Andy's Photo Blog

Experiments with HDR

2012-02-11T18:15:00.000+11:00

For a while I've been wanting to have a try at a High Dynamic Range photo.

This technique is used where if you set the exposure right for one part of the photo it's too dark or light in another part of the photo, and there is no adjustment that makes it acceptable. I've seen it used where there is a large range between the brightest and darkest parts of a scene, such as strong sunlight and deep shadow. If you adjust for the bright light, then then everything in shadow is just black, but if you adjust it so you can see what's in shadow, then the sunlit parts of the image are overexposed and maybe pure white.

HDR involves merging a series of images at different exposures and using the best parts from each.

Here I took 3 images at different exposure settings and then combined them into a fourth. I put something white in the foreground to reflect the light back.

I tried another one with more of the image in shadow.

I was going to do some more, but the cloud came over and the bright sun disappeared. Maybe I'll try it again when there's something more exciting to photograph.

Post-Christmas & Australia Day

2012-02-05T17:14:00.003+11:00

Things have been a tad quiet after Christmas.

We went for a cruise around the lake which was nice and relaxing, Then cycled around the lake, which was not. It was the first time in about 10 years that I've been on a bike, so cycling for 24km in 2 hrs created a few tired muscles that I hadn't used for a while.

Here are some pictures from the lake cruise.

The Carillion.

The small posts by the side of the lake each have the name of an Australian of the Year. With a 50 or so spare. Interestingly, they are positioned relative to 5 lines, and if treated as musical notes, they make up the National Anthem.

I still don't know why they have put up one flagpole here and a couple of trees to ruin the symmetry. I bet the politicians decided this. Or they decided to skimp on the price of the second flagpole.

Coco learnt a new trick over Christmas. He now drops a squeaky toy into the water and jumps in after it. But only as far as the steps. And of course most of the time it drifts away from him.

Ooops. Too far away.

"Will you get it for me?" His tail wags a million times a minute, so it's always blurry in photos.

On Australia Day, Karyn and I went to a friend's place for a bbq and a games afternoon. It seems to be popular with the neighbours and relatives. The kids especially love it, and compete for medals, bags of lollies, and the honour of standing on the winner's podium.

There was a football-throwing competition.

A gum-boot throwing competition.

A golf pitching competition.

A ball-tossing competition.

An egg-and-spoon race (with the older kids having to run backwards).

A sack race.

Winners of the senior kids egg and spoon race.

Winners of the sack race.

Karyn managed to defeat the senior kids in the ball tossing competition decider.

But she did no good in the thong-tossing competition.

Kids tug-of-war competition.

Willo, the host. Never to be seen without a can in his hand.

Christmas Break

2011-12-31T16:08:00.002+11:00

I've had a week off over Christmas, and I've taken the opportunity to do a few interesting things. I went on a few dives and went up to see what's left of the Mt Stromlo observatory since it was pretty well destroyed by bushfires a few years ago.

I went on a dive trip out to Black Rock, about 20min off the coast from Bateman's Bay. I wasn't sure what the conditions would be like because many of the nearby beaches were closed because of the high surf caused by a nearby anti-cyclone. You can see from the photo below that the waves were still pretty large and higher than the boat itself, but fortunately there was no current to drag you away. Under the water it was quite peaceful with pretty good visibility though a fair amount of floating sediment.

Going up the anchor line back to the boat

Nudibranchs

"a shell-less, marine snail of the suborder Nudibranchia, having external, often branched respiratory appendages on the back and sides" - Dictionary.com

Starfish

Not a great picture of a starfish, but I was being dragged through an underwater tunnel by the current and I couldn't stop to take a better picture.

A close-up picture of a sponge.

A soft coral with a really interesting shape.

Mt Stromlo

The observatory on Mt Stromlo was pretty-well totalled by bushfires a few years ago. But since then there has been some reconstruction. Mt Stromlo is about half an hour's drive out from Canberra.

One of the domes looked ok, but when we peered in through the windows we noticed that everything inside had been destroyed, but still in place. Unfortunately the observatory was closed on the day we went there, so we couldn't go inside. It looks like they have repainted the exterior but preserved the interior.

Some of the other domes weren't so lucky.

There used to be a telescope mounted here.

There seem to be quite a few new small domes around.

Some of the new domes.

Kangaroos were all over the place.

The view from the top, looking over towards Canberra. Black Mountain tower is in the distance on the left.

The new Canberra arboretum

2011-10-17T22:51:00.000+11:00

This weekend I went for a trip to the new National Arboretum. I drive past it every day going to work. It's is a collection of 100 separate tree plantations, with many of these apparently threatened species from around the world. It's not much to look at now, but I'm sure it will get better as the trees grow. There is also a pine planted that is a descendant of the Lone Pine at Gallipoli.

I thought that I'd take some pictures now and more over the coming years. I expect a lot of the trees to be hidden over time by those closer to the roads and paths, so the layout of the plantings may not be obvious.

I just hope we don't lose them to bushfires like the previous forests in this location.

Himalayan Cedars that were planted in the 1920's and that survived the bush fires.

A different view of the Himalayan cedars.

This is the VIP area where they will get visiting Kings, Queens, Presidents, etc to plant trees. This seems to be the last bit of landscaping. They've spend over 5 years building hills and valleys for this arboretum.

I think that these were Californian palm trees. With Lake Burley Griffin in the centre of the shot and Woden (where I work) in the distance.

When I approached this sculpture it looked like a jumble of rusty loops of metal. Not even worth a photo. It was only when I walked down the hill a bit that I saw what it really was. In a few years you may not be able to see it because the trees will be in the way. If the palms grow high it might be visible again in 10 years.

It looks like there are some interesting patterns of trees. Further back, there are is a plot of trees planted in the shape of the Forbidden City in China.

This was reminiscent of a graveyard. It reminded me of a visit to Arlington Cemetery many years ago.

A sculpture made from old tools.

Looking towards Civic in the distance with the base of Black Mountain to the left.

Giant Sequoia? I don't think so. I could jump over them. Maybe in 200 years.

Flying over Canberra

2011-10-13T00:17:00.000+11:00

Late last year Karyn and I went to a charity dinner and auction for Canteen (Teenagers with Cancer) and we ended up buying a joyflight around Canberra. We thought that Matthew would use it, but he never actually ended up organising it before he went to Mexico. It seemed that when Fay and Marlene came for a visit it was a good time to use it, with Karyn chickening out.

Anticipating some reflection from the windows, I used a polarising filter that seemed to work out ok.

Fay and Marlene in front of the plane.

The new arboretum showing all the new trees that have been planted.

This is the Governor-General's place. I once sat at the head of the main banquet table there and I noticed that the big communications tower at the top of Black Mountain sits exactly between two flagpoles at the end of the garden. Not a coincidence, I suspect.

During the flight the pilot called air traffic control and asked if we could circle Parliament House a few times. They said "no worries", so we circled a few times and I got lots of photos. I bet you can't do that in Washington !

A closer view.

This is where I work. Much more fun to be flying around during my lunchtime than sitting at my desk with a sandwich.

Some farms around Canberra. Much greener now that when I went on a balloon trip a few years ago in the middle of a drought.

Here's what the ground looked like in 2009 during the drought. All the grass was dead and bleached almost white.

The instruments. The pilot was trying out an iPad strapped to his left thigh that he had loaded with the relevant maps. He thought it might be more convenient than large paper maps.

Coming back in for a landing.

We taxied back to the hanger.

Floriade - a disappointment this year

2011-10-10T19:02:00.001+11:00

Today I went to Floriade, which is Canberra's annual flower show in Commonwealth Park on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin.

It was apparent soon after entering that I was about a week too late, as many of the flowerbeds showed the ravages of the recent poor weather. I reckon that it was probably at its best last weekend. I can imagine the panic by the organising committee now that it's been announced that the Queen will be visiting next week. I hope they have a few thousand back-up tulips.

Beds full of dead flowers.

A gardener starting to remove dead flower heads.

The whole show also seemed noticeably smaller than last year. There were no sculptures in the lakes like in previous years, and smaller flowerbeds. Despite the dead flowers, there were still a lot in good condition, particularly those that were in more sheltered areas.

Copying what everyone else was doing.

Posing for a photo by Mum. Interesting that teenage girls would agree to wearing matching outfits.

There is an annual competition for the best decorated garden gnome.

A girl and her mother painting a gnome.

Down the coast again, and again

2011-09-24T14:56:00.043+10:00

I've been down to the south coast for 3 weekends in a row. Twice to go diving with Matt, and once to go to the Moruya races with Karyn. And then last weekend we went up to Sydney to go to the races at Warwick Farm. I'm actually glad to have this weekend off.

Here are a few photos from the various weekends.

Stake Knife running 3rd at Moruya.

The jockey (Kayla Nisbet) was pleased with the result. Despite coming back with a face covered in mud. She seems to be always smiling.

We stayed overnight at a place in Bateman's Bay overlooking the water.

Our room.

Having a glass of champagne and enjoying the view.

The view from the room looking out to the East.

I went for a walk after dinner and captured this view of the bridge over the Clyde river. The section in the middle lifts up to let sailboats through.

A moray eel that Matt and I saw on a dive at Broulee.

Some colourful sponges.

A large blue grouper that kept his eye on us.

This is the beach at Broulee where we went diving. There was a very strong rip just off the rocks that quickly sucked us out into the deeper water. Just as we were getting dragged out in the strong current I remembered that I hadn't locked the car doors.

Karyn and I on a bus trip to Warwick Farm with the Women In Racing crowd. I reckon Karyn had a champagne glass glued onto her hand for the whole trip.

We were invited by the racecourse manager to view the start of a race from the starter's position. The next three show the horses jumping from the barriers.

Father's Day - underwater

2011-09-05T22:28:00.000+10:00

This weekend Matt and I went on a father-son diving weekend down to Bateman's Bay to celebrate Father's Day.

We drove down on Saturday afternoon, and had a couple of dives planned for Sunday. It was a good drive, and when we checked into the motel they upgraded us to a better room - so we felt it was going to be a great weekend.

The wind was starting to pick up when the boat left the Bay, and they had to change the dive destination because of the big swell to a more sheltered spot off a place called Black Rock - a small volcanic outcrop about 20 minutes out to sea.

It was chance for Matt to practice his photography as well.

Once we were underwater it was a lot more peaceful that on the surface. There are a lot of things to see such as the plants below. And even the acid-yellow coral growing on the rock.

We were also surrounded by big blue groupers. They weren't the slightest bit worried about us - they were only curious and would come right up to you. Sometimes it was downright scary to look to one side and suddenly see one of the just floating next to you.

As you can probably see, under the water everything looks a blue/green/grey colour. This is because the water absorbs the red component of the light. The following 2 photos show you the difference when you use a flash. Because there is no red in the light spectrum under the water, a lot of creatures use red to camouflage themselves.

No flash

Flash

Here are some other underwater flora and fauna. Fabulous colours as you can see.

Here is an interesting looking fellow. I thought he was going to attack me for a minute.

All too soon our dives were over, so it was time to drift up to the surface..

Lightning Ridge

2011-08-07T15:08:00.004+10:00

Last weekend Karyn and I went on a bus trip with a group of people from Women In Racing to a place called Lightning Ridge. It's about 750km from Canberra, and is in the middle of NSW - just near the Queensland border.

Where on Earth is Lightning Ridge?

We left Canberra at about 6:30am and got there (after a few stops) at about 5:30pm. We had about an hour's break before we had to front up for a black tie dinner for the International Opal Jewellery Design Association awards. Let me tell you, it was difficult not to just lie on the bed for a few minutes and have a nap. But get ready we did.

Overall, it was a good evening, but it was the sort of environment where if you said that you preferred diamonds to opals, you could find yourself dropped down the nearest mineshaft. These folks weren't half biased towards the opal trade... with lots of cheering and clapping every time a speaker said that the government should do more to promote the opal trade. The best part was when the models walked around displaying the jewellery so you could stare at the girls' chests without your wife hitting you.

At 6:30am the next morning we (except Karyn) got up and went for a swim in the Bore Baths. This is like a swimming pool that is fed directly from an artesian bore dug down about 1 km under the ground. The water comes up at about 42degrees which is like our backyard spa. Apparently it has a high sulphur content, but it wasn't really noticeable.

Refreshed, and ready for the day we went back to the Motel, had breakfast, then went for a tour of Lightning Ridge. It's funny, but I didn't take any photos of the town at all, because it is just 1 or 2 long roads with motels, take-away stores, 1 bank, 1 chemist, 1 community centre, and about 20 opal stores all offering "the best price in town".

Lightning Ridge is an unusual town, with most of the interesting areas being just outside the town itself. We saw what had been a dried-up lake bed for the past 20 years that was now full of water courtesy of the Queensland floods - to the annoyance of people that now have to drive around it rather than straight across it.

