Small mobile house trashers...

I'm feeling spectacularly fat at the moment. I feel a need to do something about it, but I keep falling for the lure of chocolate and larger portions than I need.
It's not easy to keep a lid on the appetite is it? (Dad.. of course you're an exception to this...) And it's difficult to feel like a lethal fighting Ninja when you look and feel like a saggy bag of lard. It's JUST possible that I may have to let that self image (Lethal Ninja) go for a while in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary!

Health wise, I've been undergoing a battery of tests lately, as a result of having gone to the dox to see if he can throw some light on my headaches. I've been getting headaches since a couple of months before we left the UK, and sometimes they are quite debilitating. However, the tests that he did for that, threw up another issue... not new, but different. My PSA reading (Prostate Specific Antigen) is higher than it should be. This could mean that my prostate is larger than it should be for an old fart of my vintage. Not much, but they decided to look closer. The PSA test is a blunt tool, and it is known to be pretty unreliable as an indicator but it's all they have. It could be nothing at all, it could be benign enlargement, or it could be a slow growing cancer... Apparently cancer of the prostate is SO common that 50% of men over 80 have it... but the good news is that it is treatable if caught early. Hence the testing. To put some perspective on this, since I mention the 'C' word here, the specialist I saw last week said that if I had a reading that was 3 times the one I have, and I told him that I'd just landed a plummy job in Vanuatu that meant I'd be away for a year, he'd say 'go for it, and we'll deal with it when you get back'. I have a reading of 3.1 whereas the reading shouldn't be that until I'm over 50. (Not that long till then, so I guess it's caution they're showing)
I've also had a CT scan for the head... which seems to have shown up nothing. Perhaps it's stress they say. NA... this is ME! I'd suggest it was the specs if it wasn't something that's been with me new specs or not. The problem is that the drugs I use to make it all go away have been indicated to cause stomach problems in long term use... and it's beginning to get to long term use now.
We decided that we'd go privately given the possibilities, and I'm seeing another specialist on Wednesday and a third one on Friday.
The moral of the story is that I'll be having the annual check up from now on. It's a bloody good idea methinks.

All the girls are good, although Phoebe's been a bit off colour recently too.
Molly and Josh were in touch last week, and they all chatted (whilst I was at work) for an hour and twenty or so. Great. We miss the older two, and especially right now as Molly had a party for her imminent 18th last weekend. I wish we could all be there too.

The house design is progressing well, and I'm trying to incorporate a few nice features that justify having gone to the trouble of building it ourselves rather than just buying one that someone else did for us. I'll put some pictures of the design on in a while, once we're happy with it. It's a much smaller and therefore economical version of the mansion that we'd dreamed up before, and therefore we hope, more likely to actually get built.

I went to a meeting of the Creative Industries Network last week, and afterwards we went to a local music venue under the Gold Coast Arts Centre. I don't recall the last time I went to see some music, and I put my last 5 bucks in towards buying a joint copy of the CD that the woman was selling. She was a singer with a guitar. FANTASTIC voice, and very competent player too. I felt a bit bad that we're going to burn a copy of her CD, but at least we bought one eh?

Narnia is going really well for me, I'm loving making stuff again for a living, and having that feeling of confidence that I know (more or less) what I'm doing, and I'm not just waiting for someone to see through my sham, as I felt like I was at Moreton Hire. I had initially also had the good fortune to be able to sell some of my products (Silicons and Urethanes, Adhesives and tools) to the production, but the head accountant ruled that I had a 'conflict of interest' so it's all stopped. I now feel pain every time I see another order going past that would have been supplied by me. They're ordering that much that I'd have been turning over something like $8k a month just on the prop dept.

One of the guys in our workshop is a 23 year old lad called Nic, that has also been starting up a little company of his own that makes animation. He's a bit of a clever lad, having been buying and selling camera equipment for some time, and making his own movers. We got talking about CNC machines, and I'd said that I'd like to make one. He said he'd also been thinking about it, and had made some headway (bought motors and controllers etc). He wants to make a motion control camera mover, and the equipment required is very similar...
Anyway, we've been egging each other on, and now we're both making one. His is about 1.5 m x 1m of cutting area. Mine, because I want to be able to use it commercially, is capable of cutting an 8x4 sheet in one. The machine is 3m x 1.5m. I've got the controllers (from an Ebayer in Sydney) and I've got the x axis slides and lead screw (From an Ebayer in South Korea). I have Z axis components coming from the same guy in Korea too. Just the big one (the Y axis) to find. (That may end up having to be new...and therefore quite expensive). I'm really looking forward to having that all up and running, and making some of the many things that it will be capable of cutting. I'm building the framework to enable the machine to operate as a router, a laser cutter, or a plasma cutter. The router will be invaluable for building our kitchen, the plasma for cutting the steelwork around the house, such as junctions between timbers for roofing trusses etc. (Our primary ceiling will be vaulted, and therefore the timbers will be exposed to view - meaning the metalwork will need to be nice)

