February 2006

28-Feb-2006 - Prophecy Ultraviolet

Just over a week ago, on the 18th Feb I went to a rave called Prophecy Ultraviolet.

The flyer

It was put on by the Powerhouse Productions crew - famous in Sydney for doing all the big Utopia raves and other large parties. They have been putting on great parties for the last 10 years, and this was another awesome night.

It was held at the Sydney Superdome and had the main arena, as well as two smaller (but still large) rooms. I wore my flashing t-shirt as usual :-) and rocked up with Julian at around 11pm. We met Tim H and Ben C when we got there.

 

Main arena in darkness

Main arena with lasers

 

I would guess there would have been over 5000 people there on the night, and all rooms were going off. Lasers covered the main room and there were these lit up balloon-men around the sides of the room. Hmm.. hard to describe what they look like, but they rose into the air powered by strong fans.

Main arena - big balloon-like men in the background

 

We went from room to room enjoying the music and atmosphere and partying like its 1999.. ahem.. 2006. Man that was a cheesy sentence. Anyways, there was also an outdoor section with a big theme-park ride, ice cream van and other stalls. We saw someone OD, but hey.. that happens at raves.

Theme park ride

 

They had different things on stage using the UV lights.. such as a group of UV errr.. stick twirlers? Looked cool anyways.

Occupation: UV Stick Twirler

 

Anyway it was a great night.. we all had fun. Me and Jules left at about 4am, but the other boys stayed until the end (i think 7am). And as well all know I love lasers so I can help sticking this photo in...

Lasers. Oh baby yeah!

 

On the way back to the car, me and Julian walked past this McDonalds which was shut. It was playing some 70's song called Self Control by Raf out of its external speaker system. There was noone around - it was Homebush Olympic Park in the middle of the night - it was dead. Still being in a bit of a dancing mood me and Julian danced crazily for 10 minutes to McDonalds music coming out of a dodgy speaker system. It was great fun! :-)

Cant wait for the next rave! Byeeee! :-)

23-Feb-2006 - The trouble with cars

... is that they are so damn expensive and problematic.

A few months ago my old car overheated while I was on the freeway, and was pretty much written off when it got a cracked head gasket that would have cost as much as the car is worth to fix.

So I bought another car - also secondhand. I knew when I bought it that the first time I take it in to get stuff done to it there would probably be a big bill of things to get done to it. And there was. Last week I took it in and the bill was in excess of $1000. I got it all done though and was on my merry (albeit slightly poorer) way.

So wasnt I surprised when on the way to my mums place last night the car overheated. Since my last car overheated and died, I have been much more observant of the heat guage. Luckily this time I saw it overheating before it was too late, and pulled over.

So there I was, once again stranded on the way to my mums place.

Stranded yet again

I figured it was highly unlikely that the NRMA would be able to do anything about it, but I called them to have a look anyway. They said 90 minutes on the phone, and after my last experience I settled in for a long long wait. I would probably have to wait yet again for a tow truck later on. It was going to be a long evening.

But only 20 minutes later they turned up - I was very impressed. He noticed that the car was revving higher than normal, and when I mentioned the fact that I had an accelerator cable installed last week he checked it out. Much to his surprise one of the bolts on the cable had come off, and he said that it was possible the cable could have been caught which would have made my car accelerate out of control. Scary thought.

Anyway he tightened the bolt back on, but still couldnt explain why the car overheated.. but after a little more investigation he noticed a hose from the radiator was all compressed and collapsed, preventing the radiator fluid from circulating around the engine. It was due to depressurisation, and once he opened up the radiator cap it repressurised and fixed up the hose. He said that it was probably the result of the mechanic last week not allowing the engine to cool before replacing the radiator cap, and when it did cool the water volumed decreases and depressurises the radiator causing the radiator hose to collapse.

So basically the mechanics last week did two big dodgy mistakes. One that could have destroyed the engine from overheating, and the other that could have caused an accident. Very dodgy.

Oh well its all fixed now :-). No tow trucks, no bills :-). Thank god for the NRMA.

15-Feb-2006 - Navy invasion in darling harbour?

Thats right.. you heard it correctly. The Navy has invaded darling harbour! I wouldnt make an outrageous statement without proof would I? Ummm.. maybe I would, but anyway this time I do have the proof...