We went for a tour of an opal mining area, and came across this church made entirely from corrugated iron. I bet it's hot in Summer.

All around, the landscape looks like the moon. With holes in the ground (mines) and piles of dirt that have been pulled out of them. We were warned not to stray from the road, because there are thousands of mine shafts that you can fall into.

We then visited a cactus farm - they appear to thrive in the hot dry climate.

After morning tea at the cactus farm, some of us who weren't afraid of confined spaces and being deep underground with hundreds of tons of rock overhead, went for a tour of an opal mine.

Later in the afternoon we heard about a "must see" place, so some of us decided to go and see the "Chambers of the Black Hand". I'd seen it earlier in the day, but I had no idea what it was. Its entrance is anything but alluring.

Still with no real idea of what this place was about we were given a detailed security lecture and helmets, and then taken down into the mine.

When we got to the bottom of the stairway we were told that we were just half way down, but what we saw there really amazed us. Firstly, there was a jewellery store there.

Everywhere you looked there were images carved into the rock.

A guide told us that when the mine was first turned into a tourist location, the owner used to get bored between tourists, so took to hand carving the sandstone. Since then it has become an obsession.

Firstly, we were taken down again to the mining level where they showed us where the opals were mined.

Here are cedar supports holding the ceiling up.

Tunnels branching off in every direction.

Tunnels getting narrow at times

This shows a thin band of opal

Then we went back up to the upper level with the carvings. As we moved around we noted that the miner decorated chambers with specific themes, such as an Egyptian tomb, entombed warriors, mystics, African animals, superheros, and classical images.

And finally, back up to the surface.

That night we went to the judging of the annual Opal Queen. Women In Racing are the judges, I think this is because as outsiders we're not related to any of the contestants and can't be influenced by their mothers.

Last year's winner handing over to the new.

First and second.

I couldn't get Karyn off the dance floor for a change.

Last day off

2011-07-15T21:29:00.003+10:00

Today was my last day off before starting a new job, so I had nothing in particular to do except enjoy it. Coincidentally, Diamond Jay was racing at Moruya, so I took the opportunity to take myself off to the coast for the day to watch.

Because I was going by myself, I wasn't in the mood to spend all afternoon at the races, so I decided to take it a bit slower and enjoy the trip there, and maybe take some photos on the way.

There were a few interesting-looking roads of to the side that looked promising, but I didn't really have enough time to explore them.

It was a really nice Winter's day - a bit cool but nice in the sun. I had lunch in a cafe overlooking the Clyde river. The coriander and chilli squid was excellent.

This should have been Diamond Jay who came 6th instead. The jockey got caught in the pack and couldn't get enough speed up in the straight.

On the way home the afternoon light had a nice quality about it.

An old boat of some kind.

I had to pull over to the side of the road a few times to try and capture the great atmosphere.

A day of extremes

2011-06-13T22:57:00.001+10:00

This weekend Karyn and I went down to the south coast of NSW. Mainly, we went there to see two of our horses run at Bega, but we decided to spend the night there and visit the coastal town of Eden as well.

We didn't have much luck with the horses - Stake Knife ran second and Diamond Jay ran eighth. But it was a nice day at the races anyway, and we had a bit of luck with the betting.

After the races on Sunday, we stayed overnight at Merimbula (about 30 minutes drive away). We stayed at a really nice place opposite the golf course, and decided to go to the golf club for dinner. The food was nice, but unfortunately there was a jazz festival on, and they decided to torture us all evening with jazz. I hesitate to call it music. If only the musicians would all play the same tune at the same time!

On Monday morning we drove to Eden, about another half hour south of Merimbula. Unfortunately it was cold, cloudy, with a fine drizzle. We had breakfast there and had a quick look around, but it's the sort of place you need to experience on a nice sunny morning.

We headed back to Canberra, and when we climbed back up to the Southern Highlands we came across a nice little fire. Either someone was burning off some grass, or there was a very productive fire-bug in action. All the following photos were taken from the same spot using my big zoom lens.

Somehow it was amusing to see one lone person with a backpack fire-extinguisher - just in case the fire got out of control.

I was glad I had my 18-270mm zoom lens on me.

Diving with the seals

2011-05-29T22:59:00.001+10:00

Matt and I went diving in a marine sanctuary at Montague Island which is about 40 minutes off the coast of Narooma. Unfortunately I've got a lot to learn about taking photos underwater - it's quite different from taking them on dry land, and seals are tricky things to take pictures of because they just shoot through the water. I have lots of good pictures of their tail fins.

Anyway, I was glad the camera's movie mode worked.

Easter with the sharks

2011-04-23T22:55:00.006+10:00

This Easter we went up to Port Stephens for a few days to visit my mother-in-law.

The highlight of the trip was that Matt and I got to spend a day diving out at Broughton Island which is about 40 minutes off the coast in a marine park. We had a great day, starting off at Feet First Dive at 7am.

The boat took us to the Looking Glass which is a fissure between two halves of a small island where we planned to traverse from one side to the other - but unfortunately the swell was too strong, so we had to move to the protected side and just stay on that side. Even on the sheltered side we got swept around quite a lot - it was a bit like being in a washing machine with the swell moving us 6 feet backwards and forwards with each surge.

We have a new underwater camera housing, but it will take a while to work out how to take good photos underwater. The camera certainly takes a lot longer to focus. There's also a green cast to most of the images that I'll have to try and correct for - but the reality is that the water tends to make everything a blue-green colour.

We weren't there long before a few of the locals came to see what we were doing.

Here the flash reflected off some of the sediment kicked-up by the surge. Fortunately the sharks don't react to an electronic flash.

Waiting at the decompression stop to bleed off some more Nitrogen from our bloodstream ....

You can see the opening in the rockface where we went in just behind Matt.

This is the quiet spot that we pulled into after the first dive and decided to stay here for a second dive.

Matt and I having a break between dives.

Underwater at the second dive site.

Matt exploring.

Matt leading the way.

There was a lot of seaweed around, so I decided to go to ground level and have a look around.

Under the seaweed

Matt discovered this moray eel. You can see why it's a good idea to keep your hand away from its mouth.

Coloured soft corals. Under the water they just look a dull grey colour until you use a torch or flash to return some red light to the spectrum.

Matt

Returning to Nelson Bay after the dive.

Scuba diving at Bateman's Bay

2011-04-03T16:04:00.003+10:00

Over the past few weeks, Matt and I have been going down the coast to go scuba diving.

Matt recently learnt to dive, and is keen to get some experience under his belt. It's been interesting for me to take up diving again because I haven't dived for probably 20 years. I gradually stopped diving when we moved to Canberra because it really isn't convenient to dive when you live 2 hours from the coast compared with living in Sydney. Before coming to Canberra I'd been a scuba instructor for 5 or 6 years, but getting into the water again after so long was surprisingly easy - it's like riding a bike. Personally I'm pleased to see that I finish the dive with more air in my tank than anyone else, which reflects a degree of relaxation under the water coupled with efficient movement through the water - the lack of either of which causes you to breathe heavier.

There have been some improvements to dive equipment, but not as much as I expected. None of my old equipment is really any good now - too much of the rubber has perished. My wetsuit also seems to have shrunk. Surprisingly, people at the dive shops keep saying that the equipment now is so much better than in the past - they assume that ours were very primitve - but I don't find them any better. I think that there is an incorrect assumption that newer=better.

We've joined a dive club and so far have had several shore dives at Bawley Point, about 20 minutes north of Bateman's Bay.

This is a popular spot where we've seen sharks, stingrays, cuttlefish, moray eels, octopus, and many, many, types of fish. So many types of fish that I've had to pull out one of my old fish-identification books to help remember which is which.

We've been driving down to the coast on Friday afternoon and staying overnight; having a couple of dives on Saturday, and then driving home on Saturday afternoon. Then spending Sunday recovering.

We are going up to Port Stephens in a few weeks, so we'll do some diving up there as well.

Fashions on the Field - a photographic experience

2011-02-27T22:13:00.005+11:00

I went to the races by myself today because Karyn wasn't well. There were 2 reasons, firstly because we'd already committed to going to a Women in Racing event there, and also because one of our horses was running in the last race.

The WiR lunch was OK, but a bit boring because I was sitting at a table with strangers with no-one to talk to. Everyone else were couples. So I decided to walk around outside and take some photos. As luck would have it, there was a "fashions on the field" competition just outside the function room, so I thought to myself that it would be interesting to try and take photos of the girls on the stage and see what I learnt from the process. I learnt quite a bit: some things at the time and others after the event when processing the photos at home.

The first thing I learnt was that amateur models don't pose for the cameras. The girls were maybe concentrating on not falling off the stage or trying to remember how models walk. Too often I waited for the right shot that never came as the girls just swept past the point where they were supposed to stop.

Next, it's hard to get the whole girl in the photograph without becoming distant. You have to be content with getting half of maybe two thirds of her in the frame. This was certainly complicated by models who rarely stood in the same position on the stage, so it was difficult to frame a whole-body shot. This must be an important issue for fashion photographers who want to get both the hat and the shoes in the same shot. Maybe it's a matter of what type of photograph you want, and I prefer portraiture to fashion. It certainly seemed that the facial expressions were important to me. And pleasant expressions at that.

From this distance you do tend to notice the clothes more than the person.

Lesson - hats can make it difficult to capture the face. It would have been good to use a flash, but I was standing back and using a zoom.

Lesson - bad luck with someone in the background. In both this and the previous, the girls not yet on stage didn't have their modelling face in gear.

Lesson - expect to catch the blink. I seemed to have caught a lot of girls blinking. I probably should have used rapid fire mode.

Here are some of the photos that turned out OK.

This is the girl that I think will win. She smiled at the crowd, she smiled at the judges, and most importantly, she smiled at the photographers.

Oh, and as for the horse racing.... Diamond Jay came 6th.

A weekend at Merimbula

2011-02-06T23:30:00.012+11:00

Last weekend we had a trip down to Merimbula, which is about 3.5 hours drive away. Merimbula is on the south coast of NSW just above Eden, near the border with Victoria.

We were going to drive down on the Friday, and then spend 2 nights there, but there was so much rain we decided to go on the Saturday instead.

So on Saturday, we drove down early and visited Mogo Zoo. Unfortunately it was unbearably hot, about 36 degrees and 90% humidity. While we were walking around the sweat was running down our backs and also down our legs. The weather seemed to suck all the energy from us.

We'll have to go to this zoo again, but perhaps in winter when it will be a lot more pleasant and the animals more active. On this day most of them were hiding under trees and bushes, trying to avoid the heat of the day.

That night we stayed at a great guest-house in Merimbula. Rated 5 stars. Here was our view.

On the way in I saw a small pond or lake that offered some photo opportunities. So after unpacking our bags in our nicely air-conditioned room, I walked down to the lake. When I got there, there was a great scene of a few ducks getting ready to take flight, but when I took off the lens cap, the lens fogged up completely. I realised that this was because I'd had my lenses out in the cold bedroom, and the lens canp insulated the lens from the heat outdoors, so when I took it off, it was like taking an icy cold can of beer outside on a hot day - the condensation started immediately. So that photo never eventuated. I had to wait about 10 minutes before the condensation evaporated again.

We were a bit disappointed at the races on Sunday where one horse came 3rd and the other 5th.

Spiders, spiders, everywhere ...

2011-01-23T20:10:00.000+11:00

Over the past week or so we've been invaded by spiders. Well, actually, by spiders and bull-ants.

I don't think I've ever seen so many spiderwebs. Every morning when I go out back to check on the swimming pool, I either walk into one or just avoid one. There's even been webs woven right across the swimming pool.

Normally spiders don't worry me too much, except the other night Matt and I watched a movie called "Ice Spiders" which basically involved giant spiders eating everybody at a ski resort. That is, eating them after a) ripping their limbs off, or b) crushing their heads or c) paralysing them and wrapping them in a cocoon.

So every morning the sunlight catches webs on fences (like above), or in the roses, or just about anywhere. I can't work out how one managed to spin a web right across the pool to a tree on the other side.

The bull-ants aren't as scary, but if we are sitting on the floor watching TV we sometimes see the inch-long ants exploring. It's not too bad unless you see one about to bite your finger or something.

I got a new f1.8 lens the other day, so I've been playing around with it so see how well it performs. I got it to allow me to take better indoor photos without a flash, but it seems to take nice sharp photos outside as well.

Stop Press:

I just went outside and another spider, or maybe the same one as previously, had strung a single strand across the width of the pool and was building a new web. It moved so quickly it was hard to take a non-blurry photo in the evening light. I guess that means that we'll have good weather tomorrow.

GPS shopping ... grrr

2011-01-02T12:20:00.003+11:00

Today we went shopping for a new GPS for Karyn's mother.

