If you’re looking to give Vim a try, you might find my list of common keyboard commands helpful.

Getting Started With Vim: Basic Keystrokes

You should really look at the full-res image, (link is on the flickr photo page) but it’s 15megs, so you’ll have to wait a few secs for all the pixels to download.

From right to left, you start by looking South, where the opera house is, and end up looking East at the left side of the image. If you could see past the small bit of land in the distance to the East, you’d be looking at the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Usually you just see pictures of the harbor bridge and the opera house, but, really, there’s much more to Sydney.

Last week, Margie and I did the Spit to Manly walk. It’s got a rather unfortunate sounding name, I know. It’s called the Spit to Manly walk, or the Manly to Spit walk, depending on which place you start and end from because, well, the endpoints are the Spit Bridge, in Mosman, and Manly, one of the popular Northern beachy suburbs. Either way you walk it, you’re in for at least a four hour stroll and, since we started the walk at the Spit Junction, at the top of the hill that the Spit Bridge connects to, we ended up with a slightly longer walk, around 12km in total.

Two of my coworkers told me that the walk is one of the best that Sydney has to offer and, even having not done a lot of the walks yet, I’m sure they’re right. This walk has it all: postcard-worthy harbor views, tiny hidden beaches, countless birds, trees, and plants, aboriginal rock carvings, electric barbecues for public use, an EXELOO (more on that below), and even a lighthouse!

Since the walk follows the coastline all the way from the Spit Bridge to Manly, almost every turn you make greets you with a new view of the water. Of course, this also means that the path follows rising and falling terrain, like the rest of Sydney, so parts of it were a real workout on the legs.

So, aside from all the really amazingly beautiful nature, I’d say that the things I remember most about the walk are the animals, the EXELOO, and the rock carvings.

First: the animals. The walk takes you through a surprising variety of vegetation zones, from towering eucalyptus trees, to big poofy ferns, to groves of pine trees and, as the scenery changes, so do the bird calls. In one area, we heard a high-pitched ring-a-ding song that tracked down to a gorgeous Crimson Rosella sitting on a branch calling to a friend.

But the best bird call was one from a bird that we never ended up seeing, but we sure heard it a lot, and we turned it’s call into a game. You see, the Eastern Whipbird makes a call that I think sounds like a laser gun; warming up with a ‘Whoooooop’ and then firing a fast ‘PEW PEW!’ So, I suggested that every time we heard one of these laser guns warm up, we had to squat down before it fired the PEW PEW, or we’d get hit in the head with the laser beam. I think we might have been hit once or twice (the time it takes for some of these birds to fire their guns is faster than others), and we definitely got a great thigh workout from all the rapid squatting.

The other bit of fauna from our walk that warrants some mention is the snake that Margie saw. I must have stepped right over it because I didn’t see it in front of me, but I was walking in front of Margie and I heard her call out behind me. To quote it exactly, I believe her words were “Oh! Snake. Snake! THAT’S A SNAKE!” I turned around to see the tail end of it slither into some bushes at the side of the path. Margie says that it looked to her like a dark curvy stick on the path suddenly came to live and slithered very quickly off the footpath. All we can tell is that it was dark brown all over. It was probably venomous, because most snakes in Australia are, and it could very well have been an Eastern Brown Snake, one of the world’s deadliest snakes, being “the second most toxic land snake in the world, after the Inland Taipan (which may also be found in Australia),” according to Wikipedia. Well, no matter what it was. The snake quickly vanished into the bush and we continued on with our walk, with 100% more glances down to the ground for the next half hour.

So, you might think that taking this Spit to Manly walk isn’t such a good idea after all because, you know, you might get bitten by a snake and die. But if you don’t do this walk, sure, you might live longer, but you might very well spend your whole live without taking a piss in an EXELOO. And that, my friends, is a life half-pissed.

The EXELOO is a really remarkable piece of civic sanitation. It’s a public toilet, or, as the EXELOO website suggests, a “self managing public toilet module,” which might actually be a more appropriate description since it makes this thing sound rather robotic, which it is. You might think it’s funny that I want to mention a public toilet in this writeup of one of Sydney’s best nature walks, but I’m telling you, this thing is not to be missed.

Near one of the cute little beaches that the Spit to Manly walk takes you through, we saw a little pavilion with two changing rooms and a toilet, I mean, err, a self managing public toilet module. It said EXELOO on the outside and had an icon indicating that it was vacant. I didn’t have any pressing need to use it, but I had been keeping my eye out for a toilet for Margie because I knew she had been in the market for a clean public toilet for the last ten minutes or so. This EXELOO sure seemed to fit the bill. With it’s brushed steel exterior, it sure exuded an air of cleanliness. I called her over and Margie happily decided to try it out.

