Busy Time

It’s been a busy couple of months since returning from holiday, with some interesting pieces of work:

• helping the Australian Institute for Loss and Grief to determine pricing schedules for its range of workshops and related training services;
• reviewing and editing content for SAGE Automation’s new web site;
• editing documents for a large mediation/arbitration for an Extension of Time Claim for a major international civil engineering project and
• reviewing and editing a Field Trials Report on the collection of post-harvest biomass for energy production for Syngas, an outcome of the previous submission that won Syngas $300,000 in R&D funding for this project a year ago, almost to the day.

Technology Divide

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be all right really.

(Douglas Adams, 1999)

A Win for Allwater

It’s good to play a small part in another winning project.

The ALLWATER Consortium – a Transfield Services joint venture with Degremont and Suez Environnement has secured a new 10 year alliance contract worth approximately $1.1 billion with its new customer, SA Water, to operate and maintain water and wastewater services for the City of Adelaide and the surrounding metropolitan area.

I am delighted to have made a small contribution to the winning bid by editing and rewriting parts of the extensive and complex tender documents, including those dealing with water and wastewater treatment plants, leak management and R&D. Congratulations to Les, Ben and their expert teams for their successful submission.

HGT Funding Submission Completed

Congratulations to the team at Hospitality Group Training for completing and lodging their Application to the Commonwealth Government’s Industry Skills Centre Fund. I enjoyed working with them on this submission for funds to help establish a commercial training kitchen in Adelaide’s CBD.

The proposed project is to provide a modern, eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable commercial kitchen and associated training facilities for hospitality students to complete certificate and work skills training and gain general and technical competencies to be effective Chefs, Cooks, Waiters and Bar Persons in the high demand area of Hospitality.

Thanks go to Wendy, Jodi and Janet for their energy and focus and for including me on their team for this bid.

Mega Millions

Fought my way through the milling crowds of hopeful NY punters to get a last minute ticket for a shot at the second biggest ever Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $355 million. The guy next to me was absolutely certain he was going to win the big one. Maybe he will, after all, the odds of winning the jackpot are only about one in 176 million.

NYE in NY NY

Not long to go until midnight and the start of 2011. (It's 10.20 pm Friday.) Just been talking to someone who got here over 12 hours ago to bag a good spot for the NYE party. Said New Year's Eve in Times Square was on her bucket list.

Snowmaggedon

First time outside in 2 days into the white chaos of NY's Snowmageddon III, in time to head over to Bryant Park and its 100+ temporary "holiday shops" festival. Just the thing to ease the end-of-year chills.

Before and After – the new MTA Workshop

Before - the Funding Submission and Business Plan

Congratulations to the Motor Traders Association and its Group Training Scheme on the official opening of their new apprentice training centre for heavy vehicle maintenance at Royal Park.

On the left is the “before” – the submission I wrote for the MTA back in March 2009. It won $1.359 million in Federal Government funding. The MTA matched the funding and built this new $3 million Apprentice Training Centre shown on the right – “after”. 

After - the outcome, the new MTA-GTS Workshop

Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations officially opened the centre today. It will be a great asset to help kickstart the careers of the many young people who train here.

Dongle Wars - Broadband on an eeePC

They said it couldn’t be done – get wireless broadband via a dongle on my netbook running Linux.

Hah!

Go to any high street retailer of mobile broadband services such as Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Three and Virgin and ask if their gadget works on Linux.

“Sorry”, they’ll say, “it only works on Windows or Mac”.

They are wrong. It was like being told in 1985 that you couldn’t access the embryonic internet with one of those new fangled Macintoshes. They said Macs didn’t have the F keys that you needed at that time for the log-on process. So I just telnetted around a few archives until I found a software F-key emulator, FTP’d it across and used it to log onto their system and send them emails complaining that I could access it on a Mac when they promised me I couldn’t.