Last weekend, we had a couple of little kids stay over, the eldest of whom (Natalia) is in the Feeb's class. Letitia, her four year old sister, is a bundle of joy. They're both lovely little kids. On Sunday, their Mum and Dad came to pick them up and stayed for a couple of hours to chat. During this conversation, Steve said that Mrs Laubsher (their teacher) had been discussing Natalia with Rin (her mum...she's from Thailand) and had asked her if she was autistic! Steve had been livid that she's asked this... and that Rin had been unable to get in behind the question to probe about what she'd meant. She just said 'No'. For a second, we both thought that it was weird too... so weird that neither of us thought it could have been what she'd meant. Then I realised what it was... Mrs L is from Johannesburg! Ha ha. Sith Ifrican! She was complimenting her on her artistic ability!

Here's some pics of them: This is Natalia...





this is Letitia...





The pics were taken when we all went to the local park. Chelsea and Tara, local mates came too. This is Tara...



and this is Chelsea;



You know these ones...





This one is from a show that Daile went to in mid June. You can see Natalia and Feeb, and the other really little girl is Arushi. She's fantastic too.



At home...Matilda has become one with the cat lately! This was just after... and just before he attacked her ankles.

Politically correct....?

... er what's that...politically ker...rapt?

Australians know what this word can mean...
but they just don't give a toss.

Welcome to Australia...have a nice day!

Another Martin heads for the hills...

My sister Gill is about to go to Canada, and Bill, her hubby has been there since earlier in the year. They'll be in Toronto, which is very nearly North America geographically speaking. So nearly in fact, that if they had our boat, it would take them about an hour and a half to get to Fort Niagara. It's about 30 miles across the Lake. If you had a stomach for it, it would be another 10 miles up the river to the falls. When you study the falls on google maps satellite view, it looks from the number of cars in the car park on the Canadian side, versus the US side, that the view is a whole lot better from Canada. I imagine the sound must be awesome.

I looked around a bit, and came across a photo of the falls at night. They put lights under them! I mean, on the one hand, I'm thinking how the hell did they do that?... and on the other I'm thinking, why? It sort of encapsulates for me, everything bad about the western world... that they take something so absolutely awesome, and they do THAT to it.





But the area is not a stranger to commercialisation, being one of the very first areas to generate electricity.... where Tesla hung out for a while etc.

Here's a pic of the falls on the American side... without any water going over them. They stopped it to have a look at the bed. Wanted to change the sheets I think it was....or change the light bulbs perhaps.



Anyway, Gill will be going here more often than Scarborough beach for a while.

Hope it all works out well there Gilly!

...and another thing!

For the most part, since the vast majority of us don’t really like to think too much, we tend to use a shockingly small vocabulary of words. It’s from this small ‘vocab-in-use’ that we draw for our daily communications, and so its probably not all that surprising that when we have occasion to express something that approximates surprise or amazement… we’re all pretty much stumped.

But there is one phrase that has come into such common usage that I am absolutely SICK of hearing it. It gets used with no thought….at all! Typically, you’ll hear it when some hapless punter is being told that they are staying on in one of these incessant reality TV shows. There’ll be all the hype about the fact that this ‘nail biting’ episode of ‘Master-Stiff’ or ‘Big Bugger’ with the typical American voice over from some fella that sounds like he’s just smoked 5 packs of Woodbines before stepping up to the microphone… and then a tottering woman (or man) with teeth you could use as a straight edge will reveal the result of some decision that the celebrity judges have lost sleep over. The punter will then – almost universally say: ‘OH MY GARD! Often they’ll say it, wait for the approval of all the other hyper cool people on the show before repeating it again….. and again….. and again!

Note that it’s not ‘OH MY GIDDY AUNT’…! OBVIOUSLY it’s not THAT! That would be un-cool wouldn’t it! Nor is it ‘Oh my abstracted concept of a benevolent higher being’ or even ‘shag me sideways with a ragtime players trombone’… which would have at least some small thing going for them! I mean the whole purpose of the expression is to communicate surprise… joy even! Usually, these hap-'free' contestants have had considerable time to conceive and mentally rehearse what they might say… and given that it will be seen by millions of other ‘Oh my god’ …ers, I’d have thought that they might consider something that flys a bit further…

But not only do we not consider words and phrases that are not in common parlance, but we actually try to stop others from using them too. I had a conversation with someone recently (ah my poor long suffering wife!) in which I recalled an incident during my MBA when during an online discussion I used a term ‘meta’ as in ‘meta-cognition’ (or something) to illustrate a point I was trying to make. I was squarely rounded on by another student for using language that was inaccessible, although I think he used the term ‘highbrow’ or something. What was worse was that the tutor who was the moderator of that particular online discussion agreed with the bloke.