She pushed the ‘Open Door’ button and the door slid open with a “swoosh.” But the door didn’t make the swoosh sound; a speaker did. It sounded like the sound the doors on the Enterprise make when they slide open and closed. This toilet had sound effects! It didn’t stop there, though. After Margie went inside, the door fake-swooshed closed behind her, and, in a polite but sort of robotic sounding voice, the toilet boomed “WELCOME TO THE EXELOO. THE DOOR IS NOW LOCKED. YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES REMAINING.” And then it started playing “What the World Needs Now Is Love” for her. Music! While you pee! Australia for the win.

I don’t really know how I can possibly transition from the EXELOO to the aboriginal rock carvings near Grotto Point, so let’s try an imagination exercise.

Imagine a time before we had things like EXELOOs. Well, actually, I need you to go back and imagine MUCH farther back in time. Say, I don’t know, because nobody knows for sure, but let’s say maybe 40,000 years ago. Imagine that long ago, if you can, because that’s probably how old these aboriginal rock carvings at Grotto Point are.

Yep. I think these pieces of early human art qualify as Pretty Fucking Old. And yet, there they are, on the Spit to Manly walk, extremely well preserved. Etched deep into a large flat area of rock, the outlines of a kangaroo, some fish, and a few boomerangs gave me a very powerful reminder that there were plenty of indigenous people hanging out and living quite happily for thousands and thousands of years.

And, well, that pretty well sums up something I’m really enjoying about Sydney: that you can go on a gorgeous nature walk, one Sunday morning, and take in beautiful water views, see birds flying around that you’d only see in pet stores in America, stumble upon toilets that play music for you, and see rock carvings that are some of the oldest examples of human art on the planet. Yeah, this city is pretty cool.

More Photos From The Walk

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avantbard/sets/72157621983789216/

The Path We Took

View Spit to Manly Walk in a larger map

“Geez, it smells bad!” I say. My initial reaction. The toast looks like a normal piece of buttered toast that has been smeared with the goop that you find collected in the bottom of a shower drain. It smells GodFuckingAwful.

I take a tentative first bite. I don’t think this first taste even has any Vegemite on it, but the overwhelming gag-producing smell wafts off the toast and marches obnoxiously into my nose. I steel myself and take another bite. This bite definitely contains Vegemite.

“Dude. It’s bad!” That’s the only way I can express it.

“Just finish it!” says Jack, my boss. “It’s one piece of toast.”

The smell is really getting to me. But I am smarter than the Vege-Smited toast. An idea occurs to me. When faced with the toughest challenges, humans find a way to overcome the most insurmountable obstacles. I fold the piece of toast in half, forming a sort of toast sarcophagus to trap the smell inside itself.

The next few bites are easier. Success. The taste is very salty, very bitter, and I just know this is going to leave me with terrible breath. Strangely, after about five bites, the rest is easy going. I think my taste buds have given up. Resigned. Gone home for the day. Good luck tasting anything else today, Gabe. We’re on strike.

I am reminded of the first time I tasted red wine. I thought it was terrible and that it tasted like dirt. Now, my favorite wines are the ones that taste the most like dirt. Somehow I don’t think I will start craving spreads that smell like dead everything.

My breath still smells.

“Hi!” I say to the visitors.

“Squak!” they say as they ruffle up their feathers and peer into my bedroom.

I run to the living room (Aussies call it the lounge), grab the camera, and slowly re-enter the bedroom to snap a few photos. I manage to take two quick shots before they decide that they’ve seen enough of me in my underwear and they take off to a neighboring rooftop.

First, Margaret and I gave ourselves a whirlwind walking tour of some of the Sydney suburbs that we thought we might want to live in (they call them ‘suburbs’ even though some of them are not at all suburban). Here’s my quick take on the ones we visited:

• The Central Business District (CBD): way too much like NYC.
• Darlinghurst and Surrey Hills: cute and bohemian.
• Mosman: quiet, leafy, but a little too expensive and not near enough public transportation.
• Kirribilli: very cute, friendly feel, convenient to train and ferry. One of our favorites.
• Milson’s Point: surprisingly dead (for being so close to Kirribilli) and too business-y.
• Crow’s Nest: another favorite with plenty of cafes and shops along it’s main drag while still feeling like a small, friendly neighborhood.
• St. Leonard’s: pretty boring and business-y.

After scoping out the hoods, we started our apartment search online at Domain.com.au. We restricted our search to furnished apartments in Kirribilli and Crow’s Nest, our two favorites of the suburbs we saw, and found a bunch of listings in Kirribilli (and none within our price range in Crow’s Nest). Happily, many of the Kirribilli listings were all by the same real estate agency: Deborah Richardson Real Estate. So we talked to Naton, the agent, and booked appointments to see three apartments in Kirribilli.

