Planet Cat
I've been working on a fair bit of marketing-related stuff over the
last few years, and we've been spending pretty big on online campaigns.
Much of this money has gone on display advertising, the kind of stuff
you'll see on Fairfax and News Corp sites. We've had a whole range of
problems with this stuff, and I've come to the conclusion it's more
trouble than it's worth. Certainly if you want to measure response
based on sales, the rate is pitiful. Here's why it's broken.
When you buy a search ad, you can be pretty certain the person is
actually interested in the topic represented by the keyword you're
buying. So when someone types "wireless keyboard", it's a good bet
they're probably interested in buying a "wireless keyboard" of some
sort.
When you buy a display ad, you get pretty loose categorisation.
Perhaps your technology product might end up in the technology
section of the site, so at least you're being exposed to people
with an interest. Or you might be in the "general interest" pool,
in which case you're getting exposed to the people who clicked on
"celebrity shows boobies" links. Just the people you want. But
regardless of the type of category you end up in, you're getting
people who are expressly there for something other than finding
something about a very specific topic.
So really, you can't measure the results of display advertising
by expecting people to buy immediately after clicking, it's more
for branding. Or so the salesmen for these mass media properties
will tell you. So really you're getting your brand exposed
to roughly categorised people.
Except it's completely unmeasurable, and the mass media sites
have only themselves to blame for this. You see, if I want to have
my brand exposed randomly to roughly categorised people, I need
to have some pretty solid statistics on how many have seen it. I'm
an Internet advertiser, so I'm used to pretty solid stats, not based
on diary entries like TV or circulation surveys like newspapers
(yeah, like most copies of the newspaper get read by more than one
person, every day).
The problem is the major media in Australia specifically make
any "impression" numbers meaningless, by adding a little line of code
like this to every page on their site, this from news.com.au:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0300" />
This line of code means the page gets reloaded every 300 seconds,
or 5 minutes. Fairfax have recently started doing this in a
slightly different way (checking if a video is playing first) but
they do the same thing.
By reloading the page every five minutes, they've made their
impression numbers completely meaningless. People regularly
leave their browsers open with a page: the news, the weather,
whatever they were just reading. So they go off for a half hour
lunch and three "impressions" tick over, except there's nobody home
to be impressed. There's no way to quantify how often this
happens, so the impression number isn't just inaccurate, it's
some unknowable amount completely wrong.
So you see, measured by the only accurate measurement, click
throughs and subsequent sales, display doesn't make sense. And
as a branding exercise it's not worth playing around with because
the publishers have specifically taken steps to make the numbers
meaningless.
And they wonder why newspapers are dying, when they go out of
their way to devalue the one thing of value they do produce?
For the last five years I've run a virtual server from the excellent
Linode which has hosted a number of
services including this web site, a Jabber server, some other web sites,
and my email. Initially I did spam filtering myself, but between the load
this placed on the server and the constant tweaking required, it annoyed
the hell out of me, so I outsourced that to
JunkEmailFilter.com,
which while imperfect was passable.
I've used mutt as my email client
since some time in the later 90s, after upgrading from pine. The
advantages of a text-mode mail client were speed, accessibility from
nearly anywhere, integrated tools (gpg, lbbdb) and the fact that a
clueless boss looking over your shoulder will think "techie stuff,
must be work" and hence not require me to justify my work throughput.
More recently I've noticed myself regularly bouncing messages to my
secret gmail account. Partly this is because Google Reader produces
broken text attachments, and a few of my correspondents insist on
using that, but mainly it's because more and more emails included
stuff I couldn't use in a text-mode client, like links to complicated
web site, pictures, or links to videos.
So I thought I'd try out moving all my email to Google excellent
web client. The process of moving the whole domain was surprisingly
easy. Just point the MX at Google's servers, set up the appropriate
accounts and define the pass-through mail server for anything that
doesn't have an account on the Google servers. This means the
mailing lists and weird aliases I have on my server continue working
as before.
The hardest part was uploading all my old mail. I've been saving
mails into their own Maildirs based on the big before the @ in the
email address, so john@smith.com ends up saved as john/ and if there's
any doubling up of "john" it's still all in there. Gmail has a pretty
good (and very fast) search, so filing becomes much less important.
There's a bunch of tools you can find that claim to be able to
upload Maildirs to Gmail. I couldn't get any of them to reliably work.