It seems that most of the shops don't actually want to sell you a GPS. There was either:

nobody around to sell you one (various stores)
when there was someone to serve you they were from the TV section and didn't know anything about GPSs (Dick Smith)
a problem with their GPS display so they couldn't actually turn one on and demonstrate anything to you (David Jones)

Thank goodness for Harvey Norman. They had staff who knew about GPSs and were capable of discussing their relative features, a display stand that let you play with the GPSs, and importantly, a post-Christmas sale that made a purchase attractive. So of course we bought one from there.

Building fences

2010-12-30T00:26:00.002+11:00

I had a week off over Christmas as my employer had a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and the New Year. But did I just sit back and relax? No.

Being the industrious person that I am, I helped my neighbour build a new fence between our properties. Two and a half days in heatwave conditions constructing a new fence.

We ship-lapped the palings (ie attached 2 palings and then a third over the top covering the join, and screwed each covering paling with 6 screws. So hopefully the fence will stay in good condition for the next 20 years. A much better job than our other fences done by professional fencing companies - in my opinion.

So now our dogs don't threaten and bark at each other through the fence because they can't see through it.

It was also worth it to stop Karyn complaining that I was just sitting around the house doing nothing. She didn't complain for the whole following week!

Girl talk ....

2010-12-26T23:59:00.006+11:00

Di and Donna came over today for a Christmas drink or two.

We were sitting outside chatting, when the talk turned to shopping and the great bargains at the shops. I think that Coco aptly demonstrated my mood.

Ok so far.

Oh no, they're talking about shopping.

My head is starting to hurt. I'll just close my eyes for just a moment.

If I prop my head up maybe they'll think I'm still interested..

Don't talk to me about apprentices

2010-11-20T23:59:00.001+11:00

This weekend we went to the races at Adaminaby to see Diamond Jay race.

While we weren't expecting her to win, we were quietly hopeful. Because of our two recent wins we had a large weight penalty allocated by the handicappers, but we still thought that we were in with a chance. To offset the extra weight we were using an apprentice that could claim a 3kg reduction.

The weather turned out to be great, which was a nice change from the previous weeks where it was wet or cold or both.

I should have mentioned that Adaminaby is one of those small country towns that has a race day once a year that is always great fun to attend. The whole town turns up, I reckon. Here are a few miscellaneous shots I took of the early races; being a smaller track meant that you are closer to the action, especially compared to other tracks where you can't get very close to the winning post itself.

Our strategy for Diamond Jay's race was to stay at the back and run against the fence all the way until the final turn where we would run wider and race down the outside to the finishing line.

Here is a picture of the horses just after the start. Ours is in the centre of the picture with the pink and dark blue check. Can you see where he is racing?

Not against the rail, and not at the back.

You see, our rider was an apprentice, who despite being told what to do, decided to run his own race. And this meant running the horse mid-field, and 3 horses wide, All the way around the track.

All the way around, the racecaller kept saying things like "Diamond Jay is working hard running 3 deep around the bend ..." "Diamond Jay is having a hard time of it overtaking the other horses running so wide ..." etc, until we heard "Diamond Jay is dropping back in the straight.."

That's why this guy has been added to our "don't use again" list.

After the race he said that the horse jumped from the barrier so quickly he was taken by surprise. He then said that she was running so strongly that he didn't want to pull her back (like he was supposed to) because she would lose her head of steam (like she was supposed to). He stayed 3 wide because there were other horses against the fence and he would have to drop back (like he was supposed to) to get to a position near the fence.

The big downside of apprentices - they don't listen, and if they do the either don't do as they're told or they can't. Or maybe I'm being unfair to other apprentices. But it's not the first time that an apprentice has messed things up for us badly.

A new roof at last

2010-11-08T01:31:00.004+11:00

I’ve been nervous about rain for a while now, ever since we had a big storm and the rain poured down through the downlights in the ceiling. So every time it rains I start listening for the sound of water dripping onto wet carpet.

Several times we’ve had roof tilers in to repair the tiled roof, and yet each time there’s another large storm we get more water in.

So finally we decided to replace the roof with one made from Colourbond steel. Lovely large sheets of unbroken steel from the ridgecapping to the gutters.

The installers also added a sheet of R1.5 insulation between the metal and the roof battens, so that it is actually quieter in the rain that the old tile roof was. On the one hot day that we've had so far this Spring, the upstairs bedrooms were also cooler.

Pardon the mess, but Matt had some mates around, so wet towels, etc, were strewn around waiting for someone else to put them away.

Two in a row

2010-11-02T16:10:00.000+11:00

This week we went to Moruya for its Melbourne Cup Day races.

This time Diamond Jay was in the second race. It’s a nice change from normal where we seem to be always in the last race. For me, that means that I get the chance to take better pictures because there will be more light around. At Bombala a fortnight ago I was battling rain and dark clouds that made taking a high-speed photo difficult.

We decided to get there early because the racing club wouldn’t allow us to book a table in the Members’ Area, and we thought that if the weather was awful we wouldn’t want to be stuck outside. So we got there early enough to get the best table near the windows.

It seemed to drizzle the whole way to Moruya, which was worrying. But when we arrived the rain stopped. The sun even came out after a while and there was even a large spectator turn-out.

It turned out to be a great day, with Diamond Jay winning by 2 lengths.

The crowd was deafened by the screams of delight from Karyn and Penny who then raced down to give DJ a good pat.

Karyn, as usual, gave a speech at the trophy presentation. Unlike last time when the crowd ran away as she spoke, this time they hung around.

A final pose for the photographer… As usual, we couldn’t get the trophy away from Penny for the rest of the day.

The Bombala races for real

2010-10-24T18:33:00.002+11:00

Since the abortive trip to the races at Bombala last weekend, the weather has been great, with lots of sun and blue sky. It was a great contrast to he horrible weather last weekend, and we heard that the races had been transferred to the following weekend.

Unfortunately the weather on Saturday was again rotten - an island of unpleasantness in otherwise nice days. I reckon the people of Bombala were being punished for something. Maybe serving warm beer or overcharging tourists.

All day the black clouds came rolling over us, bringing more and more rain. The only races that weren't rained on were the first and the last. Which was very fortunate for us. You see, the Women in Racing association that Karyn is a member of was sponsoring the first race, and because we were the only ones making the trek back down to Bombala this weekend, Karyn got asked to make the trophy presentation to the winner. She did a fantastic job.

Here she is with the President of the Bombala Jockey Club - Graeme Payten.

We were surprised later when Karyn and Penny were asked to help judge the "fashions on the field" competition. I reckon that anyone who gets dressed up for a country race meeting in the pouring rain deserves a medal. Here is Karyn and Penny with Barbara Joseph who formed the judging committee.

Here was the final winner.

Our horse, Diamond Jay was running in the last race, which was brought forward 15 minutes to try and avoid an approaching stormfront. Here is the result.

Diamond Jay won by a long neck.
It's not the best photo because of the need to use a fast shutter speed in very poor light.

This time Karyn had to accept the trophy instead of presenting it. Unfortunately just as she took the microphone the rain poured down and the crowd ran away. But she and Penny didn't care. It's always the win that counts.

Just a few miscellaneous photos.

Rain closing in before the last race.

A trip to nowhere in particular

2010-10-16T23:43:00.000+11:00

Today we were supposed to go the races at Bombala. Bombala is a small town about an hour south of Cooma, which itself is about 2 hours south of Canberra.

Bombala has a single race day each year as a major fund-raiser for the local schools, emergency services, rural fire brigade, etc. The racecourse is actually just a pub with a racetrack attached. This is what it was like the last time we went in 2002.

Anyway, Karyn is in a club called “Women in Racing” that does regular trips to events like this, so we decided to go along and avoid having to drive ourselves. However, when we got to the bus at 7:30am we were told that the races were cancelled because of the recent heavy rains and the predictions for further rain during the day. It was a further disappointment for us because one of our horses, Diamond Jay, was going to be racing there.

Nevertheless, the trip was still on they said. They would find somewhere for us to go – like a kind of mystery bus trip.

It was a great trip, with lots of alcohol involved, starting at around 8am. I took pictures of Karyn all day and night with a champagne glass in her hand at each time. But she refused to let me put the pictures up here.

So we ended up at a little place south of Bombala called Delegate. It can’t be too far from the Snowy mountains because it was so bloody cold.

Here are some pictures of the place.

As you can see, the town is really just a pub with a few other buildings for company. Most of which seemed abandoned.

So we spent the best part of the day in the local pub, which fortunately had its own TAB and plenty of TVs showing the Sydney and Melbourne races.

All day the weather changed from sun, to sleet, to snow, and back to sun. The temperature was close to freezing all day. And the wind was about 50-60 km/h – so the snow and sleet was blown horizontal. I was only about to get out once for a walk, and even then I couldn’t go far because the next sleet/snow shower was never more that about 15 minutes away.

But the group of people we were with were fun and we had a great day.

There be dragons

2010-10-01T18:53:00.002+10:00

I was walking near the Canberra Centre today when I saw a fire-breathing dragon.

Although you can't see it in this picture, there were flames coming out of its nose.

Cockington Green

2010-09-27T23:12:00.002+10:00

While Mum was down in Canberra we took the opportuntiy to visit Cockington Green. This is a model village on the outskirts of Canberra that I haven't been to in maybe 20 years. We went there regularly when we first moved to Canberra to show visitors, but then we just stopped going when they'd all seen it.

I was surprised at how much it had grown and in some ways hadn't changed from how I remembered it.

I took the wrong lens for my camera (the 50-250mm one) so I was limited to photos that I could take from a distance. But maybe the photos worked out anyway.

The big challenge was to take photos without someone standing in the shot to upset the sense of size.

We really enjoyed the place and would recommend it to people of all ages. There were a lot of families there on the day that we went, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it.

Floriade

2010-09-25T15:29:00.002+10:00

Mum came down for the weekend, so we took the opportunity to visit Floriade, the annual Canberra flower show. It was a good time to see the flower display as nearly everything was in bloom. In previous years, by the time we've got there, there had usually been a big storm, or torrential rain, or some other natural disaster that damaged the flowers - but this year everything was ok. The weather was good too - the temperature had climbed enough that I could get around in shorts. Mum, however, was covered up to avoid any more skin cancers.

I realised now that I must have a thing for flowers with a red/orange/coral colouring as I can see that most of the photos that I took were of tulips of these colours.

There were a group of people in traditional Polish dress that put on a display of Polish dancing and music, and some hung around for photographs afterwoods.

We were just turning back to the entrance when we looked into a little glade that had interesting decoration.

Spa awning

2010-09-20T01:03:00.000+10:00

Last month we decided to replace the old pergola at the lower back side of the house with something actually useable.

I've never quite worked out the purpose of pergolas - those strange wooden frameworks that just sit there and do nothing. Except need painting. Ours was also dangerous. You see, Karyn liked to hang plants from it. Big ones. Right at head height. Right where the the unwary face could walk straight into them.

So we decided to get rid of it and replace it with a clear perspex roof that extended outwards in an "L" shape to cover the outdoor spa as well. I hate sitting in the spa and getting rained on.

So we had someone come and measure it all up and install a roof. The only problem was that the roof they constructed didn't actually cover the spa. You can see from the following picture how the roof misses about a foot of the spa.

When I rang them up, they said that there was no problem because they had built what we asked for. I said "it doesn't cover the spa". "But it was supposed to be 2.6 metres wide" they said. I replied that the measurement was theirs and that I had asked them for a roof to cover the spa. They claimed that they had no idea why we wanted the roof, so how could they know it was supposed to cover the spa? They were desperate for any excuse by now.

Anyway, I insisted, so they came out and fixed it, and now it covers the spa properly. And to be fair to them, they replaced the whole spa roof at no extra charge. Even though it was now several square metres larger than what they had quoted for. Karyn offered them extra for it, but the boss turned her down. I reckon they knew that they'd measured it wrong as soon as they started erecting it.

The roof is nice and high and I can sit in the spa and watch the stars at night. And not worry about getting wet in the rain.

And no, that's not the same washing on the clothes line.

How could they claim that they didn't know that the roof was supposed to cover the spa?

Karyn's Birthday crystal

2010-08-29T22:55:00.000+10:00

The hard thing about being talented is that people are always wanting you to prove it. Like Karyn did today.

You see it was her birthday yesterday, and I got her a piece of Swarovski crystal as a present. An elephant. Don't ask me why someone would collect crystal; after all there's not much you can do with it. You can't drill holes with it or load games on it.

Anyway, she's been nagging me to put a light in her display cabinet to show off the crystal. So today I did it. I firstly tried LED lighting, but it wasn't bright enough. I had seen some nice lighting in the display cases at the Swarovski shop, but I couldn't get anything close from the lighting shops. We finally decided on a flat compact fluorescent light that would illuminate not only the crystal figures at the top, but the rest of the glassware as well.

