Gunung Agung in the distance, in this case about 45km. I hope any eruption is not too serious.                    © PJ Croft 2017

What’s going on? My iiNet connection has stayed up all night, since about 6pm yesterday. It dropped out briefly (5 mins) at about 11.15pm but is staying with me. Has somebody at iiNet done something? I’m afraid to touch anything in case it goes bad again.

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I know it’s stayed up all night because I was using it all night. It was yet another of my sleepless nights. I’ve had a carbohydrate-rich breakfast and I’m hoping it will make me droopy soon so I can get some sleep now.

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I had a colonoscopy last Friday. It was because the government sponsored bowel cancer screening program showed a positive result for me. I wasn’t worried – I had an all clear colonoscopy only two and a bit years ago.

This one was also clear, no problems. “Come back in five years.” Can’t be too careful.

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Strangely, my left eye problem has cleared up. I had a seemingly permanent smeary effect, like dirty glasses, but it was still there with my glasses off. I thought it was the cataract and was going to arrange for the operation after the colonoscopy. But it’s cleared. Strange, but I’m glad it has, obviously.

On the other hand, now I can see my nose and I’ve got a lump on it. The doc says it’s a BCC, a basal cell carcinoma. This type doesn’t spread apparently, but it will get bigger, like the wicked witch’s nose. It has to come off. The BCC, not my nose. So that’s next.

Just one durn thing after another.

On the air again at 6.30pm Sunday. It’s been out all day, but has come good, for how long …? I got a text message from iiNet this afternoon saying Opticomm have told them my “outage” was already fixed. No, it isn’t!!! I texted and emailed back, FIX THE PROBLEM!

This is the fifteenth day, added to the many hours-long dropouts in the two weeks before. Pathetic.

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For the past couple of weeks this rainbow strip has been placed at the top of my pages. I want to state that this has nothing to do with me. I don’t choose it to be there and I object to it being there. I’m not gay or anti-gay, I’ve voted Yes in the postal vote, but I don’t associate myself in gay promotion in any way. If I could remove this ribbon, I would, but I can’t. It’s not my choice for it to be there.

I’m back on-line for who knows how long. This is the eighth day with no internet, except for brief interludes like this one. I have learnt that promises from iiNet are worthless. I’ve been on the phone to Support every night for the past five nights. I was on the phone for more than an hour on Saturday night. Worthless. They say they’ll get a replacement modem to me, but they don’t. They say they’ll phone me, but they don’t. They say they’ll SMS me, but they don’t.

They are supposed to phone me after 10am today to come out here and replace a modem or otherwise fix the fault. That’s a promise. I’ll bet they don’t.

PS: They didn’t. Written Tuesday 1249am after being off-line all day, a brief? respite.

The fault is absent at the moment. I hope it shows if they come. That’s the trouble with intermittent faults.

Meanwhile, another sleepless night last night, so I’m drooping. I’ll try to get an hour before 10am.

This is my edited production of my trip to Northam last Wednesday to see the lift off of the Australian Hot Air Ballooning Championships 2017.

It was a perfect day, a clear, cloudless blue sky with no wind at the surface, although obviously there was wind above from the east.

I went with my friend Geoff Williams in his lovely BMW M335i. We had a little trouble finding the launch paddock, and were assisted by a gorgeous Scandinavian young lady (long white hair) who was driving in front of us. At one point she stopped as she realised we were following her and walked back to talk. She saw two options, forward or back, and we agreed to press on forward. We both arrived just in time.

I was shooting with my OSMO gimbal camera and my Panasonic FZ1000, both in 4K resolution. I had one in each hand! Crazy, but there was no time for a tripod and it was shoot or lose the opportunity. It worked. The Pana was in my right hand and I had to operate it with one finger, but it worked.

The OSMO let me down again as the software app on my mobile phone which is used to control the camera and see the vision (ie the viewfinder) crashed every time. So I shot the whole thing just aligning the lens by eye. It’s a 20mm equivalent, very wide, so it worked OK. I shot about 9 mins continuous, just sort of waving it around very slowly.

It’s taken a lot to edit it and upload but here it is.

More pics:

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My iiNet wifi modem has been crashing for hours at a time, but it’s up now and on-line. I have made a serious complaint to Support and they’re sending a replacement modem for me to test next week. It will take 3-5 working days! For a 45 minute distance from Subiaco to here. Pathetic.

I’m also getting serious drops in speed i.e. congestion at peak times, down to as low as 2Mb/s, when I’m paying for 25Mb/s. Not happy, Sam. I’m going to ask for a rebate of my billing as they can see when I’m on-line or not.

I also object to having to diagnose my own problems and swap modems myself. I’m the customer. Why should I have to do it. I also know that configuring the replacement modem will be a pain. It’s not simple.

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I’ve had a nice comment on one of my posts from December last year. I wrote about a phone call I’d had from a friend called Graham Baptie from my Trigg dog walking days.

Well, his sister has seen the post and commented that she hasn’t seen her older brother in 25 years. How about that? It was a very nice comment, thanking me. I’ve emailed her back asking if she wants me to put her in touch. Uh oh, I thought I had his phone number, but now I can’t find it. I may not be able to deliver on that one. I don’t know where she is. Graham is Scottish. Maybe she’s in Scotland?