Eventually I downloaded the corpus of my Maildirs to a desktop and
used Thunderbird to upload them all to the new location. It took
ages, but it worked.
So far I'm pretty damn happy with this. I haven't had a single
spam get through, and even the ones that make it to the Spam directory
are pretty minimal. The add-on Postini spam filtering service has
done two false positives on spam so far, which I consider pretty good
and I presume it'll learn.
Now that I'm paying US$50/year for each email account (one for me,
one for Holly) it's costing about the same as my former JunkEmailFilter.com
and rsync.net accounts. I'm also going to downsize my Linode which
will also save me some money. More importantly, I'm doing even less
maintenance, and the search engine on my email is vastly superior to
mutt. It's also a graphical email client, which is nice, and the
mobile clients are really quite good.
Quite happy with it.
I've been learning to
drive in Sydney for the last few months with an excellent instructor
who's been patient, thorough and reassuring.
Tashman driving school
has seen me through a bunch of lessons at varying times of day and traffic
conditions, including a really severe hail storm in peak hour, night time traffic
on Parramatta Road and the Hume Highway. I've really appreciated his excellent
guidance.
As well as excellent guidance, Tashman is quite an accomplished self-promoter
on his web site. He
asked me to blog about his service, and I'm happy to recommend him.
After about twelve hours of lessons, I finally graduated to driving with
Holly in our own car yesterday. It went fine, apart from one stupid near miss
in a car park where I nearly hit a stationary object. I'm learning!
![Anthony Edwin Rumble](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://rumble.smugmug.com/photos/540081077_BBxts-S.png)
Below is the eulogy I gave for Anthony at his funeral yesterday. It outlines his life,
and his achievments. I have had many comments from my family that they didn't know he had
achieved so much, and that many of these things they were hearing for the first time.
I have placed the slideshow that also played at the funeral online. You can view
just the images (use
the "Slideshow" button in the top-right ot view full-screen) or view it
with the accompanying
music (click "Full" to go full screen).
Before I begin I'd like to thank all those who have provided help and support to our family at this difficult time. The friends and family have been out in force with emotional and material support that is quite humbling and demonstrates the love there is for Anthony and his family. We thank you for all the kind words, flowers, support, meals and other help we've been given.
Anthony was born on 16th April 1972 to Chris and Ray Rumble in Port Macquarie hospital after a 49 1/2 hour marathon labour. He was a good baby and would sleep until he was due for his feed, which was handy as both his parents worked long hours, often tag-teaming child minding duties.
Early on Anthony showed many of the traits he displayed throughout his life. His knowledge ranged far and wide, and he didn't mind telling you what he knew. As fact. He was easy prey for the ribbing and stirring of his uncles and aunts, taking their gags hook, line and sinker. During his childhood he was very fond of animals: our pet dogs Buttons and Scamper, his aviary full of budgies and quails, and the Robinson family duck.
Anthony took an early interest in technology. Our first computer, a Dick Smith Wizzard, was purchased in 1982 and Anthony was immediately hooked. When we purchased the BASIC programming cartridge, he went to town writing software. Our games of "shop" with Kristy, Janelle, Susan and Kathryn had Anthony holding our money in computerised accounts at his bank, using software he'd written himself. Later on he wrote a database programme, modestly using his initials in the name: AERBase. Bear in mind, this was a ten year old who had taught himself programming and seen the necessity of a generic data storage mechanism. Anthony continued with newer computers, inheriting the computers that had outrgrown their usefulness in the family businesses.
When it came time to go to high school, Anthony went off to St Patricks College boarding school in Goulburn. I won't say he loved his time in Goulburn, not being the archetypal sporty type the school usually required, but he did well academically, studying four unit maths and getting time on any of the computers he could find around the place. At one point he was effectively administering the school library's multi-user computer network, saving the school thousands in expensive consulting fees.
After school Anthony went to Newcastle University to study Computer Science, briefly. He quickly got frustrated with ivory tower academics lecturing without recourse to the real world. In those days computer science courses taught lots of theory, with little reference to what was actually happening outside academia. He scored a couple of jobs for small engineering firms in Sydney, before landing a job he could really sink his teeth into at Netcomm, a manufacturer of modems.
