Our friend Aaron is attempting to raise $10,000 for his Ride to Conquor Cancer. As a fundraiser, and somewhat of a publicity stunt, he organised a 10km ride around Brisbane’s city cycle paths – and all on citycycles – this morning, so we trolleyed along for support.

(Note: this is Aaron’s brother, Dan. Don’t get confused – especially you, Julian.)

It was fantastic! We were blessed with perfect weather – not a cloud in the sky, and a slight chill in the air. I’ve never utilised the cycle paths in the city – neither have I ever used one of the city cycles – so there was lots of new experiences in there. Here’s the view we were rewarded with as we crossed the Story Bridge:

Our time of 50 minutes for 11.37km certainly isn’t going to win us any awards for pace, but lets be honest – this was a ride that was all about the scenery! In fact, I thought it did such a good job of showcasing just how beautiful the city is, that we’ll be adding it to our bag of tricks for the next time that we have visitors from abroad.

A big thanks to Aaron for organising, and for the brilliant BBQ breakfast afterwards!

If you have some spare cash lying around, go ahead and donate it to Aaron’s ride, and support this worthy cause!

It used to be the joke that if you worked in IT, you somehow – perhaps magically – acquired the skills to fix printers. I for one have been asked to fix more than my fair share of printers over the years – and yet somewhere along the lines, all those requests dried up. Perhaps people finally understand that “people in IT” don’t have any idea about how to fix your printer – beyond reading through the manual and pressing a load of buttons, that is.

Recently though, I’ve wished that it was all a lie – that working in IT really does give you a special bond with hardware, and that merely gracing a problematic printer with a loving touch was enough to bring it back from the dead. For the last week, our printer – a Canon PIXMA MX870, for the record – has been spitting out error codes this way and that, most of which are useless. The most useful error message – and I use that term generously – was:

U052: The type of print head is incorrect. Install the correct print head.

Huh? I haven’t touched the print head, why is it suddenly incorrect? What’s more, until very recently, I didn’t even know what a print head was! The other super informative error message I received was:

5000: A printer error has occurred. Turn off power then back on again.

What?! That’s like the first thing you learn for troubleshooting in IT – try turning it off and back on again. Printer, I find your advice insulting!

Anyway – after a week of frustration, I called an authorised Canon service centre for support, where a lovely lady informed me that (sure enough) the print head probably needed to be replaced, and that I’d need to replace all of the ink cartridges with genuine ones, too. Here’s how that cost breakdown goes:

    Cost of new print head:         $120
    Cost of new ink cartridges:     $100 (approx)
    Labour cost:                    $ 80

Using my friend mathematics and some simple addition, I determined that I was looking at about $1,726 to repair the printer! It only cost $217 to buy new! Again, with the help of my friend mathematics, I came to the only logical conclusion: fixing the printer was totally not worth it! And hence, in retrospect, I believe that Canon should update the error codes in its troubleshooting guide to the following:

    U052:  Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.
    5000:  Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.
    Other: Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.

Using this newly reworded troubleshooting guide, I determined that the printer was dead, and that I should throw it out and buy a new one. This really irks me, because the old printer was only 18 months old, and we barely used the print function at all – we mainly used it for the scanner. And, even though its scanning unit is perfectly fine, since the print head has an error, the entire printer is unusable! How ridiculous!

Anyway – after far more research into printers than I ever thought would be required, we decided to go with the Epson WorkForce Pro 4530. It has all the features that we wanted – namely an ADF (auto document feeder) duplex scanner, plus the ability to do duplex printing automatically. And, the running costs (as reported by independent testers) are impressively low, which is a good thing given that printer ink is more expensive to buy than human blood.

Here’s hoping that our new printing/scanning/photocopying/faxing/latte-making friend will have a long and happy life on top of the filing cabinet in our office! (OK, it doesn’t really make lattes, but is anyone still reading?)

As randomly mentioned, Kristy and Oscar joined me on Friday in Sydney for the Labour Day long weekend. Jason, Louise, baby Adam (who Oscar nicknamed “Ambo”) were our generous hosts.

Jason’s brother Richard is staying with them at the moment too, and he generously cooked all our meals for the weekend. It was amazing; his fajitas were a definite highlight! I’m told he does parties and weekends so long as you pony up for the airfares, and by my reckoning, it would be well worth it!

Whenever we go away with Oscar, his first night’s sleep in a foreign location/cot can only be (generously) described as “rubbish”, and consequently, we had a tired little boy on our hands on Saturday. To his credit, he did manage to stay pretty sparky for our morning visit to The Woo to meet Lisa and Damien’s new baby, Michael.

I’m sure that most of his spark came from the fun he was having playing with Damien and the fan, not to mention his excitement at being able to say Lisa’s name over and over again (“LEE-tah! LEE-tah!”).

Sydney is world renowned for dining, and not only because of Richard’s fajitas. We also enjoyed an amazing lunch at The Boathouse at Summer Bay Palm Beach, about an hour’s drive (hence an hour’s nap for the kids) from the city.