The installation was tricky as well because the Parker furniture is very solid and the internals fit pretty tightly, and with all the glass and mirror around, you have to be careful not to shatter it with a misplaced drill bit. In the end I was able to find a 5mm space that I could drill a hole through to get the power in.

I also took the opportunity to try and photograph some of her Swarovski pieces in the cabinet. It was a lot harder than I thought and in hindsight I would have been better taking them outside the cabinet rather then through the glass doors. It's just that the crystal looks much better when directly illuminated.

I really needed a macro lens for this, because I had depth of field problems with these.

I also found it hard to isolate one image from all the light reflections around it. Maybe it would be better isolating each one on a dark background. Maybe I'll try it again on some future rainy day.

Heaven knows what Karyn will do next. Probably use the new cabinet lighting as an excuse to buy some more crystal.

A great weekend in Sydney

2010-08-22T22:22:00.012+10:00

Karyn and I went up to Sydney this weekend.

There were a couple of reasons for the trip. Firstly, we wanted to give our old TV to Jessica because her son has moved out and taken the TV with him; and secondly so that I could go to Mark & Cherie's place and set up a wireless range extender so that James could use his laptop from his bedroom.

It was a great weekend. The weather was perfect and from Mum's balcony you could see clearly across Rose Bay to Potts Point and the city centre beyond.

On Sunday, before we went out to brunch, the local sailing club was in full action, and it reminded me of when I used to sail out there in Rose Bay myself in a boat not much bigger than these.

Here you can see some beginners being towed out to the starting line.

The moves that the government have made over the past few years to reduce pollution in the harbour seems to be paying off - the water seems crystal-clear, with a lovely colour. The sailors don't know how good they've got it - when I sailed out there we had to watch out for huge Sunderland flying boats landing or taking off and heading out to Lord Howe Island. These guys were so powerful that if they turned and caught you unawares, the backwash from their engines would capsize you in a flash.

Fiji Holiday - Overview

2010-07-29T00:31:00.000+10:00

Matt and I spent 10 days in Fiji this winter. It was great. In Canberra, the daily temperature ranged from about 1 to 10 degrees - while in Fiji the temperature ranged from about 21 to 29.

We spent part of our time at the Sheraton Resort and part on a Blue Lagoon cruise.

I must say, however, that the cruise was the highlight of our trip.

We cruised around some of the 300 Fijian islands, stopping off at a few of them.

While the resort was very nice, its beach was no substitute for the crystal-clear waters surrounding the islands, teeming with fish, and bordered by colourful corals.

There wasn't a log of shopping, because we were in a very tourist part of Fiji, so most of the shops nearby were devoted to souveniers. However, Denarau Marina was within walking distance, so we did our shopping there.

2 Chances, but no success

2010-07-18T23:17:00.001+10:00

We went to the races today. It's never happened before, but both of our horses were running at the same race meeting.

The races were scheduled for Queanbeyan, but because of heavy rain during the week the track was too wet. So they switched the races to the synthetic track at Canberra. From the photo below you can see the synthetic track inside the grass track.

Diamond Jay ran first in race two. This was her first run after a spell, so we weren't expecting much other than to be competitive. She did keep up with the leaders, but got trapped against the rails and couldn't get a clear run in the final straight. In the photo below she is at the back of the pack (in pink and blue check colours) and a bit obscured. It looks worse because the horse in front slowed right down at the end and she had no option but to slow down as well. The jockey said she had lots more energy in her, but nowhere to go. Maybe next time.

Hot Eyed Glare ran in the last race and was a disappointment. But consistent with previous form. We had a jockey who's ridden for us for many years and he said that he just didn't want to run and probably never would. So we'll have to get rid of him and find a replacement. Coming down the final straight he just slowed down and everyone passed him. We've tried various distances and track conditions, but nothing has made a difference. In the photo below he is in the pink and blue checked colours second from last.

On the betting front, I came out $1 ahead on the day. Big punter that I am.

Winter + night photography

2010-07-11T23:11:00.000+10:00

This weekend I decided to practice some night photography.

Firstly, I drove up to the Mt Ainslie lookout that has a great view over Canberra. As you can see from the photo below, the planners of Canberra worried a lot about symmetry. The picture shows the War Memorial in the foreground, with Anzac Parade heading down to the lake. On the other side of the lake is Old Parliament House, with New Parliament House behind it.

One thing that I learnt is that I need to take a small torch on expeditions like this. It's hard to set up a tripod correctly when:

there's no moon
it's so cold you can't feel your fingers

Here is a picture showing the city centre (which locals call "Civic").

I then headed off to New Parliament House to take a few pictures.

I found it difficult to capture a good image of the giant flagpole. Because the forecourt is so well lit with floodlights, it tends to hide in the darkness. I probably need to come at dusk. I picked this time of night so there wouldn't be anyone else around.

I was just setting up my tripod in front of the building when a policeman hurried out. He told me that I couldn't set up my tripod in front of the building because there is an aboriginal mosaic in the paving stones and the aborigines don't like people putting tripods on it. It's ok to walk on it, spit, and probably urinate on it, but apparently not stand tripods on it. If that is the case, I reckon they should dig it up and put something else there, I mean, let's face it, its just some decoration added to the paving stones. I bet that one day some polically-correct committee will put a fence around it and declare it a sacred site.

Some Winter photography

2010-07-04T22:10:00.006+10:00

Most days when I drive to work I see a very picturesque scene off to one side. It's a view across the lake to some trees on another bank, with a rippling blanket of fog as the sun heats up the surface of the water.

So this weekend I decided to try and capture it with my camera. Epic fail.

I got there early to be sure to catch it, but I arrived to see total fog. This was the place I had selected.

I decided to wait until it cleared. It took 2 hours, so I just walked around a waited. And took pictures.

This is where the really nice scene should have been. But alas, no nice carpet of mist over the water. I did see a giant water rat, though.

Maybe another weekend.

There were lots of budgies around, but I couldn't get one to pose. The little buggers fly away as soon as you approach. I had to take this on maximum zoom.

Winter has set in

2010-07-03T17:00:00.002+10:00

Nothing much is happening at the moment.

Winter has arrived with a vengeance. Yesterday it reached about 6 degrees duing the day. Today is a bit better, and at least the sun is shining. Despite the sunshine, the garden is looking a bit bleak. We've just had some of our trees cut back because they were reaching the powelines so things look even worse. Because we've had it done before we know they'll recover OK. The two photos below show how much we had the trees lopped and how boring the back yard looks. Even the pool looks a bit murky.

I took these photos with my new phone that I got last week. My phone plan finished months ago, but I've been holding off to see what the new iPhone was like. Instead, I decided on an HTC Legend phone running Android.

The phone is really great, but it takes a while to set it up in the way that you want it. I've been using a Palm Pilot for many years and I hope to be able to set the phone up as a replacement. However, from what I can see at the moment, no phone will be able to fully replace the great features of the Palm Pilot. But then the Palm Pilot wasn't a phone either. So I hope to get close, at least. One of the good things is that we are now all on Vodafone, so all calls between us are totally free. I got a message from Vodafone during the week that they've now merged with 3, so all calls to and from Mum are also free.

Matt is on holidays from University. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but he got a Distinction and a High Distinction for his two subjects. We are very pleased and hope that he keeps it up. He even remarked that maybe his high school (Radford College) wasn't so bad after all.

In order to earn some money, and to stop himself from being bored, he's taken a job as a casual labourer. His current job involves relocating furniture at one of the universities. He seems to be enjoying it because it is such a change from his usual part time job of waiter. He says it good not having to be polite to customers. Because it's Saturday he's getting $30/hour, so we reckon that he's late home today to get extra money.

Oh, yes. The tickets for our holiday to Fiji arrived during the week. I'm really looking forward to it. I can really use a holiday after the past 12 months...

Hmm .... despite what I thought when I started this blog post, there have been things happing after all.

A poor day at the races

2010-06-13T19:56:00.008+10:00

Another day, another loss.

Today we went to the races in Bega to see how our latest racehorse, Hot Eyed Glare, would perform. Our other horse, Diamond Jay, is having a break at the moment.

Unfortunately the horse didn't run well as the jockey worked the horse too hard at the start of the race rather that letting him settle has he was directed by the trainer. So he came well back in the field. I didn't get a picture of him crossing the line because I can only take a finite number of frames at high speed and I ran out of them before he crossed.

So I spent the rest of the day trying to capture a good picture of the horses as they came down the straight. It was a lot harder than I expected, especially when the cloud came in and reduced the light. I had to set the speed to about 1/1250 sec or 1/1600 sec to avoid any motion blur.

It's still a bit hit-and-miss because you don't get time to frame the shot as they cross at high speed and it seems that most of the time you just capture a mass of heads, legs and bits of jockey. I also noticed that I had a tendency to overly-concentrate to the horses' heads and jockeys so clipped off their feet.

ANZAC Day - Dawn Service

2010-04-25T23:28:00.000+10:00

This year I again went to the Anzac Day dawn service.

It was easier than I thought to get up at 4:20am. I went with Di and Donna (our neighbours) leaving Karyn and Matt in still in bed. No way can you get Karyn up early.

As we approached the War Memorial we took seemingly random turns looking for parking, only to end up exactly where we parked last year. We walked up to the cenotaph with a thousand other people only to find many thousands already there. I'm not certain of my ability to estimate crowds of people, but I reckon there must have been over 6,000 people there.

When the official party arrived, they made no fuss about the presence of the Prime Minister, which was good. It's not a time for politicians. After all, aren't they the ones who get us into wars in the first place?

It was a very simple ceremony, but we reflected afterwoods that there we didn't like the hymns they selected this year. Maybe hymns are less relevant these days.

The ceremony lasted about 30 minutes and then ended. We walked up to the volunteer tea/coffee stalls, but they'd run out of coffee and only had soy milk left. So we had to wander around until we found one with coffee and real milk.

We then had an early breakfast at Pizazz at Kingston before coming home.

Away for Easter - but not on holiday

2010-04-25T23:13:00.001+10:00

Today we drove up to Port Stephens to stay at the mother-in-law's.

The traffic was pretty good until we reached Sydney and got onto Pennant Hills Road where it became bumper-to-bumper. We picked-up Jessica at Hornsby and headed up to Newcastle. The expressway was busy, but flowed well. As usual there were the usual hoons who felt the need to tailgate and zoom in and out of lanes.

When we arrived it appeared that there's a big list of things for me to do. It seems like my days up here are fully planned out for me.

Here's where we had lunch on Sunday.

Credit Card fraud

2010-03-10T20:20:00.003+11:00

I got hit by credit card fraud this week .

The Credit Union rang me to ask about a few transactions that had just been made on my credit card. I said that I knew nothing about them, and they said that they were probably fraudulent. It looks like they have a system for identifying suspicious transactions. They immediately cancelled the card and issued me with a new one, but over the next few days about $2000 in transactions had been racked up from all over the world.

I don't know how they got my card number, perhaps they have a software program for working them out, or maybe there are people in shops or restaurants who copy the card details and sell them. I just hope they can track the bastards down. I never use this particular card over the internet, in case you were wondering.

Now I have the hassle of filling in paperwork to get the transactions reversed.

Back on the treadmill

2010-03-07T17:28:00.000+11:00

This weekend I was able to get back on my treadmill and go for a walk.

Although my broken toe is sore if I kick something or wear tight shoes, it doesn't hurt to walk any more. Today was a bit of an experiment because I feel guilty for not exercising each day; but afterwoods there was no residual pain at all. But then there are always pain-killers and anti-inflammatories !

It's been a miserable weekend so far, with drizzle most of the day, so walking inside is the only option available. Karyn's been painting doors, architraves and skirting boards. I've been doing .... not much. Supervising, really.

Penny's Birthday

2010-03-01T23:08:00.001+11:00

On Sunday we celebrated Penny's birthday at our place. She's got a few things in the pipeline at the moment so we thought that we'd hold her party here and give her a bit of a rest.

We had a BBQ and had a great time. What could be better than good friends, good wine, and good cake?

Here's Penny and her daughter Catherine.

Once the thunderstorm passed, the day improved remarkably. Here we are outside after lunch.

From the left: Gabby (hiding from the camera), Catherine, Karyn, Penny, Peter, and Jill.

Half a day's racing at Braidwood

2010-02-20T21:58:00.004+11:00

Today we went to the picnic races at Braidwood. This is a once-a-year event run as a major fundraising activity for the local town's community services. We love going to these races because they are a great day out.
There's nothing flash about the racecourse, but it was pretty good for somewhere that has races once a year. And the atmosphere is terrific, with everyone out to enjoy themselves.

The course has a very "personal" feel about it compared to other courses. There was little separation between the people and the horses. In fact the horses were unloaded in the carpark, in between parked cars. You got to stand within spitting distance of the finish line; so much so that I had to change to my 18-55mm camera lens because I was so close.

Our horse, Diamond Jay was racing in the last race.

