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2010-03-27T12:13:00.001Z

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Caterpillar into butterfly: proving metamorphosis works to a 3 year-old (almost 4!)

2010-03-12T05:41:00.001Z

We've read about it, and like most of us he knows the theory. But is it for real? Like tadpoles growing into frogs, caterpillars turn into butterflies. Yeah, right. As if. So we carefully captured a fat stripey caterpillar and temporarily relocated him/her/it from a ficus in a pot to a plastic bug holder. Within 2 days we had a lumpy blobby chrysalis that dried overnight to a dramatic gold sheen. And a week or so later emerged a Common Crow butterfly (black with white spots). Theory turned into practice, we let the butterfly flutter by, off to sip nectar somewhere nice....

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The 20 year old Look KG76 wore out so I got another Felt. (Warning: bicycle pics attached.)

2010-03-05T05:07:00.001Z

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Some pics of local central coast cockatoos including full-flap landings at my seed bowl (OK, their seed bowl)

2010-02-01T05:34:00.001Z

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Bike stuff. I swear this shifter cable was perfectly fine a week, or maybe a month, ago. Or was it?

2010-02-01T04:24:00.001Z

Clearly it wasn't. Despite knowing that I should clean, inspect, lube and replace cables (having broken plenty of gear cables in my time, and clutch and accelerator cables in cars, too) somehow this one passed me by. In hindsight I knew I had a problem. I saw the cable wearing against the head tube and I should have wrapped it with some tape. I also noticed the lack of responsiveness in shifting but I assumed it was related to cable tension and friction, and having lubed it where I thought it "needed it", I left it at that. Indeed, performance had improved markedly, so I thought I had nailed it. Then yesterday it started to skip gears, or shift belatedly under power. At the end of the ride it refused to go into the smallest gear. No big deal, I thought. I'll adjust it later. But later didn't come.

Instead I went for another training ride today and forgot about yesterday's problems. Until I tried to grab a bigger-diametre rear cog. No dice. It would go up but not down the range. (Which is to say I could grind out a bigger, harder gear but I wasn't going to get a smaller, easier ratio if I needed it. Considering I live on a hill this was no small thing.) That's when I started playing with the cables, looking for a kink - whoa. That's not a kink. That's a snap. You'd think after almost 30 years of bike riding I'd be on top of this stuff... but complacency never lets up, does it?

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Last Friday's crit - the iBike power-meter view of 10 laps in D-grade

2010-01-18T03:27:00.001Z

I had a break. Well several breaks really, and a fall (with no breaks, just pain!). But I'm back on the bike and racing - and training - with the intention of staying race-fit until the "road season" (which is Aussie-speak for our winter as we do track and crits in summer). We shall see. Although I raced at least twice (maybe 3 times) back in October/November last year I have taken January 2010 as the "real" starting point. I am training, rather than just riding, and trying to have an influence on the race.

So here's an iBike power-meter view of what was race 2 for me in 2010. I was carrying a hamstring injury (of all things) and wasn't sure how hard I could push it - I could feel a twinge of pain when I rose from the saddle or pulled up with the right leg - so I "sat-in" as any old ex-Randwick-Botany racer would do and just followed wheels. For the 2nd race in a row - hey this is only D-grade at CCCC's Lucca Rd circuit, don't get excited - I got 3rd place. But I contested the sprint and didn't ever feel like getting dropped. Average speed was just under 33kmh for the 30mins + 1 lap. Nornalised power (my own formula with coasting "zeroes" removed and weighting given to "power-on" rather than "slacking off") was just under 200W (seeing as how I have been cracking 200W training it shows that I was taking it easy, but the iBike is also not that great at measuring power whilst sucking wheels, either). You can see that the sprint (end of the bike race, folks) was the only time I exceeded 50kmh but we cracked 40 every lap. That's on a downhill but there was a headwind!!) There's a small but painful "rise" that starts at a left-hand turn (so only the brave really take a run-up at it) every lap and the wattage hit 450-600 every time up that incline as someone always "had a go" to dislodge a few non-trainers. There's also a smaller power peak each lap just after the "big" hill and past the start-finish straight where we go left again and kick up a smaller but noticeable gradient. The speed rises once more as we hit that gentle climb - must be enthusiasm or the excitement of it all. If you took this seriously you could train to these conditions and increase output in key situations. You could replicate the course or sections thereof and impose repeated loads. Or you could use this race data to optimise race speed whilst keeping the lid on over-enthusiasm, power-wise. Hang back a bit, save the powder as it were. Now you could do this without a power meter - heck, I raced for more than 20 years without one - but it's so nice to get pictures, isn't it?

