Kazza the Blank One

Sunday.  Star Wars Day.  Stu cooked a cauliflower and feta bake with brussels sprouts and zucchini for dinner.  

DS9 3.9 then Andor 2.1.

Monday.  Slept okish. The guppies downstairs I think are doing ok, but I think the ones in the four foot got eaten. I think one might have survived overnight (but didn't see it again later in the week). Catching up at work (not too many interruptions hurray). Cooked very nice salmon for dinner (huge pieces though), with salad for me and leftover veggies for the sweetie. DS9 3.10 which was pretty silly.

Sunrise.. sunset..

Tuesday - Slept okish. All over the place day. Did manage to do a change I'd been planning though. The sweetie cooked the mince I cooked the other night with olives and tomatoes and fake fettuccini which was very nice.

DS9 3.11. Had to LOL at a Riot-ACT post from the other day. They were all spruiking the "first Malatang in a food court in Canberra" in Civic. The first comment on the page was literally from someone saying the people in Belconnen must be shocked that they don't live in Canberra (there's been a Malatang at Belco mall since pre covid). I just reloaded the entry and got a 404. bwahahahaha.

Wednesday. Awake from 1:30 to 5:00 or so. Hurrah. Distracting day again. Did get some decom work done in the later afternoon. Pizzas for dinner. Was going to make slow cooked lamb shanks, but, life. DS9 3.12.

Thursday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night. Managed quite a bit of decom work due to not being interrupted every five seconds. Was actually a fairly peaceful day. Put the lamb shanks on at lunch, they turned out really well. Too often in the past my slow cooker lamb shanks have super watery sauce, so this time I didn't cover the meat - I only used about a cup of liquid with a stockcube, as well as a heap of fresh rosemary and some gobs of minced garlic. At the end I made gravy like I do with the pulled pork - take the lamb out to shred, pour all the stock/juices into a saucepan with some cornflour (in a slurry with a little water). Boil til thickened. Mix back in with lamb. Enjoy!  I didn't get an "after" photo.  DS9 3.13.

The veggies didn't make it to leftovers..

Friday.  Early night so woke up at 4. Hurrah. Got a bit more sleep and in the end woken from a dream (wherein I was drifting over Sydney in what appeared to be a massive cruise ship, but I was also weightless. I held onto a handrail tightly (in case gravity came back suddenly) and just floated. Nice :) ).

More decom work. Kievs and a cauliflower bake for dinner.

Then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Don't know why it rates so highly in IMDB - pretty much most of the entire movie takes place on one night in the story. And it's just so damned *dark*!!

Saturday.  Slept okish. Awake for a while here and there though.

Just a day of all the things. Started back into culling of Europe 2016 photos again so I can get them online.

Made butt sorry beef cheeks for dinner with lemon garlic broccolini which was very nice.

Watched Andor 2.2, Fantasia 2000, and The Movies That Made Us on Back to the Future.

Sunday.  Awake from ~1:25 to ~4 hurrah. Bit of a slow start. Quieter day, but did do some Europe photo culling.

Saw this on Neil's a while back and thought it would be cool to do.  One of those old-fashioned "blog memes" that people used to do twenty years ago.  I stopped commenting on Neil's blog forever ago because when I tried to catch up with him when I was in York in 2010 he completely ignored me.  His blog went dead for years but my feed reader still had it and notified me a few years back of new posts.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Vic said I should.  I was doing unpaid work at CIA/Host1 at the time (well, helping out with windows hosting support and answering support mail in exchange for free internet and web hosting).  I'd heard of blogs by then (January 2003) but had never read or subscribed to any.  Vic probably wanted to spread the word of his ISP a bit, so I did it.  But it very quickly became a place I could brain dump and I only wish I'd started the thing sooner so I could have recorded my life better.  Not that the early years were much good at recording events.  Too many times when I've been sorting my photos I've wondered what I was doing the day I took them, only to find no useful record.  These days are much more betterer.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

Movable Type.  Been using it since day 1.  I started using it because it came as part of the cpanel setup Host1 had so it was easy to start with.  There was one big upgrade a few years in that changed the whole directory/post/file structure layout, and the one that started inserting images as assets, but otherwise it really hasn't changed much.  I'm still using the last free open source version before it started costing $500 USD .. PER YEAR..!!  WTF!??  I really do need to modernise, not the least of which is because it uses http not https and I still haven't figured out how to *fully* sslify it (eg, canonical links)

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I did put a few entries up on blogger.com for some more private stuff, but it never really went anywhere.  Same with the "This Day in History" posts I was trying to do here.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?

