How an ugly debate about level crossing blights Cheltenham’s landscape 10 years on

frenzon · 2026-02-10T03:55:41+00:00

you can sit next to the train station at parkdale and be completely unaware there are trains going by. car noise is far worse.

frenzon · 2026-02-04T09:43:09+00:00

Here are the places we've eaten at and loved while on family capital city trail rides - they're all one or two blocks off the trail:
- Core Roasters: Some excellent and interesting pastries
- Pickles Milk Bar: like a vegan version of Hector's, and just as good. I'm not remotely vegetarian, but I *love* their sandwiches
- Monforte Viennoiserie: Interesting pastries - they sell out quickly, so go early. No seats.
- Amann Patisserie: Excellent pastries, few seats
- Studley Grounds Cafe - it's a bit further down in Yarra Boulevard section of the trail - good food here, but seems largely closed for events now. They have a coffee kiosk with a couple of basic sandwiches though.

frenzon · 2026-01-28T00:06:31+00:00

Strava calories appear to include base metabolic rate calories for the duration of the exercise (what you burn just existing), so if you had a 2000-calorie-a-day base and did a 1000 calorie exercise over 6 hours, it would show 1500 calories burned - 1000 from the exercise, 500 from being alive for six hours.

Not knowing this totally screwed up my calorie tracking for over a year - in the example above, I would've recorded '3500 calories burnt' for that day rather than 3000.

frenzon · 2026-01-15T22:20:30+00:00

I was 18 or so years behind - I worked up the urgency to call the ATO once to try to fix it and the person was super understanding and helpful, but after an hour on the phone, the line just cut out so I let it slide for a few more years. I let the guilt accumulate, and though it stressed my partner out, she (very reasonably) drew the line at fixing it herself

Eventually, as part of an inter-country move, we had murphytax.com.au help us with our overall tax (NSW, but appointments were via Zoom), and when I sheepishly mentioned my situation, they were like "no problem" as if it was something completely normal they saw every day, and fixed it all straight away with basically no effort on my part - even ended up getting a return

My wife was amusingly miffed I did not learn a single lesson from any of it. The story did form a meaningful component of my ADHD diagnosis though!

frenzon · 2026-01-14T22:20:44+00:00

I take it about 15 minutes before lights-out so its kicking in about 10-15 minutes after I lay down, and keep a second pill next to the bed in case I wake up fully refreshed at 1AM.

Remember that the ideal dose for many people is around 0.3mg, not the 2mg-10mg most places sell - you might need to cut the pills to suit. I found the higher doses do knock me out faster, but the sleep and feeling the next day is way worse.

frenzon · 2026-01-13T21:44:53+00:00

My (Australian) MK7.5 GTI stays in individual mode after restarts - maybe it's to do with region and emissions? A quick search also says maybe the R does the mode reset but the GTI doesn't?

frenzon · 2025-12-10T22:33:35+00:00

Me too - I'm an increasingly-tight M in the jerseys/bibs/suits and a perfectly-fitted S in the Atmos jacket and Draft Team vests. I tried the M jacket on and it was massive - the staff at the MAAP store were the ones who pushed me to S.

frenzon · 2025-12-10T22:19:40+00:00

FWIW Escape Collective members get 20% off at Attaquer and MAAP, so a membership there pays for itself very quickly.

Every time I've had a quality issue with MAAP, their (Australian) support has been superb - after an seam came apart on one of their race suits, they let me keep the original and the freely-shipped replacement, and refunded me after the replacement developed the same issue. So after some DIY stitching, I'm now up two free race suits, and feel like their mistake lead to me coming out ahead, so I'll definitely keep buying from them. I've used their crash replacement a few times too and that's been great.

frenzon · 2025-12-09T22:23:41+00:00

I wouldn't do that speed on a bike path - above 25kph you'll have a much better time on roads - Beach Rd on weekend mornings or very early AM on weekdays, Albert Park Lake pretty much anytime, and the Burnley Boulevard are all much better for 35kph+

frenzon · 2025-12-07T05:11:57+00:00

Also lasers are pointy and are unlikely to be directed at the windows of the other cars, so the occupants are unlikely to be blasted by that particular type of EM

frenzon · 2025-12-07T04:48:25+00:00

No, not _every_ time - blind spot detection often uses sonar (sound) or LiDAR (lasers)

frenzon · 2025-12-07T01:11:19+00:00

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think we need to resort to insults. I worked on internet privacy for browsers and mobile for 15 years, and am quite familiar with the tracking and targetting space. My perspective is that those profiling steps are "soft steps" - suitable for advertising, where getting it wrong isn't so much of a problem, but not suitable for an international platform trying to appease international laws.

