Another little Eee PC (the first one we got three and a half years ago between our wedding and our honeymoon).  While the first one was adorable, it was too underpowered to work with the photos off my new camera, getting photos off it was a pain (you had to do a cp -p to preserve the timestamps on the files), the screen was *tiny* and difficult to use Firefox on, and the final nail in the coffin - it runs Linux, but I need Windows or MacOS to run my GPS software.  

I wanted an SSD for it, but they're really hard to get in netbooks (apparently people want more space so they can use them for downloading holiday photos).  The Macbook Air certainly looked pretty swishy, but at three times the price, and the pain of me having to learn a whole new OS and find replacement applications put me off.  I decided I just wanted something reasonably cheap that wouldn't be the end of the world if anything happened to it while travelling.

JB HiFi had the R051PX for $397, Dick Smith had it for $399.  So Phil looked up MSY and they had it for $299.  So out to Fyshwick I trekked this afternoon :)

Haven't played with it much yet, just doing lots of updates.

Not sure what we'll do with the old one (which we paid $500 for - ouch!!), maybe give it to the kids for Christmas or something..??  

And I still have that old 98 laptop too - and it even still boots!  But couldn't get the GPS software working on that either - it installed ok but then wouldn't actually run :(

So Friday afternoon I left work super early and headed off into uncharted territory (Lachlan Valley Way - which I don't think I've ever been on in my life before!) and headed north.

It's a three and a quarter hour drive to Parkes, but amazingly pretty (compared to the Hume Highway to Sydney which is quite boring for a lot of it).  Had the road to myself for a lot of it, and the sweetie had given me some podcasts to listen to, so was a great drive.

Well that is until the bugs got so bad I couldn't see out the windscreen anymore..

Ha!  That's where the bogans come from!

I arrived at my motel at 6:40pm, and had to wait while they tried to find the room key.  Had just barely enough time to dump my stuff and go to the loo before Tony and family picked me up to go to dinner.  We went to Bellas in town which had good reviews.  And we all agreed, the food was delicious.  Although I did eat too much and it meant I took forever to get to sleep!

"Pollo Insalata" - proscuitto line chicken breast served on baby spinach and sweet roasted pumpkin with roasted hazelnut butter and crumbled fetta

Fountain next to my motel, by night

Watched a bit of The Mummy Returns while waiting for dinner to settle.

Saturday morning it was foggy.  The motel also had a couple of police teams staying the night, apparently to cover the roads to Bathurst.

We were going to have breakfast at Tony's motel, but they don't do breakfasts on weekends.  (?????????)  Lame. So went into town and found an open cafe, and I had bacon, eggs and a hash brown.  It was bigger than I expected but did keep me going all day.

So off to The Dish!!

It was still foggy, but that made for some cool photos.

We wandered through the visitors' centre and joined the queue for the telescope tours.  I think we had to wait maybe three quarters of an hour?  The queue length really didn't change the entire day.

They did have astronauts on segways, classic cars arriving, and Einstein to keep the crowds entertained..

The tour was pretty cool.  

We got to climb up a temporary staircase on the outside to the outside platform.

Here's a view you can't see every day!!

Then you climb *into* the top of the dish support.

And down into the control room!

There were even some real astronomers doing some real observing.  Well so they say, I don't know what sort of results they would have gotten with all the people around with mobile phones and video cameras, and moving the dish around all the time..

And finally out the front door

Next we had a wander down the train tracks past the old Kennedy Antenna (not in use anymore)

A quick look back at The Dish at a different angle

Past the earth-air heat exchanger.  This is where they take outside air, then pump it underground for eighty metres to get the air to a constant temperature and into the twelve metre dish they have setup for testing for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Twelve metre dish setup for Square Kilometre Array testing

A Lego version of the SKA (not accurate - the real thing will be a lot more "random")

Then headed back up and had a look around at the classic cars.

One of them gave us quite a surprise - it had wallaby joeys in it!!

The dish from another angle

Then it was time for the official ceremony.  So they brought the dish down till it almost touched the ground.  So low in fact that it nearly took out a bottlebrush tree as they swung it round.

They attached a banner to The Dish and raised it up during the official speeches by Prof Phillip Diamond (head of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science) (I think) and Dr Megan Clarke (Head of CSIRO).

They also had one of the sopranos for the night's opera lead a chorus of Happy Birthday (Helen Barnett I think)

Then Jess went off to make some Sandtastic art, so I wandered around and took photos as the sun was coming out.

This is Jess' sandtastic art - it's just a sticky bit of card with all these stencils you pull off one at a time and cover with coloured sand.  Sand sticks to the card and you shake off the excess.  Way cool!

