Townsville holiday

Photos

Day 1 (2008-09-13) Flight to Cairns

Today we travelled by aircraft from Melbourne to Cairns, via Brisbane airport. We did this in an aircraft. The aircraft flew in the air and did not crash until we landed.

At Cairns the Hotel got our booking wrong. The process is that we booked via an online booking agency, and they write the details into a fax, send it to the hotel, where the hotel types it into their computer. Unfortunately they mistyped the date, and the booking was made for the wrong day. The hotel was fully booked out. Fortunately we were transferred to another hotel of the same owner and stayed there the night.

In the night Dad took some night time photos with long exposure times (15 to 30 seconds).

Day 2 (2008-09-14) Cairns to Cape Tribulation

We drove. In a car. A rental car. A rental car that was black, to be precise. At one stage we had to cross a river in a car ferry. The ferry cost as $19 for a return trip. We stayed the night at Heritage Lodge.

Day 3 (2008-09-15) Cape Tribulation

Today we walked up Mount Sorrow. You have to be careful to stay in sight of the orange arrows (or orange ribbons or blue ribbons) otherwise you can easily end up walking in the wrong direction (because it looks like that is the direction the path takes). We did so on several occasions and had to back track our steps and find out where the path disappeared to.

At one point we thought we were almost at the top. Wrong. We had only started the steep stretch. The path just kept going up as far as you could see. Eventually we got to the top of a steep stretch of path, but before we could get any relief, the path turned 90 degrees and we were at the bottom of the next ever lasting steep stretch of path. At the top of the mountain we got a good view, from a metal cage. Some people criticised the cage as being ugly, but it provided a place to wait without fear of leaches. Unfortunately no seats were provided.

We started the walk at 10:55, arrived at the top at 13:32, started the descent at 14:51, and got back to the bottom at 16:22.

Day 4 (2008-09-16) Cape Tribulation to Undara

On the way to Undara, we saw the Millstream falls, and made some friends with some Kookaburras.

There are a large number of road trains using this stretch of road. Each vehicle can be anything up to 5 units long (1 engine + 4 trailers).

Throughout the entire area there is a lot of sugar cane farms. All of these farms are linked by the narrow gauge sugar cane railway. The carriages look top heavy, but somehow they manage to stay on the tracks. There are numerous level crossings, with some of them being rather complicated because there has been no attempt to relocate the train track away from intersections. Instead, a placing give way signs at appropriate points is considered satisfactory.

Undara is a place of historic volcanic activity. It is now a national park. We went on the sunset tour, and saw kangaroos, wallabies, and bats flying out of the lava tube at night. We learnt that kangaroos have pointy ears and wallabies have rounded ears.

Day 5 (2008-09-17) Undara to Ingham

We went on the half day tour, and saw more wildlife. We also saw the insides of some of the lava tubes.

The mango tree on the side of the road is significant because it marks where the lava crossed this area.

Later on we saw a number of water falls and headed for Ingham. At Ingham we stayed at in old building, Hotel Noorla, with historic features. For example, the owner created all the tiles by hand, and they appeared to be of good quality.

We stay the night in a historic Hotel.

Day 6 (2008-09-18) Ingham to Townsville

We see more waterfalls (the Wallaman Falls). When driving we go around a corner and find a dead cow on the road in front of us. Only it isn't dead. There are two calves, back to back, sun baking on the road. We blast our horn at them as we pass them, but they don't seem to take any notice.

We walk to the bottom of the waterfalls and take lots of photos.

After the falls, we drive in our brown rental car to Townsville. By this stage, the car has been covered in layers of dirt and tar (from the many road works) and bullshit (from wondering live stock) that it is no longer black.

Day 7 (2008-09-19) to day 9 (2008-09-21) Townsville

My sister attended a wedding in Melbourne (the irony!), so we look after her dogs and try not to destroy her house too much in the process. On the first day we accidentally flood the house (the hose come out of the sink from the washing machine). On the second day the toilet flush mechanism breaks and is no longer functional. On the third day nothing breaks.

We take lots of photos of birds, lizards, snakes and dogs in the area.

