Troy’s Random Ramblings

BookCrossing – What a neat idea. I’ve left books behind heaps of times, mostly accidentally, and I’ve picked up the odd book or two that I’ve found lying around.

I might register a couple of my old favourites and leave them lying around when I head back up to Sydney in a couple of days.

• All 100% legally free – Playlist: Downloads
• Umm, well, yeah – Songs to wear pants to

Dodge Viper – VIPER ACE – Go Race!!

All Forces has a very in depth spiel on how to connect »iChat to MSN through Jabber.

Follow the comprehensive instructions and in no time at all you’ll be using iChat to connect to your MSN, Yahoo and other IM accounts.

The Gimli Glider … next time you fly, hope you get these guys as your pilots. All I can say is, Wow!

My desktop setup

Since I couldn’t go kiting today because of all the running around I had to do this morning, I decided to pick up some bits and pieces to make a protective cover for my kite board.

After looking at a variety of actualy kite & board bags I decided that I really didn’t need one quite that flash just yet. I mean I’m not going to be doing that much travelling on planes with my gear over the next 6 months. However, I still needed something to protect my nice shiny board.

A quick trip to Spotlight, the local fabric and craft store had me walking away with 2 metres of dark blue polar fleece and a couple of metres of thick piping rope. The polar fleece comes on rolls 1.5m wide, so it was a perfect fit for my board. The plan was to make a simple bag with polar fleece on the inside and out, folding the wrong sides together and then folding it over again so that I ended up with a rectangle 1.5m x 0.5m. Sew the side and bottom up, a quick hem on the top to thread the rope through as a draw string, turn it inside out and it would be done.

Well that was the plan. After 45 minutes of cursing and swearing at the sewing machine I finally worked out how to get the thread from the bobbin to thread through under the foot (note to self: wind the machine in the other direction when threading the bobbin). Luckily there was beer handy to keep things under control. Once the argument with the sewing machine was won I managed to get the sewing done pretty quickly.

Now I have a nice furry protective cover for my kite board, and it only cost about $20 all up, plus I made it myself.

Yippee!! Got my new set of lines for my kite today. Now this isn’t just any old kite, it’s a 13m job specially designed to be used when Kite Surfing.

Now I’m still learning the finer points of this sport, in fact I haven’t even got up on the board as yet. But that isn’t through lack of trying. Unfortunately I decided to take up this kite surfing a bit late in the season down here in Victoria, so I haven’t actually had that much practice, been out about 4 or 5 times so far.

Last time I had a bit of an incident, to say the least. I ended up being dragged across the beach before pulling the safety release on my bar. The kite then proceeded to spiral away in the sky and not fall down like it is meant to (it was a little gusty). I eventually got the kite down but in the process managed to get one line (of four) that control the kite snagged. In the end I had to cut my losses and cut the line, there was just no way that I could get the line free. As a result of that minor incident I had to get a new set of lines, because it’s best to replace them as a set.

So, I picked up my new lines today, removed the old ones, connected the new and wound them onto the bar. Now I just have to get a couple of little pig tails that I forgot I would need and I’ll be ready to go kiting again. Hopefully the wind blows in the right direction over the next week, otherwise it looks like I’ll have to try out the warmer waters of Townsville when I’m up that way in a month or so.

Head on over to Planearium and create your very own South Park self portrait.

Go on, you know you want to.