It was around the end of Anthony's time at school that we bought our first modem. A modem allows you to connect computers to other computers through a phone line, but this primitive model worked at the blistering speed of 300 bits per second, about 40,000 times slower than the Internet connection in my home today. We started calling bulletin boards, which were computer meeting places that you could use to exchange messages and, in some cases, talk in real time to other people. Eventually discovered one of the more popular boards in Sydney, Active Fun Entertainment, which at the time sported five lines allowing five different people to talk to each other in real time. Quite a revelation. The main difference with this board was its social aspect, and it is here that Anthony met some of his closest friends.
One of the groups who frequented Active, and its many social events, ran another bulletin board called Arcadia. This group shared a quirky sense of humour and a plethora of obscure in jokes. Anthony was rapidly accepted into the group, and made lifelong friendships. I see a bunch of Arcadians present today, and I know a few couldn't make it today. Thank you for the kindness and companionship you showed to Anthony.
Soon after discovering Active, Anthony installed some software into the core of the bulletin board to allow people to play a real-time, multiplayer game. It was while installing and integrating this system that Anthony wowed Grant Parnell with his technical skills. Grant and Anthony became close friends, and eventually business partners. We're extremely fortunate to have Grant with us today, as he was scheduled for major surgery last Friday, but it has been rescheduled.
The Linux community has much to remember of Anthony. He was one of the early users of Linux in Australia, with his interest in Minix coinciding with that of a certain Finnish programmer. I remember him rushing in to tell me about a new operating system he'd found, which promised to be more useful than Minix. I was a bit bewildered, wondering how something that took so long to boot and seemed to crash constantly could be of any use. While going through his things, I stumbled on ancient floppy disks for Linux v0.12, the second ever release of the Linux operating system.
Anthony spent much of the early years of Linux distributing the software to others in Australia. He had an Internet account, a rare thing at the time, and so was able to keep up-to-date with the latest developments. People would post or hand-deliver floppies for him to copy, and eventually he set up a bulletin board to allow people to download it. Soon enough he helped found the Sydney chapter of the Australian Public Access Network Association (APANA), which was at the time one of the only ways ordinary Australians could get Internet access outside universities and a few big companies. His APANA node, lsupoz, was one of the first in Sydney and at one point was the hub for the Sydney network, running from the front room of our parents' house.
Later on, Anthony set up a business distributing Linux software and merchandise around Australia with his wife Laura. They got Linux into thousands of sites, distributing CDs and propaganda by mail order and at conferences.
With the dawning of the Internet explosion in public consciousness, Anthony scored a job with one of the early Internet Service Providers in Australia, Microplex. Here he learned many key skills in networking and business, and was fortunate to meet another close friend, Matt Perkins, who would later be Anthony's best man.
Anthony was next headhunted to work on an ambitious project by a large multinational stationery supplier with ambitions to control the entire market in Australia. Corporate Express wanted to move most of their transactions onto the Internet, which at the time was a radical idea. Anthony rose to the challenge, building an innovative online ordering system with a front-end simple enough to be used by the secretaries and admin staff ordering stationery in Australian businesses, government and academia. Soon enough, it was Australia's most successful e-commerce site, turning over many millions of dollars in orders every month. The technology Anthony developed handled the massive load with ease, and the project won a special commendation by the Australian Information Industry Association.
While still working at Corporate Express, Anthony met a young university student named Laura, and shortly afterwards they married in a big ceremony and party. While the marriage ended some years later, there were very happy times as Anthony and Laura built up a business and a family in their home in Croydon. Anthony and Laura set up a business distributing Linux software and merchandise, Everything Linux. This developed a sophisticated stock-management and online ordering system to handle mail orders.
Abigail Rumble was born late in 2000. Anthony doted on Abi, his beautiful daughter, and loved her dearly. After Anthony and Laura separated, they shared custody and he continued Abigail's involvement with cub scouts, which she loves. Under his parents' rearing, Abigail has developed into a beautiful, intelligent and loving young girl, who was the centre of Anthony's life.
The last few years of Anthony's life have not been perfect. He struggled with epilepsy, which was diagnosed about six years ago. The drugs used to control it have many negative side effects including mood disorders, memory loss and aphasia, and the doctors attempted to adjust the dosage to minimise these effects while keeping him safe from the dangers of epilepsy. During this time, his friend, business partner and flatmate Grant was an enormous support to Anthony. More recently things appeared to be looking up for Anthony, with his drug regime seeming to stabilize and cause fewer of the bad side effects. His epilespy seemed well controlled and his mood was good.
