One day in the city,
a ladybug landed on my hand.
I whipped
out the camera and flicked it into macro mode.
I was moving around to try and
get some decent light.
This is the result.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Dancing with the Ladybug
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Continuing my series of 'embeds'
This is an example of a Scrapblog from scrapblog.com
I've used some old photos that I took at last years sculpture walk here in Sydney.
Friday, April 27, 2007
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
Who was it that wanted to earn some cash from their writing?
It was someone in my neighbourhood.
This showed up in my Myspace account and you might find the site useful…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
Who was it that wanted to earn some cash from their writing?
It was someone in my neighbourhood.
This showed up in my Myspace account and you might find the site useful…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
Who was it that wanted to earn some cash from their writing?
It was someone in my neighbourhood.
This showed up in my Myspace account and you might find the site useful…
For my second piece of community info sharing this week…
Who was it that wanted to earn some cash from their writing?
It was someone in my neighbourhood.
This showed up in my Myspace account and you might find the site useful…
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Walking to work
Went on the ‘Right to Work’ demonstration last Sunday.
No riots unfortunately
The people I was with and I did the traditional thing and stopped in for a drink in a pub half way along the route.
Was disappointed that the tail of the group rolled past outside in the middle of our first drink.
We quickly sculled and rejoined the stragglers.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Entry for April 21, 2007: Another of my very irregular weekly summations.
I had some great comments on my Melbourne trip by the usual suspects. I think I now have a deeper appreciation of some of these individuals. I have to heartily agree with Hot Claws, that alcohol is a wonderful thing.
The reflections thing in the video is something that I’m building an internal fixation with. I like the additional content in each frame, and confusion that the reflection adds to a shot.
Gypsy mentioned vanilla flavoured cigars, which coincidentally was what my companion was smoking.
Specking of video.
I've posted some clips from my time on a boat off the coast of Spain last year on the Lonely Planet web site.
There is a competition on, where the video with the top number of ratings wins a new computer and camera.
I could use a new camera
Ordinarily I wouldn't spruik people like this, but it's the Lonely Planet, who are a pretty cool travel book type company, and their Ozzie.
It’s a good site, and there are lots of interesting homemade travel videos to look at, so it’s not like I’m inviting people to an Amway meeting :-)
Earlier in this blog I posted a video of the shenanigans occurring around the perimeter of the V festival which was staged earlier in the year.
I made a comment on how I was surprised how lax the security was compared with other festivals I’d seen.
Click here for previous entry...
There have been recent news reports detailing the excessive advertising that was displayed within the festival. This included a few commentators criticizing the amount of alcohol promotion that kids were being exposed to.
I guess the organizes might have been more interested in getting the kids eyeballs inside the gig then keeping them out.
The Catholics have decided to abolish Limbo.
It’s nice to see the Christians referring to this ‘limbo’ concept as a hypothesis. I wonder what other spiritual constructs will also turn out to be theoretical?
Where does this leave purgatory?
Vatican 'abolishes' limbo
The Vatican has determined that limbo does not exist, opening the gates of heaven to babies who die unbaptised, a member of a high-level theological commission told AFP today.
"The many factors that we have considered ... give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved," says a document published by the US magazine Origins with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.
The medieval concept of limbo as a place where unbaptised infants spend eternity but without communion with God seems to reflect an "unduly restrictive view of salvation," the document says.
In 1984, when Benedict headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said he was "personally" in favour of scrapping the 13th-century notion, which he termed a mere "hypothesis."
"We cannot know with certainty what will happen" when an unbaptised baby dies, said panel member Paul McPartlan. "But we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them to salvation," he said, quoted by the Catholic News Service.
The reflections thing in the video is something that I’m building an internal fixation with. I like the additional content in each frame, and confusion that the reflection adds to a shot.
Gypsy mentioned vanilla flavoured cigars, which coincidentally was what my companion was smoking.
Specking of video.
I've posted some clips from my time on a boat off the coast of Spain last year on the Lonely Planet web site.
