HOTY 2013 1 - Melbourne

Thursday
Marcus drove Megan and I to the airport.  He then had to high tail it back to Oxley to take Chris to the BGS  rowing shed where a bat christening was taking place.  Chris hitched a lift home with the Clarks.

Meanwhile Megan and I were winging it down to Melbourne somewhat late.  This was tempered however with over wing exit isle seats.  A huge improvement in leg room.  A couple if Sudokus and a couple of wines and we landed in Melbourne.  Late as.  I was expecting us to land around 9 but it was 10ish as I recall.

$17 ea got us a Sky Bus to Melbourne city and a free shuttle to any down town hotel.  As we were arriving after check in, Megan had arranged for the key to be in a little key safe near the door.  We had to type in a code to retrieve the key.  Megan announced she was hungry.  We deposited our bags and went in search of food.

Spied and indeed entered a 7-11 but this is Melbourne.  Surely we could do better.  U turn and out we walked.  Up along "Little Collins St".  past a people queuing for a night club.  A friendly garbo pointed us in the direction of China Town.  We found ourselves eating special fried rice and Kebabs upstairs in a little Vietnamese restaurant at midnight.

Walked back to our room and a good nights sleep.

FRIDAY
Up at a pleasant 7:00am and met with some others from our group.  We walked down Little Collins St.  Melbourne seems to have a variety of street sizes.  We have Collins St - several lanes in each direction and then Little Collins St that runs Parallel to it and is only one lane in one direction.  Then there are numerous lane-ways that lead off at right angles from little Collins and I assume other streets too.  Our group chose one of these lane-ways filled with cafes in which to get breakfast.  After some deliberation we chose a cafe  and headed in to order and blow me over if another member of our crew (Tony) and his wife were already there.
We ordered and sat outside.  Tony and Karen joined us and Megan took a photo.
 Cafe Segovia in "The Block" lane-way

 (Clockwise) Richard, Tony, Karen, Rob, Frank.

9:30am we met in the foyer and walked to the river.
Unloaded the boats off the trailer and bolted them together.
launched and rowed up river.
This was to check out the course.  The start line is about 200m upstream of where we launced and the finish line was the Horthorne rowing club.  Down here they launch their boats from slopey board thingos at the side of the river.  Not from pontoons as we are used to in Brisbane.  We have yet to work out how to effectively and smoothly land on these things.

Someone bought some beer. -  VB - Hey when in Rome.  We sat on the boardwalk holding the boat with our feet and drank the beer. Another Grammarians crew - The Honey Badgers - arrived and did likewise.  I also saw Lachie who is a BGS coach but here he is in the guise of a cox for a womens eight.

We rowed back.  Took the boat out of the water and placed it on a rack.  It is going to be very busy around the launching area tomorrow.  There are 186 eights in this race.  It could be carnage.

This picture was a screen grab from my fake go pro little camera that I mounted on the boat.  It seems that as it gets humid, the moisture condenses inside the lens and the bright picture elements start to glow.

FRIDAY NIGHT
All three Grammarian crews and their partners are going out to dinner at The Pop Restaurant

Chris - First Quad

Chris arrived home from school and rowing training yesterday (19-11-2013) and advised that he has been moved up from the second quad to the first quad.

Congratulations Chris

I understand that the selection process is quite objective.  The kids do an ergo which means they row on a rowing machine over a "distance" of 2000m (I think) and their time is recorded.

They do a sculling trial where they row a single scull over a fixed distance - 2000m I assume and that time is recorded.

I am sure that there is something else that goes into the formula.  Anyway Chris did well in the trials and has moved up into the first grade 10 quad. 

While we are at it,
Marcus is at Schoolies down the Gold Coast.

Rowing

Some coaching - On Friday Steve (7) and Jeff came out in the Tinny and today Steve(7) and Dick Sommerville took on the coaching role and interestingly Jeff rowed 6 seat.  Tony being away surfing in Indonesia as you do.

I think the combination of these two coaching sessions has bread new life into our crew.  I think we can see that we can row.

The frustration or problem was that the boat would tip from side to side.  Although it spent more time down on stroke side, it would also tip to bow side.

The solution consisted primarily on getting correct blade depths in the draw and heights in recovery. We were going different depths during the draw and in general far too deep.

Sunday:


Friday

YOW VGA + Audio Recording

CONNECTION
Plug the Microbook2 Audio->USB device onto the mac.
Plug the Epiphan VGA->USB device onto the MAC

PROGRAMS
Run CueMixFX to control the Microbook2 inputs (Audio)
Run VGA2USB to control the Epiphan inputs (VGA)

In CueMixFX set as follows....
Inputs Tab:-
    Click the "Inputs" tab
    Click and drag trim to 25
     Set dB, f and q to mid range
    Set EQ and Dynamics OFF - Note the little indicator at the right hand side of each button.

QUICKTIME7
We use quick time 7 rather than the current version of quick time (version 10 something) because QT7 can record video and audio from an external source and it would appear Quick Time 10 only records the built in camera and microphone.
Run Applications/Utilities/QuickTime7
   Preferences>Recording
     Video Source: V4U131349
     Microphone: Motu Microbook 2
     Save Files To:   - Set a directory  <- file="" here.="" is="" p="" saved="">   File - New Movie Recording.
     Press the record button
     when done press the stop (square) button.

