David Gardiner - Animals

A new year, and 5 years at SixPivot

2026-02-03T12:30:00.000+10:30

December and January have come and gone. What's been going on?

I had 3 weeks off over the Christmas/New Years break, which was much appreciated. We didn't go away, but it did give me a chance to do a few jobs around the house. We're renovating our laundry and there was some painting that needed to be done before the new cupboards get installed. The whole process has taken quite a bit longer than we'd hoped but it does feel like the end is in sight.

The Tour Down Under was on recently in Adelaide. On the second Saturday, the men's race came quite close to where we live. I met up with our friend Jane and we hung out at top the King of the Mountain stage finish to cheer all the riders on. If you were watching the TV broadcast I'm the yellow blob to the right of the arch, visible for about 0.2 seconds. That bright yellow 'DDD Adelaide 2025 Organiser' t-shirt comes in handy!

We've already had a number of days over 40°C - Summer is definitely here in Adelaide. On days like that the aim is to keep cool and try and protect our garden and animals from the heat as best we can. Old bedsheets are put to good use! There's actually a Mandarin tree hiding under there.

One other change for the Gardiner family is we've had some new additions:

Vanessa (a 1 year old tortoiseshell-coloured rescue cat) joined us back in May last year. She loves all the girls in the house but just puts up with me. More than once I've gone to start work in the morning (or returning after lunch) and discovered there's an extra "cushion" on my chair. Well I thought it was my chair but I think she has other ideas 😃.

And in early January our chook collection doubled. We're now looking after Peckachoo and Egglet, in addition to our two bantams. They belong to my son and daughter in-law, and needed a new home after friends who had been looking after them on their behalf moved to the country.

The new chooks are full-sized, so in comparison to the bantams they seem huge! But they're settling in well. We've kept them apart from the bantams for now. They're great layers - most days we get an egg from both. I'm hoping it will inspire our bantams (who are not the most reliable in that department) but so far not so much.

Adelaide .NET User Group

Recently the ADNUG organising team caught up for a meal and we started planning out the year. One minor issue we're still trying to solve is a venue. Normally we meet at the University of South Australia's City West campus. But UniSA has just merged with University of Adelaide to become 'Adelaide University' and that was causing a delay in us being able to book our regular room. Merging two large complex organisations is tricky at the best of times, so I can only imagine all the internal systems and processes they're trying to figure out. We've ended up with a different venue for February but hopefully we can be back at City West for April.

DDD Adelaide

I've also spent a bit of time editing some of the videos recorded at DDD Adelaide. I'm not giving up my day job just yet, but starting to figure out more about how to use DaVinci Resolve 😃. You can see the recordings that we've published so far at https://www.youtube.com/@DDDAdelaide.

5 year work anniversary at SixPivot

My first reminder of this was getting some LinkedIn notifications on the weekend. I continue to be grateful for working for a modern, people-focused company. Small enough that I know everyone, but large enough that there is a diverse range of experience and thinking.

After previously working with a few longer-term clients, I've been mixing it up a bit recently with some shorter engagements. I am enjoying the variety.

I've received 500 'good vibes' points for my 'workversary'! I'm due to get a new laptop this year, so I might put them towards that (which I may need to given the price of RAM these days!)

In the garden - Winter 2025

2025-08-11T08:00:00.000+09:30

Looks like it has been 5 years since my last 'In the garden' post. Here's an update for Winter 2025:

First up, this year marked Chookbacca's tenth birthday. That's a really good age for a bantam chicken. She had stopped laying a few years ago, but was still going pretty well until a few months ago. First I noticed she was having trouble keeping her rear end clean. I resorted to giving her a bath a few times to sort her out. Not her favourite thing to do! Sadly one morning as I let her and the other chooks out of their shed, I noticed she'd developed a bad limp. A trip to the vet and we decided the kindest thing was to put her to sleep. She's been sorely missed by us and by the other chooks (who being a few years younger took quite a while to adjust to losing their boss).

I've been growing a Jaboticaba in a pot for 20 years. It is supposed to start flowering and fruiting after about 5-10 years, but our never had. It did suffer a setback around 10 years ago when I was away on a trip for a couple of weeks and forgot to make sure it was watered in my absence. Unfortunately it was quite hot while I was away. Part of the top of the plant died off, but the rest recovered.

I've not given up on it, and back in April I could hardly believe my eyes when I spied a few tiny flowers. They didn't set fruit, but I'm hoping it's a good sign for next season.

I figured it was overdue to be upgraded to a larger pot, with a bit of fresh potting mix. Hopefully that also helps.