There is a competition on, where the video with the top number of ratings wins a new computer and camera.
I could use a new camera
Ordinarily I wouldn't spruik people like this, but it's the Lonely Planet, who are a pretty cool travel book type company, and their Ozzie.
It’s a good site, and there are lots of interesting homemade travel videos to look at, so it’s not like I’m inviting people to an Amway meeting :-)
Earlier in this blog I posted a video of the shenanigans occurring around the perimeter of the V festival which was staged earlier in the year.
I made a comment on how I was surprised how lax the security was compared with other festivals I’d seen.
Click here for previous entry...
There have been recent news reports detailing the excessive advertising that was displayed within the festival. This included a few commentators criticizing the amount of alcohol promotion that kids were being exposed to.I guess the organizes might have been more interested in getting the kids eyeballs inside the gig then keeping them out.
The Catholics have decided to abolish Limbo.It’s nice to see the Christians referring to this ‘limbo’ concept as a hypothesis. I wonder what other spiritual constructs will also turn out to be theoretical?
Where does this leave purgatory?
Vatican 'abolishes' limbo
The Vatican has determined that limbo does not exist, opening the gates of heaven to babies who die unbaptised, a member of a high-level theological commission told AFP today.
"The many factors that we have considered ... give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved," says a document published by the US magazine Origins with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.
The medieval concept of limbo as a place where unbaptised infants spend eternity but without communion with God seems to reflect an "unduly restrictive view of salvation," the document says.
In 1984, when Benedict headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said he was "personally" in favour of scrapping the 13th-century notion, which he termed a mere "hypothesis."
"We cannot know with certainty what will happen" when an unbaptised baby dies, said panel member Paul McPartlan. "But we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them to salvation," he said, quoted by the Catholic News Service.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
OK, I guess you two can't see each other in my neighbourhood...
So here is an introduction...
grantalias
I've got 3 Joost invites to give away.
For those of you who don't know Joost is the next big thing from the guys who brought you Kazza and Skype. So one would think that this will be huge.
It's
pretty cool to watch television for free on your computer and not have
to bittorrent... I mean get it from totally legal pay outlets.
grantalias
I've got 3 Joost invites to give away.
For those of you who don't know Joost is the next big thing from the guys who brought you Kazza and Skype. So one would think that this will be huge.
It's
pretty cool to watch television for free on your computer and not have
to bittorrent... I mean get it from totally legal pay outlets.
Okay now listen up! I don't make many demands of you neighbourhood
types and this is more of a plea than a demand anyway, but are there
any Joost Beta users out in Vox-land with invites to the beta they'd like to share with a TV-deprived Aussie?
Yes, I have a TV, in fact several in this house, including the
'puter, but free-to-air in Oz is just plain crap, which is why we don't
often watch anything here. We're much more addicted to downloading what
we want and watching when we feel like it. Joost offers so much more to types like me & Rabble.
Crossing fingers and hoping....
Both of you showed up in my listing this evening sitting next to each other ;-)
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Entry for April 17, 2007: Easter in Melbourne (cont)
The one thing I had my heart set to do, during my visit down south, was to spend a bit of time warming a seat in a proper cigar bar
One evening we ended up at the big casino that lurks on the bank of the Yarra river.
Turned right and walking through the door, and we were swamped in a crowded shopping precinct which must have been the ‘family friendly’ face of the casino, and it was jammed with people.
We found the bar and were instantly transported to a quiet place where soft conversations mingled with the blue cigar smoke wafting around the low ceiling.
I noticed that a decent breeze was keeping my smoke alight so there must have been an efficient aircon whisking the smoke away.
She had an elderberry and champagne cocktail, He had ten year old Taliska Scotch.
My companion was attractive, and smart, and could squeeze out a cute chuckle, with nice lips, round of bosom, and she was funny.
There was one of those ‘out of phase’ periods where I couldn’t remember any details, but we both ended up in bed, half undressed…
And then the momentum faded.
Has anyone else been stopped in their tracks by another person’s history?