 

Navy boat ominously moored in Darling Harbour

 

The HMAS Armidale if I remember correctly

So whats going on?

The end is nigh?

There were plenty of naval officers around Darling Harbour a couple of weeks ago. Japanese ones, American ones, Canadian ones, Indonesian ones... but fortunately we werent being invaded.

It was the Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Conference 2006. Whatever the hell that was. Sounds interesting though.

12-Feb-2006 - Julian, Ben and the Internet

Julian and Ben are funny boys. A few weeks ago, around the time when 4 guys from Sydney were selling a weekend with them on ebay (and the price had reached over $40,000), I was showing Ben the million dollar homepage when he had an idea: Sell your sperm on ebay. Ben's always looking for a way to make a quick buck ;-) but I never thought he would actually go ahead with it.

I was wrong! I was amazed to find an email in my inbox with a link to Ben's sperm on ebay hahaha.. very funny. I wish I took a screenshot of it, but there was a starting bid of $5000, a pic of Ben, and some info on him - I think it said something like IQ of 136, double degree, healthy and fit etc...

Not surprisingly it was removed from ebay within a day, and Ben had apparently received one favourable response and a not-so-favourable response. One woman said something like "You're hot but $5000 is too much" and another said "You're ugly and i'm reporting you to ebay" hehehe. I did some searching to find out what the rules and laws are and its illegal in Australia to sell your sperm, and it also specifically mentions that it is banned under ebay rules. He was not the first person to try selling sperm on ebay.

Not to mention the fact that there would be so many legal complications. Who knows.. some chick could have taken it, and Ben might have been the father by law and have to pay child support for the next 18 years! :-)

Nonetheless it was very funny and I will make sure I pay ben out about it for some time to come. Hello to Ben if you are reading this! ;-)

And everyone has gone blog crazy lately. A number of people I know now have weblogs. Blogging has totally taken off. Even Ben and Julian have started blogs. Julian asked me to link to his page from mine, so here it is :-). It might get you indexed into google, but since my page hardly ever gets indexed dont hold your breath. Damn google. Bens lasted 1 day, but I'm sure Julians will be long term. He has only had it for a few days but he has had so many entries that I now realise why he was 'busy working' all weekend and not wanting to do anything ;-). Incase you missed it, the link to Julians blog is here.

And for anyone creating your own blog (ie not MySpace etc...) you can use a blog pinger to alert the internet your blog has been updated.. and also to get yourself listed to the world. The best one is BlogFlux which is a Meta-Pinger. It pings all the pingers. Hmmm... enough nerd talk.

So thats the story of Julian, Ben and the Internet. I wish I could write an uncensored version of everything on my blog - it would be much more interesting! But I wont... so thats all in the latest round of Ray's Incredibly Sanitised Version of World Events (tm).

11-Feb-2006 - Rollerblading at Centennial Park

A couple of weeks ago me and Tim decided to go for a blade at centennial park. Every now and then I go blading, and centennial park is a great place for a casual blade - its flat pretty much all the way around.

Geared up Tim - ready to blade!

We did a couple of laps of the park. It was a great sunny day, not too hot and not too cold.

Ready set roll

And as you can see I took my camera. Hmm.. I need a video camera!

Trying not to crash while taking photo

There are lots of nice lakes in Centennial Park. Hmm.. another perfect excuse for a photo opportunity me thinks :-)

Mr Timothy - How YOU doin?

Sneezing?

Finally we got a drink and something to eat at the shop in the centre of the park, and had a rest in the park.

Lazying about in the park

And so concludes the photographic diary of Raymon Scott and his rollerblading at centennial park adventure :-)

I went to the Australian National Maritime Museum at darling harbour the other week with Richard. Its free entry, but there isnt a whole deal of stuff to see. We had a look at the history of Pyrmont photos which I thought was pretty cool. Its interesting to see what my area looked like 100 years ago. It was pretty much covered in railway tracks.

I've been hanging out with Andrew M a bit too.. we went for coffee a couple of times and to Ten Pin Bowling. Andrew is a friend from my uni course at UTS. We both suck at bowling though :-).

