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Well I'm quite convinced that if I stopped blogging and tweeting noone would even notice, much less care. My last tweet was a week ago and only two people commented - my brother and a friend who doesn't have a twitter account. I considered stopping blogging/tweeting altogether. I considered going somewhere else and starting again or going totally private. But I have to keep coming back to the only real reason I blog - it's just too good a diary not to. The years before I started blogging are almost like the dark ages, where I don't really know what I was doing from day to day. I love the chronicle, and going back to find out when I did things. And all the photos. And occasionally reading a random month or search results and reading stuff I'd completely forgotten about. Twitter is a supplement to the blog, and records stuff that doesn't seem blogworthy enough for a whole post. It's crap as an online archive, but regular backups mean I still have an offline record. So as much as I'd like to wait around for someone to miss me, I doubt that'll happen any time soon, and not blogging is hurting me more than anyone else.

So we got back from Japan and the UK on Saturday morning. Managed to survive most of the day before collapsing at 4pm for a couple of hours. Slept ok Saturday night and was basically fine on Sunday. Although did stay up waaaayyy too late on Sunday night. Whoops. Monday was more recovery from Sunday than from jetlag heh.

The holiday was decent enough. The biggest downer was the weather. It was grey most of the time. Rainy a lot. Very little sunlight. Which is pretty depressing as a photographer. And Legoland was closed the last two days we were there, which is when we were planning to go. I, of course, was devastated. It was supposed to be one good thing to finish the trip off on, and instead it was the biggest let down. It really soured my mood about the whole trip and harder to think of the highlights. Which included our first day in London, Harry Potter filming locations, some lovely cathedrals and Scotland. We also missed quite a few things I wanted to see because we didn't have the time. And the things we did see were rushed. But I'm not planning to go back any time soon (except maybe to Edinburgh, and Legoland if I can face it) as there's too many other places in the world to see. I took around 12000 photos (haven't got an exact count yet). I still haven't seen most of them.

Our weeping cherry tree was nice enough to wait til late September to flower this year. It made me very happy to come home and see it in full bloom.

In the afternoon there was a cool rainbow

Tonight there were storms south of us, and Mt Ainslie was all black, the sky was dark, but it was sunny on the foreground. Made for some cool lighting conditions.

Although this spider freaked me out by coming up next to me while I was taking photos out the window.

I spent some time on the weekend building this model of Tower Bridge I picked up in London. It was quite fun to build, but not really a puzzle, as all the pieces are numbered and there's instructions. But a pretty cool result.

And even cooler? An email from Lego on the weekend with a Lego version!!

This of course I must have. The Lego version doesn't have the other piers on the ends, so I'll probably get some extra bricks off BrickLink and make up my own.

For reference, the real thing -

So it was back to work today. I had planned to spend an easy day getting back into things, reading emails etc. And mostly that's what I did. Took til around mid afternoon to get through five weeks of emails. I did get given two projects, both of which are fairly urgent. One will be significantly easier than the other though. And also got caught up in *problems* which are just painful and suck time like you have it to spare.

Epic win of the day was an incorrect shelf price at Toys R Us, which meant I got the Toy Story garbage truck in Lego (RRP $99.99 and $109.99 normally at Toys R Us) for $65.99 !! Epic win!! Only one more Toy Story set to go now. And the new Imperial Shuttle. And the new Diagon Alley. And the Eiffel Tower.

With daylight savings, and a beautiful warm afternoon/evening, it felt like summer. Had a walk, dusting done and two episodes of Survivor watched before 8pm. And the sweetie cooked dinner :)

Firsts

So we went into town yesterday to have brunch, get Stu a haircut, buy me some replacement ratchet straps for my roller blades.

And we accidently bought ourselves new toys.

That is to say, we had intended to get Stu a video camera. I hadn't quite intended to buy a camera for myself. That is, I'd been thinking about it, but hadn't fully decided what to get. So it wasn't as fully researched as I'd have liked it to have been.

So the new toy. A Canon 500D with an 18-135mm lens (28-200mm equivalent) - which is pretty much what I had with the Sony. The idea of having to continually change lenses while travelling still puts me right off - one of the big reasons I went with the Sony last time. So this lens is a decent compromise.

