Decided to work from home today.  I kidded myself into thinking I could get some work done with less general distractions.  Alas that was not to be, as I think I spent more time answering messages and teaching people stuff than doing the work I wanted to do.  Oops.

Tonight I was making panoramas of my last trip up Black Mountain Tower (inspired by Yvonne).  They weren't very good, I'm just going to have to go back :)

I did put together the (almost) 360 panorama I took up Kyoto Tower in September.  It turned out really well :)

(click to embiggen)

Still saddened by all the Christchurch stuff.  Read NathanaelB's account of it..

Phewf!

Talk about a productive evening :)

Tonight's scanning job was the album that had photos from my first camera, the Ricoh, I got for Christmas 1991.  The album had most of the first two rolls from that camera, and included such events as Easter Camp, a trip up Sydney Tower and the Harbour Bridge Pylon, the Harbour Tunnel walk, a St Clements bushwalk to Ruined Castle and some photos of my room before and after one of the rearranges I did.  It was also the year I was dating my first boyfriend so there's quite a few pictures of him throughout (and all the flowers he sent me that year)..

My models, as of 1992

The Bismarck at Scarborough Park.  This was a regular thing in Sydney but I only ever went once.

Cousin Itt.  I had a couple of better versions when my hair was a bit longer.

Joyce Jacobs aka Esme Watson from A Country Practice.  She came to just a doll/teddy bear competition at my old primary school.

People lining up for the Harbour Tunnel Walk

Darling Harbour from Sydney Tower

Before a rearrange, late 1992

  After a rearrange, late 1992
 
Yasi is finally petering out...

Spent this evening scanning another 67 photos from (mostly) 1991.  Last year of high school, so a few of the last weeks of school.  Lots of memories there.  I tried emailing Chris (Crust) on her last birthday earlier this week but got no response, so no idea if the email address works (I got it a year or so ago) or if she just doesn't like me anymore heh (I'm terrible at keeping contact with people).  Oh crap, that reminds me, I never wrote to Linenoise! Gah!

And also the study camp where I met my first boyfriend Mark, and our high school formal.  

And a few other bits and pieces.  Including some experimental photos my brother took, probably in mid-late 1991, of the stars and other long exposure experiments.

And a picture of my collection of models in 1992, with considerably less dust on them than they do now..

Always liking the fact that it's Friday.  Managed to come home, have a swim, clean the house and get dinner on, now at 7:20pm it's quite definitely beer o'clock.  

Anyways.

Here's a couple of pics I got of a dragonfly recently. It was just sitting on the flyscreen and stayed there long enough for me to get some (pretty average) pics of it.

** EDIT: actually I think most of these were actually mum's originals.  When she pulled apart the old evil photo albums that destroy photos I think she separated them out for us, and gave my photos to me and my brother's photos to him **

Until it hit Brisbane and places I've been to.  Watched coverage for several hours tonight.  Sad sad sad.  Stu was pretty sad tonight too.  He having lived in Brisbane for so long and all..

The only people I know in Queensland are ok, although not far from the devastation in Goodna.

This page is pretty freaky too.  Someone's done an overlay of the Brisbane River and the extent of the possible flooding..

So yeah.  Stay safe everyone...

It started off ok but got worse as the day went on.  All day fighting with a crappy crappy cobbled together piece of software, getting home and fighting with robocopy and people hassling me about crap equals a grumpy Kazza.

On a lighter note, I did start collecting photos for the RiotACT's bird week, had a yummy dinner of refried leftover pork and potatoes and watched some Monty Python while cycling.

So not a bad year all up :)

Let's see.  Where to begin.

The year started with me away from the sweetie - I was visiting old Sydney friends.  First year since we met that we weren't together on New Years, which was a bit sad.

Did a fair bit of other travelling during the year.  

The big trip of course was to Japan and the UK in September.  It wasn't the best holiday I've ever been on.  Japan was 34C for five days in a row, and I didn't have shorts.  And the UK was grey and/or raining for a good chunk of the time we were there, plus we missed out on going to Legoland which was pretty devastating for me.  But on the plus side, everything "worked" in terms of bookings.  We didn't get robbed.  We didn't crash the car.  We didn't miss any planes or trains.  We did see heaps of cool stuff.  So really I can't complain too much heh.

Had quite a few smaller trips as well.  Spent a couple of days in January at the coast with all of Stu's family.  Would have been better if I'd brought stuff to entertain myself with heh.  Went to Mogo Zoo then.  There was a quick trip to Sydney for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary.  Went down the coast to DaveC's house three times in March, August over my birthday and October where we had a great whale sighting.  Went to Melbourne over the Easter weekend to see Cats with Nat&Andrew.  That was a cool weekend, we'd love to go back and do more Melbourney things.  In July we went to Queensland for a long weekend to visit Chay and David.  Decided that July/August is definitely the time to go to Brisbane, so will probably do that again this year.  And another quick visit to Sydney on Boxing Day. 