Onward, ever onward. Even at 52.

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Wet day, a camera, some fruit and flowers. You are warned.

2010-01-04T06:13:00.001Z

Wet day, a camera, some fruit and flowers. You are warned.
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Some light rain and even light under a cloudy sky - perfect for shooting flowers! (Oh, and just a touch of flash to light up the darkest bits.)

Wet day, a camera, some fruit and flowers. You are warned.

2010-01-04T02:57:00.001Z

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A splash of colour and beaks - parrots in our Central Coast garden (reprised)

2010-01-04T02:55:00.001Z

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This morning's Central Coast spiderwatch - warning Eriophora eating gruesome breakfast

2009-12-23T00:57:00.001Z

There are always plenty of spiders around in summer but the orb-weavers - especially the Nephila and Eriophora - are surprisingly small for this time of year. I'm guessing that the early summer heat, coming as it did in late winter, drew the sap-sucking cicadas out a month or 2 earlier than usual, before the orb-weavers got going. Normally a fair number of cicadas would be caught up in the massive orb webs but with this mis-timing the cicadas have proliferated without fear, at least from spider predation. Finally the orb-weavers are weaving and catching food but with less around to eat they aren't looking as good as last year. We need some rain as well as the 'real' summer heat to bring the food supplies up. Well that's my take on it, anyway.

But here's a lucky - if gruesome - catch for one of the Eriophoras, a grasshopper that was on the wing. Until it got snagged, anyway. Someone's got breakfast, and lunch. Also a few other orb-weavers just hanging around looking beautiful.

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At great personal cost (ie loss of sleep) last night's Central Coast Gecko shots for @neerav

2009-12-22T23:58:00.001Z

This is Phyllurus platurus or a close relative, AKA Southern Broadtailed Gecko. They are slightly unusual (I think) in having that blue colouring on the back of the neck. There are 2 of them here, male and female (not that I checked in detail but at an educated guess) both pictured on a pathway in my tiny and slightly wild suburban garden on the Central Coast of NSW. The time was 11pm. Having promised @neerav some Gecko shots I thought I'd better get out there and find some small, flat, spiky reptiles. Armed with a Nikon D50 and an LED bike headlight (as spotlight and as an aid to manual focusing, not always easy in the dark - in fact quite a pain to do) I set off on my crazy night-time adventure. This could take some time and will require patience, resolute purpose and a keen eye I thought to myself as I set off down the path to the most likely Gecko-location, almost squishing my first Gecko in the process. Ah, there's one, just near my left foot.

As I crouched down carefully to get close I realised a few things. Firstly, he's decided not to run tonight (they usually run from cameras) and secondly the perfect camouflage for a stone pathway is also a great way to get trodden on. Then I noticed, to my right, a pair of tiny slitted eyes watching me focus on lizard "a". Of course it was lizard "b", doing the same frozen, camouflaged thing. As I was crouched over a funnel web hole at the time I thought I'd reposition myself both for safety (not wishing to die for my cause) and to take full photographic advantage of these rock-still reptiles before they realised I had a Nikon on me and bolted. With that thought lizard (b) sensed my weakness and made for the hills but - thankfully - once on the leaf-litter it froze again. Hence these shots, brought to you by luck, sheer chance and successful reptilian adaptation to the human built environment.

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Crfitics dump on Barangaroo. I don't love the design but making up stuff is just silly

2009-12-22T04:22:00.001Z

I like some of the approved Barangaroo design and would prefer more wild spaces rather than manicured lawns, but overall it's iconic and interesting. As for the critics, really, they could do better than just make it up to suit themselves: "''There's not really any excuse for intruding on publicly owned water. The precedent that sets is not a very good one,'' said Peter Webber, a former NSW government architect and emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Sydney."

Sydney Airport's main runways and every piece of reclamation-based port infrastructure from Port Botany to Port Kembla is apparently neither excusable nor demonstrates any sort of precedent for 'intrusion' on public waters. Gosh, they are rather big constructions, you'd think an emeritus professor of architecture would have noticed 'em. We even managed to move the mouth and course of the Cooks River to make space for the airport without the good professor noticing. Let alone countless private jetties, wharves and marinas that have taken over our waterways. Inexcusable indeed, but a bit late to squeal now!

