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I am writing, I really am!

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Oct 14	Update, with extra links and a disclaimer or two!
Oct 14	Links, update, disclaimer... what more can I say?
Oct 14	Links and an update. Worth reading, surely!
Jul 23	I'm still ticking over...
Jul 23	I'm still here...
Jul 23	Slack, I know.
Jul 23	Still clicking, and posting... just.
Jul 23	I'm still here... just distracted
Apr 6	Some random images that appeal.. to me, anyway
Apr 28	Australia Day 1975 PM Gough Whitlam opens "Old Sydney Town"
Mar 21	A brief look at Melbourne's airports (for comparison?)
Mar 3	Random macro shots of a fly feasting on a snake skin
Mar 3	Running a WiFi network off my Nikon dSLR as host
Mar 3	More successfully... WiFi, apps and the Nikon D5200
Mar 3	Happy Anniversary Update? Fun things to try... or not
Jan 25	What makes a brand worth paying extra for? Or, what's under the hoo...
Jan 4	A random bug and some mating-on-the-fly flies
Nov 23	We are inching closer to a "2nd" Sydney airport. It's coming, I pro...
Nov 23	Is this the ultimate Badgery's Creek runway configuration? Well, ye...
Oct 25	Sydney's water supply over time
Sep 20	Opportunistic or 'necessary' medication in the peleton
Sep 20	Storm in a drug-infused teacup, or racing under the influence
Dec 10	Post number 5 #Quora #neurosciebce #subvocalisation #innervoice
Dec 10	My 2nd most popular #Quora #humanmemory
Dec 10	My most popular Quora post of the last 30 days - on finance and eco...
Sep 17	Quora popularity posts #4... Economics again
Sep 16	My 3rd most popular Quora post - and it's Economics this time!
Sep 16	My second most popular Quora post. On civil engineering!
Sep 16	My most popular Quora post by far. And it's on astrophysics...
Aug 17	Oh, did I mention Quora?
Jul 2	The tramway and the railway from Parramatta to Castle Hill
Apr 30	In an idle moment (a video melange)
Apr 29	Really short image stacking sampler - 369
Apr 27	Slideshow of chaos - using CombineZP - 366
Apr 27	Hang on, did Hockey really say that? #noidea #economicmadness #badp...

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Oct 27	More from the world of British Cycling... and a word or two about t...
Oct 14	Update time. No biggie. Some links.
Oct 14	Yet again, with links...
Oct 14	Yet another post.
Oct 14	Another update!
Jul 23	I really will post soon. Hey, I just did.
Jul 23	Still spinning.
Jul 23	Gone fishing... or not.
Apr 2	Interesting ethical question arises: WADA and the British Cycling i...
Apr 2	Vini Zabù team in doubt? Second Positive.
Jan 8	Catching up on a couple I missed - Hekele and Sicot
Jun 14	Injured Froome may gain from Cobo decision
Mar 21	21 athletes from five sports implicated in blood doping inquiry
Jul 3	Well that's reassuring
Apr 24	Airless tyres:comfort, traction, aerodynamics, mud and cornering
Nov 16	Not that I want to sell any books
Sep 24	The 'Fancy Bear' hack goes on and on. Politically it's just tit-for...
Sep 20	The TUE saga. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Sep 19	Hackivists, Wiggins, Froome and those TUEs
Apr 30	Simon Yates - or his team doctor - forgets to get a TUE. Ooops
Apr 14	Things go better with... Luca Paolini gets 18 months
Apr 14	WADA considers Meldonium moratorium
Apr 4	Anti-ageing doctor allegedly makes doping statement against British...
Feb 13	Francesco Reda gets 8 years for 2nd doping offence
Feb 6	Retrospective discovery of doping using frozen samples
Feb 1	First catch? UCI alleges motorised doping at 2016 cyclo-cross World...
Dec 19	US track rider Bobby Lea tested positive - oxycodone #doping
Aug 17	Danielson, guilty until proven innocent?
May 13	Rabottini EPO positive named and shamed - given 2 years off
Mar 10	The heart - your single point of failure. And other pleasant thoughts
Feb 27	Reflections on training and aging
Jan 12	Jumping to conclusions about "red running"
Jan 1	One year later and I tempt cycling (and ischaemic) fate...
Oct 2	Oh brother, what a mess. Maxim Iglinskiy provisionally suspended fo...
Sep 15	Exempted Salbutamol user Ulissi set to return

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Still around.

