Dan Makovec’s blog

Feeling lucky

One of the side effects of my little SEO experiment earlier this year is Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky feature.

Thanks to my efforts, any Google search for my name now puts my blog at the top of the search results, with the consequence that clicking the “I’m feeling Lucky” button brings my blog up straight away.

An extension of this comes from the fact that Mozilla browsers (Firefox et al) make use of the “I’m feeling lucky” feature using the contents of the Location bar as a search term if it doesnt’ resolve to a valid URL. Consequently, typing “Dan Makovec” into the firefox location bar now brings my blog up straight away. Cute!

Anyway, the Snowies were great, although not too snowy except for right on the mountain peaks. It was admittedly a little bit cold up in Thredbo, but the air was fresh and the sky clear. Brian and I spent most of our time walking around the village, sipping hot chocolates down at the cafe, or bobsledding on the steel track down by the village.

On Sunday we went for a long drive right through the mountains, stopping to admire the views of the alpine peaks and beautiful valleys.

We also got to check out the Murray 1 Power Station, one of the core parts of the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme that brought in over 100,000 migrants to build post world war II. The stats of the scheme are amazing. over 100km of high pressure water tunnels, even more aboveground aquaducts, powerstations all over the place, and enough power to supply 70% of Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney’s peak electricity needs.

It also opened up a massive area of land west of the mountains for farming, as it takes control of the water forming from melted snow and diverts it to irrigation schemes to make otherwise uninhabitable land completely usable.

This trip to the mountains has got me thinking about getting a few friends together to go skiing. I haven’t been for over two years now so I’m pretty rusty (I snowboarded last time and didn’t touch the skis), and would love to go again. I wonder how many of my friends would be interested in a trip either to the Snowies or NZ for about 5 days this August. I’ll have to put the proposition out there and see who’s interested.

Off to the mountains

Easter is here and we’re fed up with Sydney, so we’re off to the Snowy mountains for a couple of days of clear blue skies, fresh air and views of Australia’s tallest mountain, Mt. Kosciuszko.

I just confirmed the booking today. Talk about leaving it to the last minute! Still, it was hard figuring out where to go. We’ve been north already and done the Blue Mountains to death, and really there’s not as much readily accessible information about the Snowies as you might think there would be.

Still, we’re getting the woolies and cameras out. Should be a nice couple of days.

Finally! My bathroom questions answered

We’re having a little bathroom problem at the moment - leaking shower cubicles upstairs causing waterfalls downstairs.. you know, just the regular sort of thing.

Anyway, I finally had a question answered by a building inspector that I’ve been pondering for ages - and the answer was just as I thought.

The question was: In modern houses, why are the tiles in the bathroom set higher than the carpet of the neighbouring hallway or bedroom? I hate this for a number of reasons:

1. I do sometimes manage to stub my toes on or trip over the entrance to the bathroom. Particularly when barefoot, tired and/or drunk.

2. If there’s a large spill in the bathroom that doesn’t all go down the drain quickly enough, the carpet is ruined rapidly (I see this in a number of places - ours included)

3. It just *looks* ugly - lovely plush carpet one side, lovely italian ceramic tiles the other, and this bloody great steal rod going right across the doorway.

The answer was as I suspected: MONEY!

It works out cheaper to throw down a slab of concrete yay high all over then shove the waterproofing and tiles on top wherever the bathrooms go than it does to properly recess the bathroom floor by a couple of cm to get a more or less flush finish.

Hence the reason that today’s slapped up buildings get finished at such a rate (and generate a whole secondary economy for tradesmen involved in warantee repairs to shoddily constructed abodes).

Here’s my promise to myself: flush flooring. If there’s carpet ‘n’ tiles, they’ll line up with each other properly. If there’s wood ‘n’ tiles, they’ll be perfectly aligned. None of this el-cheapo, let’s throw it down in one hit, crap.

Another thing I’ll be avoiding: metal door jams. For some reason, the boguns who constructed this place used metal jams. No decorative frames, just rectangular tube embedded in brick containing the door. One problem with these - they RUST. Why on earth would you have a shaft of rust-prone metal running almost floor to ceiling in a bathroom? MONEY, that’s why.

I’ve learned a lot from living in several rental properties and in my head I’m starting to put together the list of materials in, if not the actual floor plan, for whatever house we’d like to build later.

Actually, maybe I’ll skip the carpet altogether. All wood ‘n’ tiles with rugs galore I think. Less dust prone and much easier to change the look of the place by just throwing another rug down.

Oh gawd, am I really considering buying a house? God help me. We did go to a display village the other week and fell in love with a few concepts… aargh, domestication!!!