Read it in full here: http://www.smh.com.au/national/grand-slam-for-barangaroos-grand-plan-harbour-makeover-looks-like-worst-of-dubai-20091221-la26.html

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My last win in A-grade? Whilst cleaning up I stumbled over some personalcycling nostalgia from 1989

2009-12-22T03:49:00.001Z

I'm obviously not working today, am I? Whilst digging through the archeological treasure trove known as my "house" I stumbled over this clipping from the SMH, 21st October 1989. In one yellowed scrap of ye old newspaper clipping we see results for the Commonwealth Bank Cycling Classic, Dulwich Hill Club track at Camperdown and Bankstown Club track at Tempe. Matt Bazzano (now of Shimano Australia) is leading the lost and long-lamented Bank Tour of NSW and southern Queensland, and there are some other interesting names sprinkled here and there, especially if you were a Sydney-based bike racer in the '80s and '90s. For a moment I thought 'Nate Reiss' was a mispelled Nathan Rees, until I remembered there was a US rider by that name who came out here for the Bank Tour. And Nathan's best years were in the future, anyway.

Of course Camperdown velodrome is long gone, like Nathan's Premiership, although Tempe remains intact. (Ironically my old club crit races were - and still are - at Heffron Park in new State Premier Keneally's seat. And the current Premier is a decent bike commuter, too. There's always a link if you try hard enough.)

And then there's me, outsprinting Jose Rodriquez and Peter Clayton in the A-grade 20 lapper on a Wednesday night. For the record, I hit out just at the bell, 'round the outside and jumped 'em, leading all the way to the line 330m later. I even kicked again at 100m to go, just to say 'too late guys'. Couldn't do it now, trust me. Future World Track champ Sean Eadie was probably racing in the under 19 (what we called 'Junior') division at the time.

That could have been my last A-grade win. Allow me a moment of quiet reflection on that, please. 1989? Gee, it feels like yesterday.

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For the musically-inclined, here's a MIDI-controller, a guitar 'snake' and more USB gadgetry

2009-12-21T22:45:00.001Z

For day-to-day 'mucking about' with audio files I use Mixcraft as my first choice as it's fast and easy. It can do most things pretty well, too. If it can't load a particular VST or just can't give me the control I want then it's on to Anvil for composition, Reaper because it's just great and Ableton Live because it came bundled with the M-Audio Keystation 61es MIDI controller (actually it's also very powerful and full of great sounds). But for most purposes Mixcraft coupled with Audacity (free!) will do the trick. Both will load just about any of the zillions of VSTs you can get hold of on the Web and will accept input from USB audio devices like the Keystation and the Guitar Snake. This quest for musical de-composition began with my Fender electric guitar, the PC (of course) and the Behringer USB GuitarLink, coupled with various digital emulations of famous amplifiers. Actually it really began when my real amp died and rather than just fix it I decided to get the signal into (and out of) the PC instead. One thing led to another and now, like my ditching of analog photography I've almost washed my hands of analog audio as well. Almost.

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Photos of a lacewing. Saratoga is full of these blue-eyed metamorphs

2009-12-21T21:43:00.001Z

Lacewings and their relatives are everywhere in my Saratoga, NSW garden, and sometimes (like this one) in the bathroom as well. The eggs are laid underneath just about anything they can find in a white, U-shaped arrangement, hanging down as if on stilts. The larvae make their way (fall?) down to the ground (or into my washing) and look absolutely weird, even other-worldly. They have a gnarly, woolly look about them with false appendages and spikes on which to embed and display prey. One lacewing relative produces antlion larvae that live in sandy soil at the bottom of conical ant-traps. They all metamorphose into various types of wonderfully delicate lacewings, like this blue-eyed variety.

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GM's Lutz suggests higher tax on petrol to push buyers to EVs

2009-12-09T05:29:00.001Z

GM product boss converts to green motoring

"Over time, if this country is serious about reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gases, there has to be a gradual increase in Federal taxation on gas {petrol]," he said, while falling short of supporting such a policy.
If it doesn't happen, Lutz went on, it will be hard for the electric and hybrid technologies to grab a serious share of the US market.