In the fourth race, one of the jockeys lost his saddle near the finishing line. Here is a quick shot I was able to get off as he went by. You can see the jockey trying to stay on-board whilst his saddle was down past his left leg.

We were sitting next to another jockey's wife, and she was really upset that this happened, because it meant that someone (either the trainer or the strapper) hadn't done their job and the jockey could have been badly hurt.

The fourth race was actually declared a non-race because the starting gates had a problem. After about an hour of discussion between the jockeys and the raceclub it was decided to abandon the rest of the races on safety grounds. I wondered why they didn't revert to a standing-start so the races could continue.

So races 4 to 8 were cancelled and we got to go home without a trophy or prizemoney.

It was probably going to be Diamond Jay's last race for the season before a rest, so she might not run again now for several months. We'll just have to wait and see.

"Just ignore the pain ..."

2010-01-30T22:49:00.002+11:00

I saw the doctor today. He says that my toe is broken but there's nothing that can be done with it except wait for it to heal by itself.

He said that I should just ignore the pain.

Easy for him to say.

Australia Day 2010

2010-01-26T21:07:00.002+11:00

We had a great Australia Day this year.

Matt was in Melbourne for the "Big Day Out" concert, so it was just Karyn and I.

We were invited to a friend-of-a-friend's for the day, starting with a BBQ and then continuing on for the rest of the day. There was mention of "games" as well. We didn't know what to expect.

It turned out to be a fantastic day. Well, sort of. The BBQ was great, but while getting ready to go in the morning I kicked the architrave of a door with my little toe and broke it. So for most of the day I watched my foot swell and go shades of purple.

Anyway, there were probably 50 or so people there, including kids. And they were the sort of people that you can easily make friends with. We seemed to have something in common with all of them.

The house where we went adjoined a local park, so the party extended there for most of the day. There were a wide range of games to play, with formal medal ceremonies at the end of each. A funny thing was that everybody seemed to end up winning a medal for something. Karyn won the womens' egg-and-spoon race, while I won a third in the golf pitching competition. Other games included gum-boot throwing, thong throwing, Crocs throwing, basketball shooting, and 20-a-side tug-of-war. Oh, and egg-tossing. Fortunately for me it was my partner that missed the catch.

The only time the pain in my foot got in the way was playing basketball. I kept forgetting not to stand on my toes, only to be reminded by a sharp stabbing pain.

Matt got into University

2010-01-21T21:19:00.000+11:00

We had good news last night. Matthew found out that he was accepted into the University of Canberra, studying for a Bachelor of Information Technology.

He said "all that hard work finally paid off".

We laughed.

Trouble in paradise

2010-01-13T20:27:00.000+11:00

Karyn sent me an SMS and a followup email this afternoon to say that Jessica's broken a bone in her foot. Apparently she's now in a wheelchair that Karyn has to push around.

I bet it has nothing to do with the cheap alcohol onboard.

I tried calling her, but they must have moved out of range of a mobile tower. Or maybe it's just that the mobile phone network can't find her.

Holiday time

2010-01-09T19:57:00.003+11:00

Matt and I are having a holiday for the next week or so. Karyn thinks that she's the one having a having a holiday but in reality it's just that we've got rid of her for a while.

We took her to Sydney so that she and Jessica could get on the Pacific Jewel.

As soon as they got onboard, Matt and I headed off to the Watson's Bay pub to wave them goodbye over a glass of ale.

And so we watched them sail into the distance..... while we planned the upcoming fortnight.

We stayed overnight at Mum's place in Rose Bay while she is over in England. Here is the night view from her place looking back towards the City.

More photography

2009-12-29T23:42:00.006+11:00

I had a chance to do some more photography today.

Firstly, I went back to the Botanic Gardens where I photographed yesterday. After looking at the photos on the computer last night, I realised that some of the photos showed too much light reflection off the leaves, so today I went back and took some more using a polarizing filter. Unfortunately, even though the filter was effective, the afternoon sun didn't provide the same "fresh" green as I captured yesterday morning. Oh well, I learn something each time.

Later on, I drove up to the top of Black Mountain to see what was available for picture-taking. The Botanic Gardens are at the base of Black Mountain, so this involved driving out of the Gardens, turning right, driving about 100m, then turning onto the road that goes to the top of the mountain.

I didn't want to catch the lift to the observation deck as I expect to do that in a few days time when Fay's friend arrives to visit for a few days. So I was content to just wander around and snap a few shots.

This was taken from a lookout, overlooking Lake Burley Griffin. The Captain Cook water jet is to the left of the Commonwealth Avenue bridge.

This is the Telstra Tower at the top of Black Mountain. The sky looks really blue because I was using a circular polarizing filter.

Here is a close-up of the tower, standing just outside the entrance at its base.

Sammy

2009-12-28T23:49:00.002+11:00

My mother-in-law's new puppy has started to settle down and hopefully knows not to chew the carpet anymore. She's also settled on the name "Sammy" after downloading pages of poodle names off the Internet.

I've always found it difficult to take pictures of black poodles because the pictures always seem to make them look like black blobs with no discernible features. A flash only make them look worse because of the reflection off their coat. Here is the best picture that I've taken so far.

I'll try photographing him again over the next few days to see how I can take better photographs.

Today I went to the Botanic Gardens to practice taking photos in dappled light. I find this the hardest type of lighting, but one that I have to deal with a lot.

We saw Avatar 3D

2009-12-27T11:10:00.001+11:00

Tonight Matt and I went to see the new movie "Avatar".

Fabulous.

We saw the 3D version, and after seeing this, I really wouldn't want to see the conventional 2D version of it because the experience would be diminished so much.

Christmas Day

2009-12-25T12:36:00.004+11:00

Well, Christmas Day has started off differently from most.

4am: Matthew was working last night and went out for drinks afterwoods. He got home around 4am with a drunk mate in tow who needed somewhere to sleep. So at 4am Matthew is organising a mattress and sleeping bag for him. I was more concerned about his friend being sick during the night, but everything was ok. Karyn got them up at 8am because we thought that Joel's parents would be wanting him home for Christmas morning.

9am: Despite that fact that we are in the middle of a drought and that we've been suffering from 35 degree heat for the past few days, today we wake up to rain and 23 degree temperature. We had been invited to a friend's house for Christmas dinner that was being held outside with lots of people invited. Fortunately we had decided to have our lunch here first so we don't have to worry about the rain ruining our plans.

Matthew also left it to 4am to wrap his presents. As you can see from what he handed me. And yes, this is before I tried to open it.

Matthew just had enough energy to open his presents. He then went back to bed.

We got to wear our matching Hawaiian outfits (her suggestion - not mine). Until Karyn spilt some beetroot dip down her dress.

Fay's new puppy that she bought as a Christmas present to herself. Poor thing.

11:30am: I've just had to stand in the rain to put the leg of pork in the barbeque. Fortunately it's got a lid.

12:30pm: It's harder than normal to get the barbeque to the right temperature. I think the constant rain falling on the lid is causing it to lose heat. I've just added a chicken to the barbeque.

1:30pm. My mother-in-law's dog just chewed a hole in our carpet.

2:00pm. Lunch. I can't drink because we have to go to Penny's this afternoon and, as usual, I am the "designated driver". This year I tried hard to avoid overeating. I succeeded. I had some of everything and not too much of anything. The Christmas pudding was fantastic: you can never add too much brandy.

4pm. Off to Penny's. Fay is having a nanna-nap instead. Matt is playing World of Warcraft on his new quad-core, twin-screen computer - it would take the end of the world to get him off it.

6pm. Back from Penny's. Karyn and Penny were having champagne with raspberry liqueur in it. As the designated driver, I stuck to Pepsi Max.

6:30pm. Dog has chewed a second hole in carpet. May have fatal accident in the morning.

7:30pm. Karyn & Fay were yawning and went to bed.

1:00am. I went to bed.

3am. Karyn went downstairs and told Matthew to get off computer and go to bed.

The return of the mother-in-law

2009-12-25T01:18:00.000+11:00

Christmas is upon us and so is my mother-in-law.

Unfortunately the office where I work is closed for the coming week.

Matt's Year 12 Formal

2009-12-14T11:10:00.002+11:00

The last event of the school calendar was the Year 12 formal.

Matt spent the day helping organise the after-formal party. Their previous plans had fallen through because the venue they had booked couldn't cope with some of the guests being under the 18 year old drinking age. Karyn said he got home, had a quick shower, got partially dressed, and raced out the door.

He said the formal was "no big deal", and he was going with a group of his mates.

I turned up, camera on hand, to see him arrive.

Here is Matthew with "his mates".

Her name is Melanie.

A win at Moruya

2009-12-13T10:37:00.000+11:00

We went to the races at Moruya (on the NSW South Coast) the other day. We decided to make it an all-day trip because Moruya is about 2 1/2 hours away.

We had Kevin Sweeney riding him, which was good; we have a lot of faith in him. We don't have to give him riding instructions because we can leave it to him to find his way between or around the opposition, and he knows better than us how the other jockeys are likely to perform on the day.

Diamond Jay was last for most of the race, and then when they reached the straight, she just powered past the opposition. It always makes the trip home more enjoyable with a trophy in your hand.

The downside of a win is the amount of time Karyn likes to spend celebrating in the bar afterwards.

Everyone else had left until it was just us, the bartender, and the police wondering why there were still people at the track.

Catherine's Year 12 Formal

2009-12-04T11:43:00.001+11:00

The daughter of a friend of ours was having her Year 12 formal, and I offered to come over and take some photos.

I really had ulterior motives. You see when I did a photography course a few years ago, we did a module on portraits. Now to do take a portrait, you need a subject. In my house, both Karyn and Matthew refuse to have their photos taken normally, so getting them to sit for a portrait shot was impossible. I ended up having to use one of our dogs for my portrait photo.

Catherine is extremely photogenic, so she agreed to pose for some shots before going to her Formal. I took lots so that I will have plenty of material to practice my Photoshop skills in the coming year. I learnt a lot from the process, including how difficult it can be to get a good picture during a social occasion with people all around, the problems of taking photos in the very late afternoon, the difficulty of finding a nice background, and how you can't trust some photo printing places to accurately print the right colours.

Anyway, it was nice of her to give me the opportunity to practice.

The things that parents have to do..

2009-12-01T11:37:00.000+11:00

"Coasties" came to an end this week, with Matthew due to leave the coast at 6am on Tuesday for the drive back to Canberra. Everyone had to be back by Tuesday to return their textbooks and to check their term scores. It is about a 3 hour drive from Canberra to where they were staying.

Matthew rang in at about 7pm to say that one of the boys had cut his hand and it had turned septic, The local medical centre said that they had to return immediately to get it operated on in Canberra, so they were leaving in a short while.

We expected him about 10pm, so I went to a friend's house to see some of their holiday snaps.

At about 9pm I got a phonecall from Matt saying that their car had broken down and they were hoping to get it towed. About 9:15pm I got another call saying that they wouldn't tow the car anywhere where they could get accommodation or transport, and would I mind coming and getting them?

So at 9:30pm I drove to Ulladulla to get them. I got there at around 1am. It was a stressful drive because of the kangaroos jumping across the road in the dark. You just get no warning - you just see this big 6 foot shape leap across the front of your car. There is no street lighting on the roads, and about half the trip is on winding mountain roads in the dark where there isn't even moonlight.

So I got there and found them parked at a closed service station looking rather forlorn. They transferred a mountain of luggage into my car and we took off. First stop was to find some coffee for me.

So we stopped at Bateman's Bay for coffee and then headed home.

You know if I close my eyes I can still see the long lines of reflectors stretching into the distance.

So we finally got home at around 4am after dropping the other kids off first.

If I remember correctly, today Matt has to:

go to school to return his text books
work at the restaurant over lunch
go to the Uni of Canberra for an information session
work at the restaurant in the evening.

I'm so glad he got 4 hours sleep.

Things will be getting back to normal soon

2009-11-28T15:55:00.013+11:00

This has been a strange month, and I'm glad that it's over.

I've been out of work for the past month. As an IT contractor I win and then work on contracts that generally run for a fixed period, and then when it's about to finish, I bid for the next contract, and so on. However, this time a contract finished and I didn't have the next one lined up already. So for the past 4 weeks I've been madly bidding for new contracts, not kicking back and enjoying myself.

So now that I've won another contract I actually have a few days to enjoy myself before starting work.

Matt is also away on "coasties". This is a Canberra phenomenon where the Year 12 kids go down to the coast to celebrate finishing school, by partying non-stop, I gather.

Matt being away means that the house has remained tidy for a whole week. I bet the utilities bills are much smaller this month because there's no teenager having 3 showers a day and staying up all night on his Playstation and Xbox.

Today we spent a day tidying up the yard. Even Missy wanted to get in the pool.

But next week Matt gets home and I start work. So things will be getting back to normal.

Good customer service

2009-11-25T23:04:00.008+11:00

Thank goodness the heat has returned.