I just use the Movable Type web interface.  And only ever from my computer, or laptop when travelling.  Phone is too hard.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Back in the day I would blog nearly every day and sometimes more often.  Usually in the evenings.  For several years now I've only blogged on the weekends after I've downloaded and processed my photos for the week.  I definitely post a lot more photos than I did twenty years ago.  Really my blog now is a place for me to post photos.  With a little bit of filler about what I've been doing.  It's also a bit less cryptic.  Reading my old entries now I have no idea what I was talking about half the time.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I always publish immediately.  Usually on Sunday evenings.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

Nothing.  My blog's byline is "Boring Life Of a Geek" - BLOG for short.  My life is boring.  My photos are mostly of flowers and food.  I do like my travel blogs though.  There's even at least one holiday blog (USA 2000) that I wrote up from literally a paper notebook of notes I took during the trip.  And my USA 1983 blog was written entirely from my memories of the trip thirty years after the event!  When I was 9 years old!

Who are you writing for?

Myself. There's maybe like half a dozen readers that I know about, and maybe a few more I don't.  My mother and brother care most.  The sweetie might read things if they happen to show up in his feed reader.  Mostly I do it for the record of my own life.  And it's been quite useful for that.

What's your favourite post on your blog?

Don't have one. 

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

This thing really needs to move to something more modern.  One that bakes in https naturally.  But the idea of moving it is just too daunting.  Maybe if I retire and have more time to think about such things.

Who else do you want to tag?

Ha.  Who even does that anymore??  The only two active bloggers I know that might even still read my blog from time to time are Dave2 and kapgar.

Just a few other photos from the National Film and Sound Archives museum

That's not a knife!  It's only a prototype!

Last weekend was nearing the end of the Constellations art work display by Robin Fox at the National Film and Sound Archives.

So Tony and I went along to it.

It's on a twelve minute continuous loop, but when we walked in it was right in the middle of a trance party.  Well that's what it felt like.  Electronic music and a laser show?  Count me in!  Would have been cool after a couple of drinks, but we went at 10:00.  Oh well.  

We stayed for a couple of rounds through.  I really enjoyed it!

Sunday.  27th.  Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I still don't like how they explain how he's the half blood prince in the movie. Not that the book was a whole lot better - it was just a line, but at least it had that line.

Monday.  28th.  Remembering Alan's first heart attack, Como Presbyterian Church reopening after the 1994 bushfires, and the Port Arthur Massacre. Slept okish - restless and thermoregulation issues. My computer crashed last night #grunt and it wasn't even for patching this time. Managed to lose another hair tie overnight. Like how does that even happen, I've only been in like three rooms since last night. While searching I did find one I lost a couple of months ago. Hurray. Busy day. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom fake noodles which was quite nice. DS9 3.4. Looked more into ways to disable Optus while overseas, including setting a SIM PIN, and locking the phone to Optus manually (but that causes a battery hit apparently). Also realised that my iPhone 5 is really a brick now on Optus since they shut down 3G, which is why it won't connect anymore. Spent entirely too much time stressing over Optus being such a ripoff.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I think. Busy day. Lunch with the sweetie. Bought some light tshirts (all my tshirts are dark, which is no good for Greece or Dubai in summer). Lots of rain FINALLY and even some thunderbolts and lightning. The sweetie cooked some nice mince for dinner (well I cooked the mince the other weekend, but he added nicely to it). DS9 3.5 then holiday planning.

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - restless legs for ages. Tried to turn the heater on. But the control panel was dead. So Stu went to reboot it. The panel turned all the led things on. But then turned off. Then started flickering on and off. So he rebooted it again (leaving it off longer). It came up for a few seconds normally.. but then started flickering again. Sigh. So leaving it off for longer this time.

All on!