Insurmountable? I don't think so

2009-12-02T04:09:00.001Z

Interesting story, sure. Inspirational? Maybe. Anti-social, possibly (especially if you leave near by or care about the environment! But 'insurmountable'? Hardly.

Sinatra was easier than Sydney V8s | The Daily Telegraph

The high school drop-out who became the boss of Australia's fastest-growing sport is the man who defied insurmountable odds to bring his vision to life.

Venerable? Dave, I think you mean 'vulnerable'

2009-12-02T00:48:00.001Z

Nice review, Dave, but your wordsmithing? Hmmm. I like this PVR too but the 'vulnerability' mentioned (or not, if its venerable-ness is to be believed) is entirely up to how you secure your network. Yes, a consumer device with IT-abilities does leave scope for gigantic mess-ups, but what LAN-enabled device doesn't have this flaw? Home networking is a WIP for everyone, really. Still, some detail here you don't get in the mass media.

Dvico TiVX Has The Potential To Be Awesome - Channel News

The problem with this is that you leave your files venerable to other users on the network and the outside world as well.

What did he say?

2009-11-30T05:52:00.001Z

I think the writer means "fleshes out", rather than "thrashes". Maybe it'll catch on, though?

Renault launches Twingo Gordini | Car News | Hot Hatchbacks | evo

Renault is relaunching its Gordini brand. It thrashes out the French firm’s hot hatchback range and further strengthens Renault’s commitment to the fast three-door, as rival Peugeot pulls the plug on its GTIs.

Convergence and meta-consciousness. More fantasy futurism and enhanced human memory

2009-11-27T03:36:00.001Z

OK, ultimately this is all about security, privacy and copyright - those
dogged old fashioned concepts from last century. In essence we are perhaps
just a few technological steps away from a complete and utter loss of our
physical control over images, sounds, thoughts and ideas. Physical
manifestations of science, art, craft or thought have up to recently
provided a reliable means by which we can control - and often profit by -
our creativity. However the digital world has steadily chipped away at the
necessity for a physical presence for our art. Recorded music, like words
and images, is now transmissable without regard for - or containment on - a
discrete physical object. And whilst we still "need" an object to "play"
the art on, the cost and size of that object is diminishing as rapidly as
our disregard for copyright. Increasingly we have to wield a big stick to
protect from theft things which don't naturally feel "stealable". When you
can do it so easily, quickly and simply, without leaving home and without
taking someone else's physical "property", it no longer feels "wrong". It's
just a soft copy, after all.

Now we can all see good and bad in this, and we can all see that there's a
growing mismatch between the virtual and "real" worlds. And as
copyright-owners we could fight against copyright "theft" whilst feeling
"right" about our position, needing to eat and pay for housing as we do.
But what about tomorrow? What if the physical barriers continue to erode?
What if convergence, connectivity and miniaturisation lead us to a state
where everything is captured, remembered and shared, just by default?

I recently commented on the rise of a global human connectedness via a
convergence of our mobile devices, the internet and embedded image
capturing devices. In essence this is something new for geographically
dispersed humanity - that we can be somewhere, almost anywhere on the
planet, have a thought or experience - good or bad - and share it globally
as voice, text or image. Or as any form of data, really. That mass human
connectedness may (to cite a few possibilities) breakdown social, political
and economic barriers; subject our leaders and authority figures to a new
level of poular critique; or create a 'Lithium state' where the banal and
the merely average will rule. (Daily Telegraph readers will recognise that
state.) I'm sure there are many more options here and I certainly don't
know all of the possible outcomes. I'll leave you to think of some more.

What I would like to do now is throw another thought into the mix - that we
are entering a new, powerful era of connected common - as in shared -
memory. Memory that doesn't get forgotten, doesn't go away and doesn't take
much effort to retrieve. I would go so far as to suggest that the
combination of stored thoughts, expressions and experiences with our
aforementioned mass connectedness will lead to a new type of shared
(perhaps 'pseudo' or 'meta'?) human consciousness. Simply, a
hyper-awareness of a larger "self" beyond our own narrow vision. Hmm,
that's not so simple either, is it? It may not even be desirable. Not that
we will have any choice, it will just arrive. The rock, having been pushed,
is rolling downhill.

