David Gardiner - Cycling

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!)

March update

2020-03-06T15:00:00.000+10:30

January and February have come and gone, and March is now well underway. Autumn seems to have definitely hit Adelaide, though I wonder if there might still be some warmer weather around before Winter arrives? Time will tell.

Out of the ordinary

This year was the first in a long time that we didn't take part in the Tour Down Under community ride. The route wasn't particularly inspiring this year, so we gave it a miss. Hopefully 2021 will be better and the Gardiner boys will be back in lycra, raring to go!
I was all booked to fly over to Seattle/Redmond to attend Microsoft's annual MVP Summit, but it was announced this week that it has been cancelled, and an online/virtual event will be run in its place. Thank Coronavirus for making this one of many large events that have been impacted. So, I'm staying in Adelaide instead of cramming myself into an international economy seat for 24 hours (plus the return flight home). As I said on Twitter, it is disappointing but I think Microsoft made the right call considering the circumstances.

Also interesting to read about Microsoft asking their Redmond-based employees to work from home (if possible) for the rest of March.

ADNUG

The Adelaide .NET User Group is back for 2020. There's been huge interest in next week's meeting, which is great to see. I'm hoping to fill out the speaker schedule for the next few months. Do get in touch if you'd like to present to the group (and that can be in-person, or remote via Skype/Teams).

If I have one wish for the group, it's that I could find someone(s) to share the organising with. It would be good to have some load balancing (or at least a fail-over cluster!) Related to that, we've actually launched the ADNUG 2020 Member Survey. Please share your thoughts (and be in the running for a $100 book voucher).

I must say it's been really great to have Simon and Kristine from Encode Management on-board as both sponsors and supporters - and I know they're also working with other meetups in Adelaide too. It would be easy (and I think it has happened in the past) that sponsors just give some money, or might just pop their head in, but the folks from Encode are regular attendees and are often one of the last to leave after helping pack up. That sincerity and encouragement count for a lot in my book. And speaking of books, it's Encode that are putting up the aforementioned book voucher. Awesome!

DDD Adelaide 2020

I caught up with Andrew this week to kick of planning for DDD Adelaide 2020, with our traditional 'DDDumplings' lunch meeting. We should really get Dumpling King on board as a major sponsor :-)

TimeoutException (aka Tour Down Under 2019 and a week off)

2019-01-27T22:31:00.001+10:30

Back at work for a couple of weeks of 2019 and I don't want to rush things too much, so I organised to take an extra week off after this year's Tour Down Under bike ride.

Last year's community ride (the 'Challenge Tour') had to be cancelled due to hot weather. We've had our share of hot weather again this year, but fortunately Saturday (previously Friday) turned out to be ideal. This year I rode with my dad and my son - 3 generations of Gardiners! Very proud of my son, who completed the 100km distance (his furthest ridden) plus (impressing a lot of our fellow riders) he did it on a mountain bike (as he doesn't have a road bike).

I didn't need the week off to recuperate from the ride - instead I was catching up with relatives visiting Adelaide! It was great to see them lots of time during the week.

We all just made it through the 46.6°C record maximum temperature for Adelaide on Thursday (that was a really, really hot day).

I watched as my son and his cousin did the ropes course at West Beach.

Yum!

French Monopoly - Relying on my niece to translate.

I'm finishing off the mini-break with the Australia Day long weekend. Caught up with the visiting rellies one last time (before they flew home) for morning tea/lunch/kicking the footy in the park (how Aussie is that!) following by dinner with my folks. A really nice day!

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

Tour Down Under 2017

2017-01-23T13:47:00.001+10:30

It’s that time of the year again when bicycles take over the streets of Adelaide and nearby country South Australia. The Tour Down Under is in town, and that also means the Friday is also the BUPA Challenge Tour. This gives us mere mortals a chance to ride the same course as the professionals, complete with supported rest and refuel stops all along the way.

Usually I ride with my dad and we do the full distance, but this year my son decided he’d like to take part for the first time. So while dad still started at Norwood, we chose to do the shorter 60km distance starting at Mt Pleasant and finishing at Campbelltown.

Carson had previously done a few rides with me and the other Mud, Sweat & Gears riders down to McLaren Vale (a comfortable 30km ride from our place), so I was pretty confident he’d be up to the longer distance, given plenty of breaks along the way.

Our family friend Jane also joined us for the ride (as well as giving us a lift to our starting location at Mt Pleasant).