Did put a jumper on for third time this year. KFC for dinner, DS9 3.6, early night.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (cold!) but mostly slept ok. 12.7C in the study in the morning!! eep!! Achieved pretty much nothing all day. Super quiet drinks. Blue cheese pizzas for dinner. DS9 3.7. Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok, but then awake from like 1-4. Sigh. The heater worked briefly in the morning then died. Nice warm day though so the house wasn't too crazy. Stu rebooted the heater again and it worked for a few minutes then died again. Sigh. Emailed Travis about recommendations for a split system but he hasn't mailed me back. The sweetie cooked up a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts with kievs for dinner. 

DS9 3.8 which was pretty silly. Then another episode of an anime series of some Japanese travel blogger. Continued frustration with the heater which might work for a minute or two then just die. Sigh. The house is cold. Sigh.

Saturday.  Awake from like 3 or 4 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.

Another ripe mini capsicum!!

Super busy day. Attacked the todo list (mostly) in the order it happened to be in FreeMind. Chong Co for dinner then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Finished just in time to see Dutton's concession speech.

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better. More ploughing through the todo list. Moved ten young guppies to the tank downstairs which has been empty for a while and desperately needing new fish, and four to the four foot (it definitely needs a lot more guppies). Need to get a few new guppies with different genetics though.

I doubt I'll get to eat this tomato.. 

Remember how much I was complaining about windoze resetting the folder views every time I went to use them?  Well the last week or two it's been a lot better - my in tray folder of photos for blogging has maintained my view settings.  This makes me happy.  I guess enough other people complained about it.

On our anniversary last weekend we did a bit of a magical mystery tour of Canberra.  We went to a heap of "our" places (mostly friends/family).  

We drove past Annie and Stu's, Mishi's and our old place

Through Gungahlin

Past Scott and Kerry's old house and Flemington Road

Through Dickson

Past Scott and Kerry's old old house (which has been demolished and replaced with two townhouses)

And into Ainslie

Where we returned to the scene of the crime!

Had a long chat with the lady cleaning the church.

Then into Ainslie shops.

Past the War Memorial

And up Mount Ainslie

Then we headed for home

It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours with the sweetie!

Monday.  21st.  Did I mention I'm doing low carb again for another few weeks? Except the day got off to a rocky start because I'd forgotten about an apple that needed eating. There goes my carb limit for the day.. whoops. The sweetie prepped a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts for dinner and I chucked a chunk of beef in to go with it. I got my blogging done quite early. Funny how writing up notes properly during the week makes blogging a lot quicker on a Sunday.. or Monday in this case. DS9 2.24.

Tuesday.  Awake from Dentist Time for hours and only broken sleep after that. Sigh. NEIL at work, as well as trying to figure out the API of our IP management system to help someone with something. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.25. After dinner started going through Dad's photos (from when he switched from slides to prints and onwards) to get photos of Mum. Annoyingly Dad had a really bad habit of over-enhancing his photos. At least with the prints I can go back and rescan them, but for digital photos once they're enhanced at all they're destroyed because he didn't keep the originals. Which is odd in itself because he used to make backups upon backups upon backups, just not of the original unaltered files. #grunt.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok. Really wanted to get through some decom prep but the interruptions Would. Not. Stop. All. Day. So damned hard to concentrate with Teams and Outlook popping up every five seconds. Seriously considering turning all notifications off. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice.

DS9 2.26. Then more photo picking. From 2010 and some of 2011 Dad saved the raw camera photos off separately to the enhanced photos. That was nice of him. Maybe there were other copies of the rest of his digital camera photos elsewhere that either he or I lost. More likely him. I spent an entire week one Christmas trying to sort it all out, and would definitely have kept any raw photos if I'd found them. Knowing him he probably made several backups, thought he had a backup, didn't in fact have a backup, and deleted the original. Or maybe he just never thought he'd need his originals. Silly Dad.

Thursday.  Slept okish until about 5:00. Mostly decom work at work. Bar 59 for drinks which was quite pleasant, although a lot more expensive than work drinks! Made pizzas then DS9 3.1.

Friday.  Anzac Day.  Lest we forget.  Awake from 1:45 for hours sigh.

House stuff mostly in the morning. Happy that Stumpy is basking more and is more enthusiastic about food.  Did some camera testing in the afternoon. Only to realise later I had it on the wrong mode. Sigh.

I need to find a spot to plant out these chrysanthemums.  I accidentally uprooted one of the ones out the front the other month and chucked it in a pot out the back.  They're now happily flowering while the ones out the front are barely hanging on to life.  These things like a lot of sun but our garden is completely hopeless so not sure where I can put them.  

