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life_state

Stephane is away for Thanksgiving; we'll spend Christmas with my family. hack mode.

I'm working out good routes to drive to Noosa and to Adelaide for LCA. I'm pretty keen to go along the Great Ocean Road and just generally for S and myself to see some more bits of Australia.

Went go-kart racing with the boys today. Good fun: no torque, no traction, poor brakes. Pretty tiring. My car felt silky smooth afterwards: remarkable that you can make a 1000kg car feel lighter and easier to control than a 50kg kart.

I've been listening a lot to soundlab. It's good. JJJ during the daytime can tend to get stuck on "alternative top 40", but soundlab's playing some pretty novel beats.

I went for a ride with Michael down into Namadgi National Park. It still looks a bit desolate after the fires at the start of 2003. We went up towards Yankee Hat, and visited the Orroral Valley tracking station that was used for the first satellites. There are no buildings or equipment there anymore, just concrete foundations and some plaques, and an overgrown garden. You can see blue 60s tiles where the bathrooms used to be, and a little courtyard where the rocket scientists probably had their morning tea. It would be a good place to go for a picnic.

I swapped onto Michael's YZF-6R for part of the way back. I think you've been on it once? It's very different: it feels so tiny! It feels like the weight you have to lift to get it off the sidestand is half as much as mine, probably because of the outright mass and also a different center of gravity. It's very sweet. It's like a tiny little glass of honey liquer. It revs up very freely, and the sitting position is very comfortable, though the seat is hard.

Speaking of revvy, BBC World plays a little motoring show here called Top Gear. I first ran into this flipping through the channels of the United in-flight show, and it was really the first time I realized there was more to BBC World than just the Economist-rewrites-CNN of their normal newsfeed. The content is pretty amusing: guys hooning around British backgrounds in modern and classic cars. I think I find the presentation even more interesting though: there are some pretty glossy camera and digital tricks happening. I think I need to ask my media studies expert. I'd say it's consumerist porn, but I've never heard of porn being quite so well and lovingly filmed.

posted Sun 7 Dec 2003 in /personal | link

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