If anything the focus is a little soft, but still possibly clearer than the Sony. Certainly the colours are better and less chromatic aberration. I gave it a bit of a workout today at the Lego Brick Expo at Woden. Generally did fairly well.

One disadvantage of using a real viewfinder is that it doesn't give you a guestimate of the exposure. With the Sony you could get a pretty good idea of how the photo would turn out even before you took it. No such luxury with the Canon (except maybe with the live view thingie).. gonna be a bit of trial and error methinks.

The image stablising is pretty nifty though and seems to work fairly well.

So this is the fifth real camera I have owned.

My first was a Ricoh film camera I got for Christmas in 1991. It was a great little camera and took quite decent pictures. Unfortunately it was stolen along with my bag in 1996, along with half a roll of undeveloped film that included such events as my birthday outing to Phantom of the Opera.

My second camera was a Hyundai. Yes I know. I was in an altered mental state the day I bought it, having been told off by someone previously. So I wasn't thinking clearly and was sucked in by the sales guy on the day. Stoopid stoopid stoopid. This camera was very average, but I used it up until I got my first digital camera. Pretty sure the first photo on it was of my brand new second hand (and first) car. Ended up giving it away on Freecycle some years ago.

My third camera was my first digital camera - an Olympus C-900 zoom. My Uncle Graham bought it for me in Singapore for ~$1500. This was a fantastic camera. 1.3 megapix, 3x optical zoom. I used it for five years and was totally happy with it. The main problem with it was not having any control over exposure settings, so it didn't do well with the colouring in sunsets etc. Loved this camera, still have it stored away.

My fourth camera was my Sony DSC-F828. OK I really *really* loved this camera. ~58500 photos taken on it. Three overseas holidays. 8 megapix, which was ahead of its time (I got it in 2004 and it was several years before 8mp camera became the norm). One of the best features of this camera was its ability to bend the camera body, which made taking photos from waist height, and over the head, extremelly easy. I am going to miss that sorely. Really the only reason I'm upgrading at all is for better photos in low light.

Technically "random camera" is Stu's camera. I bought it for him for Christmas in 2005. It's also a great little camera, that's pretty easy to hold onto and take photos of "random" stuff when just walking around - it was used in Japan a lot this way.

Not sure if the iPhone counts as a camera, but I do take quite a lot of photos on it (it somehow seems more socially acceptable to pull out a phone than a thumping big black camera).

And finally the 500D. Still only about a third of the way through reading the manual. Still have a lot to figure out how it actually works and how I can get the best results out of it....

Toy Story 3

While we were in Queensland, we all went and saw Toy Story 3.

It was pretty awesome!!

Although it was pretty easy to tell the bad guy the minute he came on screen heh.

We decided not to see it in 3D. None of us are that convinced by it. Stu gets a headache. I think it dulls down the picture too much. Really, we're so used to 2D that 3D doesn't really add that much.

It's pretty cool that the kid who played Andy was the same kid, all grown up. The original Toy Story was fifteen years ago!!! Not even Daemon was born when the first one came out heh.

There was even a Totoro!

Pixar have certainly done it again with this movie, well done!

Almost TUA (Totally Unrelated Aside):

There's a line in one of the movies (I can't actually remember which, I think it was 2) that has a character (Stinky Pete?) questioning Woody about whether he would be still there when Andy grew up - would he be taken on Andy's honeymoon? The tragic thing is, if I'd actually remembered (I was kicking myself that I forgot) I would actually have taken my favourite childhood toy on my honeymoon. I did take her to Japan last year. She's on the packing list for the next trip hehe.

The weekend so far..

Friday night built Lego

Yesterday was woken up fairly early by completely useless alerts. Then patching alerts a while later meant I didn't get a sleep in. Had a nice quiet morning. Built some Lego. In the afternoon did some food shopping. Stu cooked a nice bean dish for dinner.

