This is the view out our back window for an hour this morning.

397 photos, one every ten seconds.  Converted to video at 15 fps.

We didn't stay for too long because we had to get to Serkan's for a killifish meeting.  I took photos of fish just because.  Some of these are even manually focussed (most failed of course).

This afternoon as a reward, I did a jigsaw I'd borrowed from someone at work.  This was a 3D picture of the solar system.  Just for fun I setup my iPhone (with GorillaCam) to record a photo every ten seconds (735 photos all up). This time I turned off the auto-lock feature which worked well, although getting a couple of SMSes in the middle still confused it, even managing to completely crash my phone at one point.

This was my setup - a bit of Lego bracing, with rubber bands holding it all in place on top of my tripod (ran out of batteries as well most of the way through, so powered it up for the rest).

Didn't take any photos (shocking I know!!)

So here's a couple I prepared earlier.

Firstly one Tony will hate.  Saw this near Black Pepper and got grossed out..

And this from our back window the other morning

Sunday I made a fairly simple massaman curry.  All I knew was that it was supposed to have beef and potato, and I could use some massaman curry paste I had in the pantry.

So the recipe went along the lines of:

Cut up a bunch of chuck steak and potatoes and stick em in a slow cooker with three or four dollops of massaman curry paste and a little stock to cover.

Come back after doing fish stuff and some housework and add in a chopped up onion and carrot.

Stir occasionally over the course of the afternoon to make sure everything gets covered and cooked properly.

Add in a tin of light coconut cream at the end.

Yummy yum yum!  The sweetie went back for seconds (not unusual, but if he doesn't like it he won't) :)

And the onion was the softest onion I have ever eaten!

Slow cooked chuck steak I think is one of my favourite meats, I love how it disintegrates when you eat it.  I really should do more slow cooker recipes with it.

Tonight I decided to surprise the sweetie with okonomiyaki as seen on Bike Bake Blog.  I've been wanting to make this for weeks, and finally got around to doing it.

I used a little more flour and water than suggested, as it didn't seem batterey enough, and half a capsicum that was getting old and needed using up.  I should have cut up the cabbage finer, it was a bit rough.  Also made the okonomiyaki sauce which turned out really well as well.

The sweetie raved about this one, he said we should have it every week lol

I'm still full, I think two pancakes was a little too much for me!  We still have a heap of the mixture left so put that in the fridge for another night this week :)

We got a spot just east of the gravel at the end of Anzac Parade.  Toilets were an issue.  One pair servicing a huge area had a queue with probably fifty people in it.  So wandered further east and found a group of eight with no queue.  Go figure (although later apparently the queue was massive, so wondering if I jumped a queue without realising it.. shrug..).  People on the RiotACT were complaining about the queues for toilets too, and lack of food outlets that were advertised. 

Anyways.  Was there just in time for an FA-18 Hornet to buzz the crowd.  Man those things are loud!  Then had a beer and tucked into a picnic dinner.  Dinner was hastily put away when it started to rain, but fortunately it didn't rain for too long.

Fireworks started at 8:30.  Played with the camera trying out different settings, and taking *lots* of photos :)

Fun night, glad I went :)

Yesterday morning we were meant to be at Questacon at 5:45am, so I dutifully set my alarm.  Except I set it for 5:51am instead of 4:51am!  Thank heavens Dave called me at 5:19 otherwise I'd have missed out completely.  So instead of a leisurely getting ready time, I was ready in three minutes flat, and had to do my hair in the car, and no shower.  Blah.

We went with Balloon Aloft, and it was all very organised.  They took us out to Kingston so that we could see the rest of the balloons from a distance rather than being right in the middle of them.

There's sixteen to a balloon - four to each of four compartments.  When it was time to get in, we hopped in, but a group of four tried to get in with us.  They'd gotten three in before the operators said you can't do that, and of course we had to get out and move.  Which was fair enough, but it turned out a bit bad in terms of positioning on the ride.  We ended up at the "back" of the basket rather than the front, which meant we were facing the wrong direction for the rest of the balloons, the wrong direction for Civic, the wrong direction for Black Mountain and the wrong direction for Belconnen :(:(:(  And if it had been sunny we would have had the sun in our faces the entire trip - luckily it was cloudy then!  Was really really frustrated that I couldn't get photos of some of the things I wanted to :(  The final insult was them wanting to charge $15 for a photo of us on the balloon.  For the price we paid ($360 each) I think they could have thrown this in!  So wasn't too happy about that.  But anyways.  

Otherwise the ride was pretty awesome.  Took 672 photos!

So we landed and came back for breakfast cooked by Neil and then went home and attempted to get more sleep (I failed!)

Inflation

We were on the Questacon balloon!  Which was way cool, cause I have a picture of that balloon on my desktop that I took from our back window one morning..

We spun around at the beginning so had a view of the other balloons

Apparently it was the maiden voyage of this balloon

Rowers

Kingston

The carillon

Parliament House

Flagpole

Old Parliament House

Two balloons, two Parliament Houses

A magpie came to visit

High court

Parliament Houses

Questacon

National Museum

Over a carpark

National Museum

Lake Burley Griffin

Civic

Woden

The burners

As we were heading for Black Mountain the clouds closed in

Gap in photos as we passed by Black Mountain Tower (on the wrong side of course)

Belconnen and Lake Ginninderra

Balloon flying low over Aranda

Deflation.  The pilot said he'd been in a balloon once where someone opened that vent at the top at 3000 feet - he said "it wasn't a good feeling"

Rolling up the balloon

All packed away!

This is where I took all the photos on the day - marked out by my photoMate GPS

I said something along the lines of long day, starting at 5:19am, involving a balloon ride and fireworks.. and that I took probably a thousand photos .. I actually took 1003!

Well I've got the images now.. now to blog them.. this could take a while..

I did chop lots of the cherry tree suckers.. some of them were so big they needed a hacksaw.  Really must stay on top of them every year before they get too big to easily chop....