Kievs for dinner.  With half a cauliflower and most of a capsicum.

DS9 3.2. Then watched Blackberry which made us both a little nostalgic. Also, it's Anzac Day but I've only worn a jumper like twice all year. Usually by now there would have been days where we'd be wanting to put the heater on in advance of the Anzac Day allowed starting date. Instead I had a window open in my room to cool it down so I could sleep.  hrmmm.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish.

Cooked cheese kranskis and miso scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Although Stu just had eggs because he needed to only eat soft food to not break his temporary tooth crown again.

Started a jigsaw. Went for a several hour drive with the sweetie, checking out previous houses, family houses, the church we got married in etc. Was a lovely way to spend a few hours with the sweetie (and we drove like 70km!). 

Made a small share platter for lunch (although I did get hungry later)

Finished the jigsaw. Got Chong Co delivered for dinner (after the MenuLog driver finally turned up) and watched DS9 3.3, then The Princess Bride :)

Sunday.  Awake from ~3:30 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.  They promised many millimetres of rain.  We got about three drops.

Went and saw Constellations at the NFSA with Tony which was a bit of fun. House stuff mostly for the rest of the day, and some food shopping.

When you realise you have 15 different cheeses in the fridge.. whoops...

Filled with rage in the afternoon at Optus who FORCE you to use international roaming because there's no way to disable it. Their only workaround is leave the phone on flight mode and use wifi. WTF??? I think I did read somewhere that if you have a second sim you can disable the Optus one. Which would work unless I needed to receive an SMS for two factor for anything. But there's a heap of horror stories out there from people getting charged the $5/day even when the sim wasn't even in the phone!!!

Hi.

Edit: all of the R6 photos were on "Fine Detail" instead of "Automatic" which I swear I'd set it to.  So I'll probably have to redo this entire comparison at some point.  Sigh.

Took out another couple of cameras for more side-by-side testing.

First up is wide angle.  The 600D would have to be my favourite in this lineup.  The G5X is quite dark, and the iPhone is a little over saturated.  R6 is dull and lifeless.

Next we have zoom.  For the iPhone, G5X and R6 this is full zoom.  For the 600D its about half way.  The 600D is also duller than its wide angle, and actually probably too bright..  The G5X is dark.  I like the iPhone shot.  The R6 is dull and lifeless.

Finally a comparison with the 600D at full zoom (at bottom).  None of my other cameras even come close to the zoom on the old camera.

Let's have a look now at raw pixels for zoom shots (fully zoomed for everything except the 600D which is half zoom).  In order, it's iPhone, G5X, 600D, R6.  Honestly I could get just as good a photo on my little G5X as the R6 (and it even has a better zoom!!).  Sorry about my head not being on straight!

And for a bonus, here's raw pixels on the 600D fully zoomed.  Winner by far.

And here's some of UC.  The R6 is actually probably the winner here in terms of picture clarity, but that's only comparing the 600D at half zoom.  At full zoom the 600D wins.

iPhone

G5X

600D (half way)

R6

600D (full zoom, had to crop it quite a bit)

In conclusion?  I shoulda just stuck with my old camera.  I'm half tempted to take the 600D on my next trip.  It's lighter and has a much better zoom and the picture quality is arguably better.  The only advantage of the R6 is its low light capability and utter silence.  

Sigh.

Sunday.  13th.  Apple cider pulled pork and lots of veggies for dinner. I didn't measure out the apple cider vinegar this time so it was a little tangier than last time, and I also added less water in the gravy which made it a lot quicker to cook. Yum yum yum. DS9 2.18. Then watched the start of a new season (for me) of Air Crash Investigations. First time I'd watched any since 2021!!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Busy morning before work, busy day at work. The new version of Outlook sux donkeyballs. They shrunk down the ribbon so my quicksteps are now hidden behind a drop down menu. So now my quicksteps take twice as long because I have to click the drop down then click my action. And no way to customise it. They broke the categories/colours on our shared calendar so everything is grey and I can't create a new category to match the common ones. And every time I move a mail to a folder it pops up a stoopidly annoying "You've moved a mail, Undo" message RIGHT OVER THE NEXT MAIL I WANT TO READ. Microsoft is so trash. Ok got my ribbon and action buttons back by choosing Classic Ribbon. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.19. OMFG this is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!!!! Don't even know what I did with my evening. I know there was some looking at optional tours for the Greece cruise. The extra tours practically double the day cost of the cruise. hrmmm.

