Welcome to 2010, and believe me, you are welcome to it. Not a lot happening this month after the fun and games of Xmas, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got little to say.

Thanks for all the birthday card, greeting and email you sent, BTW, I wuz touched. Still am.

So Bethy came back from the Scouts Jamboree, full of tales of how her troop bitch had been a bitch and not done anything to help. Once we got through that lengthy diatribe we found out that she actually had done a load of wonderful things as well, including an 18 meter “death drop” rope swing, and had met Michael. Michael was a nice young man who got very enamoured of Bethy. Bethy had got enamoured of Micheal. There’s lots of photos of them together. That’s all I know, Lee-Anne may know more. Fortunately for Micheal he is a Kiwi and lives in New Zealand, otherwise he may have got a discrete visit from me and Glenn, just “making a few inquiries”.

With baseball bats.

Next year’s Jamboree is in New Zealand, so there’s a chance they may meet up again. The other advantage of this is that me and Lee-Anne will  book a few weeks holidays around that time, and so, after the Jamboree, the three of us will be able to do the camper-van tour of NZ we have planned

I went out on the bike the other day, up to Mt. Stromlo to take images of a storm front which was due to come through. It didn’t happen (thanks met office!) so I rode on home. Got home and parked the bike and went to get my camera out of the bag. The bag has a bust zip. There was no camera in there. I crapped myself.

The only bump I had ridden over was a speed bump on the top of Mt Stomlo. So letting Lee-Anne know I’d just lost $1200 of camera gear, I ran away sharpish. I got to the top of Stromlo after taking  several  corners at hair raising speed, and there, believe it or not,  was my camera. It was stood, next to the speed bump, on a raised bit of concrete, almost like it was placed on a plinth.

There were some mountain bike riders stood around  there, Stromlo is part of the National Mountain Bike course. They came over; “We saw it on the road and thought best to shift it,” one said. I gave him my thanks, “Oh, it’s totally fucked by the way,” he added. I went over and picked it up. The lens was in pieces, smashed to all buggery, the battery holder/trigger grip was hanging in bits. I turned the camera on, no screen lit up, no lights came on, not a spark, nothing, as dead as a Norwegian Blue. I damn near wept. I thanked the bike boys again for their consideration, threw it into the bike bag, this time, this fucking time, I zipped the bag up, and went home.

Lee-Anne could see how upset I was and said; “Go on, go online and get a new one, it’s not like you don’t get your money’s worth out of it. How are you going to annoy Nicol back in the UK if you don’t send him boring images every month?”

So I jumped online and started looking. Eventually I bought one for $800.00. It was body only, but that was ok as I still had other canon lenses I could use with it. I was going to bin the old one. I decided to see if any of it was salvageable. I took out the batteries from the battery grip, as they were worth keeping. I unscrewed  what was left of the lens, and threw that out. Then I had one of those “slap on the head moments”. I Put the battery from the grip back in the body, and turned that on. The only bit of the camera which had survived the smash was the body.

And I’d just forked out $800 for a new one. Brilliant I am eh?

Fortunately for me they let me cancel it. Now I’m in the market for a new 50mm lens.

Talking of things breaking down, not long after the Stromlo incident the bike started playing up. I know sod all about bikes so I decided to paste the details on a biking forum I use, it led to this amusing (I think) exchange;

Me:

Great new problem with my SV, be nice if someone could offer help here! Yesterday it started “random rev counting”, where the rev counter would shoot over to the high side while the revs stayed the same. Quite frighteningly so did the speedo, but without any increased speed! Oh, and the petrol light came on with plenty of gas in the tank, all at the same time.

A few people chipped in with ideas then this bright spark commented;

c’mon peeps, apply some logic …

The cluster works off signals from the ECU (tacho) and speedo sensor (speed). It is difficult to imagine the ECU and speedo sensor going haywire simultaneously. The only commonality is the wiring loom & power system. The taco and speed signals are simply square wave pulse streams. Wildly high tacho and speedo indications are due to wildly high frequency pulse streams.

Analysis Part #1:
Answer the Question: where is the high freq pulse stream coming from?
You can eliminate the ECU and speedo sensor.
You can eliminate the battery (it is a DC device).
That leaves the wiring loom and the reg/rec.
You can eliminate the wiring loom as a direct source (since it is a passive device).
Answer = reg/rec (directly responsible), wiring loom (indirectly responsible), and battery (indirectly responsible).

Here’s what is happening … the permanent magnet alternator system generates power in proportion to engine speed. There is NO regulation at the alternator. The regulation occurs in the reg/rec where excess power is dumped to earth.

How is it dumped? Via the wiring loom. What’s connected to the wiring loom? The battery.
So, we have a high power device dumping large amounts of excess power into the wiring loom (at a relatively high frequency compared to the frequency of the square waves for tach and speed).

That is the source of the problem. Everything else is a symptom.

Poor crimp joints in the loom convert the dumped current into voltage spikes. The spikes are usually absorbed by the battery. The spikes might actually decrease battery life, as well as redue its ability to function correctly. A combination of fried battery and lousy loom = spikes make it to the cluster. And the tach and speedo go haywire. Replacing battery is only fixing a symptom. Ongoing spikes will continue to shorten battery life.