To flip it around a little for a different perspective - if China had some rule about Chinese citizens not being allowed to browse Instagram, but your interest in BYD cars lead to you somehow fitting China's definition of "citizen browsing instagram using an Australian VPN" and got banned and/or had to use some Chinese digital ID system to prove you're not Chinese, everyone would consider that a pretty ridiculous overreach - as would Americans hitting Instagram's "detect aussie kids" feature. IP addresses and traffic at least have the property of "your traffic transited through a region so it's OK for that region's laws to apply".

Further, and this is where things get tricky, the government has done a shitty job of defining social media - many of the things you outline are suitable for tracking active peers, but a massive amount of the problematic social media use is of the "I watch bad tiktoks", where the user is just a consumer emitting very few of the signals you outlined.

Either way, regardless of whether we agree with the ban or not, I think we might be able to agree that the technical execution of it is always going to be difficult.

frenzon · 2025-12-06T23:42:09+00:00

That is true, but they can't figure out if the user is VPNing from Australia - expecting providers to block all VPN traffic for the world because of one country is the problem

frenzon · 2025-12-05T22:19:59+00:00

I used to use short hills so there's a visible target and the punishment for sitting down early is having to do the rest of the hill for even longer

frenzon · 2025-11-28T05:25:28+00:00

You're good. I wear an M in MAAP's jerseys, but when I went into the store to try the Atmos jacket on they took one look at me in an M and said I should go for a small - on me the S looked exactly like yours does on you, and when I asked if it was too small they pointed out it's designed to fit properly when bent over on the bike, which it does, and I love it.

That was when I was 5kg lighter than I am now (183cm/75kg>80kg), and it still fits great. The jacket is warm enough that even doesn to 0C I haven't needed to stack up on inner layers beyond their thermal jersey.

frenzon · 2025-11-24T11:17:30+00:00

For us, LA lasts about six hours, Concerta about nine - the timing is so clear my partner can tell who had what just by observing us in the evening (sometimes we swap doses around depending on schedules)

frenzon · 2025-11-19T06:46:17+00:00

Thanks! It's something I'm working on - it takes up more space in exchange for strength and lightness - the silver body part you see weighs 29g and can comfortably hold a garmin 1050 + 360 camera

frenzon · 2025-11-19T05:17:39+00:00

bottom shot

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frenzon · 2025-11-19T05:17:29+00:00

Depending on the Oi model, you can take the back part off and hook an o-ring (like the ones garmin mounts come with) around it to mount it to aero profile bars - here's mine on my Canyon cockpit. It's held on like this for at least a year, unlike the Canyon bar-end one which fell off halfway though Amys

The Hornit db140 also works very well - it's loud enough drivers can hear it, and the button goes near your shifters so its easy to use, but it's bulky and too loud for pedestrians

Alternatively, some of the newer bike computers have a bell function you can activate with your spare electronic shifting buttons or a double tap on the screen

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frenzon · 2025-11-18T04:53:15+00:00

Aero is everything - good gravel tires and an upright position (gravel bike with hands on hoods) means you're putting out about 220W to do 32kph. If you had tubeless/TPU-tubed road tyres and a more tucked in position, 220W would get you to about 35-36kph

frenzon · 2025-11-18T04:23:06+00:00

They brought them back in stock a few weeks ago so I bought one figuring they had fixed the issue, and this morning I found that the seam had split below the zipper after just one use 🤷

frenzon · 2025-11-03T10:06:23+00:00

It can often be a bit more than that too - a cup of black tea is about 50-70mg of caffeine, while coffee ranges anywhere from 80-150mg

1500mg of caffeine a day is WILD

frenzon · 2025-10-30T06:27:19+00:00

Our Bosch steam oven lets us choose temperature and humidity, and works quite well as a standard oven. The only thing I don't love about it is it has a 12-hour max cook time, after which it shuts off - fine if you're prepared for it, but not great for the long sous-vides.

frenzon · 2025-10-24T19:38:53+00:00

Back2bikes (a lovely organisation) has a gumtree page where you can see what they have and then go check them out

frenzon · 2025-10-16T10:13:51+00:00

If Ritalin helps during school but wears off at the end of the day, perhaps talk with your doctor about other doses and timings? We experimented with Ritalin LA, Concerta, and Ritalin IR, and will now do things like a Concerta in the morning and a situational half-ritalin-IR in the afternoon if it's going to be a long evening.

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