Today it was about 32 degrees and very pleasant. I went swimming a few times - after gardening for a while it was good to jump in and cool down.

I experienced some good customer service today. At least I'm scoring it that way. Last year we had the last of our back lawn replaced by artificial grass because with the long drought here in Canberra most of the grass had died off and we're not allowed to water it to keep it alive. The dams are slowly filling up again, but the government here is pushing its "water conservation" idealism so hard that even if the dams are full again I'm sure they'll have some other excuse for forcing us to save water. They have increased the price of water already because we weren't using as much so they weren't collecting as much tax.

And this idiot Prime Minister of ours wants to add a new Carbon Tax to everything we buy or use in order to .... well, we're not exactly sure ... but it seems that we should be penalised for generating carbon dioxide and we should encourage all our manufacturers to relocate overseas. But of course our largest polluters should be exempt. Presumably the government will also impose a tariff on goods produced by countries without a carbon tax to keep a "level playing field". But I bet they don't. Should we plan to shut down a few coal-fired powerstations and replace them we non-polluting nuclear ones? "Oh no", they say. "Let's wait for 'clean coal' solutions to be worked out in the next 20 years or so".

Anyway, back to the good customer service story.

After my morning swim, I noticed that the artificial grass had become flattened in the main walkways. The folks who laid the grass said that sometimes they add some rubber fill to the grass to help the blades remain upright, but that our grass was a new design and probably shouldn't need it. So at about 9:30am I emailed them and asked if they could drop by sometime and give us some of the rubber to add to the grass. I went upstairs and had a shower, and by the time I got downstairs, probably around 10am, the grass folks were already there lifting the grass pile and adding the rubber.

That's what I call customer service.

You can contact them at --> www.keepingitgreen.com.au

I think that they've earned a free endorsement.

I blame the French atomic tests

2009-11-23T17:46:00.007+11:00

I can't believe that we've been suffering from a heatwave for the past few days and today I'm sitting here in trackpants and ugh boots because it's so cold.

I blame them French and their atomic tests in the Pacific.

At least the temperature makes it more enjoyable to drink red wine. Tonight I'm having a nice Cabernet Merlot.

PS. When I published this, the following ad popped up courtesy of Google. Clever people at Google - they knew I'd be more likely to buy wine rather than an atomic bomb.

Ads by Google

Buy Wine Online
Quality Wines, only $79 a case! Unbeatable Value, but be quick.
Cellarmasters.com.au/OnlineOffer

No luck at Adaminaby

2009-11-22T11:54:00.010+11:00

Yesterday we went to the races at Adaminaby (about half an hour south of Cooma).

Adaminaby has one of those once-a-year racetracks that you sometimes think are really a pub with a racetrack attached. Adaminaby Cup day is a major fundraising day for the local community, so you expect slightly inflated prices, but Karyn and Penny were very happy with the price of Champagne. Being the designated driver, I just stuck to water all day. But we had a really good time despite not coming away with a win.

We got there early, and despite filling the boot with chairs, folding tables and the like, we decided to sit in the stand, just in front of the bookies. It made it easy to see the prices.

We had a few wins, and even more losses, but of course were slightly in the red by the end of the day.

Diamond Jay was in the last race, unfortunately. "Unfortunately" because the clouds were getting blacker and blacker as the day progressed, with showers increasing. I'm still getting the feel of my new camera, so I wasn't quite sure how far to go with adjusting the settings for the decreasing amount of light. I kept the speed at 1/1600 sec and increased the ISO 800, and hope that there would be enough light for a decent photo. There was, but only just. You might think that the colours are screwed up, but because of the drought, the grass was actually bleached white. Because of the light drizzle, this then turned an orangey colour that you can see below.

Here's Diamond Jay crossing the line in about 6th place. Just after the start, I heard the racecaller saying how DJ was doing it hard riding 3 horses wide, and I remembered that we had an apprentice on board to get a 3kg weight reduction. The downside of a lot of apprentices is that some of them have a lot to learn, and this guy seemed to run 3 wide for the whole race, which meant that we ran about 2,000m instead of 1,750m. The jockey came back and said that the horse was just too slow, but then how many jockeys would blame themselves. So given the circumstances, maybe 6th wasn't too bad. We'll just make sure we don't get that apprentice again.

Here was one of the "colourful" racegoers.

The funny thing is that you can have a really great day at country races. There's no need to get dressed up (if you're a guy). I like to wear my bright Hawaiian shirts. And everyone is just there to have a good time. What more could you ask for than a nice warm day, a few winners, and a steak sandwich in one hand? Apart from a beer in the other hand, of course.

You just have to be prepared to buy lots of raffle tickets for one fundraiser or another. The organisers are smart enough to have their cute children walking around all day asking you to buy them. I'm often glad not to win the prizes though - I kept thinking "what if I won that huge quilt?"

It's hot outside

2009-11-20T12:04:00.008+11:00

It's days like today that I'm glad we installed air conditioning. It's 38 degrees C (that's 100 farenheit) outside and 25 degrees inside.

There appears to be a heatwave right across Australia at the moment and we seem to be getting the worst of it. Fortunately Canberra is a dry place so that evaporative cooling works a treat. And only a few cents a day to run.

I've been in the pool twice already, because every time I go outside I get hot and then I see that lovely, icy cold, blue swimming pool shimmering in the sun. I reckon I should just pretend I'm in Hawaii and wear my swimming gear all day and fall in the water occasionally. If I ask nicely I'm sure Karyn will bring me out a glass of cold champagne.

It just occurred to me that I should drop the temperature of the spa. Who wants to get into a 40 degree spa in Summer? It's been a week or so since I used it, and this hot snap has just hit us - I expect it to continue like this for the next 5 months or so.

I keep forgetting that it's still only Spring.

The dogs seem to be enjoying the heat. Here is Coco lying in the hot sun.

I'm getting tired of not working now. I seem to spend a large slice of every day applying for new contracts. It's actually easier just going to work each day. I've re-written my CV several times now with different perspectives for different types of job. I had an interview yesterday that seemed to go OK, but you never know what the opposition is like.

The contract job market is about to start slowing down for Christmas soon. I hope I've found something by then or I may have to get a job doing babysitting or ironing. Unfortunately Karyn keeps finding me things to do around the house.

Oh well, back to the next job application.

Oh no! The thermometer has just gone up to 26 degrees.

Maybe just one more swim first ...

Finally - my photos from Hawaii

2009-11-15T13:06:00.001+11:00

I finally got my photos from Hawaii organised and loaded into Flickr.

You can see them here --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/apeyton/collections/72157622744234342/

Enjoy.

Another Win

2009-11-03T00:14:00.000+11:00

On Melbourne Cup Day we drove down to Bega. Our horse was running there, and it's always a good excuse for an outing.

The only downside is the 3 hour drive to get there.

The upside is:

and

Surprise Visitor

2009-10-31T17:37:00.005+11:00

This was not the sort of visitor that I expected to be lurking at the front of my house this afternoon.

Hawaii - First few days

2009-09-26T22:18:00.007+10:00

After a year of anticipation, we finally got to Hawaii. It was just as good as we remembered from 25 years ago.

We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which we still reckon is the best place to stay in Honolulu. Here is the view from our room.

I wish I was there now. Outside it's only 10 degrees and raining.

The Hilton is about a 15 minute walk to downtown Waikiki and an equal distance the other way to the Ala Moana shopping centre. So you get the benefit of being away from the main drag in a more peaceful area without also being too far away from the excitement.

Waikiki is a very busy place, with a lot of hotels crowding one another for a piece of beachfront. The beach was surprisingly small, with only about 30' from the buildings to the water. In fact, while I was standing there taking a photo one day, a big wave came in and swamped some people sunbaking on what they thought was safe territory.

You can see from the picture above where the sand is wet - to the left of the girl. She was lying on a towel and got hit by a wave. I read in the paper that locals are concerned about the loss of sand.

We didn't do anything in particular for the first few days, just enjoyed being away from work, and explored the Waikiki area and got our bearings. And drank lots of cocktails. I'm not a big drinker, but it just seems to be the thing to do there.

Hawaii trip approaches

2009-09-06T00:02:00.001+10:00

Only 5 sleeps to go before our trip to Hawaii.

I’ve just got a new camera for the occasion, a Canon 450D with a set of 18-55 and 55-250 image-stabilised lenses. This camera is quite different from by previous 38-380 Kodak digital camera as there’s a lot more to worry about in the settings department.

And now I have to decide which lens to keep on as default – the short or the long range one. Murphy’s Law says that whenever I have the short-range one on, I’ll need the telephoto one on. Mark reckons that when travelling in Thailand recently, he just kept the short-range one on.

I went to the botanic gardens this weekend to try out some high-contrast photography. A few months ago I went to a rainforest (with my previous camera) and I was disappointed at the quality of the photos that I took – in the rainforest it is dark green with the occasional splash of intense sunlight – sometimes reflecting brightly off leaves. The Kodak camera didn’t handle low light-level situations well. Most of my photos ended up being either too dark, or overexposed where there were patches of sunlight. So yesterday I took myself off to the rainforest area of the botanic gardens to try again.

I guess that it was a learning experience, without much to show for it. While the camera handled the environment better, I still wasn’t able to capture that dark rainforest look with a million shades of green all around. For Father’s Day today Matt gave me a polarising filter that I think might help with the reflected light off the leaves. Surprisingly, the best ones were taken when I used the flash. And the ones where I got the camera settings right were the ones with the worst compositions. Anyway, as I said, a learning experience. After we get back from Hawaii, I’ll try again with my new polarising filter.

I hope to be able to take a lot of shots in Hawaii. I’m taking a large USB drive to copy them on to. Karyn’s taking her netbook for me to use to upload and store the photos. I don’t know what the hotel charges for internet access – certainly up in Sydney it was too expensive for casual browsing. It’s probably costed for business people who can just add it to their accommodation bill.

Today was Father’s Day, so Karyn and I went to the Bella Vista restaurant on the lake at Belconnen where Matt works. He was working there today because of Father’s Day. As usual the food was terrific. Karyn had lasagne, and I had a prawn and calamari entree and a pasta dish with strips of veal, mushrooms, chilli, olives, and other yummy ingredients. We washed it down with a lovely bottle of sparkling shiraz. Karyn finished off her meal with a dessert made from champagne blended with lemon liqueur, cream, and lemon sorbet. With 3kg left to lose on my diet, I gave dessert a miss.

A welcome addition to the kitchen

2009-08-24T22:44:00.004+10:00

We finally gave in and bought a new coffee maker this week.

It's bad enough having a teenager who complains all the time, but it's even worse if he has a job making expresso coffees and then has to come home and drink instant coffee.

Normally I drink plunger coffee, but apparently that is too hard for him.

So we bought a small expresso maker to replace our aging one. It was on special at Aldi's and was a very good buy for the price. It has quite a few interesting features and one strange one. I don't understand the water hardness adjustment - but then our water is pretty pure in Canberra and maybe this is a problem elsewhere.

One ongoing problem that I can forsee is having to make Karyn a cappuccino each morning before I go to work so that she can enjoy it before getting out of bed.

I'm sure that this gadget will get a lot more use than some that are in the cupboards.

New ISP

2009-08-18T22:41:00.003+10:00

It feels great to be free from Telstra broadband. We've now switched to TPG.

Despite Telstra Bigpond being the dominant provider in Australia, they seem to offer the worst deals. You can't fault their system reliability, but you certainly pay for it. I was paying around $100/month for 25GB - now with TPG I pay $60/month for 75GB.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when Telstra decided to get rid of personal web pages. Or rather, you could start paying an additional $10/month for the priviledge. All the other providers still allow you a small site for free. I have a site that shows my family genealogy, and I want to keep it to share it with others and to allow other family members to find me. It has worked well for me for many years.

So finally Telstra forced me to look for an alternative supplier. It seems that they are more interested in getting new customers rather than keeping their existing ones. I was genuinely surprised when I called to cancel my service and the operator made no attempt to get me to change my mind. Maybe I was just one of thousands.

But let me tell you, it's hard being without the Internet for a week. It's like having no electricity or no TV. Fortunately Matt's iPhone can be used as a modem, so Karyn could plug it into her laptop to check her email. Lucky Matt has a 1GB download allowance for his phone.

Karyn rang me at work on Monday with joy in her voice as she said that all 3 lights were green on the modem, meaning that we were back online.

Mum's Birthday in Sydney

2009-08-10T22:02:00.009+10:00

Last weekend we went to Sydney so see Mum for her birthday.

We now have a love/hate relationship with Sydney - we remember the great time that we had when we lived there, and it's a good place to visit, BUT we're glad we don't live there anymore.