Anthony joined a support group after his divorce, Parents Without Partners and soon became heavily involved with the organisation. They gave him excellent support and improved his outlook enormously. He also took up Ceroc, a modern jive partner dance style, and was incredibly proud of his dancing ability. At one of the PWP functions, he met and gradually wooed his partner Rosetta. Rosetta and her family welcomed him into their lives and made him very happy, enjoying dancing and tons of blended family activities.
A few weeks ago Anthony took possession of his new flat in Belmore, and had just finished unpacking his posessions. It was a lovely place and I hadn't even had a chance to visit it myself when I got the phone call last Saturday and rushed over. Anthony's elderly Greek neighbours have told us about the impression he had already made, helping them with odd jobs around the place and always being friendly and polite.
Looking around here today, I see that Anthony was loved far beyond his own immediate family. He'll be missed by all his friends and relatives, but especially by his mother Chris, father Ray, brothers Charlie and Simon, partner Rosetta and her children Jeffrey, Matthew and Catherine, and by his daughter Abigail. We'll miss you Anthony.
My beloved brother Anthony died unexpectedly last Friday in his flat in Belmore, Sydney.
He will be remembered as a devoted father to his eight year old daughter, as a loving brother
and son, and as a loving partner.
![Linux v0.12 floppies](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://rumble.smugmug.com/photos/535088147_ttzMr-M-1.jpg)
The Linux community has much to remember of Anthony. He was one of the early users of
Linux in Australia, with his interest in Minix seeming to coincide with a certain Finnish
programmer. I remember him rushing in to tell me about a new operating system he'd found,
which promised to be more useful than Minix. I was a bit bewildered, wondering how something
that took so long to boot and seemed to crash constantly could be of any use. While going
through his things, I stumbled on these ancient Linux v0.12 floppies. Quite impressive
historical artifacts.
Anthony spent much of the early years of Linux distributing the software to others in
Australia. He had an (at the time rare) Internet account, and so was able to
keep up-to-date with the latest developments. People would post or hand-deliver floppies
for him to copy, and eventually he
set up a bulletin board to allow people to download it.
Soon enough he helped found the Sydney chapter of APANA,
which was at the time one of the only ways ordinary Australians could get Internet access outside
universities and a few big companies. His APANA node, lsupoz, was one of the first nodes in
Sydney and at one point was the hub for the Sydney network, running from the front room of our
parents' house.
Later on, Anthony set up a business distributing Linux software and
merchandise around Australia with his wife Laura. They got Linux into thousands of
sites, distributing CDs and propaganda by mail order and at conferences.
![Rosetta, Abigail and Anthony](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://rumble.smugmug.com/photos/536230146_ydMmf-M-1.jpg)
Outside the Linux world, Anthony had an active social and family life, especially
his beautiful eight year old daughter Abigail, who he adored. He will be dearly missed by
family, friends and his partner Rosetta.
I'll post some more about Anthony later.
Obituaries
Thanks for your kind words. Also thanks for the very kind emails and messages I've
been receiving. They really are much appreciated.
Funeral
The funeral for Anthony Rumble will be held 11:30 next Monday, 18th May
2009 in the Camellia Chapel at the
Macquarie Park Crematorium.
No flowers please. There will be envelopes for donations to
Epilepsy Action Australia at the funeral.
<womble> m3ga: Yeah, I figured it was him. But honestly, that's pretty much the
required mentality for a manager. You're relying on a bunch of other people to
get everything done, you can't really get them to work any harder than they'll
work, and you've got a large collection of deadlines of varying degrees of
insanity. Add on top of that a high probability of *your* management being insane
and demanding, and what other outcome can you expect?
<-- horms has quit ("Leaving")
<lifeless> womble: hair loss
<womble> Alcoholism.
DebConf9 is getting closer so I was browsing the Internet and
the DebConf9 wiki for information. When I'm travelling I
enjoy having maps to be able to get around and not get lost. For DebConf8
I relied on TangogGPS with OpenStreetMap on my OpenMoko Freerunner since
my laptop is fairly cumbersome and has relatively little battery life these
days. For DebConf9 I'll probably do the same since navit doesn't seem too
reliable for me yet. During my information gathering for DebConf9 I came
across the DebConf9 map overlay and the Madrid free Wi-Fi map.