So just how does this pseudo-hyper-meta human consciousness come about?
Just work backwards with me for a moment. Think 'pre-book'. Human written
language existed prior to the book of course, but there was an explosion of
thought - and of the communication of thoughts - that came about because of
the sheer (relative) ease with which thoughts, ideas and explanations could
be stored on a physical page and accurately communicated across distances.
If you like, imagine yourself further back in time, before there was a
written language. We may have etched the odd number on a tablet for
accounting (or taxation) purposes but we had no way to write down what we
thought, or to document a simple 'how-to'. We could talk about it, of
course, and pass it on - but error (good or bad) was inevitable (as shown
by the well-known "Chinese whispers" exercise). Of course we had ways and
means to minimise those errors, memory aids if you like, but essentially we
had to learn a narrative by rote before we could pass it on, Illiad-syle.
And if your verbal language skills weren't too flash then you relied on
others to do the job, and to intepret what was meant. So it was inevitably
filtered, distorted and controlled information. Now come back to this
century and look at how we are changing our world, step-by-step. Firstly,
we are generally better educated and by and large can read and write. We
can just about all read - perhaps even write - entire books, if we so
choose. (And apologies to those who can't, who may have a disability by
birth or circumstance, or live in a situation where basic education isn't a
given.) Now layer on top of that the connectedness we have achieved
already, the mobility and the access to data. We can use that connectedness
for any purpose, of course, but what I wish to explore is the prospect of
accurate hyper-access to a vastly increased scope of information. Never
before in human history have we been able to access our "written" (or
saved, if you like) word, our accumulated wealth of knowledge, so readily,
so easily, wherever we may be. That alone will accelerate human
technological - and possibly social - development. We have stepped well
outside of our genome and into a wider phenotypical world of extended
ability and influence.

OK, that's all a given, isn't it? Big deal. But step forward to a brave new
world where every step we take is recorded in sound and vision. Where our
entire lives (possibly excepting - possibly - personal moments of our
choosing) are recorded and stored for later analysis. Our patterns of
behaviour, our thoughts, our art, our expression - kept for good. Not
filtered, enhanced and written down in a book but simply recorded,
unchanged, and made available upon request. Whilst much of our lives will
presumably be subject to some restriction and made "offlimits" to wider
analysis, our public steps will be broadly available. Our work, our
hobbies, our inventions, our preferences, our habits, our perspectives -
all observed and recorded. We see this trend already reflected in the
growth of stored knowledge and meta-data on the World Wide Web. We see the
possibilities that come about with crowd-sourcing, effectively putting the
masses to work, with or without pay, Wiki-style. We see the social media
revolution, capturing our lives bit-by-bit. We see GPS and camera
technology embedded in laptops, cell phones and bike hemets. We see the
cloud, convergence and miniaturisation. Add it all up. Everything connects
and converges into smaller, shared devices that we quite literally wear, or
at least carry around. That's just a step or 2 away from bio-embedded
technology and constant, pervasive data capture.

It used to be that security-conscious bodies (especially large corporates
and defence establishments) simply banned cameras and cell phones from
their premises. But cell phones became a business necessity, so they had to
come in. And now it's difficult to buy a cell phone without a camera, so
they are in too, even if by stealth. But what happens when we ourselves
save all of our vision, all our audio - all of what we do - to local
electronic memory, or to cloud, with every step we take? It may sound
slightly weird, but it becomes less strange with every generation of
ever-more-powerful personal memory device. As our converged, location-aware
smart-camera-phone shrinks to watch-size, or becomes simply part of your
sunglasses frame, so it becomes expected. Why not converge all devices onto
contact lenses? Why not simply embed in our bodies a chip that transmits
and receives signals from sensors anywhere in or on our body? And make that
data available to others?

Some of this will just happen. Some products will be outlawed. But this
converged connectedness will happen to a greater rather than lesser degree;
it may lead to a new meta-conscious state where ideas are shared
exponentially, and it may provoke a security and privacy backlash. Indeed
perfect, highly retrievable and super-communicated memory will certainly
test our copyright laws. If you can hear or look at it, it's copied to the
cloud, immediately. Some people will chose not to transmit, but many more
will like to share. How will Rupert Murdoch put a wall around that?

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Confused cicada, or knows exactly what's what

2009-11-23T03:13:00.001Z

I'm not exactly sure what this guy was trying to do, but it was worth taking a shot. He (or perhaps she?) is either climbing out of their shell, or having felt the 40 degree C heat is getting back in. There's another possibility I'd rather not consider, of course, and I'll leave that to your imagination.