So what does this mean?

Well I think that it is symptomatic of a reluctance to step outside of the normative behaviour that we use to define ourselves to the society around us. It is this same behaviour that I’m trying to work around (for my part) in the development of the Logan Creative Network….but lets not go there eh…or Bugger that for a fridge full of beer!

Out of the frying pan?

Crikey! Time's flown since I was last on here!

Been pretty busy at work, and some of the stuff I'm doing is great to be doing. Well most of it is really, even the less great stuff... like making lots of repeats of stuff. One of the guys there is a stereotypical 'whinging Pom' I'm sad to say, and seems to find things to complain about all the time. I told him that he should try being out of work for a while...

Having said that, I'm not really doing any repeats... only the more interesting jobs ...so far at least.

House sale

A few weeks ago we completed the sale of our rental house. We were finding it difficult to pay out, and watch all our hard work making the place presentable be trashed by the tenants who didn't seem to give a s**t about it, and were rude to us into the bargain.
After some difficulty, we managed to get figures from the bank that showed what they'd done with the money.
Now those of you who are familiar with the selling of property in the UK will know that when you exchange, the solicitors pay the dosh into your bank and the mortgage is paid off (you hope). Well guess what... ! They don't do that in Oz! Here, what they do is they put the money into the account and still charge you interest. OK... not a problem, you just pay it back right? Wrong! We had two thirds of the money that we'd borrowed as a fixed rate loan. We looked upon it as a mortgage, but here they call it a home loan. Ending the term early incurs penalties.

We understood this when we took it out, but figured that based on the sort of money these things had been in living memory... or at least financial market memory, which is considerably shorter than a small child's and fractionally longer than an ant's...it was worth it. We'd been led to understand that it would more than likely be around a couple of thousand to get out of it.

But of course we weren't counting on the interest rates dropping. Nor were we aware of how the banks (aka legalised loan sharks) think. The way it works is:

1. You enter into an agreement.

For us it's a loan of 'x' which we may or may not want for 5 years but which we are prepared to take a risk on the interest going 'in our favour' rather than theirs, and pay the get out if we need to sell the house before that. (It's worth noting that most people sell their house every 7 years on average in the UK)

For them, it's a guarantee that we will pay them a fixed amount for 5 years and apparently, the rate that they gave us ( a whopping 1% below the standard rate) is based on their being able to calculate their cash flows over this period.

2. If the loan-ees, (hereinafter known as the lambs) decide to close out the loan early, it is therefore perfectly reasonable for the bank to charge them (hereinafter known as the slaughter) a percentage of the interest that they had calculated that they would earn over the remainder of the term - EVEN though you've given the money back. The idea sounds reasonable enough until you see what happens in a recession!

Our locked in rate was a full 2.5% higher than it is currently. If they re-loan the entire amount that they loaned us to some other lambs, then they can only slaughter them for the lower (current market) rate. That leaves them a shortfall on their projections for that parcel of dosh that comes to....

wait for it...

$17,300!!!

Yup you read it right! That's how much it would have cost us to close our loan the day that they told us. The loan value (if you're interested and like the maths was $190k and we had about 3.5 years left on the fixed rate (hereinafter known as being tied to the rails) Since then the rate has got worse and better and worse again. The last time I looked it was about $14,600.

So we figured there were three options open to us.

1. We could sue the major Australian bank, that would of course be in league with all the other major Australian banks - especially given how much money would be at stake if they lost and everyone else joined in.
2. We could pay off the money and lie in a pool of blood and lambswool on the floor of the abattoir... or
   
3. We could keep the money and get back to building our house. I mean, lets face it... they would never lend us money again under our current predicament with work being so intermittent and NOT A PROPER JOB - so the chances of us building our house any time soon are VERY slim... unless!!!!!!
   

So that's what we decided to do! Only problem is... we're back to square one. We still have to pay the loan every month, and now we don't have anyone paying some of it in rent!

Better get a move on and get the thing done!

To whit, it's in re-design, to be a stage build, so that we can build a slimmed down version, and get into it, with what we have available. I hope I keep working!