One months 2talk's VoIP service < One days parking in Wellington city

Looking at bank statements this just caught my eye .. crazy how relative costs pan out.

Base rate for a fixed IP and SIP trunk = $11.50.

Early bird Wilsons Car-park in Upper Willis Street Wellington = $12.

Kids bike seats

Tested 2 front sears (ibert - not shown and WeeRide) and 1 rear (Hamax Sleepy). 

Results - all were a bit harder to fit (our 4 bikes) than expected. My partner is short (4'2) s/xs frame, I am average height (5'10) medium frame. We both have a hardtail and a full-sus. I have 2 GTs and my partner has 2 specialised bikes (the hardtail is a womens XS and the full-sus a small unisex (actually a better fit). 

Results (from worst to best):

a) none work on my partners bikes, the frames are simply too small and/or her arms are too small for our the front mounting options.

b) The WeeRide was fiddly, but once installed the spreader bar could be left on. 

• I didn't like the idea of leaving the spreader bar on, 
• switching bikes would be painful
• I didn't like the feeling of stability of the bar once fitted so I didn't test on the road
• The child's position (given bike geometry) was further towards me (as the rider) so the position was slightly more awkward. 

That said, in theory it could be near perfect for a full-sys, perhaps it was the second hand one I tried that was a bit worn in.

c) the iBert is my preference for full-sys, that said it had issues but in my mind they are worth it for occasional use:

• I found I needed to remove my handlebars and stem to fit
• I also need to shuffle my levers so they didn't dig into our childs legs .. 
• I wouldn't leave the bar on - unless you want to maim yourself 

Not idea for easy use but once set-up while on a particular holiday .. great.

d) The Hamax didn't work on my full-sus because of frame geometry to make matters worse on my hardtail I needed to remove my front derailleur (cabling issues). Fortunately this is something I planned to do - see earlier entry for 1 x 10 (38 tooth chain-ring). The Hamax mount point is easy to leave on and the rear seat is the best IMHO for road riding. Having my full platform clip ins on the hardtail is also a perfect match.

Reuslts: Hamax sleepy for road riding, iBert for trails.

Email voicemail from asterisk

Nothing too flash - simple stuff and existing capability in TrixBox. Only problem I had was not being able to listen to the wav format recording on my cell (Android) or some desktops - the problem turned out to be common and resolving was simply a matter of changing a line of config, e.g. http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Voicemail+as+email+using+sendmail

voicemail.conf

[general]
; Formats for writing Voicemail. Note that when using IMAP storage for
; voicemail, only the first format specified will be used.
;format=g723sf|wav49|wav
format = wav49|gsm|wav

The only other setting I changed (from default as part of this) was to not store the recording on the server (just email) - basically it is good to pick up the message remotely but having listened to it there is really no need to keep it (IMHO messages age so either listen or delete).

So in review there is now some basic IVR to ask who the message is for and once recorded the recording is emailed to said user. Happy campers.