Coffee & Music, charming.  Kyoto 1992.   © PJ Croft 2020

Aaaah, rain at last. I think April was our driest on record, or near to it, and it’s only three weeks ago that we were having a heat wave, day after day above 30deg. Suddenly it’s down to 17C max today, and I’m feeling it. I’m enjoying it, though.

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I can’t help thinking of the way this pandemic crisis is throwing up themes for a novellist.

* A country with evil intentions deliberately releases a virus in one of its international gateway cities with the intention that it will quickly spread through the world, but especially to its great power rival. It accepts that some of its own citizens will be infected but is prepared to sacrifice them. It quickly locks down the city and, with  a casualty list that would be appalling to any other country, manages to suppress the epidemic in its own population. But its plan to infect its rivals succeeds beyond its dreams, decimating their armed forces and crippling its navy. Now read on …

* A passenger on a cruise ship falls ill with a strange flu-like illness, but beyond the ability of the ship’s hospital to cope. Crucially, they do not take sufficient isolation procedures for fear of spreading panic among the other passengers. The disease spreads like the plague through the ship, in passengers and crew alike. Passengers are locked in their cabins but as the crew fall ill, food deliveries falter. Passengers are forced to break out to find food and fighting ensues. The ship desperately tries to enter a port, but news has travelled from passengers’ phones to shore. The ship is forced to move on to port after port, seeking help but without success. Now read on ….

* A pandemic virus infects the president of the USA, then his vice president and senior members of the congress and Washington elite. Many die but all are incapacitated. Soon confusion rules. Who is the head of government? Power struggles break out. The military feel obliged to step in and take charge. Meanwhile, right wing militias see their opportunity to arm themselves and seize power in various states. The military has to confront the heavily armed militias. Now read on ….

And so on. I can think of many more stories waiting to be told. I’m not a novellist, though.

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There are some great pictures on PetaPixel today —  link: PetaPixel grounded jets

© Andy Luten

© Andy Luten

© Andy Luten

These are all in the south west of the USA, Texas and Arizona. It’s a sight never before seen and we hope, never again. It’s the same in Australia. Terrible.

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I’ve said that I “ripped” all my CDs to hard disk a couple of years ago and now, every time I buy a new CD it goes straight to hard drive. As you can imagine, with well over 1,000 CDs, cataloguing them became necessary. Besides, it satisfies my obsession with collecting things and displaying them.

There are a few nice free programs to do this cataloguing. I’ve tried two and settled on one. The first I tried was called Helium https://www.imploded.com/  It’s nice, especially the full display of the front covers which it mostly goes to the web and finds automatically. I used it for over a year and even paid for the full version.

However, I was pretty annoyed when after less than a year’s use, a new version wiped out my full licence and reverted me to the restricted functionality free version. They wanted me to pay again for the new version. I didn’t, as I find a lot of frustrations, including the long time to load. It’s complex to use, too, being a front end for a database with all its complex language.

I’ve now gone for the other major contender, MusicBee — link: https://getmusicbee.com/  It seems to me to bee (~) easier to use and much faster too. It scans your hard drives, wherever you tell it to, and builds a list:

You can see the list at left under Album Artist. This is the major sort heading, so all “albums” (that obsolete term from record days) are grouped under one name, in this case Wagner, Richard. It’s too hard to see but there are 16 albums under that one name. Likewise for the Beatles, 10 albums and so on.

Notice that the last one is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with 8 albums. However, there’s another folder just called Mozart already containing 20 albums, so I’ll edit this bottom folder to make each name just Mozart. That will put them all in the Mozart folder, making 28 albums, CDs, and delete this long name.

And see how all the track names are shown. There’s no way I would have typed all those in – when you rip a CD in the CD Ripper I use, dBPowerAmp CD Ripper link: — https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm – as soon as you insert the CD and close the drive, it scans the disc, then goes to the web and finds the track names and a thumbnail of the cover. It’s brilliant. I paid for that one, too. It’s well worth the small price.

When the keyboardist of The Stranglers, the composer of Golden Brown, died a couple of days ago I thought, I wonder if I have that track. Within 5 seconds I’d done a search in MusicBee and there it was, I do have it.

The only drawback at the moment is:

It’s found all my mp3 files and listed them as separate tracks as shown above, e.g. 17 Helen Shapiro. I have a folder for Helen Shapiro as I have a couple of her CDs, but it means I have to go through all these individual mp3 tracks, delete the number (e.g. 17) before the name and tell MusicBee to do a web search for a CD cover image, so that thes two tracks go into the correct name folder. There are hundreds of these individual tracks. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just delete them all and make new mp3s as required. Probably.

Anyway, MusicBee, recommended, and it’s free! I would pay for this.

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I’ve nearly finished my Channel 7 story, about 10,000 words, and it’s got me inspired to do a really spiffy book layout using this and some of the hundreds of photos I’ve got. Boy, I have a story to tell. I started in April 1966, so it’s 54 years ago! Holy heatsinks, Batman.

Much more to come.

Gunung Agung, Bali 2015. It’s OK, it’s not erupting.  © PJ Croft 2020

Ooops, missed a couple of days, but no problems. No virus here. I had a nice phone conversation with a friend this afternoon and she wants me to help her (well, we’re doing each other favours). It was nice to be able to say, “C’mon up, and Geoff too”, meaning the two of them should come. It’s allowed now. She’s also very vulnerable, having had serious heart trouble a year or two ago.

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Y’know, the more I read and see of New Zealand, the more impressed I am. They do everything so well. They’ve dealt with this corona-virus in exemplary fashion and are admired around the world for it. Jacinda Ardern is the tops.

I remember decades ago in the late 60s, I used to see shorts before the main movie, at the “flicks”, made by the New Zealand Film Unit and I was always so impressed even then. They were interesting and very well scripted and shot. Totally professional. Noticeably so.

Then there’s the Lord of the Ring series of movies made by Peter Jackson. They were not just good, they were, and still are, absolutely outstanding, setting new standards in special effects and computer graphics. There have been many times over the years when I’ve thought, “Yeah, this is good. I’m impressed.” It’s the Scots. NZ was always a destination for Scottish people, no doubt due to the similarity of the countryside and terrain. Scots are tops.

