The price for a boy

Today being the Queen's Birthday public holiday was a opportunity to sleep in.  Then brunch theh we were running late so we all piled into the Vito and drove into the Uni to go to the Schonell theatre and watch the Queensland Musical Theatre Company's production of Oliver.  One of Dan's conteporaries was in it.

Acording to wikipedia Oliver Twist set  in 1837.

I believe Oliver was sold for somewhere between 3 and 7 pounds.  So I wondered what we might get for one of our kids.  This investigation proved to be somewhat difficult.

This web site only went back to 1900
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html
1 pound in 1900 is worth  101 pounds in 2012.

This web site goes back further but starting at 1837 our 1 pound is still only 100 pounds now. 
http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/ 

So it would seem he was only worth between 300 and 700 pounds.
We convert to AUD using this web site
http://www.ozforex.com.au/currency-converter
and we find the child is woth a poltry $AU468 to $AU1092.68
Ebay?
Cripes we spend more than that on school fees.

More crazy nanny state stuff

Dan has been away at "Advanced" music camp all week.  This was held at Alex Park up on the Sunshine Coast.

I was dispatched to collect him from the bus.

The buses dropped the kids at Centenary High School.  Talk about an unergonomic arrangement.  First, as you can see, there was not much room for people and so everyone clogged up the space between the buses and the fence on the right.  No one could move and in the middle of all this the bus drivers were trying to get bags out from under the bus.  A very slow operation because they could not get the bags away from the bus because they were hemmed in by people.  Then once some lucky kid had gotten their bag they would stand their with their bag waiting for their other bag thus exacerbating the problem.

So in this safety conscious world, the only way to walk around the buses was on the road to the left of the bus as we see it in the photo.  And just to the left of the road is a fence that separates the buses from the car park.  This of course prevents one from taking ones child and bags directly to the car.  So eventually the bus drivers managed to get all the bags out of the bus and it seemed that they managed to make it back to their drivers seats at the about the same time as the kids appeared to reunite themselves with their bags.

So simultaneously, everyone - people and buses decided to walk or drive down the driveway.  The buses so they could escape to the main road and the people so they could get to their cars parked tantalisingly close on the other side of that bizarre fence.  I mused that it would only take one kid to trip or be pushed and they would be under a wheel.  Squashed flat.  Yet had the fence not been there, the parents and kids would have only been in the same vicinity of the bus for a moment before they were off and out of the way.  Bizarre.

A video projector for those who gaze around in church

Can't concentrate?
For those people who upon entering church, just gaze around and wonder why they are there.  Well come to Sherwood UC and now a new innovation means that when your eyes wander, you can always keep track of the song you are singing or especially the latest key point a sermon.

With nothing better to do, I figured why not put up a video projector.  It was not until this engineering feat was complete that we realised that it was pointing at the back wall.  Oh well as indicated above, it will cater for those who have lost the plot.

Frank climbs the ladder kindly loaned by Graham Hodgson.  It was remarkably light.  The blue legs are fibreglass.

Marcus very kindly consented to help.  Dan did too on Thursday evening before soccer training.  Marcus though came down Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. 

Marcus and I climbed up ladders carrying Ausie duct.  That is the white thing going from me to him across the photo.

The aussie duct is rectangualr plastic ducting that holds all the wires nice and neat.

Keeping a grip on the ladder was kind of essential.

 Was rather awkward to take this photo.  I probably should have moved the ladder back and to the right.  Anyway, you can see the hook clamps that Tim welded to the 25x25RHS that I coach bolted to the hammer beam

The projector control centre.  The PC runs windoze and it does periodically during video replay.  Will have to look into that.  To the right of the video monitor is the VGA distribution amplifier.  It feeds the picture to the monitor, the front and rear video projectors and the floor monitor down the front.  To the right of the keyboard, you can see the box with buttons and LEDs that Tim made.  It controls both the front and rear projectors.  You can control them independantly or using the buttons in the middle, control them together.  Very cool.

The transit of Venus

Vesa (Left) & John Ness of EM Solutions with a telescope pointing at the Sun.  The image is projected onto a piece of paper.  EM Solutions is next door to Syndetic.  We are both in the microwave and high tech electronics game.









This is the image on the piece of paper.
The large white disc is the sun.
Venus is the black dot

It was kind of disapointing to discover that there were no telescopes at Oxley State School.  Oh well it's not in NAPLAN so we won't bother.

OXFAM Trailwalkers Meeting

Megan's team the "Serial Hillers.
Now on twitter
@SerialHillers
and see their location as they walk
http://oxfambulators.javonix.com/

The big team meeting to organise .... just about everything.  There were a few divergent / disparate / aw different points of view.

Frank Horky made me a very nice and necessary cup of coffee.  I think I may have felt a bit stressed bacause of divided loyalty.  Dan's party was due to happen shortly.

Dan's 11th Birthday

Megan excelled herself as usual and produced a wonderful musical cake.

Dan wanted a "Nerf Gun" party having experienced this at a youth group he has been attending.

So they went wild with evil in their eyes.  :)

Adjust it like this and it helps you to kill more accurately.

These kids just don't get "Go ahead make my day"
or even "I'll be back"

Of course we can all take a break from the carnage to feed and sing "Happy birthday to you"

Chris had to get to rugby training so you would think he would smile.  Well he did on the gazillionth photo.  I am surprised the cake did not walk off in frustration given the number of photos we had to take to get one with Chris simply smiling.  I wonder if Jemma is on tip toes or has she somwhow finally gotten taller than Dan.

We also had a game of tug-o-war and a chalk chase.

 The chalk chase, a staple of church youth group attendees,  was a real novilty to some of these kids.  The trail setters started off and we went up the street and across the foot bridge toward the schol.  Then round near Teal's house.  A false trail set up past Teal's house on Bannerman Street and the real trail when up that little short dead end street to the school where we were  convieniently caught by the chasers.  The chasers then took over and as the trail setters and we set a trail through the school.  Much to the enjoyment of the kids who no doubt are pointing out the chalk arrows to their school mates today.  Then wait at the lights and cross oxley road.  Down a side street.  At the first inetrsection we were planning to cross that road and head North but we could see the chasers had gotten across at the lights but they had not yet seen us so we went left.

Hit the service road and left again.  Now we were passing Office works and so decided to take the foot path tunnel under Oxley Rd.  Getting low on chalk.  If someone had brought money, we could have bought some at office works but alas not.  We went through the tunnels and along the Eastern side of Oxley Rd.  Down past the school, past the lights where we crossed the road.  All the way back to Calston St.  Arrived home to find a mother come to pick her child up early.  Hmm what to do as Megan had no phone.  But as we ummed and ahard Frank Horky arrived and anounced Megan was no far behind.  A great way to use up some time.

The shootup resumed and some other unstructured activities.  Then eveyone went home.  We collected Nerf bullets to find we are over 30 short.  We need Nerf CSI.

That Guilty Cat

Say no more!