I was going through my memory cards on my cameras and thought I’d put up some images that I’ve taken recently. In no particular order or group…

On New Years day the water at the fountain at the local shopping centre was looking a bit frothier than normal. I think someone had some fun with some detergent overnight.

My cat Neko poking out her tongue. Perhaps she didn’t want the photographer annoying her.

Mum playing ten pin bowling on the Nintendo wii on Christmas day. I didn’t think I’d see the day when she thrashed me at a computer game.

My sister and I had to wait for over an hour in front of this fish and chips shop to wait for our order. The fish was good… but not that good.

Damien said ‘You’ve got a green dot on your eye’. I wiped my eye. ‘Nope still there’. I wiped my eye. ‘Nope still there’. This for a few minutes. I thought he was having me on so I took a photo with my camera.

I saw this ‘No climbing’ sign on a kids.. umm…climbing thing in Townsville. No wonder no kids were playing on it. Very obedient kids around.

The holidays are over and everyone was heading back to work today. So much so at the train station this morning the lines to buy tickets were long. Very long. So long they actually left the train station. And went across a zebra crossing and onto the other side of the street. Luckily that street was only used by buses, not regular transport. But its still used. So when a bus came through it had to crawl along to make sure it didn’t run anyone over. I wonder if it will be the same next Monday, or in the fortnights time, when peoples weekly or fortnightly tickets become due.

After a trip to DFO we went for a drive through Olympic Park and came across the Brickpit Ring walk. Its a raised platform that runs around an old brickwork area. Around the outside of the platform is information about the brickpit, its history, and the nature in the area. Its a nice walk if you’re in the area.

We decided to go for a drive today and ended up back near Olympic Park. This time we went to the DFO outlet to have a look since neither of us have been there before. Parking was terrible and a sure sign of things to come. We actually left the premises once, got back on the highway, and then had to re-enter the block to find a car park. Finally found a place and went for a walk. The building is actually horrible. A mixmash of carpark and high powered electrical towers with the centre piece being a big building, not unlike a warehouse. Inside a main corridor goes around the building so you can inspect the shops. The place was packed so I think I’m one of the few people who didn’t want to be there. And I wasn’t impressed with the prices. Shops that have ‘From $50′ t-shirts (yes, ordinary cotton t-shirts) are not likely to interest me. I think I buy my clothes too cheaply for these types of shops. Even the discounted prices were more than I pay regular.

As if my unit isn’t small enough already this morning was a trip to Ikea to do some furniture shopping. The purchase was to be a bookcase, and some of their cheap hotdogs. Mmmm cheap hotdogs. The bookcase that was chosen was a simple 4×4 cube type setup. The dimensions against a corner wall almost perfectly. Also picked up a couple of extras those being a draw insert (turn a cube section into two draws), doors (so two cubes can be closed) and a couple of boxes to put stuff in. While being damn heavy we managed to get the boxes home ok and other than one screw that wouldn’t fit together initially, it all put together with only a minimal amount of swearing. It actually looks really good (I think so anyway). Must be because Jo picked it out. I never would have picked white.

I hope everyone’s 2009 has started out well. I didn’t do much to see out the old year, or in the new one. Went to the movies last night and saw Twilight. Yeah it was just barely ok. I looked at my watch a few times thinking the movie was too long.

If what you do on the first day of a new year is what you’ll do for the rest of the year… I’m going to be broke as I went shopping. I bought a nice new messenger style bag which was actually a present from Mum (thanks Mum). I’ve also been thinking of getting an electric shaver again for a few months. The shop had a sale, so seemed like the timing was right so I bought it. I’ll have a normal blade shave tonight as I have a fair amount of growth happening. Then from tomorrow I’ll be switching over to the electric model.

As another year draws to a close its time to think back on what I’ve done this year. This is one of the best things about having blog (or diary). You forget all the things you’ve done and then look back and realise, hey, I’ve done a fair bit this last year.

January
I packed as many as my possessions would fit in my car and over four days drove approx 2,000km to my new home town, Sydney.

I went to the Sydney Salsa Congress.

I started my new job. The most memorable thing at the time it seems, was that I was hungry.

I saw a performance of Shakespeare in one of the parks in the inner Sydney area.

I went on a bus tour of the Hunter Valley wine area.

February
The unit I only just moved into, goes on the market, for sale. Luckily the new owners wanted to continue to rent the property so I got to stay.

I never thought it would happen to me (at least I’d hoped). I went to a Backstreet Boys concert.

I saw the musical Rocky Horror Picture Show.

March
I went to my first Salsa Palladium in Sydney.