When you visit Sydney, you are struck by the scene of a modern city flanking a beautiful harbour. The main focus of the city is Circular Quay, busy with ferries shuttling people from the rim of the harbour to the centre. Circular Quay is flanked by the Harbour Bridge on the left and the Opera House on the right. It's hard to think of politicians today making the same decisions as those of the past that resulted in such striking landmarks.

But then there's the traffic, and the people. And worst of all are the strange traffic diversions that take you in directions that you don't think that you want to go, which then force you to turn into tunnels that do take you where you want to go. And you have to be so careful to be in just the right lane so that you can take the right exit to move to another lane to take another exit to end up in the right street. Make one wrong turn and you could end up anywhere. And forget your GPS - you have to keep your eyes on the street signs.

We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel at Circular Quay. I would recommend it to anyone. Good rooms, great views, excellent gym, but wi-fi far too expensive for the casual visitor.

On Saturday night we went to Doyles at Circular Quay for dinner with Mum, Richard and Lynne. (I forgot to take a picture of us all). The food was good and the view even better (see photo below). The only problem was that I reckon that they turned off the heading at 9PM to make everyone leave.

On Sunday morning we went for a walk to the street markets at the Rocks (a stone's throw from the Quay) were Karyn bought a new vase/water bowl/decoration-filled-with-water-that-you-float-things-in.

All in all, a very nice weekend.

The case of the misplaced water heater

2009-07-24T23:04:00.011+10:00

I had a phone call from Matthew the other day. I was at work and he was home on school holidays.

Speaking over a loud hissing noise, he explained that there was no hot water and that the water heater was making a loud noise. It turned out that the water heater had sprung a leak and extinguished the gas pilot light. We needed a new one.

A man from the gas company came out and recommended a new instantaneous gas water heater rather than the storage system that we had previously. 5 stars instead of 2 apparently. The down side was that it couldn't go in the shed at the side of the house (according to the installation instructions), and the guy recommended putting it on the back wall next to the kitchen window. Surprisingly, the unit was only about the size of a large briefcase. They suggested the back of the house because people steal them. At $2,000 each, I'm not surprised.

I came home the next day to find the unit installed.

A problem then manifested itself. I found myself choking on the gas fumes. You see, when it is heating water, it fires its exhaust out horizontally almost 10 feet (3m). If you stand or sit on the decking at the back of the house, all you can smell are the gas fumes. A point that the salesman failed to mention.

I could just imagine sitting on the decking in summer, enjoying the outdoors - maybe a nice barbequeued steak, a glass of cabernet merlot, and a lung full of gas.

Being a bit of a soft touch myself, I got Karyn to give the gas company a call the next day. The salesman then rang me to say that they'll come and move it to the side of the house, but that we should leave it at the back because:

it isn't a gas smell, just a "new" smell
the gas exhaust isn't toxic because it's Natural Gas
people steal the units

I said "what about the security bracket that it mentions in the one of the pamphlets that came with the unit"?

"Oh, but that bracket's ugly"

"But if the unit is on the side of the house we won't see it"

"Oh".

So they came and moved it.

Here is where they repositioned the unit at the side of the house, complete with an ugly security bracket.

What, you can't see the ugly security bracket?

Here it is - underneath the unit at the back (with a padlock on).

Windows can be so frustrating at times...

2009-06-30T22:07:00.002+10:00

I'm sitting here at the moment with a friend's laptop on my desk. I feel like throwing it on the floor and jumping on it.

Like most girls' laptops that I get to fix the virus protector is about 2 years out of date. I think that it came with a 3 month free licence for Norton Antivirus, and when that ran out it nobody ever bothered with it again. Now what I have found is that an expired version of Norton is worse than a virus itself. Norton seems to try unsuccessfully to connect back to headquarters, and it hates you trying to use your laptop until it is good and ready to allow you. The first thing I always have to do is deinstall Norton completely. I often have to download the additional Norton deinstaller/cleanup tool to make sure that everything is properly removed - apparently the standard de-install leaves bad stuff hanging around.

Now Internet Explorer causes the machine to hang. I've had to load Firefox just to access the Internet.

But every now and then the machine just ... hangs..... for about 5 frustrating minutes. And then ... bingo... its back.

While its hung, it's really hung. I can't even get the Task Manager to run, so I've no idea what could be causing the hang.

I've tried downloading a bunch of Windows updates, but after downloading they refuse to install. I can see I've got a bit of work in front of me. Maybe a couple of days' worth.

Batching for a week

2009-06-21T20:55:00.007+10:00

Karyn's been away this week, taking her mother home. So Matt and I have had the place to ourselves. Not that we've got up to much, you understand.

On Sunday night we went to see the new Star Trek movie. We both thought it was great. We were going to have dinner at the sleazy bar next to where Matt works, but he had filled up with one of those disgustingly large buckets of popcorn, and so didn't feel like eating.

The pool company came and installed the new spa cover one day, but when we decided to celebrate with a spa that night, we found that they turned off the spa heater, so it was too cold. So I turned it back on and cranked the thermostat up.

The next night we got in, and it was too hot. We now know what a cooking lobster feels like. I now know that 41 degrees is about 3 degrees too much. We could only stand it for about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately the spa cover doesn't fit properly, so they'll have to make another one. Karyn says they took quite a while measuring it up, so someone has slipped up big. On the side nearest the house it looks quite neat, but from the side and back you can see how it doesn't cover properly. Fortunately we haven't paid for it yet.

It looks good from the front...

But really untidy from the side.

When I rang the guy who installed it, he said he "thought there might be a small problem", but "he wasn't sure".

Dinner each night was whatever we felt like. Reheated frozen dinners featured a lot. We went out to Wests Rugby Club one night and had a pretty good nosh up. Matt had a Caesar Salad with freshly cooked king prawns, and I had the roast pork buffet. It's interesting that now Matt's 18 and can drink anything he likes from beer to spirits, he'd still rather just have a Coke. He doesn't seem to have inherited his mother's genes.

He went out with some mates after work on Friday night. I bet my parents were glad we didn't have mobile phone technology in my youth, because they never had to respond to SMSs at 2:00AM asking if we could sleep over somewhere.

Karyn came home on Saturday with a 6 hour drive. I noticed that when she got home she ignored the large stack of laundry that needed ironing. But I was generous and let her have the evening off. She can start on it tomorrow.

Today we finished the week off with a lunch with our friends Peter, Dot, and May at the Goulburn Workers' Club, about an hour's drive north of Canberra. This is a monthly event/therapy session where we get to compare horror stories about bringing up teenagers.

Peter and Andy

May, Karyn, and Dot

The mother-in-law has left the building

2009-06-15T23:17:00.005+10:00

Karyn has taken her mum back to Port Stephens, leaving Matt and I to look after ourselves. She'll only be away for a week, so there shouldn't be too much mess and dirty washing for her when she gets back.

It's been a horrible weekend. Matt used up all our download allowance (I thought 25GB would be enough!) so we were slowed to 64k/sec, down from about 8MB/sec. It's hard to believe that once upon a time 64K would have been fast. It surprised me just how much I expect the Internet to be there whenever I want. Karyn's also taken her netbook with her, so we've lost our family-room internet device. Matt, at least, always has his iPhone in one hand, so he's never out of touch.

The situation has prompted me to change ISPs. Bigpond is dropping its member webpages, so I'll have nowhere to store my genealogy web pages. I'll probably shift to TPG as they have the best deal; I can get a greater download for less price. And they still have member homepages.

Matt and I had a spa tonight. It was about 6 degrees outside, so a bit warmer than its been in the past week, but still a big shock when you get out of the warm water. When we were in there I had a horrible thought: what if Matt closed the door and it locked automatically? Fortunately he hadn't or we'd be blocks of ice by now.

Bad news

2009-06-08T22:56:00.002+10:00

Bad news.

My mother-in-law's leg is too sore and she will have to stay longer.

I'll leave it to you to work out the bad news part.

A poor way to end a day

2009-06-07T23:59:00.004+10:00

Today wasn't as good as we hoped it would be. We took a trip to Bega.

Why go to a little hamlet on the far South Coast of NSW? Because of its racecourse. Our horse was running there, so we felt obliged to make the 3 hour trip. That's 3 hours each way. In a car for 6 hours. Locked in car with my mother-in-law. But of course I'm only joking, she's not too bad.

We had to leave at around 8am so that we could get there early enough to get a table in the Members area. So I had to get up at around 6:30 so I could spend half an hour on the treadmill first.

We picked up Penny, and after about 2 hours we stopped for coffee at Maccas in Cooma, where it was foggy and the temperature was a pleasant 6 degrees. By the time we got down to sea-level, the temperature had climbed to a mild 14 degrees and the sun was out.

Karyn went to say hello to Diamond Jay, and got bitten again. It happens every time. I guess one day she'll learn to stay away from the part with teeth.

It was a great race meeting at the Sapphire Coast track. Unfortuntely we came 6th. The jockey blamed the horse for not performing, but we prefer to blame him. So no trophy this time.

To make the day worse, Karyn put on a trifecta bet (picking first, second, and third) but the girl at the TAB put it on wrong. When Karyn realised this, she broke the cardinal rule of betting, and had the bet changed. If she'd left it alone, we'd have walked away with a 490:1 payout. But she broke the rule of never changing a mistaken bet, so we walked away with nothing.

So, back in the car for another 3 hour drive. With the mother-in-law next to me all the way. I had to drive, because the girls had consumed at least a bottle each.

By the time we reached Cooma we felt like a nice steak dinner, so we stopped off at the local RSL, and as luck would have it, the restaurant didn't open for another half an hour. We didn't feel like waiting, so back to McDonalds we went.

The girls pigged out on fat-burgers, while I had a wrap from their healthy-choice menu. Strange, but this menu has shrinked to almost nothing these days.

On the way back to the car, Fay tripped over and hurt herself. I'm sure the bottle of wine had nothing to do with it. She already had an injured ankle, so now she has an injured wrist and hip go with it. When we got home she realised the disadvange of our split-level home: stairs. It took ages for her to get upstairs and into bed.

Boy am I not looking forward to the morning when she tries to get up and finds out that her muscles have locked-up. Maybe I can go out somewhere before she wakes up.

I got into the spa for a relaxing float-around. And, of course, it started to rain. You know, I find it hard to relax in the spa when it's raining on my head.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Art Show time

2009-05-30T23:59:00.000+10:00

It's strange that when I'm doing lots I don't seem to blog much. Now it's been so long that I can hardly remember all the things that I've done over the past few weeks.

It's certainly been a busy day today, and I've just been relaxing in the spa for an hour or so. Everybody has gone to bed and Matthew's out sampling some of the bars around town now that he's 18 and it's all legal. He left his car at home, so that's one thing I don't have to worry about. Donna, who lives a few doors up the street, was in an accident during the week and wrote off her car. She came to dinner tonight on crutches; fortunately a banged-up ankle is her only injury.

Karyn's friend Jessica came down for the weekend (she couldn't make it for Matthew's birthday). She and I went to the Radford College Art Show today, and we really enjoyed the paintings. I'm on the organising committee, helping out with the IT-related tasks like the art catalog and sales recording system. There were so many great paintings that next year I need to agree a budget with Karyn and buy something on the spot if I like it. This year I dithered so much on opening night that all the good ones got bought within a few minutes.

Some fabulous student art. It's amazing what some people can do with an HB pencil.

I'm glad I got out of the job of setting up the display stands. I did it last year and it took us until midnight.

We had great art that sold well. When one artist found that all his paintings sold on the first day, he turned up with 3 more in his car for us to sell.

Once the show started we could relax a bit. No disasters (yet).

I've worked out a better method for printing off the artist sales statements, so I'll have to be there at the end for a few hours to upgrade the system and install the new reports before all the artists turn up for their money.

The spa's back in action

2009-05-03T22:43:00.001+10:00

Karyn's been away this weekend, so I had a good chance to have a relax.

Fortunately the spa pump has been replaced, so I could kick back surrounded by bubbles and enjoy the night sky.

I wonder if the people I met in Mumbai last year could comprehend the world outside India.

Big Win at Bega

2009-04-26T22:09:00.003+10:00

On Sunday we drove to Bega on the southern coast of NSW to see our new horse "Diamond Jay" race.

Whilst being optimistic about her, we weren't sure about her real competitiveness. In her last race, despite coming 3rd, she was also 11 lengths behind the leader. You always hope that there was a reason for this, not just a lack of speed.

Anyway, we made the 3 hour drive there with some friends, stopping at Cooma on the way for coffee and then a lookout over the Bega valley.

Here's the view from the lookout.

Canberra is in the Southern Highlands of NSW, so we're about 600m above sea level. So, being Autumn, it was about 8 degrees C. As we descended to sea level, the temperature rose to about 21 degrees, so we had a relatively warm day ahead, windy though it was.

Karyn gave her usual pep-talk to the horse. He must be getting used to her now. Last time he bit her 3 times.

And of course the best horse won on the day....