Our Lemonade tree continues to be the standout citrus tree in our garden. Great crops of fruit. I need to give it a regular haircut otherwise it would grow too high and the fruit would be way beyond even my reach. Lemonade fruit looks like a Lemon, but it is sweeter - you can juice them and drink it straight from the tree.

Narelle was inspired by a recent episode of ABC TV's Gardening Australia which showed how to build a frog 'spa'. A few days later we now have one in our garden. Not sure if the frogs have discovered it yet, but I have heard a few croaking around the place so I hope they take advantage of it!

The mandarin had a real off season this year. It didn't have many flowers, and so there were literally just 4 fruit. Usually the fruit is amazing - shop fruit tastes so bland in comparison. Hopefully it does better next season.

The Pink Lady apple had a really good crop of fruit this season. Today I picked the final two apples and removed the net from the tree. It is surprising how late the fruit ripens. I was quite attentive to keeping birds and rats away, and didn't lose much at all to either of those.

The Tangelo citrus has probably had its best crop of fruit. The fruit has started dropping off by itself, and is not quite as sweet as I would hope. Some people add a bit of sugar to improve the taste. It's doing well despite getting a bit of competition from a rather large pepper tree growing next door (you can see that in the background of the photo).

The nectarine and apricot are dormant over winter. The nectarine has lots of buds, so I'm hopeful of a good crop this summer. I've been applying a copper spray to try and mitigate leave curl. I know the year I forgot to do that the tree really struggled and lost lots of leaves. It is tricky as you want to apply it before the buds burst, but that's now when it's often wet and rainy. So as soon as there's a dry day I try and get out and give it another spray.

The real lemon tree has a good crop. Some of the fruit went a bit funny after our really long hot dry summer, but most of it is now fine.

I planted some peas - some in a garden bed and some against a fence that keeps the chooks from wandering too far into the rest of the garden. I thought the chooks might attack them but surprisingly they've left them alone. The plants have grown really high and have pretty flowers. I'm waiting to see if they set.

The jonquils are out and flowering madly. We dug up heaps in spring as they were taking over the garden a bit, but there's still plenty left.

And the first of the daffodils are starting to flower too.

The roses were all pruned quite hard a few months ago, and we're now starting to get some new growth.

Winter is a busy time for weeds. Sour sobs (a kind of Oxalis) are a particular problem in Adelaide gardens, and ours is no exception. I've tried various things over the years with varying degrees of success.

Previously I tried herbicides like Roundup (Glyphosate), which kind of worked but there's been increasing concern over its health risks. Hand pulling could be effective but is labour intensive - You never quite know when you pull out a plant if the bulbs will be attached or if they stay in the ground to grow again next year.

Dear old Chookbacaa also really enjoyed eating Sour Sobs - both the leaves of the plants and absolutely loved the bulbs if I dug them up for her. Sadly she's no longer able to help with that (and the other chooks are less interested).

I've been attacking them this season with Slasher. The active ingredient is Nonanoic Acid (also known as pelargonic acid). The satisfying thing about using Slasher is you see results in minutes. Here's some Sour Sob plants that I sprayed about 60 minutes earlier.

I'm hoping that will really make a dent in how many sour sobs are growing in our garden. I'll watch with interest next year to see how effective it has been.

2018 draws to a close..

2018-12-26T17:24:00.000+10:30

2018 is almost done. It's the day after Christmas, about 38°C outside (just over 100°F in the old money - not uncommon for this time of year in Adelaide). As I sit here under the cooling, gentle breeze from the air conditioner, I've compiled some of my 2018 highlights. (Let me know in the comments if I've missed something obvious)

Work

RL Solutions are/have merged with Datix. No changes yet, other than getting to meet a couple of people from the Datix side (including from their Melbourne office).

Our Adelaide team also grew this year with some new hires. We do miss Tom (having lost him to Toronto), but we've managed to survive, and it was great to have him back for a week last month. A part from my coding and team lead responsibilities, Tom's move has meant I've picked up additional roles of office grocery/supplies organiser and local IT support.

One particular recent highlight was upgrading the office to a 1G fibre Internet connection, taking advantage of the 10G Adelaide initiative. That's been a huge win - bandwidth is essentially no longer a constraint on getting things done.

Toronto sent a lovely Christmas present to the Adelaide office. Yum!

User Group

The Adelaide .NET User Group has finished on a positive note. We've had increased attendances the last few months which is really encouraging. We've also had a sponsor come on board, which means we can run meetings for free now that our pizza costs are covered.