To be honest, I have the itch to move there, but it’s cold. I have a Kiwi mate and he lives here because he can’t stand the NZ cold. Mind you, he came from Dunny, Dunedin right down past Christchurch on the south island. It’s bound to be cold down there. I think it’s a bit late for me.

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There’s not much new, except that I’m making good progress on my Channel 7 memoir for the TVW Book Project. It had been in abeyance for a few weeks due to the lockdown, although that didn’t really stop me, I was just preoccupied for a while, but I’m back into it and nearly finished it today. I’ve written about 18 A4 pages and around 10,000 words. It’s hardly a novel but it’s a lot more than the 2,000 words limit set by the organiser. Sorry Ron, but I’m not going to compress things down just for an arbitrary number to suit you.

I’m at the stage now where I’m going back over what I’ve written, editing, adding, shifting, correcting and especially, adding more names and my memories of the people. Luckily I have a complete listing of all the people who worked at TVW over the years, more than 800 names, so as long as I have one part I can find the other.

The next step will be to lay it out in a proper word processor, NOT Microsoft Word! Lotus Word Pro is my choice. But I’ll actually use a desktop publishing program which is specifically designed to flow text around pictures with added frames and any other graphic elements you want. Then it outputs it to a print-ready PDF file. That will be my final output. I’ll post some screen shots here soon.

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I’m nearing the end of the book I mentioned last week, Exactly, by Simon Winchester. I was critical of it last week, calling it jingoistic and posh, but as it’s progressed it’s getting better. He’s covered the Hubble Space Telescope and how a tiny error in the making of the mirror led to blurry pictures and nearly meant disaster, and how it was fixed. There’s much more detail about it than I’ve read before.

Then it goes on to GPS navigation in detail and at the moment he’s detailing the LIGO interferometer for detecting and measuring gravitational waves.

But the thing that’s really got me going is his description of how transistors and semiconductors were developed, with their profound effect on the world. Mostly for good, I think.

The point is that the timeline of semiconductors and integrated circuits aligns with my life and work in the electronics field as well. The transistor was invented in 1947, the same year I was born. The first integrated circuits started in 1966, the year I started at Channel 7 (it was all valves when I first started there). The first microprocessor came along soon afterwards. I can clearly remember quite excited talk about the Zilog Z80 in about 1968 or ’69 when I was doing first year electronics at W.A.I.T. (the WA Institute of Technology at Bentley). It only cost $10! That was quite a bit more money then, but we thought it was cheap and accessible to experiment with.

The first IBM PC came out in 1983. I remember it well, although it was more than I could afford. I bought a second hand one a few years later – it had a 5¼” floppy drive, a 20MB hard drive and 1MB of RAM. Wow. (An 8GB USB thumb drive on your keyring  has 400 times the capacity and costs 1/10 the price). [And that was my downfall. I divide my life into BC and PC – Before Computer and Post Computer. Before, I used to do woodwork, cabinet making, photography…  After the PC came along, most of that fell away. I’ve become a total slave to this PC. It’s all useful stuff, but I’m so stuck to this chair!]

Ampex ACR25. This is just the right hand cabinet, the left one was as big.

I think I mentioned the Ampex ACR25 video cart recorder/players I worked on for 20 years. They were designed in the early 1970s (we got our two in late 1974) and used quite early integrated circuits, primitive now and not very reliable. If microprocessors had been available then, they could probably have cut the control electronics (RH bay above, below the meter) down to one small board. (Ask any tech who worked on these machines what was the most troublesome board? B16 and B17. Hands down.)

Anyway, it’s inspired me to document this history here because I lived it all, and it’s still going on, ever smaller, ever more powerful, ever cheaper, ever more reliable. As the book documents, we’re reaching a limit, where the transistors are now only a few atoms thick and invisible to even the most powerful microscopes. They’re etched using extreme ultra-violet light and the connecting tracks are only a few wavelengths of light wide. It’s just astounding. And it ain’t gonna stop.

Haven’t got time to do it now.

Esperance. Looks nice!   Photo: ABC website

Missed a day, but no worries. Beeeyoootiful day today. Sparkling autumn weather, 24C and a cloudless blue sky with no wind. World’s best climate.

1st of May, my first hot shower for the summer this morning.

Another power failure today, about 3.10pm. Only about 5secs but it lost me a small amount of work. What’s going on?

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The new cleaner came yesterday but at 11.30am despite telling me 10am. Oh well, close. No explanation. She’s Vietnamese, about early thirties, husband and two kids, passable English but not fluent.

Her work was just OK. She works too fast, leaving water and wipe marks behind, missing things, but she got through a fair bit and I’m glad it’s done. I’ve had to go back over some of her work, but it’s easier now. I’ll probably get her to come again but not regularly.

However, when she finished I asked her to confirm her rate – on her note she wrote $20 for 2hrs. She confirmed it. I said, no, that’s too low and tried to give her $40. She refused it! I tried to give it to her but she pushed it away. I tried to give her a $5 note as a tip but she refused that too. Remarkable and it makes it more likely that I’ll get her back again.

That contrasts with an ad I answered about six years ago: two ladies, $30 per hour, min two hours. OK I said. So they came and did two hours. When I went to pay $60, “Oh no, it’s $30 each, $120.” Crikey! They could see I was shocked and tried to make excuses, but I had to pay the full amount. Needless to say, I didn’t get them here again.

Likewise, about 2015 I got a guy to come and quote me for a yard cleanup. He came and looked, then said $300. I said “That’s for 3 hours?” I thought he agreed so I expected three hours work from him. Even that would have been $100 an hour, way above the going rate!

But when he came and did the job, he did it all in less than 90 mins. He did what I expected, but he said “$300”. I said, “But I thought you would be here for 3 hours!” “Nah, mate, I quoted you for the job, $300.”  Bloody hell, that made his rate $150/hour. I just had to pay it. I included a note with my payment, “Never again!”  He didn’t like that and wanted to argue about it, but I just cut it off. And I have never again used him.

Again, in about 2015 I got a reticulation company come to get my retic going. It had low pressure and wasn’t spraying properly in many outlets.