Day 10 (2008-09-22) to day 16 (2008-09-28) Townsville

Fix stuff around my sisters house. Fix leaking toilet. Repeatedly. Fix TV, and allow it to receive ABC (perfectly) and other channels (not so good - Antenna is VHF only). Install blinds to protect dogs from insects in wet season.

Day 13 (2008-09-25) Townsville

Walk through Town Common taking photos of birds.

Day 14 (2008-09-26) Townsville

Walk through Town Common and take photos from the top of Mount Marlow.

Day 15 (2008-09-27) to day 16 (2008-09-28) Townsville

Continue fixing stuff. No photos. Wasted days.

Day 17 (2008-09-29) Townsville

Today we leave Townsville to go back home, in Melbourne. The aircraft flies through the sky. It is powered by our camera, with every photo we take we propels the aircraft forward and keep it in the air. Flying is perfectly safe, as long as we don't run out of batteries. When the camera fills up with photos it is time to land.

Lots of Snow

2008-08-10

Last weekend it snowed at my place. This is so unusual for our area that we took lots of photos.

Secure Gateways

For any connection to the Internet, ideally you want to keep things as separate as possible. For example, web servers should not exist on your internal network, because this means anybody who breaks into the web server can access your internal network. You shouldn't put it on your firewall either, because not a potential attacker could get access to everything.

The solution is to put the web server on its own, physically separate network, that has its own network connection to the firewall. This way you can add rules to restrict connections from the web server to the internal network, so even if the web server is compromised, an attacker cannot get to your internal network. Obviously the firewall must be kept secure, this means it should not run anything except the bare essentials. This is also known as a DMZ.

Unfortunately, this approach, while secure, has traditionally been rather expensive, due to the large number of computers required. On my network I would have:

• Firewall
• Samba file server
• Asterisk server
• Web server
• Squid
• Mail server

All of these functions should be separate, in order to minimise damage if one part is compromised, but that is 6 computers, that must be purchased, located, and provided with power.

What if there was a cheaper and easier way to do this?

There is: Xen Virtual Hosts.

Conclusion

With virtualisation software, it is possible to produce a reasonable gateway with only one computer, and still have a firewall protecting the various applications from each other.

Storms

2008-04-02

The following was typed in on a laptop computer with a battery that was running flat and using candle light. Errors may exist.

Morning

I was driving down the main road, and noticed a car stopped in the middle of the road. In the darkness I could barely make out a person pointing me to turn left down Hilton Road, so I followed. I ended up behind another car, when we noticed a bus coming in the opposite direction. We were not able to pass the bus (the gravel road was not wide enough for a car and a bus), so the car in front drove up and along the embankment, and I had to follow it. As I was pulling back on the road behind the bus, I got a fright because the bus was in reverse gear, but fortunately it wasn't moving anywhere.

Evening

I arrive at Flinders Street station at 4:01pm, and was surprised to see that the 3:59pm train was still there. On getting I was surprised to see that the 3:59pm Belgrave train was still there on platform 3. I race to get on the train, and accidentally knock somebody on the head (oops), only to find the train is not going anywhere in a hurry.

Train

The train on platform 2 is an Eltham train, which is highly unusual. There make some announcements on the platform, but I cannot hear them. As we wait, the train gets fuller and fuller. Eventually at about 4:20pm the doors closed and the train was ready to depart. Unfortunately some people made a last minute dive for the door without considering that the train was too full. They got jammed in the closing door, and needed help from other people on the platform to get free before the train departed.

Through out the city loop it was clear that the train was extremely full, and that there were crowds of people waiting to get on my train. Also I noticed that all the signs said that the train was a Camberwell train, unlike at Flinders Street where the signs said Belgrave. At Richmond the train driver confirmed our worse fears, and said that the train would be stopping all stations to Camberwell were it would be terminating, and we were to catch alternate transport (nothing was mentioned about a bus replacement service).

At Camberwell station there were crowds and crowds of passengers. I struggled to get off the train. I decided that the 109 tram to Box Hill would be too full, and the busses would take some time to arrive, so I walked south to catch the 75 tram to Vermont South.