It would be great to have others join me in organising the group - it does concern me that I'm the 'single point of failure' at the moment.

In addition to monthly meetings, I'm looking forward to some announcements in the new year about a bigger developer event for Adelaide.

Presentations

Managed to do some user group talks locally as well as while I was in Toronto, but the highlight for the year was being picked to present as part of .NET Conf.

Travel

A bit less this year - two weeks in North America in March (Toronto for work and then Seattle/Redmond for the Microsoft MVP Summit). Coming down with a nauseous gastro-type bug for the last couple of days and the flight home was not a highlight. Definitely an incentive to remember good hand hygiene!

We also had a family holiday interstate and flew (instead of driving all the way). More costly, but quicker and less stressful.

Christmas

A significant time of year, and one I really enjoy. I have many happy memories of Christmases as a child, and I hope we're creating them for our kids now.

Our family traditions include taking part in our Church's Road to Christmas 'Bethlehem re-enactment', joining with friends to sing carols at a local hospital, attending a Christmas Eve church service, and then gathering with family for a meal on Christmas Day.

Bonus tip: My aunty told me that she buys a platter/plate from a 2nd hand shop for the food that she brings. That way she doesn't need to worry about having to remember to bring it home.

Turtles

We bought my son a turtle for his birthday the previous year. 'Nibbles' is now fast outgrowing his tank, so the current project is to build a pond out in the garden where he can live (the turtle, not my son!)

The pond shell/liner, redgum wood sleepers, a pump and filter, shade-cloth all add up to be a surprising amount. Not to mention the manual labour of digging the hole in the ground!

I think Nibbles will appreciate it when it's all done.

Nibbles the turtle, about to give the pond a test drive/swim

Sevenfold

That's the band I play in. We've had a few gigs this year, and might be doing some recording in 2019. I was sad when Jane (our violin/mandolin player) retired as that left me as the sole string player on 'Cello. I've had to pick up some of Jane's parts in some of our songs. Our last gig for the year was something a bit different (and special) - playing for Liz (who also sings in our band) as part of her service of ordination to become a Deacon.

Sound check, with Pete and Keith photo-bombing

When you're young, you sometimes dream about being a rock-star. Well that hasn't happened! But I do get to play instruments and sing on stage with good friends, and people seem to like our music, so while I'm not giving up my day job, it is a lot of fun.

Cycling

I try and get out for a ride when I can. Seemed to be less commute riding this year, but got out for a few Saturdays with the Mud, Sweat and Gears mob. Looking forward to the Tour Down Under in January and riding in the Challenge Tour with my Dad and my Son (3 generations of Gardiners) as well as brother-in-law James.

Family

I tend not to post much about my family here. If you know me personally then I might have shared a bit more about how we're all going. Needless to say, the kids are growing up fast!

Thanks for reading, see you in 2019 :-)

David

When you’re a koala..

2015-10-18T21:10:00.001+10:30

take some time to smell the roses.

Yes, never a dull moment in our backyard. Not just lizard fights, but the odd koala passing through too. Not to mention Narelle had a baby brown snake trying to come in through the sliding door on Friday. It’s all happening!

Blue-tongue battle

2015-10-17T16:11:00.001+10:30

A bit of excitement in the Gardiner backyard this afternoon, when two blue-tongue lizards had a bit of a ‘rumble in the jungle’.

I assume it was a bit of a territory thing. I’d seen what I thought was one lizard sunning itself on our back steps, and noticed another one across the other side of our yard near our lemonade tree.

The latter one must have decided to go visiting because all of a sudden it was also near the steps and the first lizard wasn’t too happy about unexpected guests.

After a bit of biting and hissing, the visitor made a quick getaway – but not before attracting the attention of our 3 bantam chooks (enjoying some ‘free run of the backyard’ time), who were most intrigued by the lizard and “escorted” it back across the back lawn to the garden near the lemonade tree.

The “steps” blue-tongue then retreated back to its spot, upon which we noticed that there was actually another lizard there too. This one must have been friendly as they both then slid behind a rock without any concerns being raised.

Glad to say that our backyard has now returned to relative peace – that is unless you’re a worm or slater, in which case I think you’d be a bit stressed that the chooks are out to eat you 😀

2014 in review

2015-01-04T09:00:00.000+10:30

As I write this, a major bushfire is threatening towns and some suburbs in the north eastern areas of the Adelaide Hills.