Out of the three places we looked at in Kirribilli, one clearly stood out above the others. The flat was in a modern building with a nice lobby and elevator, had a roof deck, and was well furnished. And, well, no surprise here, we liked it so much that we decided to put in an application to lease it. What is surprising, though, is how low-stress it is to lease an apartment in Sydney (compared to, say, New York). I didn’t need to show any pay stubs to prove my salary level. I didn’t need to sign some crazy landlord-specific lease with clauses about what percentage of the floor I had to keep covered with rugs (leases in New South Wales are regulated and standardized by a central body). And, best of all, I didn’t need to pay any sort of broker’s fee for getting the apartment (10% of the annual rent is typical in New York). All I had to do was fill out an application, then wait a day for them to process it and tell me I was approved. Then I just showed up with the security deposit (they call it a ‘bond’ which, incidentally, is held by some standard third-party New South Wales Bond Board, not by the landlord or leasing agent) and the first month’s rent and I signed the lease and got the keys. This is a proper country.

OK, so what’s the place look like? Check out the pictures on Flickr.

The flight out here was actually pretty nice. It all started with a very cute gal checking us in to our V Australia flight at LAX. Margaret and I had four heavy bags to check, and we knew we’d have to pay $100 each because we were over the weight limits, but Danielle, the super nice V Australia employee didn’t charge us anything! Maybe it’s because I mentioned we were moving, or because I smiled a lot, or because V Australia is a new airline and they’re just trying to make everyone write nice blog posts about them right now. Whatever the case may be, we walked away happy and impressed. Thanks, Danielle!

The flight itself was, of course, long. But V Australia has a great entertainment system, even in the economy class, and we had our choice of plenty of movies to watch including some new releases that I had actually ripped onto my laptop to watch on the plane (hah!). Margie watched Twilight (her review: “pretty bad”) and the new The Day The Earth Stood Still (“better than Twilight”) and I watched Vicky Christina Barcelona (my review: not really a comedy, 3/5 stars). But mostly, we slept. I think we probably got around eight hours of sleep in total, which was pretty nice. It’s funny how, when flying internationally, you wake up, realize you have four and a half hours to go, and think “Hey, that’s not long at all!”

And so, eventually, we landed. Clearing customs was a breeze and Jack, my new boss, was waiting to pick us up and drive us to our temporary apartment. Jack even gave us a little driving tour around the neighborhood we’re staying in, called Mosman, in North Sydney. After the tour, Jack went off to the office, leaving Margie and I to explore Mosman on our own, after two much needed showers, of course.

Scenery-wise, Mosman feels a little like the Pacific Palisades near Malibu, California, in that there’s lots of trees, quiet streets, and some really beautiful houses with amazing views of the harbor. We were pretty hungry, so we stopped at one of the first restaurants we came across, Oodles of Noodles, an asian noodle house, where we had, yes, some pretty good noodles. The prices were a bit on the high side, at around A$12 for a big bowl of noodles that would probably cost $9 back in NYC (note that the first price is in Aussie dollars and the second is in US dollars; so, comparably, they’re about equal, but with regards to local income levels, etc, I still think A$12 is a bit much for noodles. I don’t yet know if prices are high here because Mosman is a pretty nice suburb, or if food is just generally more expensive here, or some combination of the two; I’ll collect some more data and report back later. More on expensive food in a minute, though.

After lunch, we took a short walk around the neighborhood, then went to the local food stores to buy some basics to take back to the apartment. Mosman’s main street (I think), Military Road, features specialty stores like a butcher, a cheese shop, fruit and veggie stores, etc. There are smaller and larger supermarkets here as well, from what I understand, but I think it’s cool that the smaller guys have a chance, too. The most surprisingly expensive food item we bought, were a bunch of bananas, which cost us $8, if I remember correctly; the same bunch would have sold for $2 in the US. So, OK, lesson learned: bananas are obviously imported.

Once we were sufficiently loaded up with some food basics, and luxurious bananas, we dropped the food off at our apartment and set out again for a short walk down to Mosman Bay. But, this is starting to feel like a boorishly long post now, so I’ll save details about that walk for another post.

G’Day!

As our company grew, we were creating more pages on the site and making more copy edits than ever before, and it became clear that we were finally ready to integrate some sort of CMS into the site. We evaluated a ton of CMSes out there before deciding that we didn’t need a whole lot of fancy functionality and that we could probably write our own CMS to suit our needs pretty easily. As it turns out, we were right. We built a simple CMS in-house, and it’s been powering our website for many months now with no real hiccups.

To share a little about how we went about it, I put together a short white paper about the Tutor.com CMS describing the architectural design decisions we made, the implementation challenges we faced, and the solutions we came up with. Want to learn more? Read the PDF.

Tutor.com CMS White Paper (PDF)