A guy came and spent about 2.5 hours. He found a leak and fixed it, replaced all the  sprinkler heads in the garden beds and a couple in the lawn and reprogrammed the controller. It hadn’t been possible to get a quote beforehand because we didn’t know what needed doing. The bill? A bit over $500! I nearly fell over, but the work was done, it was successful, I couldn’t object. So when the Water Corp wants me to get a retic installer to fix the leak in the joint near my meter, I’m very wary. I think I’ll let the lawnmower man do it at $60 an hour.

Likewise again, I got a plumber to come and fit my new kitchen sinkmixer tap a few months ago. Stupidly, I forgot to ask for his price beforehand. He was here no more than 30 mins and when it came time to pay, it was $150! He hadn’t used any materials – I had the new tap already here – he just got under the sink, not even needing any special tool, which I thought it would need. In fact he really needed some small rubber O-rings but he didn’t have any! He had to use thread sealing tape and we hope it holds. There was nothing I could do but pay. And plumbers wonder why they are regarded as so expensive. Grrr.

I also think I was right royally ripped off when I had my rear garden and lawn rearranged a few years ago. Despite telling him what I wanted in things like limestone blocks and paving slabs and the type of lawn, what I got was what he wanted me to have, because that’s what he was used to supplying and had in stock. It’s OK, but it’s not what I wanted. But once it’s in, it’s hard to ask him to rip it out and do it again.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking I’m being ripped off over and over again.

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Speaking of which, I’ve just been out and bought 2x 10m lengths of speaker cable. It’s reasonably heavy stuff but nothing special. $4.95 a metre! $90 for the 20m. Holy smoke. It’s only thick figure 8. Even coax is not that expensive. And the plugs that go on the ends are $4.95 each. I need eight = $39.60. Ouch.

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I’ve also bought a two bay SATA hard disk enclosure at Jaycar:

It’s not a NAS (Network Attached Storage) as it’s only USB3 and doesn’t connect to a network, but it does RAID 0 and 1 and JBOD and will allow me to back up to some of the spare SATA discs I have on the shelves. $99. I’m still looking at NAS boxes but they are very expensive.

In fact, ASUS, the motherboard, laptop and monitor maker has tempted me into buying their offer of 1TB of web-based (cloud) storage for US$13.49 for 1 year. It looks like a reasonable deal to me so I paid up and within 10 mins I was uploading my D:/Data folder, which came to 703MB. It only took about an hour (5Mb/s connection), so that’s a good thing. There’s an Android app for the phone, so I can access any file wherever I am on my phone. Bloody amazing.

Kyoto 1992    © PJ Croft 2020

A slightly busier day.

First, an email from the Water Corp people, asking what’s happened about the water leak. I emailed straight back saying it’s been stopped, explaining it and including a photo (isn’t it magic how we can take a photo with our phone, immediately transfer it via Dropbox to the desktop and hence into an email or this blog?). It’s fantastic. When I think of the film days, it would have taken at least 24hrs and involved scanning the film. Crazy hard.

Anyway, the Water lady included a pdf document for me to fill out if I want to claim a rebate on the cost of the lost water. It includes a section for a WGI reticulation person to fill out and sign. I don’t know what WGI means but I would expect a pro retic company to charge me much more than Bryce, the lawn guy will charge. Will any rebate cover the cost of getting this pro guy? I suppose I’d better do it.

Meanwhile, the ground is dry now, thank goodness.  Valve on lower right.

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Next, I sent a second text message to the lady who put the handwritten note in my letterbox last Friday asking for cleaning work. She didn’t answer the first time.

This time I got a reply. Her name is Kimmie and I have the feeling she’s Chinese or Asian, but I’ll find out because she’s coming tomorrow at 10am. The Silver Chain lady comes at about midday but they won’t clash because even if they are here at the same time, they clean different things. One thing I want done is my fridge cleaned, ie shelves cleared one by one and washed and wiped, the vege drawers emptied into a box and cleaned, then replaced, and the freezer drawer (bottom freezer) temporarily emptied and cleaned out. There’s no ice, no frost, yay. I used to hate having to defrost my old freezer compartment.

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Next, I bought a few SACDs (Super Audio CDs) from Amazon to use with my new second-hand player. I also got an email from the Berlin Philharmonic inviting me to buy a new set of three SACD discs of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with Mitsuko Uchida as performer with Sir Simon Rattle. It’s US$49.99 for the set, but I’ll enjoy it. I’ve been listening to Mitsuko Uchida for nearly 40 years and she’s great. To have these in super quality very recent recordings will be great.

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Next, fatally, I fell for Amazon’s invitation to look at their daily deals. Uh oh.

For years I’ve wanted a Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet. It’s an LCD monitor about 15″ diagonal but only 11mm thick, with a pressure sensitive surface over the monitor screen so that you can use the included stylus/pen to draw and paint on the screen. But the Wacom (US) tablet is way out of my price range – starting at A$809 and going up to A$4,800 depending on size. This is a Chinese brand.

No, I did not pay $739.99

I did do my homework and spent nearly an hour looking at reviews and overseas prices. It rates about 80% in the reviews, i.e. some drawbacks but pretty good.

Amazon Australia’s price today was a cent short of $450.  The price on Amazon USA was US$399.99 = A$624.84 so our price is substantially lower than the US price. At the moment.

I fell for it. It should arrive in a week. I already have software which is made for it, having software brushes, pens, styluses, calligraphic pens, nibs and so on. And any type of paint, ink, texture you can think of and many you wouldn’t think of. The pen is pressure sensitive so it follows your hand, making fine or coarse lines, hard or soft brushes, thick or thin paints and so on.

Standby for magnificent works of art to pour forth from this repressed artist. 🙂

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Brrrr, I felt cold for the first time this year today. It was 21C, which is not really cold. I still had my cold shower this morning, probably the second last this year. It might seem difficult, but it’s only the first few seconds and then it feels great.

What a shot!   From the CSIRO Facebook page.

Missed a day yesterday, not much happened. Guess what, not much happened today, too. There was no mail for me on the day after a public holiday, which is annoying because I’m owed many items from the Wish web site. Deliveries have really slowed to a trickle in the past few weeks. I’m also waiting on a CD from Amazon and a selection of vege seeds from a nursery in the Perth hills that have been on order and paid for for more than a month. Grr. (Small grr.)

