Why do bad things happen on Friday nights when no-one can do anything about it until Monday?! Let me explain. Nat and I were driving home from the train station on Friday night (21-Oct) and stopped at a set of traffic lights. There was this almighty "bang" and shudder through the car - we thought someone had run up the back of us. Nope. When the lights went green, the car made this awful "whining" noise that emanated from the gearbox region. This can't be good. So we pulled over and I jumped out and had a listen to the car while it was idling in "Park" and it sounded fine. As soon as it went into gear - the whining sounded more like grinding noise. Ah - not good.

It seems the kernel update that was published a week or so ago by the fine folks at Kubuntu left my system in an awful state! Much poking, prodding, and configuring couldn't get things back to their rock-solid state. So I bit the bullet and went up to the next stable release "Breezy" and this is my experience.

It's taken a while to catch up, but with Nat's help we've added 123 photos in five galleries spanning October 2004 to the present. Have a look at how our little angel has grown!

Update 27-July-2005: Added galleries and links for July - September 2005 and Emily's birthday

• October - December 2004
• January - March 2005
• April - June 2005
• July - September 2005
• Emily's First Birthday!

I went flying today with two good friends; Andrew and Michelle. It was bumpy with howling (30kt) SW winds but despite the nerves and turbulence they say they had a good time. The strong winds weren't all bad though; it cleared the pollution from Sydney's air and we could see from the coast to the mountains!

It's the day after my birthday and it wasn't so bad after all. Natalie bought me a neat little radio scanner (so I can listen in on air traffic etc), and Emily got me a photo frame with three little photos of her and Natalie. It's really sweet. Mum and Dad sent me some money which I'm going to put towards a new GPS.

So what's it like to be 31? Dunno - not much different to 21 really except I've got less hair! Having the flu is making me feel any younger though...but that's pretty subjective. I guess I'll just have to take these birthdays on the chin and grow old disgracefully. Heck why clean up my act now?!

Tomorrow is my birthday and for some reason this hasn't inspired me to break forth into uncontrollable displays of happiness. In fact it's barely raised a smile. I didn't want to turn 30 last year (or ever for that matter) and I sure as hell don't want to turn 31 this year!

I guess that's called getting older and for the first 20-odd years of your life it's a real buzz to get a year older as each year brings new privileges and opportunities that only come with age. However, once you get past that, nothing happens each year other than a few more wrinkles and a little more wisdom (wisdom - read "scars" heheh). Birthdays become the metronome of life, keeping beat and marking the time.

All is not doom and gloom though, with Emily getting older I am really enjoying watching her grow and develop! She's growing up way too fast for both Nat and I. Just when we've got accustomed to her being a certain age/stage, she goes and changes. Life is great.

Another great birthday present this year has been my return to the air. Although I'm still coming up to speed for parachute operations, the general concepts are falling into place nicely and each flight becomes easier than the last. The hardest part is getting all radio work done, plus manage the tracking to the drop zone and making all the run-in calls to the jumpers (5 minutes, 3 miles, 2 miles, 1 mile, open door, jump out...). It's a busy 5 minutes then you just point the plane at the ground and make like a brick :)

Well, I'll be back tomorrow with more news and info about my birthday pressie :)

For some time now (ok for the last 3-4 months) I've been getting HEAPS of referrer spam in my web logs. Unscrupulous websites do this so their referrals appear in statistic pages, then those stats pages get indexed by Google, Yahoo! etc, and thus their crappy websites are elevated in the search results. It sux and it skews my log analysis.... but NO MORE!!

Well, four and a half years after flying my last professional flight, I'm now BACK in the air!! Three flights in the last week or so with Southern Cross Gliding Club. Yesterday I even managed a 1hr 46min flight on nothing more than rising air. Shouldn't be long now and I'll be solo again :)

Stay tuned, I'll be adding a new photo album and maybe some video in the not-too-distant future.

It was another warm Saturday, with good friends and great skiing! The usual suspects were present along with a few ring-ins. All up a great day with minimal sunburn. Read on for the full details.

After visiting the SYdney Boat Show and talking the guy at Solas into selling me an $850 prop for $700, I've now fitted it to the boat and done the testing. Here's the story (click "read more").