Speaking of uni, I searched for my name on Google the other day (as you do..) and found some guys page with my photo on it. Amazing! It was a photo of me on a uni harbour cruise, along with lots of other photos of that night. I have no idea who's page it is either because I couldnt see any photos of the guy who owned it. And another strange thing is that almost noone spells my full name correctly (Raymon) unless they know me quite well. Hmmm.. its a mystery.

Well thats all I can be bothered writing at the moment. Bye!

3-Feb-2006 - Oz Day Evening and a lot of Imaxing

My long long weekend was a very busy one. After going to the huge mountain bike ride on Thursday I came back home and met up with Richard down at darling harbour.

We watched the Australia Day fireworks amongst the crowds of people. It wasnt as packed this year as it has been in the past. I remember one year when they actually closed off darling harbour completely because it was completely full!

Some of the firework's sparks were still alight and going into the crowd, which added a spice of 'danger' to the spectacle :-).

Years ago I watched fireworks at Parramatta park and they were going off above Parramatta river. Everyone was standing on the banks of the river and the fireworks were all falling into the crowd still burning. People young and old, and whole families were running from the edge of the river as a rain of fire came down on top of them from the sky. Was great to watch, but I ended up with a piece of something extremely hot go down the back of my tshirt... ouch!

After the fireworks I went to Richards place for a bit, figuring that there is no way i'm going to be able to quickly get up to my apartment, or drive out of the suburb. I live right next to darling harbour and as soon as fireworks are finished everyone goes back to the apartment all at once. With 3 lifts and probably 1000 people in the complex it takes quite a while to get back upstairs! And I was about to go to a BBQ at Rhodes, and all the streets were lined with cars, so there was no driving away either.

Eventually I went back to my place and set out to Rhodes where we went to Jasons BBQ. I hadnt met Jason before - he is a friend of Sivs. They had a nice place - in a new building with a pretty good view, and in a suburb that was newly done up. I had previously looked around this suburb because it seems like a nice place to buy an apartment. I showed Ben the million dollar homepage which gave him the idea to put something up on ebay... ahem... more on this later! ;-). Ben and Julian ended up coming to the city for the usual after the BBQ.

The next day Tim came around and we went to imax to see Walking on the Moon 3D. It was ok.. there have been other 3D imax movies that were better, but it was not bad anyway. I ate way too much popcorn as usual - still had half a box of it when the movie was finished!

It was just the next day (saturday) when I went to imax again, this time with Richard and saw The Polar Express 3D. This was a pretty good movie - it was 100 minutes long, longer than normal 3D imax movies (which are 50 mins). Although after about an hour of 3D-ness I started to feel a little motion sick. I guess thats why they are usually only 50 mins!

If you have never seen a 3D imax movie I would highly recommend it. But usually the animated ones are better than the real life ones (the 3D effects are more 'in your face').

Hmmm got lots of stuff to write about this week.. but i'll continue writing later. For now.. see ya!

3-Feb-2006 - Fun with Photoshop

The other day I was playing around with photoshop a bit and learnt how to turn text into fire :-). My counterstrike source name is comeGetSome, so I created this:

Want some?

Hooray for photoshop!

2-Feb-2006 - New RSS Feed

For the techies out there who like to use RSS to get the latest info, I have now added an RSS 2.0 feed for this site. The link is http://www.raymonscott.com/rss2.0.xml

2-Feb-2006 - Mountain Biking on Australia Day

Well it was only a couple of weeks ago when I had the 'nothingness weekend' where I did absolutely nothing. This weekend was the total opposite. I was constantly doing something and hardly had any time to rest.

It was a long weekend for me. Thursday was Australia Day and a public holiday, and I had decided to take off Friday turning it into a 4 day long weekend. Hooray!

Thursday

This was Australia Day. I had asked a number of people at work and outside of work what January 26th signified. Noone was sure! You gotta love Australia :-). So what do you think it is? Is it the anniversary of:

a) Captain Cook's landing

b) First Fleet's landing

c) Federation of Australia

I'll give you some thinking music... doo doo didi didi doo doo dah..

You gotta love Australia

Ok times up! If you said a) you were WRONG!. If you said c) you were also WRONG!. Yep.. January 26 is the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney Harbour.

Anyway, Thursday was the day to try something new. Real mountain biking. I have owned a mountain bike for a few months now, and used to have a mountain bike years ago and rode it all the time. However I have never actually been "mountain biking" with them. Well what an introduction Thursday was to the sport!

