Friends

Monday night group. 

These guys have been great support. We discuss the usual stuff like sport and politics but also delve deep, to whatever level a person wishes to go, into emotional stuff. 

A humongous thank you to Tim Hills (not present) who invited me along back when I was totally depressed consumed with rejection as a result of the end of the marriage. 

This group is only one of several groups of friends who support me. It's great to know I'm a part of stuff. Other groups include the Grammarians rowing, 

more recently BeLeste dance, 

The Sherwood people especially the dads - this group had a tough challenge as they were friends with both Megan and me and they've played a very straight bat. 

Sunday

 7:30 Coaching.  Took Magnus.  Only 2 kids.  One was new with this her second time.  Everyone else was at Wyaralong.
The coaching was good.  I mused over the lack of clubness.  

A bit of house cleaning.

Ran a corrugated grey water pipe from the washing machine to the back yard.  This was a cheap hose and came with a couple of pin holes along it's length.

3pm video conference on Tim's film.
I do not understand the purpose.  The story line.  It seems random. I don't think anyone understands the purpose.

Evening- reheated some potato & pumpkin and mince.  Teamed with raw beans.  Washed down with ice cream and Milo.

Watching random stuff on Netflix.

Nice to relax.  Weird in a way to be home but not depressed.

Saturday

 Park run

Spent most of the day with Phoebe.

Did grocery shopping together.  So domestic.  So ordinary.  So nice in a weird kind of way.

Cooked shepherds pie.
Ate some ice cream.
Started watching "Unbelievable" but it was a bit slow.

Brian & Elle's Wedding

 Well it was apparently a cock up the first time so they decided to give it another go.

Husband signed as the best man, Best man signed as the groom, Wrong cake delivered,

It was out on the Toowoomba road.

They did a reaffirmation of vows.
Brian and Elle faced the guests (rather than each other) and we the witnesses were reminded of our obligation to be there in the good times and the tough times.

The husbands speech notes how the wife was such an encouragement to him.  Supporting his endeavours including his sports car.  He also noted that when she was away, he was at a loss because when he dropped a fork there was no one there to tell him to pick it up.  When he went to bed, he did not sleep well because there was no one there to tell him to turn off the light.

I first met Elle at dance lesson.  We learned the waltz together.  Well we did the basic steps without turns.  Me going forward and Elle going back for half an hour.  At the end I was mentally drained.

Rent Renew

 Time to organise housing for next year and the owners have made an offer.  The question is is it reasonable.  Looks like the answer is yes.  Even though rents are ridiculous, my rent seems to be market rate.  Searched realestate.com.au for 2 bedroom rentals in the area.   I actually like the place.  It's small, wood, high set, yard for dog and cat.

WHERE	Bed Rooms	$/WK
Me Old	2
Me New	2	$520
TownHouse Skew St SHERWOOD	2	$590
House Robbins St CORINDA	2	$650
Unit Oxley Rd CORINDA	2	$550
House Dan St GRACEVILLE	2	$529
House Appel St GRACEVILLE	2	$550	Looks like a Queenslander
House Harrowby St CORINDA	2	$685	Near rail

 

 

 

 

Coloured Mic Cables

 Coloured mic cables make it easier to mix.  They are more expensive. The question is what makes a good mic cable.

I think (but don't know for sure) that one would want a braid shield and not a aluminium foil shield.  I would think that over time, foil shield would crack and result in less shield and more intermittent contact. 

NAME BRAND
I think "Canare" is seen as one of the best brands so lets see how they do it.

Canare L-4E6S-BK100 cable 100m BLACK

Brand	Shield	Link or comment
Canare L2T2S	Braid No Foil	https://www.canare.co.jp/en/products/cables/index.php?tid=4_003
Amazon Auxlink	Foil + Braid
Amazon GLS	Unknown	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um9Ohx-rrBc at 7:30 Single braid shield.  No foil.  25ft $152.55 / 6 / 11.8m =>$2.15/m Ordered this
Amazon Neewer	Foil + Braid
Amazon GearIT	Foil + Braid
Amazon BOYOUYS	No Foil Braid Only	Only 3m length available as far as I can see
Amazon EBXYA	Foil + Braid
Amazon Seismic	Loose spiral	Not very well shielded
Ebay Handysams	Foil +
VSD350L0600		I think it's foil
Ebay Visiosound		I think it's foil
Ebay Stagg		I think it's foil
Ebay Visiosound		I think it's foil
Ebay Visiosound		I think it's foil
Ebay Visiosound		I think it's foil

Amazon Seismic

GLS Audio - Medium Shielding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um9Ohx-rrBc

Sat Kalbar

The day started slowly.