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Daily visitors, looking for a handout and a chat

2009-11-23T03:09:00.001Z

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Tracks of our tears. Extent of NSWGR, 1962

2009-11-23T02:55:00.001Z

NSWGR 1962_0263
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

Blame Labor or Libs, or venal self-interest? A quick guide to NSW railway closures

2009-11-04T05:05:00.001Z

This could be a very long post, or a very short one if I get bored of the task. But if history matters at all, and it may not, it's worth looking at who did what to stall or enhance the NSW railways over the medium to longer term. We could then draw meaningless conclusions about what the encumbents or pretenders may or may not do...

And I should say right now that we have to look at context, too. Railway line closures have been going on for a very long time, just as Sydney's (and Newcastle's) extensive tram network grew and declined over decades (but it was Heffron for Labor who finally pulled the pin on Sydney's real light rail system). You can't blame Labor alone - in fact the Liberal Premiers have a slight lead in the 'rail closures' game overall - however you can accuse both major parties of an over-eager opportunism. Flood damage can be a great excuse to close a line, for example. But glib analysis ignores the elephant in the room: the motor lobby, and it's venal, self-interested cohorts. If anyone - or any thing - is to blame, it's the motor vehicle. Truck and car competition, fostered and lobbied by car makers, pro-car organisations and the oil companies, has been intense over the last 60 years or so. Money that could - perhaps should - have gone into improved public transport was used instead to subsidise road building. First it was sealed roads, then bigger roads, straighter roads, wider roads. Our appetite for roads seemingly knows no bounds.

And people - voters - actively chose to buy cars, house them in little boxes on their increasingly remotely-sited land and use them, "proving" that continued investment in rail was not in the short term interests of citizens or their elected representatives. You can blame the old media, too, for their glorification of subsidised personal car transport and self-interest in selling car-related adspace. Blame who you like, but we are all complicit in this crime.

So here goes... and E&OE, I'll do the best I can but you will have to check it out yourself to be certain!

First of all and my personal favourite in so many ways is the Parramatta to Castle Hill line (it began as a steam tram, but later there were platforms and a direct connection with the main western railway). It actually continued onto Rogans Hill (from Castle Hill). It was closed in 1932 due to poor patronage. Jack Lang pulled the plug on this one, for Labor. Imagine if we'd have kept and developed that line. But people just didn't use it.

Some lines were closed formally by an Act of Parliament. At least they are clear-cut examples. They include:
Ballina closed 1948 - McGirr Labor. Due to landslides.
Westby closed 1952 - McGirr Labor.
Richmond to Kurrajong closed 1952 - Cahill Labor. Unprofitable, flood damage.
Morpeth closed 1953 - Cahill Labor. Due to siltation of the Hunter and Morpeth's decline.
Kunama (Batlow) closed 1957 - Cahill Labor
Taralga closed 1957 - Cahill Labor.
Camden closed 1963 - Heffron (hey, they named a park after him) Labor. Coal trade moved elsewhere. Imagine if we'd kept this one, too?
Dorrigo closed 1993 - Fahey Liberal, suspended for a long time previously but still under a Liberal leader. Unprofitable, washaways.

Some lines are just "disused", even though they may or may not have rail and sleepers, stations, platforms and bridges in place. You see these all around NSW - just look out your window as you drive around country NSW and look for raised embankments, fences, bridges and culverts where you don't expect to see 'em. According to this recent - and somewhat emotive - SMH article there are 58 such disused lines: http://www.smh.com.au/national/rail-lines-could-be-ripped-up-20091103-hv9b.html

I'm not sure what is counted amongst that 58, but here's what I can find:
Inverell branch (to Moree) - progressively closed '87 (Unsworth, Labor) to '94 (Fahey, Liberal)
Burcher branch - closed (maybe) between '72 (Askin, Liberal) to '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Corowa - closed '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Kywong - closed '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Rand branch - closed '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Rankin Springs - closed '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Tocumwal branch - closed '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Tumbarumba - damaged by floods in 1974, not repaired (Askin, Liberal) and remainder closed in '87 (Unsworth, Labour)
Tumut - damaged by floods in 1984, not repaired (Wran, Labor) but already on its way out in '75 (Lewis, Liberal)
Unanderra-Moss Vale - stations closed '75, '76 (Askin, Lewis, Willis, all Liberal) but line open
Yass Branch - closed '58 (Cahill, Labor)
Brewarrina - closed after flooding in '74 (Askin, Liberal)
Coolah - progressively closed from '75 (Lewis, Liberal) to last train in '82 (Wran, Labor)
Molong-Dubbo - progressively closed, much of it in '74 (Askin, Liberal) and finally and completely by '87 (Unsworth, Labor). I looked at this one in 2009, pretty well taken apart now
Oberon - closed 1980 (Wran, Labor) but station closures earlier (Askin, Liberal)