Their menu was so good that it was tough to choose just one thing, and every meal that came out while we watched from the queue made me change my mind! I finally settled on the fish ‘n chips though; it was a generous serving and deliciously prepared. Highly recommended!

Being Oscar’s first trip to Sydney, we figured we should get at least a couple of photos of him with some of Sydney’s famous landmarks, so on Sunday we took a boat ride from Kirribilli (where the PM lives) into Circular Quay. Ben’s awesome photo of Ted with the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge in the background convinced us that Mrs Macquarie’s Chair was the vantage point that we were searching for, but time was working against us; there was no way we were going to make it all the way around Farm Cove before sunset.

To save ourselves a bit of time, we decided to catch the choo choo train instead of walking. Asides from the speed advantage, this was beneficial for three reasons:

• We got to have a (brief!) tour of the botanical gardens, and learn a bit of its history;
• Kids under two ride free; and (most importantly)
• The kids loved it!

We jumped off the train on the other side of Farm Cove and did our best to get a photo to signify the occasion.

As predicted, the sun had well and truly set by the time we got back to Circular Quay for our return ferry ride across the harbour. Our best option for getting back to the cars was to jump off at Luna Park and then walk, which was a huge bonus for me as it meant I could take a photo of the city lights.

The rest of our three days seemed to fly past in a blur of chasing kids, parks, and just chatting with the Lowes (who we hope to see in Brisbane sometime soon – hint, hint!). It was a great weekend though, and I have to admit that I could easily see myself living in Sydney… if only I could convince all my Brisbane friends to relocate, and the real estate down there wasn’t so tooting expensive!

Photos in the Labour Day in Sydney album on Google+

As I randomly mentioned, I flew to Sydney on Wednesday the three day WebDU conference. I barely took any photos, except for of my fellow workmates one day when we were sitting at the coffee shop. So, to make this story even more interesting, I’ll randomly insert those pictures here, even though they’re not related to the content. I know you love it.

This was probably one of the better conferences that I’ve been to. They had three “tracks” running simultaneously, and often we had trouble choosing which presentation we should attend. The beauty of having four of us there was that between us, we easily covered everything that was worth seeing.

By far though, the highlight was Friday’s keynote presentation by Colin James. His talk was titled “8 Powers to Building Greatness”, and reflected on eight characteristics that humans should strive for in order to be awesome. He was such an effective presenter – very animated and likeable, and he didn’t use any powerpoint slides! Instead, he drew pictures to illustrate his point – lucky for him he was also a great artist. Everyone in the room was captivated by his talk, and had his presentation been the only one that I saw, I still would have thought the trip was worthwhile. It was life-changing!

That aside though, I’m not sure that I learned anything at the conference that I wouldn’t have been able to work out for myself. But to me, that’s not the point of these things – to me, it’s more that they’re conversation starters. What I really enjoyed was all the informal talks that we got to have about the direction that web technologies are going, and how we can use them to solve problems in innovative ways.

I’m looking forward to shaking things up when we get back to work!

This was a pretty non-weekend. Ben, Rob, Piet and I voluntarily attended a training course for almost the whole of Saturday. Sadly, the best part of the course was by far the massive stash of free pens that Ben found hidden in the corner of the lecture theatre. Some of the presentations were so bad that it made me think that perhaps I should go into presenting – I don’t think I’d be anything outstanding, but I figure that so long as you let your audience know what they should expect from your presentation, and then deliver it in a clear and concise mannor, you’d be well on the way to making people happy.

Also, I’ve decided that I’m getting old. For two reasons: firstly, I no longer require the most up-to-date games. On the contrary, the next game on my “must play” list is Mass Effect, which came out in 2008! Did they even have computers then?! One might argue that this makes me thrifty, not old – however, combine that fact with this one: my favourite piece of clothing at the moment is my windproof vest, from Kathmandu. I know that it’s not a fashion statement; or at least, if it is, then it’s not one that I’d ordinarily choose to make. But it’s so warm! And it layers so well, especially under my motorbike jacket! Again, one might argue that I’m not old, I’m simply “ahead of my time” – vests are coming back, you know! – but I think I’m really pushing the proverbial uphill with these two powerful facts combined. Also, I couldn’t find the button to turn video mode on on Skype the other day – though that one I choose to blame on poor interface design.

Now, here’s a photo of Ian and Oscar, which was quite blurry, however I think I’ve saved it by combining a soft focus filter with the all forgiving sepia brush.

Finally – I’m heading to Sydney this week for the WebDU conference, which I’m very much looking forward to. Kristy and Oscar are flying down on Friday and we’re going to make a long weekend of it. Take that, Labour Day!

On Wednesday, we decided that we should take Oscar to a big playground for an ANZAC day adventure. Originally, we had Kidspace at Chermside in our sights, but it turns out we were not the only ones to have this idea. It was packed! So much so, we couldn’t even find a park! By this point, Oscar was screaming “wwwiiiiiiiinnnnggggg!” as he had set his sights firmly on the swing set that he could see from his car-seat. So, we needed to park and get him on a swing set, STAT!

Randomly, Dad had sent me an e-mail about another park not too far away called Hidden Worlds at Fitzgibbon, so we decided to try our luck. It too was quite busy, but parking was ample, so we quickly unclipped the boy and unleashed him on the the park. And what a park!