Coffee at the bakery. 

Walked through the markets. Most notable for the number of stall holders. Mostly the usual market junk. 

The primary school had a very impressive stage with kids playing music and singing. 

Set up the PA. 

Insanely hot. 

Consciously drinking tones of water. Hard to see the pc screen. 

Two shifts separated by lunch at the pub. 

Phoebe and Fletch joined at the pub. 

Fletch helped complete the set up. 

 

 

 

 

 

 TECH
Mixer - Keep first 4 channels free as the have HiZ inputs.
5 x MIC  Coloured leads make it much easier.
+ Drum Kick and overhead from Dave Fitell,
Mic on Paul's amp as it does not seem to have a line out.
DI Passive on Ian's amp.
Peter (Bass) provided own DI.
DI for Scott's acoustic.
Each of the two individual artists had own set up.  One instrument channel plus one of our mics.

Personally I think our guitarists should turn down their amps so that our singer can actually hear himself in fold back.

Friday Kalbar

Went looking for a stubby mic stand for kick drum. No one has them. They propose desktop stands. Gave up.

Home. Packed car with a space for magnus. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to need a box for speaker and mic stands. 

Set up, just fold back for rehearsal.  Beer, Pizza & hot chips. The rehearsal was loud. Too loud in my opinion but they seem to like it.

Magnus was very good. Sometimes sitting near us. Sometimes exploring the area. Everyone loves her and her tail wags with enthusiasm. 

Monday row

A really good row.

1 Chris H

2 Rohan

3 Frank

4 Paul B

Boat sat up. 

I think we were all very focused and that was the underlying reason of sat up. Then we could get the power on. 

Laura St festival 2023

Helping out at the Laura St Higate Hill festival. Stage management at the "tree house" stage. This is the front verandah of Aaron's house.

Started with kids that Aaron and friends teach at the local primary school. Middle was ukes. Finishing off with folk punk. 

It's full of arty, left wing, green, "yes" people., 🤣

Kind of warm cumfy in a way. 

There's something nice about kids drawing a giant hopscotch thingy with chalk on the road.

referendum

The Voice to parliament referendum went to the no vote.

In my opinion... 

The yes campaign had a tough challenge from the start not helped by the libs backflipp from support to opposing and further not helped by some high profile aboriginals joining the no campaign. 

But I think the yes campaign made some mistakes. 

In my view, they should have focused on the wording of the proposal but instead they would talk about receiving racial abuse. 

Also, as I understand it, polling companies established that suburban voters were firstly concerned about the cost of living and on top of that there was almost no presence of either no or yes campaigns in the outer suburbs and so those voters gravitated to the no side. 

Centenary Rowing Jazz

Friday night and the BCC put on jazz in the park at Centenary Rowing Club. I was amazed at the size of the crowd. There were cars parked way back along Sumners Rd. Met Graham Thomas and Melissa Lochran and hobnobbed with the chosen on the verandah of the rowing club. Met Paul, Cybele and Sam on the grass. Ate a lovely Spicy German sausage with Phoebe and shared a glass of red. Speaking of the grass, I'm assuming that as part of the organising, our local member Cr Sarah Hutton  organised someone to come along with a giant vacuum and remove the kangaroo poo that had been in abundance last week when I was rowing.

I'd avoided involvement this time. It was a bit psychologically interesting turning up but not having been organising. Had a nice chat and felt very welcomed by club members. That was good because I'm carrying a bit of feeling unappreciated. Or maybe ineffective. 

Sat park run

SATURDAY 

Park run

No Jemma. No Peter this week. Just me.