The only solution is to let the regulator do its job properly, by installing drect cables between it and the battery, and bypass the wiring loom. Immediate gains are to be had for minimal outlay: Battery life is extended. Voltage Spikes are eliminated. Charging system works better. ECU operates superbly (interference on its sensor lines are gone)
Cheers, Mark

I almost felt smug posting this reply:

Ooops, took the seat off, and found I hadn’t tightened the positive battery terminal sufficiently the last time I took it off. Problem sorted.

The trip up to Sydney was great. We drove up on the Friday night and found our hotel no problems (thank god for GPS.) The hotel itself was wonderful, a luxurious, hugely spacious, fifth floor apartment near China Town.

We took an walk into China Town in the evening and it was in full flow, with Chinese street entertainers, jugglers, magicians,  and stalls offering dodgy goods, and people offering massages etc. Every café and restaurant had a gorgeous oriental lady outside pushing their menus on you, I didn’t mind this one bit. We found a bar and had a quiet drink and did some people watching, which was fun, not as fun as Kings Cross, but still fun. We went back to the hotel and took full advantage of our room in the best possible way, including the living area, bathroom, bed, kitchen table, and even a bit of outdoors, bent over the balcony. There’s life in these old dogs yet! (I wonder what the blokes in the flat opposite thought?)

The next day I was shattered, serves my right. I wasn’t helped by the temperature outside being in the mid forties, also there was a smog, and I  am old and fuckered. We dossed for the day, but, following a  spectacular thunderstorm in the evening, we went out. We took a stroll around Darling Harbour and watched all the Bogans, wannabees, WAGs and yuppies in their breeding rituals. We found an Indian restaurant which did the most brilliant vege grub, what a find! Unfortunately after the starter we were both full, to be fair  it was huge for a starter. I didn’t have the guts to ask for a doggy bag.

The next morning we got up early, Match Day!!!

To kill some time we went shopping at Paddy’s markets. Lee-Anne got a sexy tiger print dress, more on this later, and I got fuck all. We took a coach to the famous “Bat and Ball Hotel”, and had a pre-match snifter.  After a kerfuffle about buying magazines, not that they were needed,  we eventually got to our seats in the stands. We had great seats with good views, the day was overcast so not many good photos of the match were had (that’s my excuse.)

Unfortunately the Pakistanis were woeful, Aus slaughtered them, it was like watching the village club take on the country side, embarrassing in parts. We left before the last wicket fell. My only match of the season, and it’s shite, just my luck.

The reason Lee-Anne bought a sexy tiger print dress, is that this weekend we’re off to Debs Midwinter’s birthday party, (back up to Sydney again!) and the theme is “Safari Suits to Loin Cloths”, god knows why. I’ve got a safari suit. The thing is, as Debs is a champion life saver with the Bondi Surf Rescue  club, (think on that for a minute, what a fucking achievement is that!) and the event is being held in the SLSC club on Bondi,  it’s going to be full of ultra fit, bronzed, handsome, lifeguard types, (none of whom will  be told I  cannot swim.)

I suppose having a fat, ugly, unfit, Welsh, bastard along will provide a nice contrast.

On Sunday we’re going to see “Avatar” in 3D, on the world’s biggest IMAX screen. Seeing it in 3D on such a huge screen means that even if the movie is shite we’ll still have some fun, which is good.

Booking a hotel for this weekend’s trip was a nightmare! Sydney, believe it or not is full to bursting point as it’s Chinese new year, and the place is full of …Chinese people! Lee-Anne was doing the bookings and found a website called “Hotel club” which stated it had rooms all over Sydney. She did a booking for a place which looked good, and sent it. Then, seconds later, she realised she’d entered the dates wrong, canceled the booking, and changed it to the dates we wanted. They didn’t have anywhere for the dates we wanted.

Though the next day they kindly sent us a bill for the “Booking we had canceled” as any cancellation must be paid for , at 100% of the bill plus booking charge. Total cost for a booking which lasted three seconds; $295.00.

As you can imagine Mr “Cool, Calm and Collected” here, blew his top. I phone the company and calmly explained the circumstances, and they calmly explained that as we had canceled a booking made in good faith, we could fuck off and pay. I explained to the person’s supervisor, they told me I had to pay.

Ok, handbags at dawn it is then!

I wrote to the travel agents ombudsman, the department of fair trade, the company owner, the press and every travel website I knew of. No joy, but at least I felt better. Then I phoned the hotel that the booking had been for, I explained my problem with “Hotel Club.” They were very understanding and told me they would waive the booking, and only charge me a nominal cancellation fee.  Very kind of them.

NEVER EVER USE HOTEL CLUB, THEY ARE SHITS OF THE FIRST ORDER.

Ok, a nice young man by the name of Simon e-mailed me the other day asking if he could use one of my images in an exhibition. I was chuffed. I Thought it would be just some college or local do from what he said. But I was wrong, my image is going to be blown up to A3 size, and be part of an exhibition on “lost wilderness” here at the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. Wow, fame at last! I’m hoping to tap Simon up for the A3 print after the exhibition. 🙂

Click here to see the image he will use.

Ok, I went to the quacks the other day, just for a sick ticket off work as I’d been feeling shitty for a couple of days, and wanted a day off. She sent me for a routine blood test , cos I’m old and knackered and she wanted a good laugh. The scary thing is the doctors receptionist phoned me at work, the very next day, and said the quack wanted me back in within a fortnight as “something has shown up on my blood test screens.”

Ok, I get the results next Friday, I’m quietly shitting it…

I wonder if anyone cares enough to read this far…