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Well, the Liberal Party have succeeded in forcing the commissioner of the Corruption and Crime Commission, Mr John McKechnie out of his position at the end of his current term. He wanted to be reappointed, the government wanted him reappointed, the judiciary, the police, the public, everyone wanted him to continue except the Liberal Party.

Gosh golly, I wonder why? The reason is blindingly obvious – he was too good. He was finding corruption in Upper House Liberal members and they wanted him out.

What kind of idiocy is this? Surely they must know that you can’t hide this kind of thing forever. The truth will come out. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party is tarred with the brush of corruption. They will wear this like a blazing tyre around their necks to the next election. Utter stupidity. If they’re this stupid, why would anyone vote for them to run the state?

The person they’re trying to shield must be incredibly powerful for them to do this. The trail must lead very, very high in the Liberal Party hierarchy. What utter fools. Anyone who would vote for this party after this must share the sleaze. I suppose I should be pleased – this virtually assures Labor of another term.

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Back in the days when I used to build electronic “stuff”. I built the audio oscillator (top) and the oscilloscope it’s sitting on, and I was using them to build the hi-fi amp in front.

I’m still sitting right now at the same table in this shot.

I did get this amplifier working but it suffered from switch clicks and pops.

My flat in Tuart Hill December 1974. The amp I built is next to the turntable. Those are B&W Model 70 speakers, electrostatic on top, 12″ bass cabinet below.

I just found these pics today, going through some old CD ROMs that I used for backup about 20 years ago. Ah, memories.

I didn’t own a TV until 1979 and I used to be so keen on electronics as a hobby that I would take things in to Channel 7 at night to work on them and use the test equipment. Sometimes I drove from South Perth to do it. Keen!

This was my hi-fi gear 20 years later, before I was burgled. Thorens TD160 turntable, Technics CD player stacked on a NAD amp/tuner on top of a Yamaha CA1000 amplifier. AIWA AD-F770 cassette deck on top of a Yamaha CT800 AM/FM tuner. Spendor BC1 speakers.

Can you believe, apart from the Technics CD player which was stolen, I gave all the other items away to friends. Sometimes I think I’m too generous.

All those CDs were stolen in the 1991 burglary. I had about 100 then. Once the insurance company asked for details, I was able to recall virtually all of them from memory so as to make a claim. They paid up. Having about $2,000 credit with my CD shop was pretty good – I remember having the fun of picking out CDs to that value. These days, no-one wants CDs, for some reason people would rather listen to the inferior sound of mp3 files. Hi-fi has almost died, except for the crazies who will pay $10,000 for an amp and $20,000 for a pair of speakers.

Photo ABC News

Now that the pollution has cleared, at last, a great view of the Australian Alps! 🙂

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Wow! The fortieth day in the wilderness. What did I do wrong?

It’s not too bad. Beautiful weather, not too hot, not too cold, Goldilocks conditions. I’ve been thinking, I must admit about 40 days ago I did buy three or four shopping bags of non-perishable foods in the madness of the moment, when we were all thinking we may have to totally lock ourselves in.

But those four bags are still sitting on the floor under a table. I haven’t got room in my pantry for all that stuff. What to do?

It’s occurred to me to take it to Coles and put it in the big box outside their entrance for food donations to people who really are doing it tough. I would use it here eventually, but I really have enough in the pantry to keep me going. Hmmm…

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A sheep cruise ship.

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I got this handwritten note in my letterbox on Friday (I’ve blurred the number). She sounds a bit desperate, as that’s a very cheap rate. I’ve texted her saying “I’ll pay well for a good job.”, meaning I think I would pay her more. No reply as yet. I get Silver Chain home help but they only do floors and bathrooms. I’d sure like more help with the kitchen and the fiddly bits like blinds, shelf dusting and fridge cleaning.

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Undamaged, but still not working.

Ever wondered what’s in a hard drive? I’ve had two fail recently. Normally you definitely would not open them up because a speck of fluff or dust is like a boulder to the heads, huge and damaging. They’re also sealed airtight and filled with nitrogen from the factory. Those disks (there are several, stacked on a common spindle) are smooth and flat to the point of being perfect mirrors, with not the slightest deviation from flatness. A motor, hidden by the discs, spins them at 7,200rpm.

The read/write magnetic heads are on that arm thing. The heads are in their parked position in that tan coloured bit. An electromagnet in the pivot drives them back and forth across the discs at a blinding speed so that they find the track and then the exact location of the data on that track as it spins around. It’s near to magic. NB: the heads never actually touch the disc surface in normal operation. At the speed the discs spin, there’s a very thin film of the nitrogen or whatever gas is in there, only microns in thickness, separating the heads from the disc surface. If the head touches, it likely damages the surface.

The electronics is smart enough to remember which data sections are bad and move that tiny section of data somewhere else, updating its File Allocation Table (FAT). It then maps that section out, stopping any further writes there. Obviously, this can only be done so many times. The makers label their disk drives S.M.A.R.T., Disk Management And Reporting Technology. Smart, eh?

But if they’ve failed, then you have nothing to lose by opening them up. If you’re lucky, you might find the heads stuck somewhere on the surface of the disc and you might be able to give them a little nudge back to their park position. In this case, no such luck.

The damage is obvious.

Here’s the other one. See all the obvious damage marks near the centre of the disc? The heads have been hitting the surface, big time. Not a hope of salvaging this one.

Hard disks usually come with a five year warranty, but you never remember when you bought them or keep the receipts. Besides, the warranty only covers replacement of the drive after you’ve posted it back to the manufacturer either in Australia or worse, in the USA, at great expense. It doesn’t cover the data, which is far more valuable to you. It’s almost worthless, in other words. The lesson? Backup!!!

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Recognise that? Yes, it’s a fountain pen. I bought it for about $6 from the Wish website. I haven’t used a fountain pen in almost sixty years, since my high school days.

They used to be messy things, prone to leaking in your shirt pocket, hard to fill, or using expensive ink cartridges. This uses a clever screw piston so it sucks the ink up from the bottle like a syringe. It works well. I wondered if I’d be able to buy ink, but the newsagent had it, the Parker bottle, but it cost $14.95. It should last me a good while though.

In the old days, you had to use the pen for several days to get the nib tip to wear down to the angle you wrote at, to fit your style on the paper. It tended to feel scratchy until you’d used it a while. This feels OK so far but I haven’t written with a nib in many, many years. Time will tell.