It’s huge! And colourful! And there’s heaps of activities for kids of all ages to enjoy – truth be told, I saw a few of the (*ahem*) “older” kids enjoying themselves on the slides, too. Though, I’m pretty sure this was only to encourage their kids to have a go – not that I was eavesdropping on their conversations or anything, but when they’re sitting at the top of the slide, trying to coerce their kids into riding down with them, they probably don’t realise that the slide itself also doubles as a gigantic megaphone. Whoops!

Most importantly (to Oscar at least), the park also has a swing, right down at the very back. Since only one of them is little-kid friendly though, it took a fair amount of “patient” waiting until he got to have his turn! But eventually he did, and sure enough – all was once again right with the world.

Team BaM have been sans-BBQ ever since their old one – henceforth known as “The Original” – was singed to pieces on New Year’s Eve. But no more! They’ve now invested in BBQ #2: a brand-spanker which henceforth shall be known as “The Successor”. As such, it only seemed right that they regather as many witnesses of The Original’s demise, to be astounded by the glory of The Successor.

Of course, the most impressive part of the evening was the ridiculously good looking tong masters that he’d hired.

I’m pleased to report that the BBQ was a complete success – after all, you can’t spell “successor” without “success”! I have to admit though that those tongs almost defeated me – they’re so powerful it’s like trying to clamp shut the jaws of life in order to grab the chicken!

Anyway – BBQ good. Meat good. Beer good. Explosions absent. Long live The Successor!

I’ve been rather neglectful of the blog since my PC has been away, but the good news is that it’s back now – yay! It turns out that the motherboard was dead (which was my suspicion all along). And so, with any luck, updates will be more frequent again from now on; but here’s a casual handful of things that should catch you up on the last few weeks:

• More flat tires: My run of poor luck with flat tires on my bicycle hit a peak at the beginning of April, when I suffered a flat going in, and then another one coming home. I took the wheel back to Goldcross and told them that something had to be done, so they sold me a pair of Continental Grand Prix 4000 S tires at a very heavy discount (though I notice Wiggle is still slightly cheaper). With all the rain we’ve been having, I’ve only had three rides on them, but so far so good!
• Mel and Ben: Ian and Un hosted a phenomenal dinner in honour of Mel and Ben, so we could finally hand over their long overdue wedding gift. All I can say is: Un is an amazing cook. Amazing.
• Coffee: Oscar has learnt to tamp coffee – a trick which he can now do without even looking.

• PS3: I finished Bioshock and Bioshock 2, both of which were borrowed from Shane many months ago. They’re awesome – I particularly liked Bioshock 2!
• Drinks with the boys: Ben, Rob, Piet and I hit the valley for drinks after work on Friday, including a sensational meal at The Valley Corner Chinese Restaurant. The crispy skin chicken is highly recommend.
• Soccer lessons: Oscar and his little friend Lily scored some free passes to tryout soccer lessons. The consensus was that they’re both a little bit too young still, but it’s pretty clear that Oscar was made to be a soccer superstar.

We spent Easter Monday morning at Alma Park Zoo with The Threebies, thanks largely to a huge discount voucher that Chellsie’s parents had purchased and passed on to us. Thanks, Ray and Maree!

For the record, I believe it’s nearly impossible to take good photos at a zoo; unless of course, you’re specifically after lots of photos of animals. And again, for the record – nobody wants to see your photos of the animals at the zoo.

Alma Park has some saving graces on this front though, because they have lots of places where you can actually interact with the animals. Like above, where Kristy and Oscar got to feed a “baa baa” (as Oscar would call it). Or, perhaps this:

Yes, to the casual observer, this may look like Ted and Ben are snubbing the emus; what you may not realise is that it’s actually a photo of Ben teaching Ted to say, “Get Down!”, just like in Terminator 2. The emus just happened to be there, milling about like a bunch of Angry Birds.

And so, would I recommend Alma Park Zoo? Yes! Especially if you happen to own an iPhone, and you wish for the camera to be cleaned by a cow.

A few more photos in the Alma Park Zoo photo album. I promise I’ve kept the animal shots to a minimum.

I can’t say I remember doing any Easter Egg hunts when I was but a lad. This is something I’m going to have to take up with my parents; I’ll add it to the ever growing list of things they clearly did wrong in raising their children. Sure, it’s possible that our childhood Easter holidays were simply loaded with Easter Egg hunts, but what are the chances that I’d forget that? Pretty slim, I reckon.

And so, to make up for this clear lack of parenting and care that I had to suffer through, we’re over-compensating for little Moo, who has now participated in four Easter Egg hunts this year! Kristy The Easter Bunny spent a few minutes hiding some eggs in our backyard this morning while Oscar and I were cleaning the BBQ. He also left a little basket hanging on the clothes line to collect the eggs in – what a thoughtful Easter Bunny!

All in all, Oscar managed to claim 15 finds, even though only 12 eggs were hidden to begin with – what are the chances?!

More photos in the Hunting for Easter Eggs album.