I saw comedian Wil Anderson at the Opera House. Actually my first time seeing a show at the Opera House.

I saw Harry Connick Jnr perform at the Opera House.

I decided I was going to start growing my hair. No more haircuts!!

April
I saw some crazy people in the Red Bull Flutag.

I saw Rob Thomas (from Matchbox Twenty) in concert.

I saw the musical Billy Elliott.

I saw James Blunt in concert.

June
I drove my car into the CBD by myself for the first time (and didn’t get lost!)

I saw Frank Woodley at the Opera House.

I finally got a hair cut. I lasted 3 months, 6 days without one.

I helped a local dancing team by dancing in the street at a local shopping centre.

July
I went to my first State of Origin game. I was the third, decider, game. And Queensland won!

Jo arrived in Sydney after living overseas for more than a year.

I saw Phantom of the Opera.

August
I rode Segways at Olympic park with friends.

I saw Cirque De Soleil perform their Dralion show.

I saw the comedian Chris Rock in concert.

September
I went on a nature walk through the Muogamarra Nature Reserve.

October
Witnessed a car burst into flames before calling the fire brigade.

My car was involved in a minor crash.

November
I changed my licence over to New South Wales and also changed the registration on my car.

I saw Andre Rieu in concert.

December
Went to the Star Wars Exhibit at the Sydney Powerhouse Museum.

I saw Kylie Minogue in concert.

And More….
I’ve also had multiple trips to Townsville, Canberra, and even Brisbane. I’ve had my good friends come and visit me in my new home.

Its been a pretty nerve wracking year at times. Moving home, jobs, making new friends. But overall I’m going to give 2008 a big thumbs up.

Bring on 2009!

Flipping channels on my sisters pay television and I came across and old episode of Star Gate. Very old in fact. Series 1, episode 2. What was a real shocker was out of the blue is a scene with female full frontal nudity. Something I’ve never seen before. And according to a web search, is the only episode where anything like this happens.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas day. Christmas eve we caught the train to the airport to fly up to Townsville to spending time with the family this holiday. At the airport I decided to buy a book using my ‘rewards’ program that I have with my credit card. Swipe the card, enter the pin, rejected - incorrect pin. Nah, I must have typed it wrong. Swipe the card, enter the pin, rejected. It was definitely right that time. Third time, failed again. Damn it. Used my normal credit card to pay with it. Will look into that later.

Arriving in Townsville, while warmer, wasn’t as hot as I was expecting. And Christmas day yesterday was nice… especially since we put the airconditioner on for the day. There was present opening with the family and then breakfast. I got some nice presents but I think my sister won the present round. Her boyfriend got her a Nintendo Wii. We played it lots during the day with everyone having a go. Even those who aren’t really computer literate, or gaming literate, had lots of fun. Ten pin bowling and tennis were the games of choice. I had a little less fun when I was doing a power overarm swing in tennis and punched the fan above me. No real harm, just a chunk of skin less on a finger. Those warnings all over the Wii documentation…. listen people! Oh and my Uncle smacked my Aunty while bowling as she was sitting too close to his bowling arm. No real harm and we all had a laugh. She beat him that round so it was ok.

In addition to the gaming it was lots of picking at nibblies, lunch, watching a movie, going for a swim an a BBQ dinner. All in all a very nice relaxing Christmas day.

Oh and I was given a letter that was sent up here to me. From my Rewards program saying here was my new pin that was ordered. Damn it!!! Thats why my pin didn’t work. I didn’t order any new damn pin so I’ll be chasing this up next week.

I was stumbling my way through the Internet and I came across a page that explained how to make flipbooks. I remember back in my school days when I used to doodle stick figure drawings in the corner of my exercise books to create a mini flipbook movie. Well its time to get up to date. The website I found shows you how to create flipbooks from a video file. The website can be found here.

I think the examples given looked excellent so I wanted to give it a go with my own videos. However there were two issues. The original author used Adobe After Effects to create their flipbook. I don’t have that software and wasn’t keen on purchasing it just for this project. I wanted to do it with free tools. While looking for a solution the second problem came up; most video software doesn’t like the MP4 video format that my video camera records to. Solutions though, were found!

Continue reading this post…

We went to see Kylie in concert on Sunday night. Lets start with the concert. It was great. I love Kylie concerts. This was my third. She puts on a good show. The costumes weren’t as elaborate as her last ShowGirl concert but still pretty big stage setup. One thing that I found really interesting was the lighting on the floor. They must have some sort of LED base on the floor so they could change the floor lights/patterns to whatever they want. Add a giant backscreen and you can very quickly change a stage from one setting to another. While the feel of the concert was very….. techno’ed she did a couple of acoustic songs where she sounded just great.