There are more but circumstances (like mine closures) make it obvious that they would close anyway. Indeed if you take the emotion and politics out of it, many lines just lose their reason for being - for example if a mill or a mine closes. Or if trucks take away the business. You can't blame Liberal or Labor for that, unless you see their weakness in the face of oil-fueled transport lobby groups, populous fuel tax policy and the like as their fault. Which of course it is. Every time we give in to the oil lobby and lower or limit the tax on petrol or diesel at the pump we are killing off the rail system. 10 years of Federal Liberal government under John Howard can certainly take some of the blame here with singularly populous politicking on fuel pricing, but Labor can be just as weak-kneed when it comes to the crunch. Let alone the Greens, unashamedly politicking on the issue: http://leerhiannon.org.au/rail-trails-bill-a-disguise-to-close-rail-lines-through-nsw

We could, after all, simply keep all the infrastructure and use and maintain it at huge ongoing cost, or mothball it at a lesser cost. The hidden cost is what we can't do with that locked-up capital. Or we can sell it off, raise more cash and redirect it into other public services. That's the game in play that the media, the Liberals and the Greens are playing silly games over.

And then there's the Eastern Suburbs line. Started under engineer Bradfield in 1926, it was stopped by Depression and World War. Originally planned to extend from Town Hall to Bondi Junction before heading south through Randwick and the University of NSW, most of it just got dropped. It was restarted in '47 and abandoned in '52 (both decisions by Labor). Restarted again in '67 (Askin, Liberal) and reviewed and shortened in '76 (Wran, Labor). And "completed", if that's the word, by Wran in '79. Now if we had kept the trams (stopped in 1961, under Heffron for Labor) then the route-shortening may have made some sense. Now it just looks like bad planning. That's hindsight for you, though. It's worth noting that a spur was proposed to Bondi in 1999 but it was heavily lobbied against by the residents of Bondi, presumably because the utility of the rail system for them was undermined by the increased ease by which more people could travel from faraway parts of Sydney to visit Bondi Beach. That's People Power at work.

Much of the info above was found at a couple of sites, well worth exploring at the links below.

Railway status reference:
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/formally_closed.php
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/short_lived_sections.php
http://www.nswrail.net/lines/show.php?name=NSW:eastern_suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Suburbs_railway_line,_Sydney

Also well worth a read: http://home.iprimus.com.au/bexleyboy/arhs/unofficial.htm

Premier and party reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiers_of_New_South_Wales

Posted via email from gtveloce's posterous

Just can't let this one past - soft brake pedal, so blame the pads?

2009-11-02T23:29:00.001Z

I like EVO mag. It's readable. It's not necessarily focused on sustainable motoring - in fact all forms of 'motoring', be they EV, diesel or petrol, are arguably unsustainable. It's really about harm-minimisation.

That said, I have to question rev-heads who throw a road car onto a track, find the brakes inadequate and blame the pads. After just one warm-up lap it's hard to imagine overheated pads, or rotors, or even boiling brake fluid; but of all those options I'd pick the brake fluid over pads. Soft, mushy pedal? That's extra play in the hydraulics as the fluid boils. Hard pedal that fails to slow progress, that's a pad with a layer of superheated material on top, between pad and rotor, causing the braking equivalent of skating on ice.

To me this suggests old fluid, or just lousy standard brakes. They aren't designed for race tracks after all. Still, an interesting article on turning a sow's ear into something else again...

Project Veyrog: Audi TT | Trackday features | evo

"With John Barker alongside in the Audi’s passenger seat, we completed an easy out-lap to warm everything through. But approaching the first corner proper – Hangar Hairpin, which requires some serious slowing from fourth gear down to second – we discovered that the old, worn, poor quality pads were already too hot, causing the pedal to go mushy underfoot and the TT to shed speed only gently, rather than in the major hurry I was asking for."