Choose an Alfa over a Merc. Absolutely.

Fast Alfas at Albert Park? Worth a read

Alfa Romeo Giulia Veloce 2017 review

Why so big, and why so powerful? Giving the Stelvio a pas...

Faster, faster, faster... stop.

Madness. So where does this lead? Ever faster, until you ...

In an idle moment - Alfa116 GTV - 370

A "warm" MiTo Quadrifoglio Verde?

Alfa Romeo bursts into flames in St Ives | thetelegraph.c...

Still ticking over...

Alfa parts = note to self, but could be useful to someone...
Older yet still young Alfas are just starting to get a bit, umm, more challenging to service and repair. Fewer cars on the road, fewer wrecks in the wreckers...

Purring like a kitten - or an '82 GTV anyway
Did I mention that the GTV is purring like a kitten? Weird, I know. That's what a tune-up can do, if your engine has carbies, anyway ;-)

The '82 GTV rumbles on...
30 years later, my '82 model Alfa Romeo GTV remains reliable and relatively cheap to run. OK, it uses more gas than a 'modern' car - twin double-choke carbie...

Spanish engineer grandfather with too much time on his ha...
Not exactly Alfa content but fascinating anyway.... Spanish engineer crafts "world's smallest" V-12 engine Anyone who appreciates the precision art of engine...

It's old, it's small, it's stylish. It's ...

Alfa 4C - sub 2 litre sports mid-engine - to spawn both M...
Well it makes some sense to share, even if it rarely works: take one design and remodel and rebrand it several times (think Alfa 164 and its SAAB and Lancia ...

A classy European seen testing on US soil (OK, it's a...

Gasp - an almost "good" review for an Alfa. Sti...

Chrysler invades Italy after FIAT boss strikes Torino dea...
Truth is, FIAT now has a 25% stake in Chrysler so squeezing out some common platforms, smaller cars and longer production runs is important. Even if it means...

Puzzling MiTo Sport review. Aren't they all?

Noisy, dirty but clearly an Alfa Romeo 147 GTA 3.7
I really don't think I could live with myself if I owned this car. (Says the guy with the old, noisy, dirty Alfa in the garage.) But it's clearly a car that ...

Speculation on a coming Giulietta Sprint coupe. As ever. ...

'evo' mag reviews the nuova Giuletta Cloverleaf

Alfa to build 2 crossover SUVs in a Chrysler factory. For...
Chrysler builds two new crossovers for Alfa Romeo - China automotive news The two SUVs are internally known as CSUV (Project 921, CXover possible model name)...

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General comment and statement of existence!

I'm not mything.

On Stonehenge, aliens and cosmic alignments

The questions that can't be answered by faith alone

On faith, science and fundamentalism

On Nature vs Supernature

On purpose? Or on the randomness of everything...

And another thing.... the proof of the pudding is in its ...

A Young Earth? Giants? Really? I must stop reading this s...

On condensation - or Goldilocks proves nothing

On complexity and design

Design, or chance? I'm on a roll here...

Random thoughts on Faith and Science

Yes, I'm still awake. Or, 'On Amphibians and experimental...

Every few weeks I get these strange visitors from the pla...

I myth you (sure you do) so I came back!

Friendly people at the door again, pro-science but anti-e...

I'm still here!

More rambling notes on creation myths and comparative rel...

On cherry picking "facts" to support your myths...

My Bible-packing 'friends' visited on a steaming-...

Historicity of Julius Caesar vs Jesus Christ

Jumping to conclusions - "near the centre of the uni...

Just thinkin' and ruminating on ruminants, even-toed ...

Just thinkin' - Salt, plate tectonics, water and evol...

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Not just writing, but writing-related...

A crawl through the web exposed these ideas... not all writing-related, but mostly...

A BBC account of the genesis of the Blooker awards. The LuluBlooker itself. Worth remembering: Google's book search. Spot your book and complain about breach of copyright, or enjoy the wider fame and possible fortune that accessibility confers? Evidence from Businessweek that it actually happens. An O'Reilly blog asks, are blogs and bloggers up the the task of becoming books and book authors? Lifehacker on how to turn your blog into a book. A good read. Poynter offers some excellent writing tips for journos. Problogger on - again - how to turn your blog into a... you guessed it! If you write a Livejournal blog you can convert it into a book with this tool. Burridge on how to turn a Roller blog into a book format... More evidence. Blurb's blogslurper will suck you blog into a book format and then publish it for you, if you want. And here's a blog-to-PDF tool that looks useful.

