Jim's Home Page

Man, I want to write something just so the leap year date can appear on the web page. But I'm fresh out of ideas of things to write about at the moment. Probably due to doing nothing...

I need to get a life. Either that, or find somewhere else to live.

I suppose I better say something about the Academy Awards. When I saw "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King", I wasn't very hopeful about it doing well at the Oscars. Looking back, I can of course attribute my lack of optimism to my love of the books and my disappointment at some of the compromises the film makers had to make.

And tonight, it was proven that I know nothing about anything when the "Return of the King" swept the Awards, taking eleven Oscars: makeup, best song, best score, editing, visual effects, art direction, costume design, sound mixing, best adapted screenplay, best director, and best motion picture. In short, it won every category it was nominated for.

Congratulations to Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, and everyone else who was associated with this wonderful production.

I can't wait for the director's cut to come out.

news.com.au is reporting that seven people are dead in Lahore from kite flying accidents at the spring kite festival. Having flown large stunt kites, I can tell you that these things are really dangerous unless you know what you're doing.

The kites I have all use a type of synthetic fibre called Spectra for the kite lines, which is generally about 1mm in diameter (and has an amazing breaking strain of around 200 kg!) This stuff, moving at better than 100 kilometres an hour trailing a parafoil stunt kite, can easily cut you like a razor.

But these people in Lahore are even more insane than that, using steel wire to fly kites! Hit a power line with that and say good night. What really gets me is that the sale of kites and steel wire had been banned, but "those restrictions were lifted this month to celebrate the festival", officials said.

D'oh.

This arvo, I nearly got hit by another car on my way home on the bike. If I had been a tad slower on the brakes, I would have smacked straight into the side of this stupid woman that pulled past me in the traffic lane on my left then turned right directly in front of me.

Just in case you are not getting the picture, this is like turning right from the centre lane of a three lane highway without first pulling into the right-most lane, and without regard for the traffic in that lane.

She had to stop to open the gate, so I pulled in and confronted her. She had the nerve to try and blame me, saying "I had to get past you. It was very dangerous."

Sure it was dangerous. With me on a 16 pound bike and you in your 4500 pound SUV, I wonder whose life was more at risk? Insensitive, uncaring arsehole. I hope you don't have to kill or injure someone to learn that bikes have just as much right to be on the road as you do.