Nowadays I have one of the early netbooks, a very cute, very tiny, Asus eee PC. In the days before Blackberries and iPhones, a netbook with a cheap, pre-paid wireless broadband “dongle” (a thumb-sized, plug-in broadband modem that looks like a fat USB memory stick) was an ideal solution for occasional use. I still use it when travelling. No bigger than a slim paper-back book, it is still very convenient and prepaid wireless broadband is much cheaper than the internet fees in hotels and the like.

However, the Linux operating system is Open Source software, and that is anathema to Microsoft and Apple who own the proprietary Windows and Mac operating systems. And it seems as if the retailers are either colluding with them or have been competely conned by their propaganda.

There is nothing intrinsically ‘wrong’ with any of these systems, they are all fine for a great range of business and personal computing activities. But to be told in 2010 that my Linux netbook could not use wireless broadband was bizarre.

None of the retailers nor their help desks could even begin to get their heads around using their products on Linux. Their “best” advice was to change the operating system to Windows XP. Yeah, right!

Many simply didn’t want to know – for them it was simply a case of “It can’t be done”. That was the ‘deja vu’ moment of being told that you couldn’t access the internet on the early Macs.

But it can be done. I have posted a fairly detailed explanation of the relatively straight-forward process on EEE user forums. If you are interested, this link will take you to a copy of those notes.

Anecdote for Fathers' Day

It was the 60s, and I was in a Linguistics tutorial.

At that time, a new breed of student was beginning to go to university in the UK, thanks to the recently introduced grants system – clever kids from ordinary families who otherwise could not have afforded it.

In this session we were talking about accents and dialects. As the only member of the group who had a regional accent (Birmingham) I was a ‘person of interest’ in a good sense. I was also the only male apart from the tutor. Everyone except me “spoke posh”.

We had talked about accents as they related to geographic areas, now we began to discuss accents as they related to social class.

To make a point, the tutor went around each member of the group in turn and asked, “What do you call your male parent?”

The responses from the young women varied: a couple of “Dad”s, a few “Daddy”s, a “Pop” and even a “Pops”.

As the answers went round the table I pretended first to be puzzled, then surprised and eventually mildly shocked.

By chance, I was last. He fed me the line beautifully. “And lastly Mr Short, what do you call your male parent?”

“Sir.”

Poor sucker. He didn’t see it coming. A good tutor, not much older than us, enthusiastic and knew his stuff. But he couldn’t read the sub-text, even as it happened.

He might have understood the theory and mechanics of regional accents but I understood the dynamics. In those days I used to speak like Ozzy Osborne, for pity’s sake. And of course I understood the dynamics of class accents, far better than the tutor or any of the young woman in the group, all of whom had upper crust accents and came from well-heeled families.

He took it at face value. He couldn’t see that I was making a statement about the dis-connect between academic understanding of a concept and actually living the reality; that I was ironically telling him “Yes, I get it” at the same time as sticking it to the posh chicks; and that I was letting them know that they shouldn’t make assumptions about a person’s background or capabilities based on his regional accent, just as they shouldn’t based on the jeans and tee-shirt I wore compared with the up-town frocks they wore.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then the now flustered tutor muttered, “Yes, well…” and hurriedly went on to the next topic. The posh chicks were eyeing me with peculiar interest.

Funding Win for Syngas

Congratulations to Syngas who have just won a $300,000 R&D grant for field trials of their ‘biomass to liquid fuel’ project.

This is one of the submissions I worked on with the Syngas team (see my post for 7 Aug 2010).

Biomass is organic material from plants which use sunlight to grow. It is a store of energy which can be converted into heat, electricity and transportation fuels.

Syngas will use waste biomass (organic material left over after harvest) and convert it to synthetic gas which, after a cleaning process, can be used to fuel engines or gas turbines or as a feedstock for liquid fuel production such as low-sulphur diesel.

It is great to be able to contribute to a project with potential for economic and environmental benefits.

Pedal Mod

Fed-up with the sound bleed-through on my Boss SD-1 Distortion pedal when it’s supposed to be off, I’m half way through modding it to true by-pass, so that when it’s on, it’s on and when it’s off, it’s off.

