Eric the fruit bat

We have a smallish peach tree in the back yard, which we'd like to get a taste ofthe fruit from this year.

However the local birds (Currawongs) seem to be doing their best at pecking them well before they're ripe.

So we put some bird netting over the tree to hopefully reduce the losses.

Today late in the arvo I was looking out at the tree and noticed some bundle of black rolling around in the netting ... yep a fruit bat had made its way into the netting and gotten caught up.



so armed with the scissors and a ladder my wife and I carefully cut him (or her) out.

The poor creature looked so shagged from the struggle we thought that a local cat might get it. So we rummaged about for a box and brought it inside for a bit of recuperation.


It didn't seem comfortable with the box so I cut a couple of holes in the sides and pushed a bit of wooden dowel through ... give it something to hang from ...



it seemed more comfortable, so we thought we'd give it some food and drink to help it recuperate from the struggle. He didn't seem so keen on the apple slice (although he kept licking it) so I thought about some (recently home made) strawberry nectar mixed with water. Some sugars and water ... seemed to be a hit as he drank from the end of the syringe as if he was born to the job...



after a hour or so I took him out and placed the box near another tree, and he climbed out and into the tree.

An hour or so later on and I heard the rustle of him moving off and getting back to life again.

One more wrong righted

bad decisions - failure to invest in people

Its been interesting to see the unfolding of the Queensland Health Payroll debacle. I read today that some $200 million (yes, thats $200,000,000) will be required to "fix" the system. Assuming that does the trick.

As one who has been a developer for some decades I find it interesting to see how large government institutions have been increasingly divesting themselves of any internal skills or experience in IT and outsourcing everything. Once upon a time organisations had both process knowledge as well as technical knowledge and built systems which worked well and functioned. These were often done in house at low cost.

Back in those days management would whine like a fully functional jet engine at the thought of hiring 3 more programmers at $30,000 to complete large tasks. Looking at the numbers above you'd get a team of over six thousand developers (not just 3) for the same money.

Ok, that's maybe simplistic ... lets say you'd need to have them for 3 years (how long has the QLD Health debacle been in the planning?), say there is an admin overhead of 100% (meaning you'd have to pay double) and put it in todays dollars (about 50,000 per annum for a developer).

So 3 x $50,000 x 2 = $300,000 ... or six hundred teams for the same price.

Why has noone realised that expensive consultants who own expensive downtown buildings and get paid high salaries can't be saving you money when they're getting rid of low paid employees.

But no ... its more cost effective to outsource it or is it ...

At last the ABC reports that the Government has broken off from this supplier:

"Corptech, on behalf of the Government, has terminated its relationship with IBM," he said.

but where to now?

Try and find experienced IT staff who have a long history with an organisation, people who get to develop stuff; not just patch packages like "SAP or People soft" or have to work with "pre made" stuff which does not suite the task and gets nails hammered through it to "fit".

I've been saying for some time, if there's a skills shortage in Australia it seems to be focused around upper management who decide its not worth investing in a good team.

addicted to cars

Cars are great tools, but we seem to have (in the last 30 years) wanted to just jump in our car and go where we want without thinking.

I started riding my bicycle to work back in about 1997 (about 17km each way) and found that not only was I getting healthier but I found much more money in my wallet at the end of each week!

However I'm in the minority in Australia ... and its a shrinking one too. Enough car drivers are just insane in their attitude in this area. Ask any cyclist and you'll hear stories of near death experiences.

Ask the average car driver who hates bicycles and you'll hear more simple whinges like "they touched my car" (leaving no marks) "they held me up" (for no more than 10 seconds till the next red light) or "roads are made for cars".

Essentially its just dribble to justify their irrational hate.

I'm glad to see the publication of these findings which indicate that:

Drivers were at fault in 87 per cent of incidents with cyclists and most did not realise they had behaved in a reckless or unsafe manner, according to the Monash University Accident Research Centre and The Amy Gillett Foundation.

Its interesting to read some of the methods and findings:

The three-year study into cyclist safety on the roads used mounted video camera footage, as well as helmet-mounted cameras worn by cyclists, to determine the main causes of road accidents between cyclists and motorists.

Fifty-four events were recorded; including two collisions, six near-collisions and 46 other incidents.

The helmet camera study found that of the 54 incidents recorded, more than 88 per cent of cyclists travelled in a safe and legal way.

Conversely, drivers changing lanes and turning left without indicating or looking were the cause of more than 70 per cent of the incidents, Amy Gillett Foundation chief executive officer Tracey Gaudry said.

“We believe there is a strong argument to introduce a road rule that prescribes a safe passing distance (at least one metre), as well as further educating drivers that they need to indicate at least five seconds before changing lanes,” she said.

After 2000 I started living overseas, in places like Japan, Korea, India and Finland. All these places have an active and functional cyclist population and car drivers who are tolerant of this.

These days I'm back in Australia I've been forced to give up or get injuries.

So, what do we do about it?

I'd love to suggest we force drivers to use bicycles, but we've really started to make our cities in such a way as to totally preclude bicycle transport. We now live too far from work and its almost impossible to use a combination of public transport and bicycle.

How can we go back? Well probably we can't ... so where should we go forward to?

Greater reliance on cars, greater traffic congestion (another tunnel anyone) and greater costs for transport ...

looks like we've painted ourselves into a corner doesn't it

dads back yard

Dad called me today to say there was a family of Tawny Frogmouths just recently out of the nest in the back yard. So I pulled out my trusty FD 300mm f4 and my G1 and toddled over.

They're commonly thought of as Owls, but they are in fact not. They are related to the Nightjar family.

They are nocturnal, so there isn't much activity by day ..




just keeping still


and keeping an eye on photographers



But this is the "classic" pose for the Tawny.



I must say I'm quite pleased with my existing image making tools. The G1 does well with adapted lenses in this sort of work

People today confuse me ... they want to spend thousands on cameras and lenses which more often not fail to do any better than this. They often fail to see the worth in learning a little about their craft and equipment. These were taken with a lens made in 1970.




I just use a monopod to stabilise it and this wonderful optic can get images which are as sharp as you could ask for. This is a 100% sample from the keeping still image above (click it to load the full image).



enough detail to make a very good looking 50cm high print of the little guy