At the train station I’d met a previous boy friend (he had his front teeth when she had gone out with him.)
She’d let slip that recently she’d made a random pickup in a club…
And also got laid at a party last week.
I couldn’t bring myself to dive under the waist band of her jeans (alright, that’s a lie, I did some half hearted delving but her knickers held tight against her hips by some sort of super elastic, as was the impressive binding of her bra.)
We had a nice kiss and cuddle and grope, but I don’t think either of us were completely satisfied.
Say what you like about intimacy and gentleness, but there is nothing quite like finishing off the night with a jolly good pounding, a few screeching moans, and maybe a small blasphemy yelled at the head board.
Where is the halfway point between clumsy virgin and town bike?
To find a woman who knows her way around the paddock (for our international readers a ‘paddock’ is what we call a football field) but doesn’t have carnal knowledge of the entire home team (and the visiting team, both sets of training staff, and the lad who runs the hotdog stand?)
Not that either extreme is a bad thing. I’ve known some gracefully ignorant virgins, and quite a few of my current friends have slept with half the city.
These are all wonderful women, who I have little lust for.
Why would a woman would reel off a list of previous plumbers…
or wax lyrical about her progress through the members of the surf lifesaving squad…
or let slip that she had had a kid when she was at High School and had put him up for adoption?
I reckon it’s a test to fathom the depth of feeling of the current tradesman who is ‘seeing to the plumbing.’
‘If he’s still here in the morning, then he must like me a bit?’
Speaking of which, we had breakfast in a café hidden away in one of Melbourne’s ‘lanes.’
There’s a shot from our table in the accompanying video (the compiling of which has taken me a week and so I’ve ‘multi parted’ this blog entry to fill in the time.)
One evening we ended up at the big casino that lurks on the bank of the Yarra river.
Turned right and walking through the door, and we were swamped in a crowded shopping precinct which must have been the ‘family friendly’ face of the casino, and it was jammed with people.
We found the bar and were instantly transported to a quiet place where soft conversations mingled with the blue cigar smoke wafting around the low ceiling.
I noticed that a decent breeze was keeping my smoke alight so there must have been an efficient aircon whisking the smoke away.
She had an elderberry and champagne cocktail, He had ten year old Taliska Scotch.
My companion was attractive, and smart, and could squeeze out a cute chuckle, with nice lips, round of bosom, and she was funny.
There was one of those ‘out of phase’ periods where I couldn’t remember any details, but we both ended up in bed, half undressed…
And then the momentum faded.
Has anyone else been stopped in their tracks by another person’s history?
At the train station I’d met a previous boy friend (he had his front teeth when she had gone out with him.)
She’d let slip that recently she’d made a random pickup in a club…
And also got laid at a party last week.
I couldn’t bring myself to dive under the waist band of her jeans (alright, that’s a lie, I did some half hearted delving but her knickers held tight against her hips by some sort of super elastic, as was the impressive binding of her bra.)
We had a nice kiss and cuddle and grope, but I don’t think either of us were completely satisfied.
Say what you like about intimacy and gentleness, but there is nothing quite like finishing off the night with a jolly good pounding, a few screeching moans, and maybe a small blasphemy yelled at the head board.
Where is the halfway point between clumsy virgin and town bike?
To find a woman who knows her way around the paddock (for our international readers a ‘paddock’ is what we call a football field) but doesn’t have carnal knowledge of the entire home team (and the visiting team, both sets of training staff, and the lad who runs the hotdog stand?)
Not that either extreme is a bad thing. I’ve known some gracefully ignorant virgins, and quite a few of my current friends have slept with half the city.
These are all wonderful women, who I have little lust for.
Why would a woman would reel off a list of previous plumbers…
or wax lyrical about her progress through the members of the surf lifesaving squad…
or let slip that she had had a kid when she was at High School and had put him up for adoption?
I reckon it’s a test to fathom the depth of feeling of the current tradesman who is ‘seeing to the plumbing.’
‘If he’s still here in the morning, then he must like me a bit?’