The day started off cool and overcast, a huge relief from the high temperatures we’d had in the previous days. There’d also been a decent thunderstorm overnight. A small amount of drizzle hung around for the first part of the ride, but nothing too annoying.

We made good use of the rest stops along the way to get refreshments and make use of the ‘conveniences’.

We also had a bonus visit to the bakery in Lobethal. A welcome boost.

At one stop, we did an adjustment to Carson’s seat pole – turns out he’s been growing a bit and those legs wanted a bit more room to stretch out 😀. Later on at the Cudlee Creek stop, we were just about to head off when he noticed that his rear brake was not working properly. The main rest stops also have resident bike mechanics, so we immediately went over to get it looked at. This brake had played up in a similar way a few months ago and I thought I’d resolved the problem. I was encouraged that the mechanic tried exactly the same things that I had done myself previously. He managed to get it working so it would get us safely to the finish (which was a fair bit of downhill, so having good brakes was critical), but recommended we take it in to get serviced as there’s obviously something not quite right.

The final ride down to the finish went well and the three of us even got a chance to ride arm-in-arm under the finish archway, much to the appreciation of the crowd. The finish line was right next to Foxfield Oval with the huge gum trees lining the road. That made it the ideal place to stay and wait for the professional teams to come sprinting in.

All in all a great day. Super proud of Carson for riding 60km (as Jane pointed out, every km after the 30km mark was a PB!). Also nice to finish the ride and not feel completely wrecked too!

Tour Down Under 2015

2015-01-24T13:14:00.001+10:30

Yesterday, I took part in the BUPA Challenge Tour ride, part of the 2015 Tour Down Under. I rode with my Dad and Philip – all as part of the Mud, Sweat and Gears bike club. We followed the same route that the professionals would take later in the day. Apparently around 6,500 cyclist took part – some like us doing the full distance, others choosing to do shorter distances by starting at a number of locations along the route.

The official route started at Glenelg, but to save riding down to Glenelg and then back the same way, we started from the bottom of the Southern Expressway. We then headed south down the Expressway (a route not unfamiliar as the veloway parallels this) and then through Old Noarlunga, back onto Main South Road then past Aldinga to Sellicks Hill.

Sellicks Hill was designated as the “King of the Mountain” section for the professionals, but it really was just a gentle incline.

Further along, after nearing Myponga, we veered off back towards Mt Compass. Just before Mt Compass it was great to have my in-laws Rick & Margaret cheering us on (they’re a regular fixture every year to see us during the ride and at the finish line). Passing through Mt Compass, we travelled a few kms before stopping for food and refreshments at Nangkita.

Back on the bikes, through Ashbourne, Strathalbyn, Macclesfield and then another drink stop at Meadows. No time to stop at the bakery unfortunately!

The final leg through Echunga and finishing at Mt Barker!

Here’s a summary of my ride captured by the Endomondo app on my phone. (Note that the distance/time includes travelling from my home, but I’ve edited out that part from the map).

We rode a total of 152km and took 7 hours, 4 minutes (including rest stops).

As you can see, we don’t set a blistering pace 😀 - 20km/h is about our average. Those sharp dips on the bottom graph’s green line correspond to our rest stops. The grey line on that graph shows the elevation.

I think this year I had one of my better preparations for the ride. I’d been able to get in some regular rides to work and got out most Saturday mornings in the last few months. Whilst glad to finish, I felt in reasonable shape at the end. The weather certainly helped – it was very mild for most of the morning, and we even had a bit of drizzle as we passed through Sellicks Hill. It was only in the last hour and a bit that the clouds parted and the sun made itself felt.

The tour organisers did a great job. Lots of drink stops and well provisioned food stops. No complaints there.

Here’s my Dad and I after the race – please ignore the helmet hair! It was a good day and a great ride.

Photo credits – My sister Fiona for the two photos of me and my Dad

Riding in the wet

2015-01-08T11:29:00.001+10:30

Unlike earlier this week when Adelaide was dealing with 40°C heat and the worst bushfires since Ash Wednesday in 1983, today is wet.

The weather radar image gives you an idea:

This is fantastic to help put out the bushfires (and water the garden). Not as much fun if you’re trying to get some exercise for the Tour Down Under ride in a couple of weeks.

I hadn’t ridden my bike earlier in the week because it had been so hot, so I was determined to ride to work today, even if it was a little moist outside.