I didn't play cricket on The Dish..  I think maybe I shoulda bought one of these! :)

Another wander while Jess made a paper SKA

Jess and her paper SKA dish

There were a bunch of people there from the Central West Astronomical Society, some of them with telescopes pointed at the sun.  Which has some super awesome sunspots going on at the moment!

Then had a look in the receiver room.  I never realised that they actually change the receivers all the time!  Takes them a few hours to change them over.  Dad would have loved all this stuff - he would have understood what the dude was talking about :) These are some of the receivers actually in use at the telescope!

Finally we headed back through the visitors' centre to have a look at the displays.

This is a panel that they made up for the movie The Dish (2000) and donated to CSIRO afterwards.

It's only a model! Shh!

We stopped at a couple of lookout places on the way out.

Then into Parkes to see the War Memorial.  It's supposed to be a lookout, but it was all locked up and nothing there to say it ever opened.  What's the point of a lookout if you can't go up it?  Too many trees around to have any views of the town, so that was a bit fail.

Then headed to Forbes for a late lunch.  There were like two places open in the entire town, one of them being Subway, so that's what we had.  Then filled the car with petrol and headed home, arriving a bit before 7pm.

So yeah a super fun day away.  Pity the sweetie bailed (still feeling too sick).  We might have gone to Dubbo for the Sunday, but those plans had to be cancelled.  Thanks Tony/Heather/Jess for putting up with me! :)

Managed to squeeze in one beer at drinks before being picked up.  Made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  Had already checked in, so just needed to drop off bags, but no automatic machines that I could see at Canberra airport for plebs, so went to counters to drop off bags.  Went into the Qantas lounge for drinks and snackages.

Then Stu got a notification on his phone that flight was delayed.  Oh well, more snackages.  And delayed again.  Flight was nearly two hours late by the time we got away :(  Got a beef stroganoff of some description for dinner on the plane.

People please, stand back from the luggage carousels so other people can see the bags going past and actually get to the carousel to pick up their bag!!  Sheesh!!

Because the flight was so late, the car rental place was closed.  So had to walk all the way back into the terminal to pick up the keys, and back out again.  At that time of night it wasn't much fun.  And their computer system was down as well.  Hurrah.

Finally got the car and headed off, thinking we'd use the toll roads and get there a bit quicker.  

Big mistake.

Night roadworks on the M1 meant we were stopped for long periods of time in several places along the motorway :(:( 

We had a hybrid car, so the stop start traffic was kinda quiet and fuel efficient.

Finally arrived - very very late - but still ended up talking til around 2am before going to bed.

Flight to Canberra was pretty quick and uneventful.  Took off from Sydney to the west and straight on down, approaching Canberra from the south in very windy conditions.  But the landing was a lot smoother than I thought it would be, considering how much we were getting buffeted.

Had to walk out onto the tarmac (love it when that happens :) ) - where we'd just gone from beautiful t-shirt weather to suddenly cold and wet and windy.  Craziness.

Went inside and then waited to see if our bags had made it.  Which, miracle of miracles, they did!!  Was very impressed with Qantas making *that* happen :)

So got home very late and pretty much just crashed.

Had a lovely few days.  A nice relaxing weekend, good company, fun times and even read plenty of my very behind news feeds.

Same time next year guys :)

What this means is that the tenants have been doing the same thing - having the windows open and the blinds closed.  And now I have to pay for it.  *sigh* #firstworldproblems

So of course I had to do one too :)

Took home five pieces of blue paper (to make 60x7cm squares) and three pieces of pink paper (to make 30x7cm squares) - twelve 7cm squares to an A4 page.

And spent all of last night folding.

Tonight we got home late (after having dinner at The Dumpling Inn and doing our shopping), so then spent the night putting the thing together.

Ta da!

Fun fun fun.  And surprisingly frustrating to do without a right-hand thumbnail (mine shattered the other night trying to lock one of our windows).

And then it just got hotter and hotter.

Documented a crimson rosella having noms in the front yard..

Then after I'd cleaned up the house, Nat and Andrew came over with Steve (and later on their friend David came over as well).  Chatted briefly before taking beers and noms and jumping in the pool (that spa bar epic rocks!).  Stayed in until it was well and truly dark, then Andrew and Stu attempted to order pizzas.  Crust and Zeffirellis were both closed (fail!!) so ordered Dominos.  Ate pizzas upstairs while Stu played some of a Miku concert.  Then we headed down to cooler weather and played a game of Split Decision that we got for Christmas.  It played fairly well, although a lot of the categories are just silly and you really just had to guess the answers.  My favourite round was Queen or Queen Latifa album?  Only three questions per round though - doh!  Nat and I were tied at the end and the last question was just a random guess by both of us, but I got lucky and won.  

That took us til nearly midnight so then we got icecream and watched the Sydney fireworks!

