Fun Stuff: November 2011 Archives

Lightning

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Second attempt last night to document lightning.  Better success this time!

Lightning

Lightning
Lightning
Lightning
Lightning
Lightning
Lightning
Lightning


Recurring Theme?

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Big work Christmas party today.  In my opinion too early for a Christmas party (and not helped by it being freezing cold today!)  But not as loud as previous years, so a much more enjoyable day.

In a repeat occurrence of last year, it rained lots and lots today.  So as we did last year, we hit up Scrivener Dam.  Not nearly as exciting as last year, but pretty cool nonetheless!

Scrivener Dam
Scrivener Dam
Scrivener Dam
Scrivener Dam
Scrivener Dam

Flight Diary

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A few weeks ago I had the idea that I should digitise the flight log book my parents kept for me as a kid (after the Air New Zealand flight we got home from New Zealand in 1975 which gave me the log book).  

Flight Log Book

I entered all of those flights into an excel spreadsheet, and then kept going, digging out all my old boarding passes, photos and blog entries to figure out all the flights I've been on in my life.

As it turns out I've been on eighty flights in my life.  A few of those trips were on the same plane, so not eighty aircraft.  

I was telling Steve about all this and he showed me a magical site called flightdiary where you can enter all the details of all the flights you've been on, and it will show you all those flights on a map, as well as all sorts of statistics about your flights.  So awesome!  (and a total shock that Steve would have done anything that obsessive himself! :) )

So I went back to the boarding passes to get my seat numbers, and then entered everything into flightdiary (where I could - I didn't always get the registration of the plane all the time, mainly around that dark period around 2000 which was after I stopped using the log book and before I started recording things more obsessively).

It wouldn't count a flight on my uncle's plane because it didn't recognise the airport, so it only has 79 flights.

Some current stats:
79 flights (59 domestic, 20 international)
212272 km (5.3x around earth)
293 h 33 min (12.2 days or 1.7 weeks)
26.5 tons CO2 (1.44 kg methane, 1.18 kg nitrous oxide)
Top airport Sydney (obviously), followed by Brisbane, Canberra, LAX and Narita
Top airline Qantas, followed by Virgin Blue, then Ansett, Jetstar and TAA
Top aircraft - 737s, 747s, 727s and probably Dash 8s (but they get split up between the different sub series)
Top routes - Sydney to Brisbane and Brisbane to Sydney.  Pretty obvious with all the trips I did to visit Stu and later Chay and David.  Sydney-Canberra has had few goes now too.
2010 was my busiest year with 13 flights and it seems I've never flown in February!
Another funny thing I noticed was that in the first 32 flights of my life, not one of them was the same source/destination!  Some return trips, but never the same start/finish.  The first route ever to get repeated was the 2004 flight from Sydney to LAX.

Flight Diary

Flight Diary
Check out my full profile and stats on FlightDiary.

Tomorrow I get to add another flight to the list :)


Air Force One

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Snuck out of the office after lunch with Windy today to go see Air Force One!

They'd been landing from the north all morning, but the wind changed and all the flights started coming in from the south.  So we went to Tennant Street Fyshwick which afforded an awesome view of the plane in flight.  My brother made it in time to go to Brindabella Business Park.  We thought about going there too, but were too worried about crowded roads and closures, so decided not to fight the masses and stayed where we went.

We had about 3/4 hour to kill before the plane arrived so took photos of planes, flowers, birds, bugs, and helicopters.  And listened to the F/A-18s flying around somewhere way above the clouds.

Qantas Dash 8 400 (VH-QOC)
Flower
Pigeons
Bug
Helicopter
Windy was listening to the Air Traffic Control on his phone, and we heard the pilots of Air Force One!

Isaac was the first to spot Air Force One in the distance.

Air Force One in Canberra
Incoming..

Air Force One in Canberra Air Force One in Canberra
It got pretty close!

Air Force One in Canberra

Air Force One in Canberra
Air Force One in Canberra

Air Force One in Canberra
It's gonna hit the ground!

Air Force One in Canberra
So yeah.. super awesome!!

We decided to go up to the airport to see it on the ground.  Bit of a mistake.  We timed it badly and had to sit on the Monaro Highway for about fifteen minutes while the motorcade left the airport.  Doh.  Saw it from the Costco car park.  Not a great view but traffic was so bad we decided not to go down to the Brindabella Business Park, and went back to work the long way around via Majura Road.

Air Force One in Canberra
Delta press plane
Nanette and the kids were lucky enough to see the motorcade outside the Hyatt later on while we were stuck in traffic.

I can still hear the jets! :)

11:11 11/11/11

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Well I thought it was fun anyway :)
Everyone in the office was watching for the minute our phones and computer clocks were on 11:11 11/11/11 :)

11-11-11-11-11

World's Smallest Jigsaw

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Borrowed the cutest little jigsaw from someone at work today.  Except there's a piece missing.  The thing wasn't in a snap-lock baggie and I did get it out a few times to show people how cute it was, so there's every chance I lost it somewhere :(:(:(:(

World's Smallest Jigsaw

Eee PC - number 2

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So I might have accidentally bought another toy today ..

Eee PC
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 :(
I totally love the Movie Barcode site.  They take all the frames of a movie, then collapse them horizontally so you can see the entire movie all at once in one small picture.  This picture looks like a bar code, hence the site name.  You can see the colour scheme and darkness of a movie just like that.  Love it.

This week they did all the Harry Potter movies (go to the site to see higher resolution images):

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 1 (2010)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:Part 2 (2011)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 2 (2011)

Edit: they just did the whole series!!

Harry Potter- Complete Series (2001-2011)

As seen in Garema Place on Wednesday..

Magpie seagulls

Team Blank FTW!!

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So we might have accidentally won at work trivia night tonight.  Just a little bit.  Whoops!!  (winning means you have to plan the next one - which is why we've come second or third for the last three ;) )

Fun fun fun and came home with wine and movie tickets!  Yayy!! :)

Thanks DC, Chris, Jeff, Neil, Rebecca & partner and Robyn :)

Cup

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Had a repeat of last year's floor party this year (wherein the entire floor came for booze and Kingsley's chicken before watching the race).  Was pretty awesome.  I was *slightly* better behaved this year (in that I made sure I got enough to eat at lunch unlike last year where not enough food meant champagne went to my head a lot more).  

Then walked henrch home only for him to discover he'd left his keys at work and had to go back - doh!!

Kazza's "Boring Life Of a Geek" aka BLOG

IT geek, originally from Sydney, moved to Canberra in 2007. Married to "the sweetie", aka Stu. Prolific photographer, Lego junkie and tropical fish keeper.

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