Home Again

Our trusty Ducato van

It’s good to be back after six weeks travelling in France, Italy and England. Ever tried driving a small truck through tiny Umbrian streets? Thank goodness for folding wing mirrors.

Highlights included: the house in Soubes in the Languedoc; three classic bridges in two days (Roman Pont du Gard, medieval Pont d’Avignon and the futuristic viaduct at Millau); train ride from Montpellier to Florence; the house in Umbria; driving the Ducato in Italy; Assissi and other Umbrian towns; lunch at Brian Chatterton’s olive farm near Orvieto; sharing our travels with good friends Greg & Rae and Bob & Pat; the late Spring in the UK; being with with family in England; the steam train to Bath; catcing up with good friends (Christie & Sheena, Chris & Mike, Rod & Lindsay, Gill & Kevin, Mick & Gill).

As always when I return after a time away I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes:

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (T.S. Eliot)

Confused Reverend

Astounded by televangelist Rev. Pat Robertson's claim yesterday that the Haiti earthquake was a result of that country's pact with the Devil. According to the confused Rev., Haitians swore a pact with Satan in times past to rid their country of its French colonial masters. This is from the man who said liberal civil liberties groups and homosexuals were at least partly responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks.

Project Wrap-ups

Just wrapped up and delivered two interesting submissions to the Commonwealth Jobs Fund: one for Hospitality Group Training (HGT) and one for Group Training Australia (GTA).

HGT want to develop an eco-friendly commercial training kitchen focusing on green skills, energy-efficient technologies and sustainable commercial kitchen practices. Thanks to Wendy and her team of Janet, Mark, Paul and Jodi for the opportunity to help with this fascinating project.

GTA wants to get more Out-of-Trade Apprentices back into their trades. Every year, many apprentices are retrenched because of circumstances beyond their control. A large percentage of them are lost to their trade. GTA wants pro-actively to seek them out and help re-engage them with other employers who are looking for part-qualified apprentices. Another great service for young people. Thanks to Mal and Jan for this one.

The Shell Game

Stockholm 12 July 2009

We’re walking along Vasterlenggarten, the quaint, narrow, cobbled street that runs through Gamla Stan, the heart of Stockholm’s Old Town.

It’s Sunday, there are three cruise ships in port today and the Old Town is packed with tourists who have eight hours to “do” Stockholm. By lunch time, most seem to have found their way here.

Vasterlenggarten runs in a long, gentle curve from one side of Gamla Stan island to the other. There are many side- and cross-streets. It’s an interesting, lively warren.

It’s lined with countless, souvenir shops, cafes, restaurants, snack bars, coffee shops, art galleries, jewellery and ceramics shops, fashion boutiques and tourists traps of various sorts.

Half way along, there is a small, excited crowd clustered round something on the ground. I go a bit closer to see what it’s all about.

It’s the Shell Game!

This is the last thing I expect to see in prosperous, law-abiding Stockholm. That’s because the Shell Game is one of the world’s greatest short-cons.

You see, a short-con is a fraud – a confidence trick that can be completed in a few minutes and is designed to cheat the victim out of his or her money – in the Shell Game it’s usually his.

And this team is good! It’s a four-man crew plus muscle. They have set up their pitch on the corner of one of the central cross streets, giving themselves four separate getaway routes.

Today, the Shell Man – or Operator – is using three upturned matchbox trays and a small wooden ball about the size of pea. Maybe it’s a small sponge ball – I don’t want to get too close. He is working on a thin mat not much bigger than a man’s handkerchief placed on the sidewalk.

The game is simple. The Shell Man shows the three empty trays, turns them over and carefully places the pea under one of them. He shuffles them around, not too quickly, then asks the mug to bet on which one has the pea. He offers even money – that is, if you put down $10 next to the “shell” that you think hides the pea and you guess correctly, you pick up your $10 and win another $10 from him. If you are wrong, he takes your money.

Gentle reader, please engrave this message into your soul and wallet: you cannot win the Shell Game.