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It’s very quiet outside these days, with little traffic noise, but I’m wondering why I’m hearing so many sirens. It seems many more than normal. Are these police sirens? Are there more traffic offenders now that things are quiet? Or are these ambulance sirens? People being taken to hospital? I’ll never know.

Nature this time. Isn’t that beautiful? Photographer unknown.

A kind reader calling himself Fred, just Fred, found the name of the goddess I featured yesterday. I’ll keep her anonymous because you never know what the trolls and perverts will do with identities these days, but it’s nice to know, thanks Fred.

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I’m famous again:

This is the second time I’ve been featured on this blog that I read every day. Mike Johnson

is probably the friendliest, most intelligent, level headed and literate blogger around and his many commenters and followers will attest to that. I’ve been following him for many years and make regular small donations through the Patreon fund to help him out as he makes his living from this blog and we all want him to survive. He has a story to tell, too personal for here, but we’ve developed a loose acquaintanceship over the years. He’s 63, ten years younger than me and has a few health issues a bit similar to mine which make for very interesting reading. I recommend his blog highly if you like reading about cameras and lenses, photographs and life in upstate New York:  The Online Photographer

However… I must say that Mike’s tastes in photography do not resemble mine. We are on opposite sides of the photographic style fence, but since he used to be the editor of Camera magazine I won’t say any more.

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Talking about the weather is a bit boring, but boring is what our weather is like here in Perth, day after day after day of 24, 25deg with almost no wind, a bit of cloud and a very rare few short showers of rain. After the hottest April day on record two weeks ago, it’s starting to feel as if winter has arrived, although I’m still starting the night on top of the covers and continuing my daily cold showers. This is the longest cold shower run I can recall, since mid-November last year.

I think this April is heading for a record dry. We’re way below average rainfall. As usual. Climate change is real.

I’ve said my electricity bills have gone down markedly since I’ve had solar power, even as low as zero. But the bill for the period just finished, mid February to mid April was $124, back up again. I know I was running the air-con a lot in the daytime, assuming the solar would cover the cost, but I guess I ran it at night in the bedroom two or three times, which is unusual for me. Not all night, just for the first couple of hours. late March-April was quite a hot period.

Another factor is that I got an air fryer bench oven in November last year and that uses a lot of power, I think. I use it in the evening, of course, when the sun is not being so generous. I have a power meter that you can program with the unit cost (26.3c/KW-hour here in Perth), so it tells you how much the power is costing. I must plug it in and use it.

I have another one monitoring my washing machine and in more than six months, it tells me it’s only cost me $7.94. That’s usually for only one load a week, occasionally two. Pretty good. Fisher & Paykel.

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I’m reading a book called Exactly by Simon Winchester. It’s about precision in engineering and manufacturing, which interests me greatly and I had high hopes for this book. The author is well known for his previous books, The Surgeon of Crowthorne, Pacific, The Map That Changed the World and many others.

But what I’m finding is jingoism expounded in the plummy voice of Stephen Fry. It’s all about how great Britain was and is, about how everything was invented in Britain and exported to the world. Sure, America gets plenty of mention, but mainly in how the ideas came from British inventors. And it’s all spoken in such flowery language with excessive embroidery, with long strings descriptive words so that I feel, “Please, stop, get to the point of the sentence.”

I’m only up to the invention of the jet engine, by an Englishman, naturally, Sir Frank Whittle in the 1930s and 40s so I should reserve judgement until I’ve finished the book. He includes the Rolls-Royce engine failure that crippled the QANTAS A380 flight 32 out of Singapore, but so far, despite clear evidence that it was a badly manufactured part in the engine that caused the failure, there’s been no criticism of RR. So far. I’ll keep you posted.

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Did you go out into the dawn this morning at 6am? I sort of wish I had but I’m afraid I forgot and I was solidly asleep until 7.30am. This is a very quiet street so I doubt I would have seen much. Oh well, next year. Next year? What will next year hold?

Goddess.  Photographer unknown.

I  was speaking yesterday of female beauty and what defines it. I don’t think anyone at any time throughout history has been able to answer that question, but what I know is, I know it when I see it. I don’t know who this is, but I called this downloaded image Goddess.jpg. I think she’s a Perth woman and I hope she doesn’t mind me posting this here. It’s entirely complimentary. What a beauty!

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My final cruise memories.

24 October 2014: I swore never again after the March cruise, but an ad caught my eye in about August 2014 for a cruise that ticked all my boxes for where I wanted to go. It was greatly helped when I asked an old school mate if he’d share a cabin, as for a single fare it’s double the advertised price. He agreed. The itinerary looked fantastic.

Fly to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, catch the ship, the ?? Princess and follow the red line. The name of the ship fooled me – if I’d known it was the same company as the March cruise I might not have booked. As it was, by the end of this cruise I blogged NEVER AGAIN!

I don’t know where I got it, but I caught some chest infection, in China I think, and by the end of the trip, when we reached Bali, I was reduced to sleeping for most of the day. I’d been to see a doctor while we were in Hanoi and he diagnosed pneumonia. He gave me an antibiotic and I guess it helped, but I just had no energy for the five days in Bali. What a disappointing end to the trip.

I blogged extensively about this trip, and you can see the entries from 24 October to 29 November 2014. I wrote a LOT! I won’t repeat it here but this was a great trip, full of interest, visiting some fantastic places that I never dreamed I would get to. My second visit to Hong Kong 22 years apart. Shanghai, then Beijing. Nagasaki – loved it. Busan in South Korea, but I felt too sick to go ashore. Then Hanoi! I never dreamed I would get there. I wanted to go because one of my cousins was the Australian ambassador to Vietnam so it was a great opportunity to see him in place. I loved Hanoi and would go back in a heartbeat (well, maybe…).

The cruise actually ended in Beijing and I with my friend’s approval, booked the flight from Beijing to Hanoi, the hotel there, then the flight from Hanoi via Singapore to Bali, Vietnamese Airlines all the way. Then five days in Bali to finish off. To be honest, I was looking forward to Bali almost more than any other part of that trip. It has a hold on me, as I’m sure others would feel too.

Again, no entry to the restaurants on the ship without being dressed up, with shoes and socks. I actually took some long trousers, shoes and sox but I hate wearing them and never bothered.