Before and after the show weren’t so great. The concert was advertised for 6.00pm. The ‘good’ people at Ticketek advertise that if you are collecting tickets, we were, you should arrive as early as possible to avoid being late for the concert. They open the ticket office one hour before the show. We had to catch a train there so made sure we arrived at 4.40pm. Waited by the closed ticket office. Which they opened at 5.30pm. They didn’t open the arena until 6.05pm, but wouldn’t let people into the concert hall. So there were people everywhere sitting down in the hallways waiting until they didn’t let people in at 7.10pm. And then concert started at 8pm. Truely pathetic.

The concert finished at about 11pm. We then had a change trains twice. And they never ran so they joined up so there was a lot of waiting. We didn’t get home until 1am. I’m seriously going to drive next time. Crappy late night trains.

But the concert was good.

Last week the local shopping centre turned on their new car park light system. There is a sensor that is above the parking bay and detects if car is parked there. If the bay is not available then a red LED is shown. If it is available a green LED is shown. If its available and a handicapped parking bay (and maybe the parents ones too) then a blue LED is shown.

This is a terrible photo but you can kind of see the lights.

The lights are really easily seen from a distance and when the car park is fairly full the green LED with empty car parks are very easily seen. They also have signs with numbers on them indicating how many empty bays are available in a given carpark/direction. For example a sign may say if you turn left there are 89 free parking bays. I think its really handy and makes finding a spot a lot easier.

I’m sure the shopping centre is getting a lot of useful data out of it too. They can tell how much of their carparks are being used and when. How long people park for. All sorts of interesting information.

The Powerhouse Museum started a Star War exhibition this week so decided to head into the CBD to have a look. Unfortunately CityRail decided to shut down part of two different lines near home and replace the trains with buses. Walked to the train station and waited for the bus. They were supposed to be running every 15 minutes. About 25 minutes later the bus arrived and a crowd boarded. Two minutes later the driver announced the bus had a flat tyre and everyone had to get off until they got a replacement bus. Luckily that only took a few minutes. We all boarded the new bus. I mean, new as in replacement, not new. No aircon. And it was damn hot in Sydney today. Caught the bus to Strathfield and then had to get off and wait for a train for the rest of the trip into the city. The total time, including waiting; it took two hours to get to the city. This is a trip that usually takes 35 minutes when the normal trains are running.

I haven’t been to the Powerhouse Museum before so this was a first trip. Didn’t really look around the rest of the museum this trip, just the StarWars exhibit. It wasn’t super cheap either at $24 per ticket.

I enjoyed looking at the exhibits, costumes, and videos about how they made things (special effects, sounds etc) in the movies.

Ok this isn’t Star Wars but Robot from the TV series Lost in Space that we found elsewhere in the museum.

There were plenty of rugrats around plenty of stupid parents who wanted to take photos of this ugly kids in front of some exhibit. An exhibit which the kids really didn’t care about. But they were ignored and I enjoyed the trip.

The trip home was by train and then bus again. This time the bus was airconditioned and the entire trip only took an hour. Much better. I did notice that the train was supposed to stop at a certain stop before ours, but it just zoomed past. Made our trip quicker but I bet the people who wanted to get off or on weren’t all that happy. The bus was packed and some people had to stand up for the entire trip (there was only the one stop as it was an express bus).

When I left work today I got on the elevator as normal to leave the building. I work on floor 7 and have go to down to floor 5 to the exit. I got in and pushed 5, nothing. The doors closed, I pushed 5, nothing. The elevator starting moving up. I pushed 5 nothing. The doors opened at floor 9.
Two guys got on the elevator and pushed button 5. Nothing. We pushed lots of buttons. We got out of the elevator let it close and then pushed the down button. The same elevator opened, buttons still not working.
We pushed the up button, the same elevator doors opened. We kept the door open and pushed the down button. Another elevator arrived and we took that one instead. I wonder if someone got trapped on the top floor and couldn’t get down.

I went to the cinemas today and saw ‘Nights in Rodanthe’. The movie, while enjoyable, was somewhat predictable and soppy. More eventful was the group of about eight teenagers who were in the theatre and decided to not watch the movie but rather annoy the rest of us that did want to watch it. Constant talking, jumping over seats, and running down the aisles were all part of their performance. After a few minutes of this I went outside and complained to an attendant who came in and warned them. As soon as the staff member left they played up again. Another woman in the theatre told them to be quiet but they ignored her after a few minutes. Soon after the woman went outside and got the same attendant. He and another staff member came in and asked the entire group to leave. Strangely they seemed shocked at the request but he was adamant and soon had them exited out the door. Probably the first third of the movie was ruined by these youthful gits. If children truely are the salvation of tomorrow… we’re screwed.