Here's Penny and Karyn holding the trophy in the Committee Room. There, we watched the race replay about a dozen times.

Notice how tightly Penny is holding the trophy. She kept it hugged to her chest for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We're wondering if we'll ever see it again.

Anzac Day Dawn Service

2009-04-25T11:11:00.007+10:00

For the first time, I went to the Anzac Day dawn service here in Canberra.

Although it's a relatively simple memorial service, each year the attendance grows. I think that this morning there was a crowd of 20,000 people standing there in the cold and dark pre-dawn service. That's not bad for a small city.

I arranged to go with Di, my neighbour 2-doors up the street. To be there on time we had to leave by 4:15am. Even the dogs didn't stir. It poured with rain off and on all night, with gale-force winds. We considered cancelling, but at 4am there was only a light drizzle, so we decided to go.

We were able to park in a nearby suburb and walk to the War Memorial. All the seating was taken so we stood just in front of the dais. It was strangely quiet given the number of people there, with most noise coming from the flagpoles and the cockatoos.

The service was short but good. And best of all the rain held off until 60 seconds after the service finished.

Despite the rain, we availed ourselves of the free coffee and Anzac biscuits, mainly to show appreciation to the volunteers who were manning the tables in the rain and wind.

We then walked through the War Memorial's gallery of names on the Roll of Honour, and then through the Hall of Remembrance.

By the time we got out it was about 6:30am and we could see that we were in for a cold, windy day.

We then went for breakfast in Civic. I called Karyn to invite her to breakfast, but she was still in bed and not in the mood. It was before 10am after all.

Standing in front of the stage.

Not enough light for a good shot.

The tradition of putting poppies in the Wall.

A bleak morning afterwards. The seating you can see arranged extends right around the courtyard. We were standing right where the truck now is.

Me, rugged up for the cold.

Easter at Port Stephens

2009-04-12T14:08:00.013+10:00

At Easter we visited Karyn's mother at Port Stephens.

It's about a 6hr drive from Canberra. What's amazing is what a difference a 6hr drive can make to the temperature. Here it's getting to be tracksuit weather, while up there you can only wear shorts and t-shirts.

It's funny how things change. In the past, most of the conflict/organisation revolved around who got to watch what on the TV. Now, it's whose got the laptop charger. We took two laptops but only one charger with us, so the big issue was who had to run on battery and who got to connect up and recharge while playing. I took a wireless keyboard we me so when it was my turn to use a laptop I could plug it in to the 50" TV and use it from across the room. Amazing how these things can just plug into one another and just work.

Matt and I took the chance to do some things that we don't usually do.

Like putt-putt. (I won)

And practicing our driving.

One evening we also went bowling. (I won there as well).

For lunch on Sunday we went to a seafood restaurant overlooking Nelson Bay marina. The food was terrific. The view was pretty good as well.

Karyn and me.

Here's a random photo at the marina.

At last I'm overweight

2009-03-19T22:08:00.003+11:00

I had some good news today.

Now I'm officially overweight. "Why is this a cause of celebration?", I hear you ask.

The reason stems back to about September last year when Karyn bought a Wii Fit for Matt's Nintendo Wii. The Wii Fit has a Body Test mode where it weighs you as part of an overall fitness test. I was rather horrified to see that according to the BMI scale, I was in the Obese category. I consoled myself with the fact that muscle is heavier than fat and the Wii couldn't see my superb physique.

Well, 6 months later, I've now dropped into the Overweight category. All I had to do was lose 16kg.

I actually set myself a target of losing 20kg, so I've only got 4kg to go.

For those of you who are wondering how I did it, I'll tell you the secret:

EAT LESS, EXERCISE MORE

Balloon Flight

2009-03-09T16:00:00.003+11:00

I had a wonderful day today. Karyn bought me a balloon flight for Christmas, so it seemed a good idea to use it during the Canberra balloon festival.

The only downside was that we had to be down at the lake in front of Old Parliament House by 5:45AM. It was still dark. After signing the usual disclaimers that said it would be our own fault if we landed in the lake and drowned or hit powerlines and electrocuted ourselves, we helped inflate the balloon.

After laying out the balloon, two big fans were used to partially inflate the balloon while lying on its side. They they turned on the gas burners that heated the air and caused the balloon to lift.

We had to get onboard quickly to stop it drifting away. The ladder is for some old folks who couldn't climb in. I had no problem. The basket held 12 people.

Surprisingly, as we lifted off and drifted West, there was no sound and no wind. The basket didn't sway at all, so I reckon and even nervous fliers would be OK with it. Until they had to land, of course ....

When I say no sound, I mean that there was no sound other then the occasional roar of the gas burners going off....

It gets quite hot when the flame is on, which is why they recommended that we wear a cap to minimise the heat on our heads. Maybe to stop your hair catching fire, I reckon.

There were panoramic views in all directions. It was a pity that there were clouds above us - it would have been spectacular if the sun had been shining. But then you can't been picky - last year Matt and I went to see the massed balloon launch and it was cancelled because there was no wind, and then the next day is was cancelled again because there was too much wind.

After a while we drifted out over the countryside. It was unbelievable how dry everything was - once you moved away from the roads into the fields, all the grass disappeared until all you could see was bare dirt and dried up water holes. I took the pictures below, they seem unreal, but that's exactly what the landscape looked like. Lots of dead trees, a few greeen ones, and everything else a light brown clay. It's probably been about 6 weeks since we had any substantial rain.

While our pilot kept us high in the sky, a few like to take a more risky path. Apparently the daredevils like to try and skim over the water. Some seem to like bouncing into other balloons.

Eventually we had to land. The only problem were the power-lines that needed to be avoided. We landed in a paddock filled with thistles and waited until the ground crew arrived. The pilot then put some more head into the balloon so that the ground crew could walk us out of the thistles.

The reason for this is that we had to collapse and repack the balloon ready for tomorrow's flight and the thistles could cause problems. We had thought that they moved us out of the thistles for the convenience of the passengers !

Unbelievable Weather

2009-02-13T22:32:00.004+11:00

It's hard to believe that last weekend we were suffering from 40 degree temperatures. Now I'm wearing a warm tracksuit wondering why we don't have a log fire going. I think that its only about 9 degrees outside and the forecast is only for about 20 degrees tomorrow.

It's too cold to consider swimming - even though the pool is about 24 degrees, when the air temperature is too low I just don't want to contemplate a swim.

Also, as luck would have it, the spa heater is broken and the shop tells me it will have to be replaced. The cost will be around $1000, but there's no point in having a hot spa without one. Maybe we'll win the lottery this week.

Matthew cleaned his bedroom this morning. As you can see. I wonder if other 17 year olds are as bad as him at keeping their room clean.

Addendum

We counted 12 dirty coffee mugs in his room, 3 glasses, 2 water bottles, and 3 empty cans of Pepsi.

Scam Mail

2009-01-29T23:05:00.005+11:00

I was surprised today to receive an actual piece of scam mail. Not the usual email sort that you get regularly, but an actual old-fashioned letter.

The usual wording though.

I was amazed that the scam business was so profitable that you could print customised colour letters, put them in good quality envelopes, and post them to the other side of the world.

This letter was sent all the way from Spain.

I guess that I should pass it on to the Federal Police.

A real pity. I could have done with the $4 million.

The Mystery of the Shrinking Crocs

2009-01-18T21:47:00.003+11:00

Karyn almost ruined my Crocs the other day.

I left them strategically placed in the family room in just the right place for me to find the next time I needed them. She obviously disagreed with my positioning and put them outside.

The next day when I tried to put them on, I found that they were too tight. I reckoned that because they'd been sitting in the sun for the morning they must have shrunk. Believe me, the hot summer sun in Canberra can be pretty fierce.

I was devastated. They'd cost me around $50.

I googled "crocs" and "shrunk" and found lots of cases where people's crocs had shrunk when exposed to heat; even those just left in hot cars. There were stories about how people had contacted the manufacturer who refused to help. The common estimate was that they shrink 2 sizes. There were also a few suggestions on how to stretch them back again.

So, throwing caution to the winds, I put them in a hot clothes drier for 10 minutes and then put them on my feet which were wearing 2 pairs of socks. I walked around for a few minutes, and to my surprise they were wearable again, maybe even larger than before. It seems that heat makes them, what would be the word - "malleable"?

Hooray!

Now all I have to do is work out how to fix my Crocs thongs that have also shrunk and because the front is curled upwards, they look like they are designed for pixies to wear.

New Year motivation

2009-01-18T19:14:00.003+11:00

I've been a bit motivated in the past few weeks to fix the steps to the spa.

The existing steps had reached the stage of actually rotting. It all seemed to happen pretty quickly. When I looked at them underneath I realised that there was a lot of raw timber underneath that general dirt had built up against over the years. Being untreated pine didn't help either.

Anyway, two full days work resulted in some new steps. It was a lot harder than I thought because the ground around the spa isn't level, so I had to make the steps correspondingly uneven so that they'd sit straight on the concrete.

The real problem was that every day was very hot, around 32 degrees C. And every time I lifted my head this is what I saw.

At least the steps work. Here are two votes of confidence.

New Year's Eve & New Year's Day

2009-01-01T00:06:00.002+11:00

For NYE Karyn, her mother, and I went to the restaurant where Matthew works.

No chance of getting served by him though. Whenever we go there he stays as far away from us as possible. Generally he works behind the bar, making up drinks, making coffees, and organising the bills.

This year the restaurant had a 4-course dinner menu. And of course we ate too much. I went for a walk after the first 3 courses to get some fresh air and help the food go down. Karyn and her mother stayed behind and made sure that the wine had no chance of evaporating.

We went home before midnight because Karyn's mother was yawning so much that she couldn't talk. In hindsight, we should have stayed longer.

Matthew arranged to get a lift home, which was great, I thought. Until I realised that Matthew didn't have any keys with him so I would have to stay up anyway and let him in. I had to play Farcry for hours just to stay awake.

He finally got home at about 2:15AM. He then decided that he was hungry and so made a meal out of the food that Karyn brought home from the restaurant because she couldn't eat it as she was too full. It was actually her main course (course #3 of 4). I think that he actually went to bed at around 4AM after playing some more World of Warcraft.

The next day we had a BBQ'd leg of lamb with roast vegetables. It was a great meal, but my undoing was a bucket of pina colada mix that Karyn made that had half a bottle of white rum in it. The mix was put into the freezer until it became slushy. It was so easy to drink a person could lose track of how much that had actually drunk. I think that we all had a sleep that afternoon except Matt who was doing something vital in World of Warcraft.

Here is a picture of Karyn wearing one of the silk tops that I got her in India. It's the first time that she's worn one, so I guess she may have troubles coping with my superior sense of style and fashion.

Post-Christmas shopping

2008-12-29T23:20:00.006+11:00

I'm tired of shopping now. I hope Karyn is too.

Today, in search of further sales, we went to the local Factory Outlet centre (Direct Factory Outlet in Fyshwick). Fortunately DFO now has a few electronic stores that I can spend my time in instead of clothing and footware stores. Hey, I only need 3 pairs of shoes in total, so the need for new shoes only occurs once a year or so.

So far, at the sales I've picked up a neat LCD desk light and some iPod speakers (below) that were a present from Matt. I wanted some speakers so that I could listen to podcasts while I exercise on my treadmill. I've been using earbuds for a while now, but I keep catching the earbud cord and pulling the iPod off the shelf next to me.

It was a bit bizzare evaluating the various speakers. I took my iPod shopping with me so I could check out the various products by listening to how they play what I listen to, so while other people are blasting out their music, I was blasting out Buzz Out Loud and the ABC Science podcast. I had to test them out relatively loud because I want to listen to podcasts while using the treadmill, and I needed to make sure that I could hear it over the sound of the treadmill motor.

I selected the Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere 2 because it seemed to have the best quality sound at high volume. Its remote control of the iPod works a treat as well.

I'll be giving it a for-real workout tomorrow morning while Karyn and her mother go shopping again (without me !!).

Canberra Races

2008-12-28T00:32:00.009+11:00

We went to the races today.

There weren't many people there.

Most of the people were up in the Members Stand, where we were.

However the number of people did pick up as the day progressed. Maybe a lot of people were down at the coast after Christmas.

I took my small digital camera to experiment with. It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5. I bought this one for my recent trip to India, as a small camera that I could keep in my pocket in case unexpected photo opportunities arose (which they did). This one has lots of clever options that I wanted to experiment with. One of these was the speed burst mode that seemed to capture a frame every tenth of a second. In this mode the camera switches to a 2M pixel image with the option of continuous firing (until you run out of storage). Here is the quality of picture that it took in this mode.

Unfortunately the camera doesn't allow you to manually set the speed, only select "SPORT" mode. As you can see from this photo, it didn't set the speed up to about 1/1000 of a second or above to eliminate the blur. THis means that I'll have to stay with my Kodak digital camera for horse work.