The Operator can make the pea appear or disappear at will. He can take it out of one shell and put it under another whenever he wants. He can do it right under your nose and you will never see him do it.

Today, the Mark – the intended victim – is a 60-something year old American tourist.

The Shill is urging him on. He’s easy to spot. Tall, late-40s, neatly cropped hair, leather sports jackets and an expensive, well-travelled leather satchel over his shoulder. He speaks with a slight American accent. He looks like just any other anonymous tourist enjoying a bit of local colour.

His job is to demonstrate to the Mark how easy it is to pick which matchbox hides the pea and encourage him to place ever larger bets.

Now I have a dilemma – I am looking at a nice, unassuming American who has come to Europe to experience some of its history and culture and is about to be cheated out of a couple of hundred dollars if he’s lucky – more if he’s unlucky or a slow learner. Do I warn him?

I check out the rest of the team. One lookout is about 25 metres away at the entrance to an alleyway. The second is about the same distance in the other direction, on the corner diagonally opposite the game. Between them they have every exit and approach covered.

They are both in their late 30s, wiry looking, smoking nervously and twitching like greyhounds waiting to be let off the leash.

Of the six people clustered around the Operator, one is the Mark, one is the Shill, and two, maybe three, are muscle. I’m not sure about the sixth – he could be just another mug tourist. But then again, probably not.

As a group they hem the Mark in, making it difficult for him to back away until he’s made – and lost – a sizeable bet or three. They isolate him from friends and passers-by and make it impossible for anyone else to enter the magic circle. The Mark is on his own, and under pressure.

The muscle are also the team’s protectors and enforcers. They will not hesitate to take you up an alley and kick the shit out of you if you threaten their safety or profits.

So, I’m afraid the Mark will have to stay on his own until the team decide they’ve screwed as much as they can out of him.

While I watch, the Shill wins five dollars and the Mark wins five. The Shill then makes a clumsy “mistake” and loses his five. His mistake reveals a clue about how to pick the correct tray and the Mark wins another five. Now the Shill is excitedly whispering in the Mark’s ear. No doubt he’s pointing out that the pea is under the tray with the little crease that the Operator hasn’t noticed and this is the Mark’s chance to put on a big bet and make a killing!

It’s like watching the umpteenth re-run of an old movie. Sure enough, out comes a hundred dollar bill and down it goes.

Suddenly, the first lookout gives a single, shrill whistle. A cop car has appeared at the far end of his cross-street.

Instantly the muscle elbow the Mark away and close ranks between him and the game. In a single movement, the Operator scoops up the mat, shells and pea, grabs the $100 bill and dumps the whole lot into the satchel that the Shill holds open.

The lookouts have already vanished down side alleys. The muscle melts into the crowd. The Shill casually walks away up the other cross street, peering into shop windows like any other tourist while the Operator strolls away along Vasterlenggarten. He’s the only one that the Mark might be able to finger, but if he gets picked up, he’s clean.

This time the Mark has been lucky. He has got away only $90 down. It was a cheap lesson. If it wasn’t for the cop car, he might not have been allowed to extricate himself until his wallet was enpty. At least it will give him something different to talk about when he gets back to Tampa.

And the Shell Game will be back on that corner again in half an hour or so, and the Shill will be encouraging the next Mark to bet his shirt on the tray with the little crease that the Operator hasn’t noticed.

The Iceman Cometh

What is it with Americans and ice? Do they eat the stuff? Do they put it in the bath tub to lower the water temperature?

Our New York hotel room is three doors away from the corner. Around the corner there is another door before you get to the ice machine for our floor.

It’s a nice ice machine and seems to work well.

The problem is that each room has an ice bucket. A large ice bucket.

The ice bucket is made of a hard plastic and has double walls for insulation. That means it acts like a drum.

So when you go to the nice ice machine, put your bucket under the spout and press the button, a small avalanche of ice cubes rattles down the chute and crashes into your bucket with a noise like thunder that is ampified by the double-skin drum into the sound of a building collapsing.