Tram

Eventually this tram came, and by the time it left it was completely full. I was barely able to fit on the tram myself. The tram stopped at the next stop on the other side of Burke Road, and more people got in. Somehow they managed to fit, despite the tram driver needing to remind passengers that the doors would not close if passengers stood on the steps, and there was the risk that people standing on the steps would somehow damage the sensors on the step and render the tram out of service.

Somebody on the tram insisted that somebody open and keep the window open, despite the rain outside, because it was getting very stuffy in the tram. I am not sure which was worse, when the tram was going and it was stuffy, or when the tram was stopped, and people were trying to get out.

At the Blackburn Road stop, when the tram started getting some free space, we had to wait, as the tram behind us was terminating at Blackburn Road (no explanation given), and everybody had to get on our tram. Now my tram was full again.

The traffic lights at Springvale Road/Burwood Highway were out, and they had 2 police to control the intersection. Same with the traffic lights at Vermont South tram/bus interchange, although police had also blocked off the north side road so cars could only turn left into Burwood Higway.

Bus

I was worried at Vermont South that not everybody would fit on the bus to Knox City, but somehow this was not an issue.

At Knox City I arrived at 6:20pm. I met another passenger who had just come from Ringwood station, just in time to see the power at to the trains die there. Maybe it was good I didn't catch the 109 tram to Box Hill. He also said that the next bus was due to come at 6:18pm, but obviously it was running late. When it did come, the driver was in a hurry leave, and wanted passenger's not to validate there tickets. I caught the next bus to Upper Ferntree Gull at about 6:30pm.

The bus travelled to stops to the other side of Box Hill and then waited for some unknown reason. I got concerned when I overheard clips of what the driver saying on his radio: "... but this bus is full of passengers right now ...". A group of passengers ran up to the outside of the bus door, but the driver didn't open the door and let them in or try to communicate with them. Apparently he was busy counting money.

Eventually a passenger at the back got sick of waiting, and pushed forward to the front to ask the bus driver what was going on. The bus driver said we were waiting for the next bus in 20 minutes, and everyone would have to get on that bus instead. The passenger was annoyed that the bus driver was keeping everyone in the bus, and didn't seem to have any intention to tell us what was going on or open the doors and let us out.

It turned out the next bus was only 2 minutes away, not twenty. Maybe I misheard the bus driver initially. After the compliant the driver opened the doors and let us out, but still wasn't going to annouce what was going on to all the passengers - it was up to us to question the passenger he talked to.

Car

After getting to Upper Ferntree Gully station, I got in my car to drive home. I got stuck behind a slow car up the mountain. Where the road splits into two lanes around Devils Elbow, the car in front went in the right lane, and I took the left lane. Big mistake. I suddenly noticed that a tree blocking the left lane. I slammed my brakes on, started sliding around on the road, and managed to miss the obstacle. Then, at the last moment, the car behind tried to pass both me and the slow car in front, and ended up having to push his way in between us.

Electricity

I got home at 7:05pm. I got a SMS from my boss saying he was still stuck at East Camberwell.

At home, we found there was no electricity. In fact, there had been no electricity since about 1pm. A tree at had fallen across the power lines and disconnected power to our road. Since it is only our road, it will probably be a low priority to fix.

Several days later

Power was lost at about 12:46pm on Wednesday, as told by my computer logs.

The next day (Thursday) people come to remove the tree, and then stood by the road. Waiting?

Power was finally restored to our house at 5pm the following Friday.

More photos

Latrobe Valley accident

AO-2007-065: Cessna Aircraft Company 172M, VH-EUI and Amateur Built Avid Flyer, 28-0929, Latrobe Valley Aerodrome Vic.

Preliminary report now available.

From the report:

Sometime later, as the aircraft had progressed in the circuit, two aircraft attempted to make a radio broadcast together, and the instructor in the second Cessna 172 reported that he broadcast that there had been an over-transmission and that the transmission indicated that both aircraft had called on final approach. In response to that broadcast, it was reported that the pilot of the Avid broadcast that ‘he had the other aircraft in sight’. The instructor reported that he noticed that there appeared to be two aircraft in close proximity on final approach to runway 09. It was reported that shortly after that, the Cessna and the Avid collided while on final approach to runway 09.

We will have to wait until the final report.