    

Rowing HOTY TT3 and a bit of Maintenance

SAT
3:45AM Rise and Shine
4:30AM  A
4:45AM (in theory) on the water.  Rowed up stream.  Against the tide & current to the start line near where Oxley creek enters.  The race was due to start at 6:00AM and it did.  Without us.  We started on our own.  Note to self.  Next time allocate 1.5hrs to row up.
6:15AM ish started the time trial.  This is 9.6km down stream.

6:45am ish finished.  So much easier when you are going down hill.  Over an hr on the way up and just over half an hour on the way down.

Then back to the shed.
Bacon, Eggs and the obligatory coffee at the West End Markets.
Back into the shed for some maintenenace.

I know it looks like I am sitting down but Angus (to my left) and I were discussing moving the bracket that mounts the "Stroke Coach".  This is the speedo.  It is connected to wires that run down to the front of the boat to a little propeller.  The faster we row the faster the propeller spins and the better numbers we see on the display.

Personally I think when we are not measuring speed we should connect a battery to the wires and see if we can get a little extra push from the propeller.  A propeller in my view should propel.








10:00AM Helped out with the BGS rowing.  I coached the coach of the gazillionth grade 7 quad.  They were short a cox so their coach, coxed and I figured I could drive around in the speed boat and make hopefully helpful comments from time to time.

This photo is not of me but some over enthusiastic fellow managed to park his speed boat on the Corro drive bike way on Friday.

Oxley CBR - DVD

I have taken some video of the tour.   Been editing it my laptop. Thought it would be nice to put it on the TV on the bus. 
A discussion with the bus driver established there were two ways. Analogue cable or burn a DVD.
Not having cables,  I turned my attention to the creation of a DVD.  
Contacted Henry. After the little darlings were packed off to bed,  he picked me up from the motel.
Went to his place.  Computer to render a DVD.  This took ages.  Enjoyed a glass of red and looked At Henrys photos of his recent European vacation.

Eventually burned the DVD only to discover it was only part of the project. It appears if one puts down a chapter marker, everything before the first marker is dropped.
Changed the settings and set it off again. Gave up waiting and Henry took me back to the motel.
Woke up very early and the rendering was done.   3.8GB but it would not for on the 4GB USB stick that seemed to have 380MB allocated to something that I could not see or delete.  Even reformatting did not fix it.
Set it to render a smaller file but this was not finished by the time we left.  Gave up.
On the bus,  I edited for a while but in less than two hours and my laptop battery is flat. So much for6-8hours.
Morning tea at Mittagong.

Oxley CBR - Returm

Morning tea at Mittagong.

While the kids had a wee stop and ran amuck I went and bought a coffee from a nearby takeaway.  This proved to be somewhat below par.

Shelby had received a tip from the bus driver that the bakery a few doors up was the place to go.   My shout and for $25.80 we bought 4lattes, a flat white and a couple cappuccino. Turned out Er should have also gotten a hot chocolate.

Made it back to the bus and we are back on the Hume highway.  Luckily the drivers collection of music was purchased in the80's.

Oxley Canberra 2 -

Monday we visited Parliament House.  As luck would have it, so was Peter and Henry.  We Dan and I  managed to hook up and have a photo. This was 4-Nov.  Luckily we got that over and done with as Lewis has just reminded us that 5-NOV-1602 was Guy Fawkes.

Oxley to Canberra 1

SUNDAY
Megan, Dan & I (Frank) headed to Brisbane airport.  As we were driving we saw several cars containing Oxley State School kids that we recognised.  Megan dropped Dan and I in the stop drop go at the airport.

We joined an ever growing group of parents and kids invading the terminal.

The crowd converged on gate 43 and eventually the swarm was brought to order and sat of the way.  As was to be expected we boarded the plane via the rear steps and occupied most of the rear half of the plane.  There seemed to be a few unfortunate non Oxley people in amongst us.  A family decamped and were escorted toward the front of the plane.  A young man was marooned nearby with two young Oxley boys to entertain.  The ride to Sydney was uneventful.  Out of the window at one stage we could see a fire front of one of their bush fires with the smoke drifting south in a absolutely huge cloud.

At Sydney, the kids were once again lined up in a dual queue that given the word began to march down the corridor toward the baggage collection.  This beast is not to be messed with.  Woe be tide any toddler that strays into its path.

Onto the bus and a reasonable drive to some place in Botany Bay where Capt Cook apparently set foot in Oz for the first time.  We got out of the bus and admired the Kernell oil refinery that is a somewhat more recent edition to the landscape.  Our attention was drawn to a couple obelisks that celebrate the landing or invasion depending on ones point of view.  A plaque advised that the Aboriginals resisted the landing from day one but were out gunned.  Spears vs Muscats.  It would appear the Muscats won.

Then it was back on the bus with an even longer drive to Taronga Park Zoo.  The highlight of this leg was driving over the harbour bridge.  I was beginning to realise that the quite lengthy detour to Botany bay is one of those things that looks good on a program and I am sure has plenty of educational outcomes but the effect was that the zoo visit was somewhat rushed.

At the zoo I was assigned 6 or was it 7 kids to .... supervise.  I knew most of them and they are easy going and responsible.  We had one kid who came with a reputation but the force of numbers was with the new kids and he just got in the groove.  Even though time was short, we did manage to see a Koala move, some snakes curled up sleeping behind glass, a couple of Giraffes eat some leaves and a penguin or two swim.

3:30PM and we reassembled at the zoo entrance, some of us more intelligent ones refilled our drink bottled and boarded the bus and set sail for Canberra.  This proved again to be pretty uneventful.  About half way the bus driver deposited us at Macdonalds....

More to come.  I am off to dinner.