One problem I’ve noticed on the rare occasion that I am out riding in the rain is that your feet get saturated. The water flicks up front wheel and goes straight onto your feet, so you feet end up sloshing around inside your shoes. It’s at those times that you wonder a) why you’re out riding in the rain in the first place, and b) is there anything you could do to make it a little more comfortable.

This morning I thought I’d try an experiment – putting plastic bags over my bike shoes. The plastic bags were just held on with my reflective strips.

Long story short.. it worked for about 15min, then I discovered that the other source of moisture in my shoes comes from the rain hitting my legs and trickling down into my socks.

Maybe sticky tape might have helped a bit. I’ve also heard that you can get proper wet weather booties (apparently made of neoprene like a wetsuit). If you were regularly riding in the wet, I suspect they’d do a much better job.

At least now I don’t need to wonder anymore.

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?

The Grand Final

2014-09-27T13:03:00.001+09:30

Yesterday was my last in the office at Eka (formerly MatrixGroup). It was great to catch up with everyone one last time after just over 3 years being on staff. A few final handovers, farewell lunch, attending and presenting at my final Developer meeting and monthly company meeting. I'll miss working with the people there, but I'd decided it was time to move on. In the meantime, I'm taking a short break. Time to relax, get some kms on the bike, enjoy Adelaide's beautiful spring weather, one or two jobs around the house and do some family things for the first week of the school holidays. After that I'll be starting something new – more about that in a couple of weeks time! The photo is from my ride on Tuesday with the Mud, Sweat & Gears blokes heading to Outer Harbour. That turned out to be a handy 93km round trip! I must be doing ok as I pulled up pretty well. It is pretty flat for most of the ride, which probably helped. (Oh yes, it's also the AFL Grand Final today)

Tour Down Under 2014

2014-01-25T11:55:00.001+10:30

We made it!

I'm glad to report that unlike last year, my back was behaving itself and yesterday I was able to take part in the Bupa Challenge Tour with my Dad. The Challenge Tour is a chance to ride the same route that the professionals do for one day of the Tour Down Under. Like previous years, we rode as part of the Mud, Sweat & Gears team.

We rode the full course of 154km from Unley to Victor Harbor. That's the longest distance I think I've ever ridden, and boy did my feet and my behind know about it – especially the last 30km or so! It took just under 8 hours (7:54 according to the Endomondo app I used on my phone), which included time at the rest stops.

The start of the ride took us up the South-Eastern Freeway through the Heysen Tunnels. Normally cyclists aren't allowed along here, so that was quite a novelty – though we agreed that the tunnels themselves are quite stuffy.

The weather this year was fantastic. It was a little drizzly early in the morning, but then remained comfortably cool for most of the day. It was overcast for most of the morning, which helped a lot. A gentle breeze earlier in the day became a little more blustery towards the end, but not as bad as some years.

We made three stops along the way – at Meadows, Mt Compass and Yankalilla. A chance to refill drink bottles with various colours of Powerade (each stop seemed to have a different colour) and grab a banana and fruit cake to refuel.

This year for the first time they scanned the RFID tags on our bikes as we progressed through the route. You could then log in to a website to obtain the results. Here are mine:

Split	TOD	Time
Unley	06:42 am	00:12:16
Unley Backup	07:09 am	00:39:30
Stirling	07:53 am	01:23:13
Meadows	09:03 am	02:33:57
Mt Compass	10:30 am	04:00:13
KOM	11:48 am	05:18:17
Yankalilla	01:13 pm	06:43:55
Finish	02:37 pm	08:07:25

The ride started at 6.30am, but you as can see it took us 12 minutes to pass through the start – not surprising as there were thousands of riders there.

Highlights:

Repeatedly being overtaken by former UniSA colleague Mandy (apparently I'm quite conspicuous on a bike, even amongst 6,600 other similarly attired cyclists)
Well run food and drink stops
Watching the pros finish in a blaze of colour
Finishing

Lowlights

They'd temporarily closed the lunch station as the pros were approaching the finish line and there just a few salad roles in a tray. I gather earlier finishers had a better selection. We didn't starve, but it didn't seem to be very organised.
I wonder if there's such thing as a saddle that's comfortable even after 100kms. I don't think I have one 😀

Odd-lights:

Lemons as a choice of fruit at the food stops. Didn't seem to be a lot of takers.

After the ride – waiting for the Pros (photo by Fiona)

Grimacing Greipel, 150m to go before he won the stage (photo by Fiona)

Special thanks to Narelle's parents Rick and Margaret, who drove us to the start very early in the morning, and then met us at the finish to take me and our bikes home again.