I woke up, it was about 9.30am. I meant to get up, but I was tired, and the boring radio made me fall alseep again, until about 10.30am. Crud, very late for work now.

I got up, and got ready, had a shower, got dressed etc.

When I came out of the bathroom, my phone rang, it was a message someone had left. It was from my mate in Newcastle, something about calling his phone.

I called him back, and he answered. I spoke to him for a bit, and I found out that he'd called my phone, from a public phone, to ask me to call his mobile phone, because he'd lost it somewhere. Someone had found it, and handed it in, so I obviously didn't have to worry at that point.

He'd already rung our other mate though, who was up there with us, and woken him up, because he works night shift, so he wasn't terribly impressed.

My mate was actually in court today, to deal with the drink driving etc, when he crashed my bike. I left him alone, to deal with whatever he had to deal with there, I said I'd speak to him later.

I sat down on the computer, and checked my email etc. My phone rang again, it was the bike place where I've been getting my bike serviced. The guy hadn't been able to find the seal he'd lost, and so wanted to know which one they'd replaced, and which one he had to reorder.

I had to go around there for him to see, and I told him that I was going to be around there shortly anyway, because I wanted to talk to them. I got off the phone after that.

I had some breakfast, and finished geting ready, and then I headed out. I rode around to the bike place, and parked outside the entrance to the workshop.

The guy came out and had a look, worked out which seal he'd replaced, and not, and then we went inside and had a chat.

I told him that I wanted to book in to get my bike fixed this week, because I want to take off on Friday to go up to Queensland with my mate and his wife.

I said that I thought I might have been pushing it a bit, and if he'd agreed, then I would have had to take my bike elsewhere to get fixed up, but he said that he could probably fit it in this week.

I told him that all that needed doing was replacing the seal, installing new clutch plates, and a new back brake would be good too.

He said that didn't sound too hard, and that they should be able to fit me in towards the end of the week.

He got right on the phone to the wholesaler while I was there, telling the guy I needed the stuff to be fitted on Thursday, and he said he'd try to get the stuff out today.

The guy said he'd have a look for the seal, he'd misplaced it since Christmas, and he'd try to find it to fit it on Thursday.

I left there, and I went back home.

I'd seen on hackaday.com, something about a portable USB battery charger thingy, good for phones and ipods etc. I thought that something like this would be handy, since I'll be away from computers for a few days, and while on the road, I won't have any way to charge my ipod, and the battery only lasts for abnout 10 hours, and we could be going longer than that in one day.

I'd decided to make one, it's not all that hard, basically just a 5v regulator, a 9v battery, a usb socket, and a box to put it all in. I'd decided to add a power switch, and an LED (and dropping resistor) to show when it was on, so I went through the jaycar catalogue, found all the cat numbers off the parts, and took off to go and get them.

I rode out the Erina, went into jaycar, and started grabbing all the bits, no great issue, it was only about $15 worth of stuff.

I went into Erina Fair after this. There was a good looking chick having a smoke in the car park when I turned up, so I was trying to look cool, but the kickstand on my bike jammed, and I nearly dropped my bike while parking it, that must have looked really impressive.

I had some WD40 in the saddlebag, so I sprayed that on the kickstand to stop it from jamming again. After that, I noticed the chick was gone, so she probably didn't see any of it anyway, or had to go away to piss herself laughing.

I went in, and I went around to the hairdresser I go to. I asked the guy about getting a green mohawk done, but that it was probably a bit late in the day (now after 1pm), he said I should come back on Friday, and I said I'd be half way to Queensland then, so we arranged it for Thursday, at 12.30pm.

Hmm, I have to come back 3 days later, just because I'm an hour too late today, oh well, I'm not going to work on Thursday anyway, since my bike is in getting serviced, and I'd nothing better to do while I wait, I'd just be sitting around at home, like I usually do while I wait for my bike to get serviced, sounds fine.

I went around and got some lunch in the food court, and then I went back to my bike, and I took off, and rode home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making up the usb charger, mounting it all in a box. While I was doing it though, I got a bit carried away with the superglue I was using to mount everything, and the switch ended up full of glue, so it wasn't a switch for very much longer.

Once it was done, it looked like it should work, I tested it with the meter, there was a bit more than 5v coming out of the regulator, but I figured that was because there was no load.

I plugged the ipod in, and it sort of recognised it.. it would change to the "do not disconnect" screen, but it wouldn't charge. Hmm.

I looked back at the instructions for the charger, and someone said that ipod minis need the usb data lines tied to ground to charge. I made that modification, and then tried again, but it made no difference, it did exactly the same thing.

I did a bit more reading, and found on some other page, someone saying that the ipod mini will only charge off usb when the data lines are connected to a host, ie it won't charge off a powered usb hub unless the hub is attached to a pc. Great, this is now totally useless, what a waste of time.

I had thought about the fact that the standalone charger that comes with it has a firewire socket, but figured it would still charge off usb, because I thought the power pins on the dock connector on the ipod would be common.

When I investigated further though, I realised that this wouldn't be the case, because usb is 5v, and firewire is 12v.

I looked around, and found that you can make a firewire charger too, similarly, it's just 2x 9v batteries, attached to a 12v regulator, and a firewire socket. I'll have to try to find a place to get the parts, and time to make it up, in the next few days.

I had a couple of drinks, and sat around watching tv for a bit.

I'd also bought a basic preamp kit at jaycar, I'm hoping it will boost the microphone level up to line level, so I can use 2 microphones in the line in on the sound card (in that recording box I still haven't got going properly).

I sat and put that together, but then couldn't be bothered to find a power adapter to run it off.

I watched more tv, cooked some dinner, ate it, and watched more tv.

I went to bed some time after that, don't know what time.