Speaking of which, we had breakfast in a café hidden away in one of Melbourne’s ‘lanes.’
There’s a shot from our table in the accompanying video (the compiling of which has taken me a week and so I’ve ‘multi parted’ this blog entry to fill in the time.)
Assault and battery
So apart from Cybette, who keeps her N95 permanently tethered to a power cord. Could I get some feedback on just how bad the battery problem is?
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Entry for April 12, 2007: Easter in Melbourne
My mate met me at her local train station, and we spent the rest of the morning chatting and shifted sun lounges around as we chased the sunny spots tracking across her overgrown back yard
After a bit we decided to go out for pizza in the city and I insisted that I wanted to ride a tram. We don’t have trams in Sydney and it was a bit weird riding in a vehicle that was train shaped, but was cruising through the middle of road bound car traffic.
We ended up in a groovy pub. She was drinking white and I had red, and we talked about the feminist position on scrunching and folding, the burgeoning popularity of tapas in Melbourne, and how it’s hard for a single girl to get ‘knocked up’ these days as guys have realised that the government will hunt them down and make them pay for the upkeep of the sprog (as a result condoms are gaining in popularity again.)
What I thought was interesting was that she expressed the opinion, that single woman are more interested in having a guy around as a babysitter, then sucking his bank account dry.
We ended up back in my hotel room, attacking a complimentary bottle of red that we found sitting on a cupboard (I think it was complimentary as I wasn’t charged, and no one appeared to claim it.)
The next day my hostess had to study, so I did what I normally do when I’m in a new place and explored.
Melbourne cental is all wide roads, or narrow lanes crammed with interesting shops and cafes.
Sydney is condensed and over bearing and choked with exhaust spewing cars and buses, by comparison.
I found a big art gallery. There was an exhibition on Bollywood which didn’t interest me, but a display of the history of exotic sneakers did.
School holidays are on so there was a children’s activity where a pile of Lego had been spilled out on a table the foyer.
Since this was an art gallery they couldn’t just use normal Lego.
The only colour available to the children was white.
Where did the gallery staff hide all the other colours?
The children were building tall towers of shiny white Lego, which looked great but there didn’t seem to be any childish chaos to the structures, and I couldn’t help thinking that the kids were being prompted.
Now for the travel details bit.
I flew to Melbourne with Virgin Blue (cheap flights but you have to pick the right times. It was astoundingly cheap to fly back on Easter Sunday.)
Virgin has this handy web check in where the passenger can save time by printing out a bar-coded travel document.
Caught the cheapest transport to the city on the Skybus (about fifteen bucks, I was told by a taxi driver that cab fare out there is at least forty-five)
Melbourne public transport is amazing. Trains and trams run all over the place and the yellow cabs fill in the bits in-between.
I stayed at the Hotel Rendezvous (328 flinders street)
The hotel was a lot nicer then I thought it would be.
It’s an old fashioned building which has been brought up to modern standards.
The room was small but clean and I didn’t mind not having a view as all I was going to be doing in there was sleeping and bathing.
The staff were really nice and friendly.
To be continued…
After a bit we decided to go out for pizza in the city and I insisted that I wanted to ride a tram. We don’t have trams in Sydney and it was a bit weird riding in a vehicle that was train shaped, but was cruising through the middle of road bound car traffic.
We ended up in a groovy pub. She was drinking white and I had red, and we talked about the feminist position on scrunching and folding, the burgeoning popularity of tapas in Melbourne, and how it’s hard for a single girl to get ‘knocked up’ these days as guys have realised that the government will hunt them down and make them pay for the upkeep of the sprog (as a result condoms are gaining in popularity again.)
What I thought was interesting was that she expressed the opinion, that single woman are more interested in having a guy around as a babysitter, then sucking his bank account dry.
We ended up back in my hotel room, attacking a complimentary bottle of red that we found sitting on a cupboard (I think it was complimentary as I wasn’t charged, and no one appeared to claim it.)
The next day my hostess had to study, so I did what I normally do when I’m in a new place and explored.
