droughtbreakers!

43-51 final scoreJust look at those stats! St. Albans hadn’t lost a match in four years, but last Saturday their run finally came to an end.

The Pascoe Vale Girls ran their legs off, and despite a fast finish with the wind, St. Albans fell short.

That “E. Harris” is a bit of a talent too 😉

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all that water

When it comes to big events like the recent floods in Queensland and Victoria, it’s information overload. The news organisation love it, broadcasting incessantly and devoting great slabs of print to it. I don’t want to add to that, so this post is just a scrapbook of, for me, the most striking images. These are all aerial photographs from Nearmap, if you click, you’ll go to the ‘wet’ image on nearmap. Incredible stuff.

1. Disappearing house

a house vanishes underwater

2. Having a cow of a day

there's a cow on my roof

3. There’s a caravan in our tree

caravan in the tree

4. Rearranging the riverside

riverside mayhem

5. Backyard salvage by canoe

back yard salvage by canoe

6. Where did you park the digger?

submerged digger

…and that’s not all

More amazing sights are being found every day by nearmap forum members.
loungeing around two men in a (spa) tubSS bathtub

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google maps announce an update

Wow! so much to post about all of a sudden. Google have just announced an update to their streetmap data, adding new streets in the rapidly expanding areas of our cities. Yay! I mean it is exciting, in fact, I think it’s the first update to the map data since they released it! Well, at least you can no longer say that Open Street Map is more up to date than Google, now that they’ve got all that shiny new data – lets go and have a look!

We can use the wonderful MapCompare to see how the new Google Data compares to Open Street Map in some of the new, outlying suburbs, like: Caroline Springs, oh darn that’s not such a good example – how about Sydenham – that’s better, I’m sure Google will add the cycle paths soon. Let’s try Lalor, oops! What about we try somewhere out east? like Pakenham.

Oh damn it!

Seriously though, I did have to carefully select locations where OSM was clearly better than the new improved Google Maps. They’ve done a great job updating it. Just goes to show though, that a huge company like Google takes years to get around to posting data that in many ways is not as detailed as that sourced from volunteers and offered up for free reuse. I think I’ll go and stick all those shiny new OSM streets on my Garmin GPS – because I definitely can’t do that with Google’s!

Cycling with wildlife

Just wanted to share a little ‘magic moment’, I encountered on the way home last night.

Riding up Royal Parade with the commuter peloton when, stopped at the lights, I noticed a woman on the footpath poking and peering at her bike. I was about to ask whether she needed a hand, when someone behind me beat me to it. Her reply:

It’s OK, there’s a spider on my bike!

OK, I shouldn’t laugh, because it was obviously a big problem for her to have an eight legged passenger, but all the same, it’s not exactly up there with broken chains and flat tyres, is it?

A short time went by during which she didn’t seem to make any headway with her problem, despite employing the time honoured ‘stick’ method of spider removal – apparently the beast in question was small enough to remain hidden somewhere around the headstem (Perhaps a magnifying glass would have helped!). Anyway, a far kinder person than me did eventually relent and join her on the footpath for a bit of impromptu pest removal.

I hope all survived the experience unscathed!

magpie love

Yes, it was a great day for the pies and nice to finally stick it to all the detractors, after all, I think these two ardent fans have all their teeth intact!

the mighty magpie

This is my mate Harry. I meet him on the way home sometimes. Sometimes he surprises me, but tonight I saw him ‘interacting’ with someone ahead of me, so I was ready – even had time to get the iPhone out and ready in movie mode!

I love magpies. The football team and the birds! Magpies are so gutsy – I mean I’m hundreds of times his size, but I’m invading his home and all he’s thinking about is the missus and the kids. You really can’t blame him for doing what the little voices in his head are telling him. Anyone who’s had chooks in their backyard can’t really be afraid of a bird.

… and look at that second effort! he’s probably wearing a number 8

bear’s weedy bastard twin

Bear Grylls just posted a message to twitter about the trailer to his new season of Man v Wild. I like Bear, the show gets a bit monotonous and I wish he wouldn’t kill animals when he clearly doesn’t need to, but this latest trailer moved him into far more ridiculous territory. As I watched the unconvincing CGI of him commando rolling across an imaginary landscape, I was getting a memory of someone else. When he turned toward the camera in one of the final frames, it clicked! He is the spitting image of Arnold Rimmer!

separated at birth

Even better, he is Arnold Rimmer’s wet dream of how he wishes he could be! I’ll never be able to look at Bear the same way again!

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father and son

Lance Armstrong’s steely glare might not be seen on Le Tour again, but any aspiring cyclists should beware that he’s passed it on to someone else…

Lance and Max Armstrong

Saw this photo (right) of Lance and his son Max on the Livestrong website, and was immediately reminded of the celebrated Armstrong ‘look’*. Peas in a pod eh?

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