Last night was the Xmas Palladium at the Factory Theatre in Enmore. ‘Xmas’ just because of the timing, they really was nothing Christmasy about it. As far as salsa parties go, the Palladium parties never fail to satisfy. Kicking off at 8pm, we arrived fashionably late at 8.30pm, had the latin beats playing courtesy of a DJ. At 9.30pm they stopped to have a few dance displays. I never like displays but at least it gave me a chance to cool off. After that the live 16 piece band kicked off the tunes and by now the dance floor was starting to get busy. We dance until about 12.30am and while could’ve danced longer decided to call it a night so we didn’t get home at too ungodly an hour.

The venue is great. They have a big dance floor, two actually separated by a step. Large stage for the band and bar for refreshments. I took a few photos and then stitched them together. Unfortunately due to the low light its kinda hard to see. The band is on the left, dance floor centre, bar far right.

Looking forward to the next one, most likely in March.

Last night I went to a concert by Andre Rieu. Before I got an email from Ticketek about some discount tickets on sale I really didn’t know who he was. But I overheard some girls talking about him and thought it might be an ok show for Jo and I to see. It was at the ANZ Stadium at Olympic Park which has an open roof so we kept an eye on the sky. Luckily though the heavens held off and we didn’t get rained on. It was a fun evening of classical music and Rieu was a fun entertainer. He joked around with the audience and his orchestra. The stage was extravagant! A mock castle with centre stage for the orchestra; and above them a huge dance floor for a cast of dancers. On either side of the stage was an ice skating rink for more dancers. And further out on either side of the stage were water fountains.

It was a really enjoyable evening with the concert going for a little over three hours. I see that he is returning to Australia in October 2009 but will be performing in much smaller venues so I don’t expect the stages to be as lavish.

My local Woolworths grocery shop installed their first lot of self checkout machines. So yesterday after doing a grocery run, with a full shopping trolly, I decided to give them a go.

The system is driven by a touch screen menu. You press a button to start. Then scan an item through the barcode scanner, then place it into the bag. Underneath the bag is a scale which detects that you’ve added an item to the bag.

To be honest I didn’t think it worked very well for a trolley full of groceries. Once you filled a shopping bag after scanning items, there is no place to put the bag, so you end up putting it on the ground until you’ve removed all the groceries from your trolley. And one really annoying thing was that you can only scan one item at a time. You MUST put the scanned item into the bag, so the weight detector picks up on it, before you can scan the next item. Otherwise it generates an error and a staff member has to play with the machine (put something on and off the scales) to get it going again. This means you can’t pick up two or three items at once out of your trolley, scan them all, then place them all into the bag. The process of scanning one item at a time and putting it into a bag is what slows it down.

It may be ok if you only have a few items, but it really doesn’t work for a trolley full of groceries.

This morning Jo and I went to the local RTA to get our licences and the car registration changed over to NSW from Qld. After all the drama that’s happened so far I expected this step to not go easy. But I was wrong. We drove to the RTA office and then with trusty screwdriver I took off the old plates. Inside when it was our turn to be served a very helpful lady named Kathy took our information, and the forms we’d already completed, and finished the process. We had our photos taken and new licences issued. And I got new registration plates for the car which afterwards fitted on the vehicle with no real problems. The registration cost $275 for a year.

When we finished all the paperwork Kathy said ‘you’re now officially a New South Welshman. Welcome to the bankrupt state.’ Ahh it’s nice to be welcomed.

I’ve felt really busy the last week or so. So much so (is that too many so’s?) that I’ve not had time to update the blog. For shame.

Last Saturday morning the car was booked in for its 9.00am mechanical inspection (blue slip) so I could get it registered in NSW. The mechanic advised it would take ‘a few hours’ to complete the inspection. Luckily it was close to home so we could walk everywhere after dropping it off. I decided that it would be best to get the compulsory third party insurance sorted while we were waiting. A trip to NRMA would do. I was expecting the bill to be about $100. Ha! It cost $623.49! That’s just for the compulsory third party insurance, not the regular insurance. Keep in mind it cost me about $527 to register and get compulsory insurance in Qld earlier this year. I’m dreading how much the registration will cost on top of that.

On the Sunday we caught the train into the city (see, never drive) and then a tram over to the suburb of Glebe. They have an annual street fair on that just happened to be this weekend. They close a main section of the street and setup stalls of food, arts and crafts, and other bits and pieces.