Melbourne cental is all wide roads, or narrow lanes crammed with interesting shops and cafes.
Sydney is condensed and over bearing and choked with exhaust spewing cars and buses, by comparison.
I found a big art gallery. There was an exhibition on Bollywood which didn’t interest me, but a display of the history of exotic sneakers did.
School holidays are on so there was a children’s activity where a pile of Lego had been spilled out on a table the foyer.
Since this was an art gallery they couldn’t just use normal Lego.
The only colour available to the children was white.
Where did the gallery staff hide all the other colours?
The children were building tall towers of shiny white Lego, which looked great but there didn’t seem to be any childish chaos to the structures, and I couldn’t help thinking that the kids were being prompted.
Now for the travel details bit.
I flew to Melbourne with Virgin Blue (cheap flights but you have to pick the right times. It was astoundingly cheap to fly back on Easter Sunday.)
Virgin has this handy web check in where the passenger can save time by printing out a bar-coded travel document.
Caught the cheapest transport to the city on the Skybus (about fifteen bucks, I was told by a taxi driver that cab fare out there is at least forty-five)
Melbourne public transport is amazing. Trains and trams run all over the place and the yellow cabs fill in the bits in-between.
I stayed at the Hotel Rendezvous (328 flinders street)
The hotel was a lot nicer then I thought it would be.
It’s an old fashioned building which has been brought up to modern standards.
The room was small but clean and I didn’t mind not having a view as all I was going to be doing in there was sleeping and bathing.
The staff were really nice and friendly.
To be continued…
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Entry for April 10, 2007: Easter in Melbourne
I decided I needed a change of scenery so I spent a few days down in Melbourne over Easter.
Melbourne is one of those cities where I feel instantly at home.
Glasgow, Fethiye, Wellington, Nuremburg, and London are others that I have instantly grown an attachment to.
The opposite would be cities such as Las Vagus which make my skin crawl.
My home town of Sydney is notorious for being sunny but soulless.
Melbourne is known for being cultured and damp.
Good Friday morning was cold and wet and swathed in cloud when I left my flat and caught the bus to the airport.
While I was in Melbourne I enjoyed three straight days of bright sparkly solar radiation.
Some folk reckon that global warming is to blame for this topsy turvey weather.
If this is true, then Melbourne and England will become known for being ‘fun in the sun,’ while Sydney and Spain will assume the mantle of ‘soggy Sao.’
I had arranged to meet a local I knew from the internet in the city centre, and not finding anyone waiting, zapped off a sms.
They replied to my cheerfully probing text message, by pleading a hangover, and extending an offer for me to hang out at their place in the suburbs until I could check into my hotel at two (they sent me very detailed instructions on which train to take where.)
I’d been in motion since five that morning, so the first thing I did in my search for breakfast was to ignore the fast food chains, and hunted up a proper ‘greasy spoon’ called the Blackjack (run by a very cute Asian family,) to have a serving of bacon and eggs on toast, accompanied by a very fine mug of coffee.
With a full belly and a system charged with caffeine, I approached the foreign train station.
Nice building. Had a proper ‘modern Euro’ feeling about it.
I was standing in front of the ticket machine in the train station wearing my ‘humm, how does this work’ face when a guy walking past gave me his ticket with a couple of hours of time left on it (nothing like this sort of kismet for nurturing in one an affection for a place.)
One of the nice things about travelling is re-learning things, such as how to board a train. The carriage doors on Melbourne trains don’t open auto-magically. They require the effort of arm to yank them open.
To be continued…
Monday, April 2, 2007
Cemetery stuff
It’s been a while, and I have some more cemetery shots from
a site that’s been left to ruin.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Entry for April 01, 2007: Peace and quiet again.
Houseguests have gone up to Queensland for a few days.
I’m having a period of detox before they reappear on my doorstep in a couple of days.
Nice to see I’m not the only one feeling my age, as they are both taking longer to recover in the mornings.
Went out last Sat night and walked out of the pub around ‘one’ to find one of the missing visitors and a huge Samoan bouncer wouldn’t let me back in.