Chatted for a while and then went up and played 16 races of Mario Kart.  Got to bed at 2am :)

Today woke up at 6am and thought someone had turned the hall light on - the whole hall was glowing.  Got up and the sun was streaming in orange.  So closed the windows and blinds to keep the heat out.  Then went back to bed and attempted to get a bit more sleep.

The aftermath:

Today it was just miserably hot.  Didn't really get much done all day cause just didn't have the energy.  Did clean out the freezer though so there's a lot more space in there now.  Found some leftovers that really need eating, so working my way through those.  

This afternoon we had a game of Roborally - super cool game.  I got lucky in my final move and pushed Stu off the finishing flag on the last program card.  Then we jumped in the pool to cool down and had some dinner.

Have thought about some New Years Resolutions.  They're a little vague though.  I think a big one will be to keep my news feeds under control.  When they're under control and I can clear them out every day, I feel a lot "freeer" and it's easier to not just sit at my computer for hours not achieving anything.  

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!!

Very quiet weekend.  Did shopping Saturday morning and work Saturday arvo. Cooked a roast chicken for dinner.  Did a whole lot of nothing on Sunday.  Did got for a nice walk.  Stu cooked dinner.

Tonight I read news feeds and closed browser windows.  Which meant I didn't actually get any UK planning done :(

Other than that I got nothing.

Other than this photo of clouds rolling over Mt Ainslie, taken several weeks ago.

Watched our plane pull up, and took our seats up the back of the 737.  Fairly average lunch, and otherwise standard sort of flight.

Qantas 737-476 "Currawong" (VH-TJU)

Lake Eucumbene

Khancoban Pondage

Lake Dartmouth

Last getting off the plane, but no wait at all for bags :)

Then hopped in a taxi (no queue!) and headed into the city.

The Giant Cheese Stick and Zipper (aka "Melbourne International Gateway")

Our hotel (the Stamford on Little Collins) was very swishy for the cheap end of the swishy market.  Super cool glass elevators :)

Our room

View from our room window

We essentially just dumped all our stuff before heading out again for a wander.

Wandered past Hosier Lane and saw some people photographing the graffiti so went to see what they were looking at.  Found several adjoining lanes covered in lots of cool graffiti (there was even some being created while we were there!). 

Moving on, walked past Federation Square (which didn't exist last time I was in Melbourne)

.. and an Apple store ..

.. and past Flinders Street station (with the new Eureka tower behind it - also not there last time I was in Melbourne)

Then headed across the Yarra River 

MCG from Princes Bridge

Lights on Princes Bridge

Took photos of the Arts Centre

.. and horse and carriages on St Kilda Road

Then wandered through Southbank.  Stopped at this point for a snack to keep us going, as we thought we'd be having a late dinner.  

This girl played short pieces from a stack of tunes.. a lot of movie soundtracks .. we were having a guessing game of what they were while we had our snacks.

Next we headed for the Eureka Tower.  Fifteen years ago I went up the Rialto Tower.  This one is a fair bit bigger.

It has bugs on it!

We headed up to the Eureka Skydeck 88 ($16.50 each).  Unfortunately it's a disaster for photography.  The windows are tinted blue and gold in different sections which screws up colour balances, the glass is *very* reflective, and the building is at all different angles.  We didn't even attempt to do any sort of panorama.  But we did spend ages up there taking photos and looking at stuff (and went outside to get blown away, but didn't do the Edge which was another $12 or so).  

South west Melbourne CBD, including the Rialto Towers, Spencer St, the stadium and Docklands.  

Tinted windows

Flinders Street station and Federation Square

Spirit of Tasmania coming in to dock

We hung around for about an hour waiting for the sun to set so we could see the place at night, but after an hour (when it was just starting to get dark) we gave up and headed back down.

The Yarra River is a lot prettier at night than during the day..

Walked past Flinders Street station

.. and wandered up Swanston Street and ended up at City BBQ Chinese Restaurant in China Town.  Dinner was ok.  We shoulda ordered less food.  Or made one of the dishes vegetables.  It was a very *brown* meal.

Wandered back down Russell Street.  

Was amused by the plastic food we saw in one place.

Dropped off the sweetie who had had enough, then went out again looking for ice cream.  Tried bottom of Swanston St and Federation Square without success.  Then went across to Elizabeth Street and walked all the way up it to La Trobe Street before heading back, eventually getting Magnums at a local minimart place.  I suppose we can't complain - it was Good Friday yet there was *heaps* of stuff open, and open til late too.  Don't think that'd happen in Canberra!

"The Public Purse" - sculpture we liked in the Bourke St Mall

And so ended Good Friday.  It was a pretty good Friday :)  Lots of walking (really should replace the battery in the pedometer!) 

And this blog post only took fifty minutes to do.. no wonder I've been putting it off for days..