I wanted to have these available in TangoGPS so I wrote a short python script
to import them into the TangoGPS POI (points of interest) database. It
requires the feedparser and beautifulsoup python modules. First download the
GeoRSS feeds you are interested in and then run the script on the machines
where you want to use TangoGPS with the filenames as arguments. It only
handles points, not lines or polygons since TangoGPS doesn't allow that.
Hopefully it will be included in TangoGPS upstream or the Debian TangoGPS
package soon. If you want to update the feed you'll need to manually
delete the relevant points from the database or remove and recreate
the database and then import the feed(s) again.
![I'm going to DebConf9!](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://media.debconf.org/dc9/images/debconf9-going-to.png)
I caught
the end of a sale
for international flights :D Perth -> Dubai ->
London Gatwick -> Madrid -> Cáceres. Might
be stopping in to see family in the UK and or other folks in
Germany. If any folks in London near Gatwick feel like
lending a couch to a Debian
developer on July 13th, please contact me. Definitely
looking forward to the debexpo hacking and deployment session,
having fun with Debian games folks and seeing Debian folks
again.
![Going to debconf!](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://media.debconf.org/dc8/images/debconf8-going-to.png)
Finally got my shit
together and got a flight to Argentina for
DebConf! Perth -> Sydney -> Auckland ->
Buenos Aires -> Mar del Plata. That is quite a bit
of flying and a long bus trip ending quite early on
the 4th. It will definitely be worth it if DebConf7 was
anything to go on. Hopefully by DebConf I can get my
hands on an OpenMoko FreeRunner to do
some Debian porting work during DebCamp and possibly mapping
out the
streets of Mar del Plata for OpenStreetMap. Of course I need
to work on
completing analysis of the results of the Debian user and
new contributor
surveys and figure out what to say about synfig
if I get the chance to do a lightning talk about
it. /me now officially excited
As a Debian developer I have on occasion felt a bit out
of touch with
doing things with Debian and out of touch with other users.
I mentioned to
some folks at DebConf7 that I felt I focused too much on
working on Debian
and not actually connected to what the benefit of working on
Debian is. Partially as a result of those feelings and
partially because I thought
it would be an interesting thing to do, I started to prepare
a couple
of simple surveys early this year. The first one went out
earlier last
month and I posted the second one a few days ago after far
too much
procrastination and running the wording by a few people -
thanks to
Micah for the drug boats question :) So, if you are a
Debian
user or are a new
contributor (or
DM/NM/AM or new DD), I would greatly appreciate hearing from
you. Please
respond to the survey addresses rather than my personal
ones. So far I have 15 or so responses to the new
contributor survey, but
ideally I would have many more, so please send
something in if you
are getting involved in Debian development or helping others
get involved. I've had about 24 responses to the user
survey so far. Many of you will
have heard about Debian success stories like Extremadura,
Bhutan, HP,
Skolelinux, Sanger and other high-profile Debian users. I'm
hoping to
hear about as many different uses of Debian as possible, so
please keep
the responses
coming in. The primary audience for these surveys
is the Debian development
community. The results will go to the debian-devel-announce and
debian-private, I also hope to have a discussion or two
about them at
DebConf8 in Argentina. There is no time-frame for closing
the survey
or releasing the results, like the Debian distribution, I
release
when ready :) PS: Please install the
popularity-contest package on your machines
if possible and subscribe to the packages.qa.debian.org
pages for
packages that you particularly care about. PPS: Please
feel free to ask me questions in your responses and
I will attempt to reply as time allows.
So today is the last day of the 2008 Synfig
January Challenge.
It is hopefully the first of many synfig challenges, I hope
that the February
one will be for a new splash screen for Synfig. My entry is
fairly simple and boring compared to the other entries,
but it represents one thing about Synfig that I think about
a lot:
we need more developers! Anyway, here it is: ![pabs' Synfig January Challenge entry](http://web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2008/01/31/synfig-january-challenge/tshirt.gif)
There is
nothing special in it, but I put up the source
code too. Also, I've been informed that there will
be an Open Video Developer meeting
on Friday February 1st 2008 at 21:00 UTC on irc.freenode.net
in #openvideo.
Should be an interesting meeting, sounds like at least
Synfig, Blender and
Cinelerra people will be there, hopefully many more.
