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Sir Edmund Hillary, first man to climb Everest, died this morning, aged 88. Good innings.

Lisa’s parents came over for lunch on Sunday and during the course of the afternoon discussion turned to an old cottage that used to be in the family in nearby Taradale. After a brief discussion we decided that we’d spend yesterday over there.

After a pub lunch in Castlemaine we kicked off at the cemetery. Lisa and her parents spent some time cleaning up one of the family graves, and The Kid and I wandered around with our cameras.

We then moved on to the Taradale railway bridge. It’s a very impressive 1800′s structure; lots of wrought iron and bluestone.

Next stop was the cottage we initially went to see, and we finally wandered up to Talbot Cottage, another house that used to be in the family. We spoke to the current owner (it’s for sale right now) about what he knew of the history, and found a bunch of interesting stuff.

It turns out that the current owner had a copy of the original title to Talbot Cottage, complete with flourished handwriting detailing all the Talbot owners going back to 1825. He sent it into the titles office when they computerised everything, expecting they’d scan it and send it back, but it never came back to him. I think I’ll go in there next time I’m in the CBD and see whether I can get a copy of it.

As expected there’s some shots up on flickr. I’ve also got a few more shots of the kids up on SmugMug.

Here’s a world clock with a twist.

My high school math and physics teacher.

Thirty years ago today — 3rd August, 1977 — was the day that the TRS-80 model 1 was released.

This was an iconic computer and one that I’ll always think of very fondly. It was the first computer I owned, and I can’t imagine how many thousand hours I spent using it.

Good memories.

Neat picture.

On Saturday night (amid 787 hoopla), Boeing had all of the 787 airline representatives at the Museum of Flight. At 7:07 PM, an Omega Air Refueling Services 707 landed in front of the crowd. At 7:17, an AirTran 717 landed. This continued until 8:17 when an Air France 777-300ER landed. In the end, the 707, 717, 727, 737, 747, 757, 767 and 777 were lined up nose-to-tail on the taxiway.

There’s an article on BBC Sport at the moment about how Lewis Hamilton’s team-mate (some spanish guy) thinks Lewis is getting better treatment at McLaren.

The real gem in this article is a link to a video from the BBC archives. It’s a 12 year old Lewis Hamilton appearing on Blue Peter talking about karting and his F1 aspirations.

Lewis Hamilton won the Canadian Grand Prix yesterday. He now leads the championship by 8 points.

Murray Walker:

It’s more than feasible that he could win the championship this year, which would be incredible.

There aren’t enough superlatives for what Lewis is doing race after race.

It is unprecedented in the history of Formula One. I’ve been watching Formula One since it began and I have never seen anything like this in my life, it is quite incredible.

We went to Buda in Castlemaine yesterday. It’s a historic home that dates from the 1850′s and 1860′s.

The Kid didn’t really think much of the interior of the home, but adored the garden. It’s on 1.2 hectares, and she loved running around all the paths and finding all the hidden little nooks and crannies. The garden is apparently pretty much the same as it was 150 years ago; kind of neat to think that she was running around and laughing the way kids would have done during the goldrush. I put a gallery up on SmugMug.

I’ve had a bit of a read through The Gentleman’s Magazine that I found earlier, and it’s interesting stuff.

Take a look at this snippet:

That’s for May/June 1860 in the Districts of London. A huge number of deaths for people under the age of 20.

Love this passage from an obituary for a gentleman named C. Scarisbrick. A bounder and a cad, no doubt.