Here’s a photo I took on my bus ride home from work on Friday, looking north. You can just see the edge of the CBD on the left of the horizon. The smoke is towering up into the sky. Friday was very hot – it got to 44°C (~111°F). This morning (Saturday) when we woke up, the smoke had drifted south and was obvious in the air around our house.

Fortunately I live a fair way away from the fire front, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about our preparations should we be put in a similar situation. Given where we live, it’s a real possibility every fire season.

So, that’s an interesting start to 2015, but what about last year?

User Groups

I’ve been involved with the SQL User Group since it started many years ago. The Adelaide .NET User Group (ADNUG) has been running even longer, but for most of that time the evening meeting time wasn’t that convenient. That changed earlier this year when I decided I wanted to take my user group involvement up a notch, by not only becoming a regular attendee at the ADNUG meetings but also stepping up to help organise them too.

I’m now charged with organising speakers for each month. Speaking of which, this month we’ve lined up Sayed Hashimi to speak to us live from Redmond (Washington, USA) on changes coming to the ASP.NET 5 project system – register now! If the live hook-up works well then we might plan these regularly – possibly alternating each month between in-person and virtual. It could be a way to book some more well-known US (or other overseas) speakers.

Work

A big change in 2014, with me leaving Eka at the end of September. I was feeling quite unsettled and was really not sure what the future held for me there, so I thought if I could take the initiative then I would, and applied for a position as a software developer at RL Solutions. It was a great start, and to be honest I’m really, really enjoying working with my new colleagues. In particular, I love the ‘team’ and ‘fun’ focus. I commented to the local guys when I began that unlike the Toronto office, we didn’t have a table tennis table in Adelaide. I’m pleased to report that oversight was remedied just before Christmas – just in time for us to be thoroughly ‘wiped off the court’ by our visiting CEO 😀

PowerShell

I was doing a lot of PowerShell earlier in the year, particularly in managing build servers and automating deployments. I’m still a PowerShell enthusiast, though those particular areas are no longer ones I need to worry about so much at the moment.

Windows Phone and Windows

I managed to get one new app out this year, but felt like I just didn’t have any spare time to devote to pushing out some upgrades to some of my other apps. I hope that gets rectified in 2015.

I’ve been running Windows 10 preview on my laptop with not too many dramas. I’m looking forward to seeing it progress through this year. I’m curious as to what changes will come to Windows Phone from this.

.NET

Wow, what big changes are happening for Microsoft and .NET. Who would have thought open source would be having such a big impact and become part of their culture like it has? It feels like the ‘new guard’ at Microsoft, particularly in the developer division have really started to have an impact in this area.

Cycling

One constant frustration with working at MatrixGroup/Eka was the lack of change facilities for those of us who like to ride our bike to work. I was very pleased to confirm that my new place of employment does provide both bike storage and shower facilities.

I’ve signed up to do the Bupa Challenge Tour ride (part of the Tour Down Under) on January 23rd.. Hmm, that’s only 20 days away! So it’s been great to be able to put in some rides to work as well as a few Saturday morning rides with the Mud, Sweat & Gears guys and girls.

Personal and family

Changing jobs feels like a big stress has gone. That is good. I’m still not sleeping well though, and am booked in to have a ‘sleep study’ later this month. I’m hopeful that might provide some clues and a way forward to not feeling tired most days.

Close friends and colleagues know that my family seem to have a few health issues that we have to struggle with. I don’t expect 2015 will be dramatically different. Put it this way – I realised that I now am reasonably confident navigating my way around the local Emergency Department (which otherwise resembles a rabbit warren) now that I’ve had to visit there quite a few times.

Looking ahead, other things to get done include getting an aquarium up and going (still deciding if we go for fish, or maybe a turtle). There’s also a chook shed that needs to be finished. The kids have already given names to our future chooks (you might sense a theme):

Princess Layer
Chook-backa
Hen solo
Bantam menace

Our oldest will start his last year of Primary School, so selecting a High School will also be on the agenda (we’ve already been doing some research towards this).

So there’s some of the things that stood out for 2014 and a few things coming up for 2015. I’m sure I’ve missed something!

What were your significant events for 2014 and what are you looking forward to in 2015?

A furry visitor

2008-12-29T23:09:00.001+10:30

"I'm sure there was a tree around here last time"

A visitor hopped in

2006-01-04T14:45:00.001+10:30

This little guy and his friend (not sure where he is) had been living the high life in one of the holes dug for our retaining wall. Not wanting to see them end their lives encased in concrete, we rescued them both and left them in a bucket with a big rock in it.

I'm just glad they were in the shallower hole, and not the 2.5 metre deep one!