Dear Lazyweb KL airport has free wifi, it works
fine on Windows, but my Linux install relies on DHCP to get
an IP address, gateway and DNS servers. I tried capturing
some wifi traffic with wireshark, but had no luck. I
remember in Thailand having to write down network settings
from Windows computers in netcafes, then manually apply the
settings after booting the copy of Debian on my external
hard-drive. I'm currently using NetworkManager. On the way
home from DebConf I'd like to be able to use the net in KL.
What nasty Windows protocol am I missing support for?
So, back to geekery after too many months away. While we
were in Thailand, I met Theppitak
Karoonboonyanan and his friend Neutron Soutmun and a
couple of others from the Thai Linux community. Thep is in
the NM process for Debian, he maintains Thai support
packages in Debian and Neutron is a Debian user. Neutron
writes firmware for GPS receivers (IIRC) and other GIS
stuff, I'm hoping he will get involved in the debian-gis
subproject. I think I convinced Neutron to at least think
about applying to NM :D. We talked about a lot of things,
mainly about Thai localisation and the challenges involved.
He mentioned that the language barrier is a big problem for
Thai people, so their main focus has been firstly
infrastructure (text rendering, layout and wrapping, fonts,
input methods, locale, etc) and now translation (and the
associated, laborious localisation efforts). He told me a
bit about the writing system and how it is related to other
systems in the area. Thep also mentioned the possibility of
debconf9 being in Thailand, I recon it would be bloody
awesome to have debconf in Asia. At least one other Debian
Developer is interested in this, madduck is the initial
instigator. I hope we both make it to debconf in the UK
this year. I also visited the open source lab at NECTEC (the Thai
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center), which
is government funded. There, they develop LinuxTLE (an
Ubuntu based desktop distro), LinuxSIS (a simple internet
server for schools and businesses) and do lots of
translation and advocacy work within NECTEC and with
businesses and other organisations within Thailand. One
thing about LinuxPLE which I noted was that during the
post-install GUI configuration step, there is an option to
setup the system to use fonts from a mounted Windows
partition. IIRC, they explained that they found this was
important because of a reliance on Microsoft fonts in
Thailand. While I was there, I went to a couple of other
labs and saw a demo of a cool Thai OCR and car registration
plate recognition system, English to Thai machine
translation (text) and direct English speech to Thai
speech conversion. They were also working on some medical
imaging and speech recognition stuff that I didn't get to
see. I also met the founder of linux.thai.net, whose
company develops this online map for
Bangkok.. Also posted some photos
from our trip through Thailand.
[RV Heraclitus SE
Asia voyage: blog photos] Arrived
at Ko Phuket a few days ago, I'm off the ship and at a
hotel. In Bintan, we saw an interesting looking resort with
plenty of coconut trees, logs and other stuff floating in
the harbour, a snake oil merchant (with a live cobra),
barges and transformer ferries, pouring rain and bad
drainage. We left Bintan, went south for Selat Durian, then
north past Singapore Straits, into the infamous Straits of
Malacca and north past Malaysia and to the tourist island of
Phuket. Along the way, we saw the coals of sunset, massive
jellyfish in the dark green water, huge queues of massive
ships covering the horizon as we passed the entrance to the
Straits of Singapore, lights from Singapore in the distance,
the pirate-free Straits of Malacca, where many large cargo
and other ships passed us, the fleet of lights/boats that
sprung up as if from nowhere some 50 miles off Phuket, the
last sunrise on the ship (in a bay near Phuket) and an
awesome NYE party on the ship. Leaving the Heraclitus
has been hard, I'm gonna miss that black and red ship and
the awesome crew who got us the 3000 or so nautical miles
from Cairns to Phuket. Now it is time to visit some Thai
Linux developers and return to Australia.