Had a very busy year at work.  Rolled out new proxies at the beginning of the year, but they were fraught with problems from the start and it was very stressful.  After several patches during the year, they finally settled down, only to have the upstream proxies start playing up.  Blah!   

Semi work-related were a ball in March where I managed to squeeze into a ten year old dress, but only just barely!   I also made a slightly drunken bet that I'd wear a dress to a Melbourne Cup lunch if all the boys wore suits.  Our director unfortunately decided to take it seriously and made all the boys wear suits.  Reluctantly I had to go buy a dress and wear it.  We also ran a trivia night that I think went really well.  And attended work drinks pretty much every week I was in the country ;)

One of the big projects at work took several months and was so stressful I'm sure it led to a high blood pressure reading in July.  I've been working on relaxing at work (and at home) and subsequent readings have been a lot more normal.

Otherwise healthwise I had a great year - just a cold early in the year but nothing else.

Spent a lot of time with Nat and Andrew during the year.  Those guys are always so much fun to be around, we really enjoy their company.  Also did a few Singstar nights with Windy and DaveO and saw Damien and Amanda a few times as well.  JamesC came to visit a few times, and the whole family stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  The Hokins clan came to visit, as did the parents a couple of times and the little brother a few times.  We've spent a lot more time with DaveC in the second half of this year.  Seems I get on with him a whole lot better now that we're not working together heh.  

Had another heat wave early in the year which meant us putting quite a bit of ice into the four foot tank to try and keep the temperature down.  Seemed to work and we didn't lose any fish from it.  I'd moved the danios downstairs so they wouldn't overheat, and found a couple of months later some baby danios that had been surviving quite happily unattented.  When I later moved the danios back upstairs, there were more babies in the downstairs tank.  Win!  Stu got a colony of duboisis for the four foot, which are great fun, and will follow you around when you go to look at them in hopes that you'll feed them!  Stu's also gotten back into killifish and has been diligent at looking after his fish again.  We're back up to fourteen habitated fish tanks now!

On the opposite end of the weather spectrum, we had a very cold winter.  This year the pool froze over probably a dozen times (it only froze over twice last year).  One of the days the ice was a full 3mm thick in places!  We even had snow in October.  Go figure!

On the Lego front, a whole stack of Toy Story Lego was released so had to get all of that.  And six new Harry Potter sets as well, although really only one of those is "new".  There's a few other cool sets I want to get too.  Went to BrickExpo in August which was very cool, and made me wonder if I should put anything in one of these years.

Other toys included an iPhone for me, a Blackberry for Stu, a video camera for Stu, a Canon 500D for me and a PS3.  

So I've had the 500D for four and a bit months and have already taken 15000 photos on it!  The majority of those in the UK of course ;)  I still haven't sorted my UK photos *at all*.  I did however manage to sort enough of our Japan 2009 and Europe 2008 photos to get the highlights into the blog entries.  One of my next projects will be making photo books of those trips.  I did make a photo book of our wedding as a Christmas present for parents.  Having seen the finished result (which I was stoked with) there's a few little changes I want to make and need to fix up some of the images before we get our copy printed.

Around the house, we bought a whole stack of bookshelves for the downstairs room and set those up.  So that room is quite well setup now.  The garden has gone slightly feral though, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

Shows seen this year:

Movies seen this year:

Books read this year:

And a few other bits and pieces:

Phewf.  Yup, busy year :)  I'm actually amazed I got this thing written *before* the end of the year - that never happens!! :)

Six hours to go.  Have a great 2011 peoples!  Happy New Year!!

These were some shots I took of the new lights in the Canberra Centre when I first got my camera.  Again, still in auto mode, so focus was very hard to control (it kept focussing on odd places).

I really like this picture of tapes.  Looks like a city scape canyon..

And some birds flying over Scrivener Dam

Have had a good new years eve so far.  Original thoughts of a Singstar night fell through, so have invited some peoples over for a small party.  Nothing quite like that for motivating you to clean the house!

I went by myself but saw Neil driving up as I was walking to the queue (which was half way up the street) so we went in together (and had a beer afterwards).

My new camera was less than a day old at this point so it was a good chance to try it out.  I didn't have a great deal of success.  On automatic mode, the camera focuses in odd places (usually the foreground) and not the subject of the picture.  So didn't get great pictures (that didn't stop me taking hundreds anyway!).  Also discovered that you can take a heap of photos with the flash in quick succession, but after a certain point it takes *ages* to charge up the flash again.

And it was epic crowded!!  Stu would have hated it.  My patience was tested.  Little kids don't understand that their fat heads get in the way of people trying to take photos.

There was lots of "hey I've got that set!!".  Maybe I should do a table next year with all the Harry Potter or Toy Story Lego (there was lots of Toy Story Lego this year) or all the Classic Space Lego sets. 

The highlight for me was a custom Hogwarts Castle.  The owner of that castle asked me about photographing Lego (cause it can be tricky with flash reflection) so showed him a shot I took and he was impressed.  Someone also asked him about insuring Lego, to which I contributed that it's actually really hard - I asked once!