I thought I’d take my life in my hands and trust the Lonely Planet walking tour as I’d previously done in Singapore and Hobart, amongst other places. This one gives a walking distance of 4.5km and recommends “all day for walking and grazing” which – to be honst – is fair. Given that the stop-off’s include a gallery, two museums and a zoo I can see this being a day-long adventure if the mood takes you.

There was every likelihood that I would start to flag in the early afternoon as I’d awoken at 5:50 to see Delphine off on her trip north to the red centre and beyond. I’ll catch up with her in Darwin in two weeks’ time where I expect to hear good things and see photos of the Adelaide to Alice part. There are still some major road trips to be done in Oz – Great COast Road, Adelaide to Alice, Perth to Darwin and also the Kakadu / Darwin / Litchfield safari. Yes, I’m going to have to come back here.

My first stop wasn’t actually on the walk itself. A local bakery were doing a promotion which had been advertised at the hostel. Today only, approach the counter and say “Mother says there are 100 chocolate chips in every choc chip hot cross bun” and get a free second bun and can of energy drink. I had a feeling I’d need the sugar.

Then I got sidetracked. I wandered down to Fowler’s Live to buy a ticket for tonight’s Reel Big Fish gig, but they don’t have a box office. I’d tried to book the ticket online the night before, but the web site was insisting that I have the ticket delivered. A little awkward on the day of the concert! At the time of writing I’m still not sure if I can be bothered walking back to the venue in the evening to see if they sell tickets on the door.

I wandered off up to the Museum, which is on the walk, and then decided I’d just pick out the highlights as I’d already wandered along about 3/4 of the route with Delphine over the last few days.

The museum’s a good one, though a little small. Still, it’s free entry and the layout is superb. I really liked the giant squid exhibit which runs vertically up four floors alongside the lift in one corner of the building. Touch-sensitive computer screens next to the exhibit give information on various critters that can be seen in the glass tube while lights highlight the fishy thingy you’re being given information about. Very smart.

At points in the main exhibition halls there are comfy seats with more computer screens bolted to the. This allows you to sit and “virtually wander” around some of the exhibits. Smashing idea.

Next to the museum is the art galler – also free – but the only thing that interested me was the collection of Egyptian art on loan from the Louvre. Sadly, despite an impressive list of about eight official sponsors – it was $18 to get in so I U-turned and sat down with my hot (now cool) cross buns and can of Mother.

The buns were delicious, the energy drink amongst the worst I have ever tasted.

Next I popped into the State Library. This is quite small compared to others I have visited – about the size of Low Fell library back home. Still, the variety of books is good. And they have free internet access including wireless. So for those of you with laptops, this is definitely somewhere worth traipsing to. They even provide comfy seats and power points!

I took a couple of photos of some statues on the way back to the hostel – Robbie Burns and the national war memorial.

The afternoon was spent sat on a comfy couch in the lounge reading Dave Gorman’s Google Whack! Adventure from cover to cover. And also mixing Nutella and crunchy peanut butter. Possibly the sickliest foodstuff in all creation. Between that and the energy drink I must be pushing sugar overload.

The hostel runs a quiz on Monday evenings and I’m happy to say that despite being the only person playing solo I didn’t come last! Still, I didn’t win anything but it timed well with Craig (who I know from an age-old newsgroup) being free for a beverage. Or four.

It was great to finish my stay in Adelaide with a few pints of Pale when we eventually found a bar that was still open. I also found out that Craig’s mum works in the YHA tour office. I may pester her in the morning just to annoy him!

To fill in some empty bits from the last couple of days and ensure I haven’t missed anything (and to have a rant):

Last night after I posted the blog up, Delphine very kindly made me dinner. Now, I’m not sure if this was return payment for my (in)famous stew to which I treated her the previous night; or whether – as is more likely – revenge. Whichever, I ended up with more pasta and bacon than enough to choke a large cow.

Don’t get me wrong. It was delicious. I just notice that I had as much on my plate as was on Delphine’s and her friend’s combined. Now I know I look like I’ve lost weight recently, but that’s just taking the Michael. Having said that, I did manage to get about 2/3 of the way through it out of sheer stubborn-ness and force of will.

And just to make a point, I ate 4/5 of a foot-long jam swiss roll. Of course, I gave the remainder to the chef. Nice, but needed custard.

The other thing that springs to mind about the hostel is the dodgy wireless. The staff here aren’t IT-trained, which is fine. It’s not their job. The problem is that the guy who does maintain the network is a one-man band and the wireless keeps dying. The usual solution is to reboot the little white box on the counter.

[Warning: technobabble]

This box is only a wireless hotspot, it’s not a router. As such, it doesn’t provide IP addresses to computers. It simply links them to the network at which point another machine does the DHCP work. So problems come in two varieties – no network connectivity (Netgear at fault) or network available, but DHCP failing (big silver PC at fault).

The big silver PC doesn’t have any power lights, a monitor, a keyboard or a mouse. So when it falls over, it’s impossible to tell what’s happened. Cycling the power is the only way to remedy it and even then, if it fails to boot you just don’t know why.

One of the staff was looking on while I did my best to tinker and said that their system was overly-complex but they needed all five (five!) machines because of the tasks involved:

Booking system

Network for staff

Network for guests

Wireless network for staff and guests

Internet connectivity

He wholeheartedly believed that they didn’t have the budget for a new machine capable of combining all these into one system. As it would need a “twin processor, giga-something, huge machine”.

Hum. I was running NT4 Server on a Pentium-90 maybe eight years ago. With two network cards in, it would be perfectly capable of running two (bridged or unbridged) networks and – I believe – providing DHCP to both. Of course NT4 is moth-eaten by now, but even Win2k Server would suffice easily.

Internet connectivity would best be handled with a combined wireless router / firewall box. Belkin, Netgear and so forth sell these for small change these days.

The booking system would run on a 486, so at most a separate low-spec PC just to keep it separate for redundancy reasons would be fine.

Anyway, I’m not the guy in charge and I’m fully aware of how protective IT staff get over their pet projects. I’m just the same myself! As they say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The thing is, this network keeps breaking…

[end of technobabble – sorry about that]