And again, I hated the crowds on the ship! There were roughly 2,500 passengers and everything involved long queues and waiting, waiting. Going ashore was incredibly expensive, all the bus tours costing upwards of US$100 at least. So if you count eight port stops, that’s at least US$800 = A$1,100 on top of the cruise fare of about $2,200. Not me.

One good thing was that I booked with the same travel firm in Perth who stuffed up my March cruise by not passing on my payment. She had said I would get $200 off my next booking, so this was it. I held her to it. She sounded a bit glum when she said that was their profit margin. Well, I’m sure she learnt her lesson to be more careful.

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I’ve mentioned that I’ve had notification from the Water company that I likely had a water leak as my readings were so high. I knew the ball valves in both my toilet cisterns were hissing a lot so I fixed that problem and thought that was it. I stopped looking.

Then on Monday I cleared some very luxuriant weeds away from near the water meter and found the ground was saturated. Uh oh.

Today my lawn mower man came and did the big cleanup. He remarked on how wet the soil was and got his spade out. He found a T-junction feed off the main water pipe into the house, this T-junction leading to the professionally installed reticulation. There is a metal stop valve there, luckily, but that has a brass fitting that mates to the PVC piping for the retic. This joint had worn through and now that it was exposed, at full pressure, it put up a spray at least 3m high. It was a big leak, in other words. So he turned the stop valve off, to fix it temporarily and he’ll come back and do a proper fix in a week or so. He charges much less than a plumber so that will be a relief. He asked for $30 for today but I had expected $50 so I gave him that and said thanks.

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From my garden just now. Dinner tonight? Lime and chillies? It’s hard to use these things.

Isn’t she beautiful?! What is it, the symmetry, the perfect proportions, the slight smile? What makes beauty?

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More about the cruises I’ve done.

27 July 1984: I was 37. This was a fly-cruise, flying from Perth to Singapore then taking the M. V. Turkmenia, a Russian cruise ship going from Singapore up through the Malacca Strait.

M.V. Turkmenia        credit: Shipspotting

The first stop was Kuala Lumpur, but KL’s port is Port Kelang on the coast, and KL city is about 30Km inland. Port K’lang looked drab and I didn’t want to spend the time and money for the bus tour so just stayed aboard that day.

Next stop was Penang and I did go ashore because that’s where the sister of my Malaysian girlfriend at the time (in Perth) lived. I met her and she gave me an island tour in her car. Unfortunately, her daughter was with her occupying the front passenger seat so I had to sit in the back where I could hardly see any of the things she was pointing out. I ended up with a splitting headache. I didn’t enjoy that day very much. Even so, it gave me a taste for Penang and I’ve been back there a couple of times. I could live there, easily.

Penang, July 1984

Next stop for the ship was the Thai island of Phuket. The ship had to anchor offshore and we had to transfer to a launch to go ashore. I don’t remember much except that I was told that a beach called Rawai was “very beautiful”, so I caught a local bus there. Sure, it was quite nice but not worth going all that way sitting on a hard seat in a cramped bus in the heat. On returning I got a brief look at the town centre which was very small in those days, then it was back to the ship in the late afternoon. Nothing much, in other words.

I do like this shot. Thai temple, Phuket.  July 1984  © PJ Croft 2020

Then the ship headed back down the Malacca Strait to Singapore again. Did we stop anywhere? Surely we must have, but I don’t remember it. We passed Malacca which is a very interesting town, but it doesn’t have a port. I’ve been back there since for a stay of several days and I liked it a lot.

There are only two main memories from that trip: first, one passenger was a wharfie from Brisbane, a burly, fair headed guy. The thing was that he spoke fluent Russian! I asked him how come. He said his father was an Aussie but his mother was Russian, that’s how, and she taught him as he grew up. I found it quite incongruous, this true-blue Aussie wharfie, yet he spoke Russian. The Russian crew ran classes in one of the saloons if anyone wanted to learn the language on board. Pretty hard in only eight days or whatever it was, but they got 6-8 people, I recall.

The other memory is that one of the kitchen ladies, servers in the dining room, was a very cute Russian girl, quite young, and I found her very attractive. I found her up on deck one day getting some sun and attempted to talk, but she just indicated no English and that was that. Oh well.

I think the other thing (and I may be getting my cruises confused) was that I shared a dining table (and cabin, that’s right!) with two elderly Perth guys, from Bayswater or Belmont or somewhere, and they were both retired TV techs, the TV Repair shop type of tech. One was Clarry and the other might have been Bert. So we could talk TV and electronics, not that we did much. This was also where I was introduced to borscht, that typical Russian soup. Not bad. The cooking was nice but very plain fare, three courses and that was it.

Finally, that was the time of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, at the height of the Cold War, when the Russians were banned from competing. Did it make any difference on the cruise? Nope.

So, back to Singapore and a few days in a hotel while I bought an Aiwa AD-F770 cassette deck:

I gave that away to a mate, free, when I moved here in 2013. What a fool I was. It was one of the best bits of gear I’ve ever owned, but with four Mini-Disc decks now, I don’t need it. 🙂

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March 2014: it was a long break, 30 years! but my next cruise was from Fremantle to Singapore again, also on the Arcadia. This was a new ship, no longer P&O, now Princess Cruises. I was 67 by now.

I remember clearly, my mate Barry drove me down to the Fremantle passenger terminal to join the ship at about 10am. I took my luggage to the loading bay and the ship guy consulted his clipboard, furrowed his brow, chewed his lip, sucked his teeth, then made a phone call. I found something to sit on and waited.

Soon he came over and said, “Sorry sir, but you are not on the passenger list.” What?! I had my documents and he perused them, but asked me to wait upstairs (escalator) in the main hall.

Long story – I waited three bloody hours, buying an expensive and crap lunch from the kiosk, getting more and more browned off, before they finally came over and told me the travel agent had not passed my fare money on to the cruise company. Therefore I wasn’t officially a passenger.  GRRRRRRR!  The travel agent phoned me, very apologetic and said she’d fixed it up, passed my money on and as compensation I would have $200 credit on board and would get $200 off my next cruise booked with them. (This cruise cost about $1,400 I think, for an inside cabin.)  Strike 1!