[RV Heraclitus SE
Asia voyage: blog photos] The
past few weeks, we changed our route to visit an uninhabited
island (aka Ko Pulau Island) said to be "National
Geographic, man" by some Americans we met in Kupang. On the
way to Ko Pulau Island we saw a large school of pilot whales
and dolphins, a humpback or other whale close to shore, a
blue starfish and hot water vents nearby on the same mostly
dead reef, a flock of birds feasting on a dense school of
fish, a manta ray, a bonfire on the beach shared with the
kids of Rote (who we swapped roast banannas and coconuts
with), a clean hull and renewed sea-sickness. At Ko Pulau
Island, we saw a long white beach made of small bead things
instead of sand, with surf at either end and reef in
between, a green lagoon with islands being eaten away at the
base, a monkey-head rock, pink coral, reef fish, sea
urchins, various pieces of flotsam washed up on the beach
(flip-flops, a light-bulb, bottles, wood, burnie-beans,
nautilus shells, a seabird egg, a dead seabird and other
crap), sunset over the ocean with golden cirrus in the sky,
turtle nests, tracks and hatchlings scurrying off into the
water, Indonesian fishermen in need of water and turtle
eggs, tidal pools with the occasional crab, ghost crabs
darting towards the water, a pandanus stand, a small cave
surrounded by discarded turtle eggshells, spinifex, hermit
crabs, scrambling lizards, sunburn and other things. Later
in our voyage, we saw a big lone flying fish, land looming
mountainous on starboard, TNI, gratis reef fish, water
buffalo and threatening rain clouds. The next major stop was
a bay on the south side of Sumba, black cliffs to port and
an eroded hillside to starboard. There, we enjoyed the
excellent snorkeling against the cliffs and off the beach,
birds calling from the forest, wasps - shiny blue and
otherwise, meeting roaming cows in the forest, forest fungi
and other sights. We met some fishermen and drove through
the forested slopes toward a nearby city. On the way, we
visited an Indonesian village and saw their traditional
animist temple, ample baby pigs & dogs, tons of kids
trying to get in photos, satellite dishes and graves in
front of houses. Unfortunately, I crashed once we reached
the hotel, missing eating and night life, but I did enjoy
the sights from the windows of the cramped 4WD we were in.
We headed for the 9.8 knot passage of Selat Sape, complete
with eddies, currents, a barracuda and the steep slopes of a
silent volcano. Since there, we saw an increasing number of
interesting and curious Indonesian vessels, fish traps, the
grey shapes of dolphins swimming in the aqua water under the
bow, a floating sandal, a school of mahi-mahi jumping out of
the water, a misty night, numerous schools of feeding fish,
entangled luminescent trails left by dolphins swimming in
the phosphorescent water beneath the bow, flashes of
lightning in the distance, our first rain since Cairns, the
associated storm, Jack the fisherman (a mast hallucination)
and other things. Our next stop was Kalimunjava (north of
Java, Indonesia), more than half way to Phuket. We spent a
week there, watched lightning, collected rain, visited the
local school, dived and snorkelled on the magnificant reef
with some really nice university students (hi Lely, Dudu,
Jaos and others) from Java who were doing a study on the
corals and hiked up the steep slopes of the island. From
there we ambled past Borneo, towards Bintan, near Singapore,
experiencing the first non-calm seas in ages, dolphins in
the storm, floating lines of debris, big barges, container
ships and megatankers, a fancy, shiny yacht, fishing vessels
with 50,000 lights, Rain Drop and it's egg (child of Rain
the gecko), amazing cloudscapes at sunrise, throughout the
day and at sunset on the way. Amazingly, we met the ∞
(Infinity, the
new PCRF vessel) one find day
in the South China Sea on their way to Bali. Eddie saw them
from 5 miles away and knew almost straight away it was them.
Michelle came on board and a lone daytime cumi (squid) swam
between us as we parted. Before we arrived at Pulau Bintan
(near Singapore), we saw seasnakes and a palm tree floating
and lots of wind and rain. We will probably arrive in
Thailand by January and I'm thinking of passing thru Sydney
on the way home, so let so please mail me if you want to
meet up.
Paris, an Aboriginal transgender friend of mine, was found hanging dead in her prison cell on Monday. I'm glad she lived as long as she did, given the forces arrayed against her. And I am glad it looks more likely she was not kiiled simply by the prison system, as so many tranys were, but by the sort of thing almost inevitable given the number of people with serious grudges against the poor girl. But I am having a little bit of a crying day for her. She never done me wrong, and I knew her about twenty years from when she was but a teenage queen at the Courthouse hotel early opener, before she became a scene stealer on William Street, a black Barbie doll with attitude. She even featured in my comic book An Hour on the Life of a Spansexual Sex Worker, which records my view of the incident when she was first banned from one of the safe houses (which is now closed). Vale, Paris. ![](//web.archive.org./web/20101016102823im_/http://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11815377-7737536602543744513?l=may-welby.blogspot.com)
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