Still run walk run walk... My time was 00:38:24.... 

 You finished in 274th place and were the 152nd Male out of a field of 399 park runners. Your PB at Rocks Riverside parkrun remains 00:37:45.

Phoebe came along and looked after Magnus. 

After the run, we sat in the shade and the park run director came and took these photos. 

Code Numbers of TV characters

5 Robot from Short circuit 

6 No.6 Main character on UK prisoner TV series.

7 of 9 from Star Treck
7 from Married with Children

007 James Bond

9 Prisoner no. 9 

11 from Stranger things

13 Dr Hadley from House

86 Max Smart from Get Smart

Joe90 from a 60's show of the same name
99 Susan from Get Smart

B1 & B2 from Bananas in Pyjamas

626 Stitch was experiment 626

55595472 from Peanuts

Monday morning

After a lovely week and weekend, Monday morning feeling flat...

Not sure why. 

The week leading up and weekend were good so who knows. 

SUNDAY

Started with a row at Centenary with Richard D. Then took Phoebe for a tinnie ride and coached two kids. One was a newbie and the other was the consumate tutor. 

Home for breakfast. 

Into work to clean up after the bulbar job. 

Home and dropped magnus and then off to dance. 

5pm dance was Charmaine. 

6pm dance was Rumba. 

Charmaine is hard as. It'll take a while to even get the basics.

Rumba is nice as it's basically cha-cha in slow motion. 

We also did Rythm foxtrot. I did it with a lady who knew even less than me. 🤣

SATURDAY 

Park run with Peter and Jemma

Chris travels home

Just said 'good by' to my son who's found renewed life working on a cattle property in Western Queensland. Safe travels Chris Thomson

Saturday - Park Run

SATURDAY 7-OCT-2023

So today back to the park run cult and a warm fuzzy feeling I've done the right thing by inviting Jemma along. Joined by nephew Peter 

At the start we stood around and cheered various individuals who'd been assigned greatness. Then we gathered eagerly in the polite crush.

Someone must have said go. I was so far back I couldn't hear it. A bit like parliament trying to listen. The crush moved forward and began to thin. I figured I'd better overtake someone so I sprinted past a granny and a then powered past a lady picking up her dogs poo.  About now I'm feeling the month or so I've had off.

It's now run walk run walk run walk run. I'm looking for something interesting but it's just a huge crowd disappearing into the distance. Run walk run walk...

Then I can see the turn around about 200m in front and a lone cyclist pulls onto the path from a side path. The fellow could have easily overtaken on the grass but was determined to stay on the concrete but with the mass of runners going in both directions, he was constrained to jogging speed. He dinged and called out but to no avail.

Run walk run walk. 520m to go and I start running again. Just as well as Peter was just past the 500m mark.  Luckily I don't have strava so it didn't happen. 250m from the finish and we pick up Jemma. No chance for another walk.

And it's over. 🤣

Xampp

Installing Xampp 5.6.40 because I need an old version of PHP that supports the mysql extension.

I get a warning Important! because of an activated User Account Control (UAC)....

 

Dinner for Chris

Chris is home for a week's holiday.

He indicated he'd like meals that don't include beef and ones with some taste. 

Tonight I cooked:

Salmon and potato bake and greens. 

Present were all the Brisbane members of the family.

Chris, Dan, Jemma and Megan. 

Desert was fruit salad, cream and ice cream. 

Potatoe Bake 3

SHOPPING LIST

COOKING

5:00 start prep

Peel Potatoes. 

ASAP, spread out on plate. 

2 min in microwave oven each. 

Rotate through a second time so each plate got 4 min. 

Build the potato bake

Potato 

Sweet potato 

Onion

Cream

Mixed herbs

2 teaspoons Garlic

Potatoes 

Pumpkin

Cream

5:30 in the oven

6:10 add Cauliflour

Add cheese

6:20 start greens

2 min beans

2 min add Asparagus

2 min add Brocolini.

6:30 start fish. Pan fried with butter.

6:40 serving first the potatoe Bake and then the fish. Greens done at the table.