This would not be too bad if it wasn’t for the American obsession with ice.

After a hard day’s work being a tourist, you are just drifting off to sleep knowing that you have to get up early to do it all again tomorrow, when you are startled awake by the sound of a building collapsing next door.

“What the…?” Oh, it’s somebody at the ice machine.

You settle, then ten minutes later the thunder crashes and the building collapses again.

And it goes on. There seems to be a procession of people going to the ice machine, filling up bucket after bucket with ice. Some nights it goes on until 1.30 in the morning.

You can ignore the car horns and police sirens, they are mere whispers in the distance compared to this. It’s obvious that some people go back several times, because there are far more crashes from the machine than there are rooms on this floor. What are they doing with it all?

Even Reuben noticed. Usually a sound sleeper, he decided to check in to our hotel one night rather than have to drag himself back first thing next morning. He had done a late interview round the corner at the Ed Sullivan Theatre with one of Letterman’s guests, and had an early morning appointment next day over the road at Carnegie Hall. The stand-by room rate was about the same as a taxi home and back again.

By one of the coincidences that follow Reuben around, he got the room next to ours. There is a connecting door between the two rooms. Although it was locked, we could hear Reuben muttering to himself every time the ice rattled and crashed into someone’s bucket.

Everytime it happened he got more and more cranky. By 1.30 am he was hopping mad. That’s when I thought, “Oh-oh! Reuben is upset”.

He doesn’t get upset often, but when he does you can bet he won’t take it lying down. But Reuben’s mind doesn’t work like most other people’s.

Around 3 am I had just gone to the bathroom when I heard Reuben’s door open and his unmistakeable footsteps go past our room. He was going to the ice machine.

I don’t know what he used for an ice bucket, but it must have been huge – maybe one of the large rubbish bins from the foyer. Whatever it was, it sounded like the mother of all ice buckets because the crashing seemed to go on forever. No one could have slept through it.

When it stopped at last, Reuben lurched up and down the corridor, rattling the can and calling out in his best Quasimodo voice , “Anybody want any f#*%ing ice?”

New York Impressions

Manhattan feels sometimes like a large village, not at all the big, scary city that everyone talks about.

Most of the time, people don’t actually look up at the buildings. After a while, your eyes rarely go above the level of the street signs as you navigate around, so you quickly forget about all that tall stuff overhead.

Everywhere you look reminds you of a movie or a song:

• The rumble of the subway trains, the lullaby of Broadway;
• Tiffany’s;
• Steam coming out of roadway vents in numerous movies;
• 59th Street Bridge (…feelin’ groovy);
• They say the neon lights are bright (On Broadway);
• The soup kitchen from Seinfeld (at 259A West 55th Street);
• Radio City Music Hall;
• Tavern on the Green in Central Park (in both “Wall Street” and where a snarling hell-hound chased Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters);
• 55 Central Park West “Spook Central” where the Ghostbusters battled the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man;
• Rockefeller Center (30 Rock);
• Underneath the IRT Bridge at 125th St in Harlem,scene of many car chases.

Walking in New York

“Don’t try to walk more than 10 blocks”, our daughter advised us from New York a fortnight earlier.

Much of New York is surprisingly walkable. You probably wouldn’t want to walk from Central Park to Battery Park (about 90 blocks), but the theatre district and midtown areas are manageable if the weather is kind.

On our first full day, we explored solely on foot. First we walked down Broadway (12 blocks ) then east along 42nd Street (4 blocks) to find the departure point for our Washington trip the following day. It was on the corner of Park Avenue and 42nd, opposite Grand Central Station, where the rail tracks go above Park Ave on an ornate, cast iron viaduct.

After a quick look round Grand Central Concourse – remarkably familiar from many movies and TV shows – we walked one block south to 41st then two blocks west along “Library Way” to the New York Public Library on Fifth Ave. It wasn’t open yet, so we walked another two blocks down Fifth Ave to Lord and Taylors department store to look for jeans for Ann and brunch. We found the food but not the jeans.

By now we had walked 21 blocks.