Have fun!!

Songware?

Songware? It seems odd that a great live band like the Who would find itself promoting software-generated songs, but apparently Pete Townshend has been working - nay dreaming - about this for 30 years. Who's next grew out of Lifehouse - Pete's idea of a connectedness that expressed itself through songs... and was for Pete a glimpse of a future world where connectedness was pervasive, electronic and creative. Which brings us to The Method, software that apparently takes personal data like a birthdate, a photo, an audio file and a beat and produces music.

Pete talks about it here on MP3.com... The legendary Who guitarist and songwriter said... that he is set to launch a new Web site that he has been thinking about for nearly 30 years. Dubbed The Method, Townsend said the site will use music composition software to take a person's physical attributes and compose a brand new, personalized piece of music for that person.

"I've been thinking about this for such a long time," he said. "The gathering that the Internet offers is meditation. You lose yourself when you're listening to good music." Townshend said he hopes the site will provoke more people to take advantage of the immediacy of the Web.

And Yahoo! says this: Rocker Pete Townshend on Wednesday unveiled an Internet-based software program that will help music fans compose personalised tracks at the click of a button. The Who guitarist/songwriter said that with a voice recording, a digital image and a rhythm clapped into a microphone, his new "Method" software will create spontaneous digital music and allow anyone to be a composer, and possibly a rock star. "You can put data in and get a piece of music out. It's as simple as that," said Townshend, a technical wizard who pioneered the use of the synthesiser more than 35 years ago on the classic tunes "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley." The project, which started percolating during his art school days in the 1960s, was developed by mathematician/composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon.

From May 1, users will be able to get free access to the Web site (http://www.lifehouse-method.com) for three months, and will be able to compose instrumental tracks that they can e-mail or post on their Web sites. From August 1, it will become a subscription-based service.

Sounds intriguing, anyway.

Another way to go... Tumblr

One more blogging-tool-with-RSS-aggregator is never enough. If you want a sure fire way to get a blog started and don't want to get your hands dirty with templates, try tumblr. (Presumably tumbler is taken.) Mind you, you can still play dirty, as I have done here: http://gtveloce.tumblr.com/

Philosphically speaking...

The 14th to 19th century humanists believed that the study of the arts, including philosophy, should be conducted in an informal, conversational style, through conversation, debate and gentle discussion. Let's look at the intellectual ideas of four of these philosophers - Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger and Camus - yes, that Camus, the writer (there had to be a link here somewhere!).

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote with a rare poetic beauty, while suffering from severe anxiety and depression. He worked through his troubles by developing his philosophic ideas. Indeed he came to see anxiety, rather than doubt, as the chief tool of philosophical questioning. He also rebelled against the abstract philosophy of Hegel, ensuring instead that his ideas - his underlying philosophy - is grounded in the concrete existence of the individual. He championed the idea that individuals are always in relationship with themselves, their environment and each other - for better or worse setting up anxieties that resonated within. It was this intermingling of challenge and change that Kierkegaard saw as the very basis for philosophical constructs. In this way Kierkegaard has influenced psychology and theology as well as philosophy itself.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), emphasises the freedom and responsibility of the individual over all else. His "existential" philosophy, that "man is nothing but what he makes of himself" - became increasingly popular after the Second World War. It expressed and supported the cause of freedom for human beings, to make choices and to assume responsibility for themselves in a post-war world of relativism. Existentialists believe that to treat people "objectively", one step removed as it were, as mere "victims" of physical, biological or environmental circumstance - is to rob them of their essential humanity. Indeed, in Sartre's view, individuals should be accorded the respect that accrues from their unbounded possibility, rather than straightjacketed into mere roles.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a controversial figure in the history of philosophy, if only for his commitment to German National Socialism, provoking the question as to how someone can be so philosophically insightful yet so blind at the same time. He is seen as a "systematic" existential philosopher but one whose influence extends beyond the bounds of existentialism alone.

And onto the writer - this is a writing blog after all. Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French Algerian journalist, novelist and philosopher - and perhaps the most enduring novelist of his time. He used novels such as The Outsider, The Plague and The Fall to explore the consequences of existentialism, often taking things to extremes of absurdity to prove his point. The famous confrontation between Camus and Sartre dominated Parisian intellectual life for years and is sorely missed.