04 Bluey Pt4 – A Triumph!
Now gleaming and safely tucked away at Sports and Classic Cars it was time to start the really exciting bit namely reassembling all the nice clean, refurbished parts back to the body. I started by cleaning out the interior which was grubby with the remains of the bodywork preparation. Having got it clean I gave the underside of the roof several coats of Smoothrite and the floor and bulkheads several coats of black stone chip. I then glued ...
03 Bluey Pt3 – Bluey at Worcester Sports & Classics
So by the summer of 1994 I'd got a complete rolling chassis, a bonnet ready for painting, loads of cardboard boxes full of labelled bits and a body tub that needed its roof and bulkhead welding. Wishing to remain on reasonably social terms with my neighbours I was reluctant to get the angle grinder out again to tackle the tub and so was a bit stuck with how to proceed. Sandy, my youngest son eventually came to (indirectly) to the rescue. He ...
02 Bluey Pt2 – GT6 Revelation
So there I was, the proud owner of a tired , sad Triumph GT6. It had some MOT left but no tax so it would have been easy to put it on the road and use it for a bit. The temptation was quite strong but I resisted it. My plan was to rebuild the car and I was determined not to drive it again until this was complete, however long the rebuild might take. It was clear that welding was going to be a pretty major activity quite soon. What experience ...
00 Bluey – A Story of a Triumph GT6
In 1989 my father, then 43 years of age decided to take on a project. He was a man of many projects. When we moved into the family home in 1972 my mother purchased a shed for him because she knew he would require somewhere to spend time on his pursuits. These were the days when things were fixed, could be fixed and Dad could fix and make a lot of things. Over the years the projects came and went and each, I found out later, was done ...
Practicality. Sensible. Not words I personally link to motorcycles, in the past this may have been the case as a student the motorcycle was ridden every day, rain, sunshine, sleet, snow, touring, Sunday riding, commuting. Now I have a car, when I lived in the city I rode the train. Over the years I have compartmentalised transport, trains work well in the city, cars work well for hauling stuff, people and dogs around in comfort. Motorcycles ...
Review: 2009 KTM 690 Duke
I've owned my KTM Duke for almost six years now and in the world of motorcycle ownership I'd suggest that six years is considered a long time to own one bike. Certainly its twice as long as any previous bike I've owned so I must like it then? Well lets get some perspective first. The last bike I owned for any time was a VFR750. It was great. It was fabulous in-fact and therein was the problem. It was good at pretty much everything and ...
Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm even more cynical these days. Maybe I'm just reluctant to change. Take all the above into consideration as I make comment on a 'new' phenomenon in my daily working life. Welcome to horizontal slice software development. Firstly lets take a step back. Way back. For many years the way to make software was separated into 'blocks' as in figure 1. Firstly people analysed busyness and designed and documen...
A product manager recently requested that we start using an electronic card wall because they couldn't find a card. The question certainly got me thinking. What happens to your team and delivery process when you use something like Jira, or Leankit or the like? Here is an attempt to answer. The answer I give is limited to my personal experience. Fifteen years working in software development creating applications for tasks such as medical and ...
We have now owned our X5 for over three years. I thought it was about time to do a little review especially as I was thinking about adding up all the various bills that have accrued in an effort to see just how much its cost over that time. Our vintage 2003 3.0i Sport may be two a penny around the streets of Melbourne but lets not forget this was a car with a retail price of $85k in base form so with the optional extras some poor soul ...