We headed back up 5th Ave (1 block) and west on 40th alongside the Library (still not open) and Bryant Park to 6 Ave (2 blocks).

It is six blocks more down to 6th Ave (Avenue of the Americas) to Herald Square where Broadway crosses 6th Ave and 34th St.

We are now standing at Macy’s Herald Square entrance. We have walked 30 blocks.

In Macy’s we buy stuff. As you do.

But they don’t stock the brand of jeans that Ann wants. “They have them in Lord and Taylors”, the assistant tells us.

So we walk back a different way: one block east along 34th Street to where the Empire State Building towers over the junction with 5th Avenue . The lines for the trip to the top are long. Oh well, another time.

Then five blocks up Fifth Ave gets us to back to L & T where this time we find where they have hidden those darn jeans. Then it’s one more block to the NY Public Library.

We have a brief look round and wished we had a couple of days to see it properly.

Then it’s a repeat of the two blocks east to 6th Ave and Bryant Park where we have juice and water and sit for a while and enjoy the outdoor reading library, the chess games at tables under the trees, gentle buskers and many people from the nearby buildings having lunch in this little oasis.

We have now walked 39 blocks.

After our brief rest, it’s now one more block over to Broadway and then a pleasant stroll a mere 14 blocks north via Times Square back to our hotel to put our feet up and savour the coffees that we picked up on the way.

Our walking total for the day so far is 53 blocks.

In the evening we walk another three blocks east and two north towards the Trump Tower and Tiffany’s checking out restaurants before we find somewhere to eat on the return journey past Carnegie Hall.

Those 10 evening blocks take our walking total for the day to 63 blocks.

In spite of that, we don’t get to sleep very easily. There is a huge storm with lightning hitting the tops of nearby buildings and massive crashes of thunder. In amongst the racket, there seems to be a competition for the loudest car horn and the most police sirens per minute.

Times Square

During coffee, my mobile rings. It’s Reuben. “Ian, are you anywhere near Times Square?”

I tell him we’re about five minutes walk away. “Great. Could you take a look around and give me 100 words on the scene down there by 1 am, please?”

I ask him to explain. “Oh, sorry. I’m covering the Tony Awards tonight and I need a few lines about the Times Square angle. You’ll see when you get there. Oh, and there’s something else…”.

“Yes, what?”

“Welcome to New York”.

Times Square

We finish our coffee and head down to Times Square.

It’s not really a square, it’s two triangles formed where Broadway crosses over Seventh Avenue.

If you picture Seventh Avenue running from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock, Broadway runs across it from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. The crossroads form a tall, narrow “X” bounded by 42nd Street at the bottom and 47th Street at the top. The two narrow triangles are between the upper and lower arms of the “X”.

Technically, only the bottom triangle is Times Square; the top triangle is Duffy Square. But everyone calls the whole complex “Times Square”.

Times Square is packed. Seventh Avenue and the cross streets are closed to vehicles. A narrow traffic lane is marked with orange cones and cars creep through.

Everywhere else is crowded with people, not just on the sidewalks but also on the large areas of closed-off roadway. They sit on deckchairs, camping chairs, plastic chairs and folding stools. There are thousands of them, packing into the car-free spaces, sitting facing the huge outdoor plasma screens which dominate the neon advertising on the sides of the surrounding buildings.

I ask a cheerful cop what’s the story. He explains that New York is trialling closing off various parts of Times Square to traffic to see which configuration works best for pedestrians and traffic flow. But he too is surprised by the huge turn-out this Sunday night.

Everyone is watching the screens which are showing the Tony Awards presentations live from Radio City Music Hall only one block over and three blocks north.

The crowd is in a great mood. They have snacks and drinks. People are cheerful and talking excitedly to each other, friends and strangers alike. They cheer and clap enthusiastically at each announcement.

As we watch, “Billy Elliott” picks up yet another Award. That makes it ten for the night. Our chance of picking up tickets for the show as we’d hoped at the discount booth in Times Square has just dropped to zero.