I don't remember walking a couple of K's to find a bus, but remember getting on the bus and paying, fell asleep and woke just in time to get off at my stop.
Don’t remember walking to the flat, or getting undressed, but awoke in bed the next morning with the oblatory ‘trail of clothes across the floor.’
Had a dinner party for my visitors and made mashed taters with sheep’s yogurt (smells like a sheep) a couple of cloves of garlic, n paprika.
Opened a bottle o favourite scotch that I carried all the way home from U.K.
Opened bottle of Calvados ‘for the ladies.’
Played with deaf dog.
Scored an Easter egg.
Received sloppy wet kisses from drunk wives.
All the dishes were washed up by pre-drunk wives.
Smoked cigars with their husbands.
With the passing of Daylight savings, we see this year’s festival season drawing to a close.
These clips were taken from outside the V fest.
As with the other festivals we’ve had in the park during the year, hordes of kids were drawn to the noise and energy to ‘walk the circuit.’
Parameter defence was pretty lax compared to the enthusiasm of festival security I’ve previously observed.
I noticed an ABC TV offsite broadcast van so maybe the organisers were making more cash from selling the broadcast rights?
I’m having a period of detox before they reappear on my doorstep in a couple of days.
Nice to see I’m not the only one feeling my age, as they are both taking longer to recover in the mornings.
Went out last Sat night and walked out of the pub around ‘one’ to find one of the missing visitors and a huge Samoan bouncer wouldn’t let me back in.
I don't remember walking a couple of K's to find a bus, but remember getting on the bus and paying, fell asleep and woke just in time to get off at my stop.
Don’t remember walking to the flat, or getting undressed, but awoke in bed the next morning with the oblatory ‘trail of clothes across the floor.’
Had a dinner party for my visitors and made mashed taters with sheep’s yogurt (smells like a sheep) a couple of cloves of garlic, n paprika.
Opened bottle of Calvados ‘for the ladies.’
Played with deaf dog.
Scored an Easter egg.
Received sloppy wet kisses from drunk wives.
All the dishes were washed up by pre-drunk wives.
Smoked cigars with their husbands.
With the passing of Daylight savings, we see this year’s festival season drawing to a close.
These clips were taken from outside the V fest.
As with the other festivals we’ve had in the park during the year, hordes of kids were drawn to the noise and energy to ‘walk the circuit.’
Parameter defence was pretty lax compared to the enthusiasm of festival security I’ve previously observed.
There was a single fence erected and it didn’t look much effort had been applied to its construction.
It\u2019s as though the organisers didn\u2019t care if people got in?
Dishwashing blues
Ahhhhhh,
This is going to sound weird, but I can’t wash up my dishes and I’m ‘pissed off!’
The sink is stacked with greasy plates, crusted cutlery, grimy glasses, and is half full of hot water.
But where the hell did the detergent go?
I’ve been eating lamb chops, and bacon, and hummus, and egg, and olive oil, and tomatoes, and mashed potatoes blended with sheep’s yogurt.
I NEED DETERGENT TO MOVE THIS STUFF.
I did have a bottle of detergent.
It was sitting on the window sill above the kitchen sink.
But it’s gone.
Did it fall out the window?
This seems to be the only option, cause I’ve searched all over the flat.
I live on the seventh floor.
A bottle of apple scented detergent falling seven floors is going to make a decent impact right?
I wonder if it hit some one?
Maybe it’s worth not pursuing this issue?
Could the plunging bottle have killed someone’s cat? Or at least scared the living bejesus out of a moggy as the bottle smashed against the earth.
That would be a bonus at least.
I was planning on starting the week with vacuumed floors, clean dishes, and ironed shirts.
It takes a bit of metal momentum for me to attempt these sorts of household chores.
Now my brain is fried.
I managed to get the floor vacuumed before this train wreck occurred, but the pile of laundry waiting for dewrinkerling has become an unscaleable mountain.
I’m writing this blog, just to avoid confronting the obstacle.
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