I went with John and Noel and we were doing The Oaks. This is a ride in the Blue Mountains that goes from Woodford to Glenbrook. Its 28km long and its tough, for a beginner like me that is. To put it in perspective, Woodford is 7 train stations away from Glenbrook - and these are Blue Mountain train stations, not city ones.

John and Noel are both quite fit too. I did my best in the city to surf but they both beat me by about 5-10 minutes. So it was going to be a fast ride. After getting off the train at Woodford with our bikes, we rode through a few back streets until we go to The Gate. This is the starting point for the huge ride.

The Gate. Starting point of the 28km ride

Getting pumped for the ride. Haha pumped. Get it?
Never mind

Now a funny (but somewhat scary) thing about this ride is written as a warning next to the main gate. It basically reminds you that after rainfall the crossing at Glenbrook may be flooded. So what you may ask? Well once you get to Glenbrook after 28km of riding you have to cross a river to get outside the national park. If its been raining and you cant cross the river, well you are totally stuffed. You will have to ride 28km back to the start and its a much harder ride back (mostly uphill) than forwards.

Innocent looking yet ominous warning

So we finally set off on the ride, and to my surprise it was much rougher than I expected. My bike (and myself) was constantly being violently thrown around. I was amazed how my tyres managed to survive the constant pounding into rocks. It looked like recent rains had washed away some of the smaller rocks and dirt leaving big rocks and much rougher patches.

The first 20km of the ride is on a dirt track large enough for a car to drive on. This was a killer with the constant steep downhills followed by steep uphills. I quickly learnt that if I breaked downhill it was a much rougher ride with my back wheel slamming into the rocks rather than rolling over, but I would quickly go too fast and lose control if I didnt break. So it was a constant challenge to make sure I had enough braking but not too much to make the ride too violent.

We stopped on top of a hill for a bit of a break. And we saw the only people on the track the whole time we were there - 3 people walking the track. Then we continued on. Some of the hills were really big, both downhill and uphill. A number of times I had to get off my bike and walk uphill. John and Noel were fitter and going quite fast so it was a test of my endurance to keep up with them. A couple of times I lost control and veered off into really rough rocky patches and nearly came off my bike, but luckily I managed to stay on. I also came very close to a sharp drop down a ravine at one point, and nearly stacked it on a hairpin corner.

Finally we arrive at a little bit of a clearing before a huge downhill run which probably went for a couple of kilometres. It was very fast, very bumpy, and a lot of fun. Halfway down my chain got stuck after it fell off the cogs from my bike shaking so much. Fortunately there was another kilometre of downhill and I was able to travel the whole way without using the pedals! I'm amazed that the chain only locked once during the ride.

After 20km or so the wide track ended and we came across another dirt road, where there was a map of the area.

Me on the left, Noel in the background.

From this point onwards it was all a single thin bushwalking style track. It was pretty much all downhill which was great - at this point I was pretty damn exhausted! There was a lot of vegetation though and I kept getting whacked in the face by overhanging plants and trees. After a number of kilometres of this we end up at a road. A paved road! Civilisation!

The road lead to the Glenbrook crossing. This is the bit where you better hope to god that the river is not too high, or else its back to the start!

Glenbrook - the river crossing. Thank god its low

At this point I was stuffed. 28km of rough riding and my hands were really sore (from holding on!), my butt was sore, and I was exhausted. We rested here for a bit having a bit of a dip in the water. There were some families there as well.

Me - completely stuffed at this point

Notice the lack of colour in my face? Yep, i'm buggered.

Not as stuffed as these people though

Noel and John have a rest

From here there was a huge uphill to get to the town and the train station. And I mean HUGE. I walked the whole thing, but even that almost killed me.

When we eventually got to Glenbrook I got a couple of sandwiches from the shop. There was a fair in the town with people dressing up as all sorts of things. We could see a few old guys dressed up as dwarves selling gnomes hehe..

Finally we rode to the station and caught the train back to Central. We got told off from some people on the train for blocking the doorways between carriages with our bikes :-)

And that concludes my first big mountain biking adventure. I did a lot more on my long weekend, but I dont want to spend all day writing this blog, so i'll leave that for next time. Bye!