I loved the mist coming off the pool edge and damp towel

I must have looked at them funny..
Doves taking off

We have these gorgeous bean plants growing. Unfortunately they're completely sterile (grown from leftovers of the original crop) and not a single bean on the plants :( So not taking any care of them, but they're still growing like crazy..
Beans

Even had some eastern rosellas down

Nat and Andrew came over after dinner for some wiiing. That was a bit of fun. Tried to get the sweetie to play Billionaire with us but he wouldn't so we didn't play (cause you really need at least four to play) :( Had a repeat of the Robert Pattinson conversation that we had at Shogun, which was pretty darned funny ;) Edward from Twilight is Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter people! :) Baked a coconut cake, but had the oven up too high, so it was sufficiently burnt around the edges that we had to cut them off - doh! And I also attempted to make icing, which I probably haven't done since I moved out of home ten years ago :) First batch was a bit of a fail cause I put wayyy too much water in it (it's not like making gravy! heh). And then just before midnight (oops, we didn't realise the time) we put on Toy Story. Nat & Andrew fell asleep by the end (and I have photographic evidence mwoooahahah)

Got to bed very late (after 1:30), then woken up by stoopid alerts at 3:20 and 8:20, so no sleep in for me. Got up to feed the birdies and found the beans somewhat destroyed by frost and the pool frozen over (it'd been below zero since 9:30pm last night). Super awesome day just being at home. Emptied, organised, rehomed and repacked ten storage boxes I'd had in the dungeon so that it would be clearer for the sweetie to have as a retreat. The sweetie made a nice (but a bit too spicy for me) lentil dish for dinner. Made more Lego. Watched a very stoopid movie (cause Kristen Bell was in it and the sweetie wanted to watch it).

At this point I'd be feeling a bit blah cause it'd be the end of the weekend. But oh the bliss of a long weekend!! :)

Toy Story Lego

Today in between crapfullness to deal with for work, I finished assembling all my Toy Story Lego ..

Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!!

*I* am your father!

This isn't flying, this is falling with style!

This isn't flying - it's falling with style!

To inifinity and beyond!

A good soldier never leaves a man behind!

Woody's Roundup!

Toy Story Lego!

Two years ago today we left Vienna and headed for Salzburg, wandering around the old town and exploring the fortress, was a great day :)

Big Mac

Had my first ever Big Mac today. I've never ever had one before, so since we were going to Maccas I thought I'd try one :)

It wasn't very big. I was starving by 5:30pm. I did like the special sauce though.

I also got the rest of the Toy Story minifigs.. how cute are these? :)

Is it Thursday yet?

Week has been slowly improving. Although thwarted in my attempts to get the work done that's been on hold since being on call. I was all set to get going on it only to get stuck on the first few things I needed to find doco for. The sweetie was home with a migraine today, so he came and picked me up after work which was nice.

Didn't do much tonight other than watching Full House, Masterchef, and finishing off the "Lost" jigsaw. It was tough because it was all very much alike. The next one I have to do is even worse (1000 pieces instead of 750).

These little guys came in the mail yesterday, there's still another four to come.

And I thought I actually did pretty well at Hell the other day..

Absolutely *hanging* for tomorrow afternoon!!

Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!!

Got this last week (20% off at Myer) .. built it tonight... :):)

And is this the cutest thing in the universe or what??

Still kicking myself I never got an original Buzz Lightyear in 1995. We got them for Luc and Luc but I never got myself one. Doh!! I did get an original alien tho :)

Bucky!!

So my ThinkGeek package arrived today.

*blink*

Yes it got here in three and a half days. So I would have been happier if I'd paid half the postage and had it take twice as long to get here. hrmmm.

But anyways.

So people got lots of cool stuff. The Khet game looked like it'd be fun, although a lot smaller than Laserwar. And the "black light" desk lamp (that was actually just blue I think) looked friggen spectacular in a dark room!

But my toy was the Bucky Balls. Actually ball-bearing sized magnets that are *extremelly* cool. I'd seen the video and a guy at work had a set, so I had to get myself some :)

An actual bucky ball!

Singstar!!

Today Windy got Queen Singstar at Toys'r'us for $20 (which makes me think I should go and buy some of these Singstars at such a cheap price - even though we don't have a Playstation .. hrmm), so we walked back to his place and started playing. Well actually we stopped at the shops to buy some beer (as you do) and had started to head back when Nanette had to wait for us at a pedestrian crossing. So we got a lift the rest of the way.

Anyways. We sang a few Queen songs while Nanette got dinner. Had dinner. Then did the rest of the Queen singstar. Then we did some Abba. And some Eighties. And some Legends.

It was lots of fun :)

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