My ship, the Arcadia, while I was waiting in the terminal.

So finally, I was able to board at about 4pm and started to calm down, helped by a beer or two.  The QE2 was also in Fremantle at this time and departed before us:

The Queen Elisabeth 2 departs Fremantle.

We set off and headed north. I soon discovered the buffet restaurant.

Delicious food, serve yourself, anything, all  you can eat!

Life on board. It could be a bit boring but it’s certainly relaxing.

I explored the ship and found several restaurants apart from the buffet that were sit-down dining and looked very nice. So one or two evenings into the cruise, I fronted up at one of these and asked for a table. The waiter looked at me and mumbled something about standards. To be brief, this being a tropical cruise stopping at Bali to Singapore, I was dressed as I always dress, shorts, T-shirt (with a collar) and sandals. Not good enough. They required long trousers, shoes and socks and a shirt! I hadn’t brought any clothes like that. As I said, this is a tropical cruise!

The result was that I was banned from all seven sit-down restaurants and banished to the buffet only. GRRRRRRRRR!  I paid the same fare as everyone else, yet I was not allowed to use the restaurants. Strike 2!

I also discovered that the drink prices were the same as if we were on land. In other words, they buy all their alcoholic drinks free of excise (hence the 10c cans of beer on the Eastern Queen in 1974), but charge the customer full retail price. Nice little earner, guv’nor.

I also discovered that the fridge in the cabin was not cold enough to store my insulin (or make ice). I complained to the service desk and was directed to the doctor’s surgery way down below decks. Maybe they could store my insulin for me. I went there and found it closed at about 3pm. Open between 5-5.30pm or something. I went back at that time and still found it closed. Strike 3!

Also, knowing I was going to be on the new Arcadia, I took copies of the old 1977 Arcadia logs and menus (see yesterday’s blog). I presented these at the service desk, expecting a fair bit of interest, but all I got was “Oh, thanks very much, very interesting.” And that was all. I didn’t hear any more about it. I thought the captain might have been interested. Strike 4!

As an unattached bloke at that time, I admit I was also aware of the tales of shipboard romances and widows looking for a new partner on cruises. I don’t mind admitting, I was surveying the field all the time.

But I’m certain I was the only person on board who was alone! Everyone else was either one of a pair or a larger group. At meal times, I sat alone, wishing someone would ask to join me but no-one ever did. It was a bit disheartening. I did have a very brief chat with a woman from Adelaide who seemed interesting, but we were in a queue and when it was over, I never saw her again. These ships are huge, with 2,000 to 3,500 passengers so it’s not so surprising, but I was a bit disappointed. (One Aussie guy was a bit weird, though. He came up to me at the railing on deck and started chatting, but he was a touchy-feely kind of guy and put his arm around me, as if we were lovers. I wasn’t too happy and disengaged myself. He introduced me to his wife later. It wasn’t the kind of company I was looking for.)

I also gained 5Kg on that cruise, in eight days! Ugh. I got it off later.

Sunrise off Bali,  10 March 2014

No berthing for cruise ships then. There is now. This was the Arcadia off Benoa, Bali 10/3/2014

Then it was another couple of days at sea heading for Singapore up the east coast of Java.

What is it?

The Java Sea is known for pirates. This is an “acoustic cannon”. It’s a big diaphragm which when pulsed delivers a very loud aural pulse to the front, as shown in the diagram on the unit above. It doesn’t do any permanent damage to the pirates (well, maybe burst eardrums?) but they’d find it very uncomfortable and think twice about being near the ship. Did we see any pirates? No. But what a rotten thing, to have pirates ready to attack big ships.

Singapore at dawn, 13 March 2014  © PJ Croft 2020   Right click, select View Image to see it big.

Frankly, I was glad to get off the ship and into a hotel again. I was sick and tired of that cruise and vowed “Never again.” Little did I know what the future would hold.

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That’s enough for today. This blogging takes a long time, but I’ve got plenty of that. I’m also building the spreadsheets I call “weight_graf.xls”  Yeah, I’m a nerd, but I weigh myself every morning, almost without fail although I do forget sometimes. I keep a notebook in which I enter what I spend every day, and I write my weight at the top of each day’s entries. Now I’m transferring those figures by hand into the spreadsheet. It doesn’t take too long, 365 entries per sheet and it took me about two hours, in two sessions, to add the 2018 figures yesterday. I’m starting 2019’s now.

They’re talking about retail expenditure for March on the radio at the moment. People spent a lot on groceries and so on when the virus first got serious, and I suppose I did a bit too, but these days each diary entry is virtually blank. I’m spending much less than I usually do, which is good for me, not so good for the retailers I guess.

Anyway, I have graphs of my weight for each year since 2013. They say you shouldn’t weigh every day but I disagree. I can straight away see the trends. I dare not show the graphs for the past 18 months. Glum.

Singapore, June 2004  © PJ Croft 2020

Singapore  June 2004  © PJ Croft 2020

Chatting with someone yesterday about cruises, ship cruises, and it’s spurred me to remember all the cruises I’ve taken. There have been quite a few going back a long way.

April 1974: a first for everything; first cruise, first time out of the country, first passport, first encounter with a casino, on-board. It was a trip from Fremantle to Singapore on the way to the UK by “ship-jet” with my friend Geoff.

Wow, what a trip!! It lives in my memory forever. The gentle rocking motion of the ship, the Eastern Queen. The gradually increasing temperatures as we headed north. The flying fish in the sea. The passage through the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra.

The 10c cans of beer, all Swan Lager or VB, I think, but at 10c who cared. The casino on one of the upper decks. I’d never been in one before, never played any games, but I took to roulette, where the bets were only 20c. I seemed to be able to play it and at the end of the cruise I was $20 in front, which was quite a lot of money then.

Then the arrival at Singapore. It was at dawn and I got up and went on deck while it was still cool and hazy, before the sun rose.

6 April 1974 Singapore arrival. Agfa CT18 slide film faded to magenta!  © PJ Croft 2020

6 April 1974  Singapore docks. The skyscrapers were just starting to go up.  © PJ Croft 2020

Notice the absence of skyscrapers? Singapore was still a small city then, before the massive developments.

When Geoff and I arrived we were allocated to a hotel, but it turned out to be the Ambassador Hotel in Katong, well east of the city centre and requiring taxi transport to anywhere. Never mind, the taxis were dirt cheap, it had a beaut pool and a cafe that served cheap meals. It was my first experience of everything, including the real Asian food and my first taste of coriander leaves as a garnish, and I didn’t like it at all. I do now.

Somehow Geoff and I teamed up with two rather nice girls from Perth, Sue and Gabriel and we met up in the shopping areas, which had much more of a Chinatown feel than the glass and stainless steel malls today. Geoff and I both bought our first serious cameras, SLRs. Geoff bought a Minolta SRT-101 with 50mm f1.4 lens, complete with the black leather “ever-ready” case they came in in those days.

There he is, Geoff in Singapore April 1974   © PJ Croft 2020

I bought a Konica Autoreflex T3 with 50mm f1.7 lens, also complete with case. The body was serial number 586755 and the lens was serial number 762730. I memorised them then in case of theft and they’re imprinted on my mind forever.

A day or so later we went to Change Alley, a narrow crowded lane with shops either side. I’d been given a camera bag as a parting gift when I left Channel 7 to go on this trip and I bought two extra lenses for the Konica, a 28mm f2.8 and a 135mm f2.8, both Vivitar brand. There were no zooms in those days. They were good choices and I took some nice pictures with them. Unfortunately I used Agfa CT18 film for the whole trip and over the next 20 years or so it slowly faded to purple as you can see in the top shot above.

Then a day or so later it was time for our flight to London. I was a bit disturbed, though, when Geoff and I were put on different airlines. I was allocated to Czechoslovakian Airways. Ugh. I was a bit nervous. First time in an aircraft and it was a Communist aircraft. It turned out to be a Boeing 727 and Gabriel and I were teamed up to sit together. It was a night flight and flying away from the sun it was a long night. I still have the little notebook I carried with Gabriel’s stick figure drawings and spelling-bee words to pass the time.

We stopped in Abu Dhabi or somewhere to refuel (the airport was nothing at all like it is now) and Gabriel alarmed me by being very slow to emerge from the Ladies to get back on the bus to rejoin the flight. I considered going in to find her. I was a nervous Nelly then.

After we took off, morning dawned and we were served a Czech breakfast, which included white sausage, something new to me. Everything was! As we took off, a lot of passengers became alarmed, as I was, by what looked like white smoke coming from the air vents near the floor. It was just water vapour, of course.

After another long flight we landed in Prague (Czech Airlines, remember) for another stopover of a few hours and a change of planes, I think.

Then It was off to London Heathrow, arriving late morning. My first step into the UK. Somehow Geoff and I met up again and said goodbye to Sue and Gabriel, then set about getting a taxi to our booked hotel in Brixton?? south of the river. I clearly remember this was the first time I’d been in a country where tipping was required. We got a black cab and when I paid the fare I hesitated and made a comment about not having any English money, which was true. He said “Well mate, we’re not likely to meet up again, are we?” I was embarrassed and confused and pressed an Aussie 20c piece into his hand. I bet he had a good laugh over that.

This was my first experience of jet-lag too. I remember carrying my heavy suitcase up the stairs (I was 27 and reasonably fit then) to our dorm room on about the third floor and partly unpacking, then thinking I’ll just have a lie down at about 2pm. Next thing I knew it was 6.30pm and I was freezing. What happened there?

Anyway, that will have to end this part of the story for now or I’ll never get on to the next ship cruise.

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December 1974:  I had been living in London all year since April, with several trips to the Continent (as it was called then), first the Autotours Europe 6 week trip. There was a two or three week gap after our arrival in Britain so Geoff and I hired a Ford Escort van and did a quick tour of Britain, starting in London, going south to Land’s End in Cornwall, then heading north through Wales (now I know why NSW is called that), right up through the Midlands to Scotland, not quite to John o’Groats but close, then down the east side to London again, Earl’s Court in fact, the Aquarius Hotel.

The six week Autotour was one of the highlights of my life. I remember so much of it and made friendships that lasted decades, although we’ve lost contact now.

Anyway, back to the topic. After more tours and the great thrill of living in a flat in Chelsea (in Camera Place, of all names), by November it was getting too dark and cold and I wanted to get home, so I booked the same ship-jet in reverse, flying from London to Singapore with a for or five day stopover, then taking the Eastern Queen again to Fremantle. Geoff had stayed on in London and I was alone this time, which took the edge off things, but it was OK. However, what I hadn’t reckoned on was the slowness of the ship journey. I just wanted to be home and the voyage just dragged! I was convinced the ship was deliberately going slow, dawdling, to keep to some timetable. It felt as if we were dead in the water. I’m sure we weren’t, but I learnt my lesson from that, fly back, don’t take the ship.

So that was my second cruise.

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May 1977: I had the travel bug now and booked a fly-cruise, flying from Perth to Sydney and catching the original P&O Arcadia for an 11 day (I think) cruise around the Pacific Islands.

All aboard. The Arcadia, May 1977 Sydney

First stop Noumea, New Caledonia, then Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, then Port Vila, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), then Suva, Fiji, round the coast to Lautoka, then back to Sydney.

The ship, a BIG one, was fine although having to sleep in an iron framed bunk bed with several other guys in the shared cabin and having to go down the passage to the bathroom, all green painted steel floor and walls, with cockroaches on the floor was not so great. But the food! Holy smoke, every meal was a banquet. I’d never had food like that before. No limit, all you can eat.

I had asked to be seated with some ladies and so I was placed on a table of four with three young women. Wow, I became the favourite guy there. Two were from Sydney, Louise and “Tamia”, actually Cheryl, and the best, the one I fell for, Carol from Brisbane. She was Eurasian, beautiful, coffee coloured, long silky black hair. But she had a boyfriend back in Brizzy and although we talked a lot, that was it. “In Fond Memories, to Peter”. Wow. If only.

My dinner companions, Tamia, Louise and Carol.

I can still picture all their faces. Unfortunately I lost a lot of photos of that trip in the big disk crash of 2013.

So that was cruise number three. I’d better wrap here otherwise I’ll never finish. I have three or four more cruises to write about.

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Nothing much to report. Beautiful day. If you have to be locked up, is there a better place to be? Well, maybe one or two but this is nice.