The second half of the ramen pack, with leftover pulled pork

Tuesday.  Took *ages* to get to sleep :( The Old Reader's CDNs are working again today hurray (they'd been broken for a few days). Found another bug in new Outlook. I only have one mail rule. It wasn't working. When I went to look at it I got the error "This rule can't be edited or viewed in Outlook for Windows". Found this page which said it was to do with the "mark as read" rule. So I turned that off in Classic, sure enough it can now be edited in 365.  Nearly had a meltdown over how much time I've wasted on Microsoft TRASH. Another "feature" is they've turned off the nice little count down the bottom which shows you how many messages you have in a folder. Ok at least you can see, but you have to hover over the folder to see it. Meeting notifications are dumb. Old version you could just hit snooze and it would automatically popup again at the five minute mark, hit snooze again and it would pop up at meeting start time. New version you have to hover, then click on snooze, then click a time to snooze. And even then it doesn't work properly, repeating notifications. Also whenever I even look away from Outlook, it navigates me to the top of my inbox, which are my oldest messages. So I'm constantly having to scroll all the way down to the bottom to see my newest messages. Went to get a Covid vaccine at lunch (been like eighteen months since I got my last one). Also spent a 50th birthday gift card. I probably should have looked around more for some cool games or something, but ended up just buying a couple of jigsaws. The sweetie cooked cabbage and bacon for dinner. DS9 2.20.

Wednesday.  Took quite a while to get to sleep and still woke up before 6. First meltdown of the day - the barrel fell out of my locker again at work, but no Connor around today to help me fix it. Took like ten minutes to get it back in. Second meltdown of the day - losing my mind over some proxy configs - turned out Wardie did a sneaky add and remove of a policy which confused me no end. All the middle of a MICROSOFT problem on the proxies that we spent literally all day on, and still haven't resolved. Microsoft is utter TRASH. Third meltdown of the day - YELLOW LIGHTS. I did have a nice birthday lunch with DC though. DS9 2.21.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish. More trash today. Gave up and went back to Outlook Classic, which made me feel a whole lot better. Microsoft is almost entirely responsible for my very strong desire to retire early.  Super quiet drinks, just our group. Pizzas, DS9 2.22.

Good Friday.  Not so great for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Tuna bake and veggies for dinner. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk then mostly holiday planning. Finished my galah Diamond Dotz and did one of my birthday jigsaws. Steak and salad for dinner. DS9 2.23, then Death in Paradise 14.6.

Easter Sunday.  Christ has risen.  So did the sun in a nice way.

Slept mostly okish. Went for a walk. On the way back a group of kids (and parents) were out in their pyjamas doing an Easter egg hunt around one of the playgrounds. Funny.  Mostly house stuff in the morning. Mostly holiday stuff in the afternoon. Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Monday.  Somewhat restless sleep and thermoregulation issues. Another quiet day - bit of house stuff, bit of holiday stuff, food shopping (which was super quiet which was nice).

I really could get used to four day weekends....

The other day I took the new camera out to try out different picture mode settings to see if any of them give good results.  The options it has are "Auto, Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Fine Detail, Neutral, Faithful, Monochrome"

Here's them all on 24mm.  Auto is probably the best, although the greenery is not very green.

And here's them all at 105mm.  Everything is dark and dull.  Not happy. 

Here's them compared with the iPhone

First at wide.  The phone is greener.  When compared to my old 600D I did generally prefer landscape photos off the Canon rather than the phone because sometimes the phone overdid the blues.  Here I'm almost preferring the phone.

Then at full zoom (3x for the phone, 105mm for the Canon).  The iphone is so much BRIGHTER than the Canon.

Here's some side-by-side of the iPhone vs the Canon using "Auto" mode, cropped to be about the same dimensions.

At wide angle things aren't too bad

iPhone

Canon

And here's them at zoom.

iPhone 3x - nice and bright

Canon.  It's so DULL

I have to say I'm pretty disappointed.  In bright sunlight these photos should POP.  But instead they're just dark and dull.

Given 105mm is hardly much more than the 3x on the phone it makes me wonder what I'm paying for.  I'm not getting the zoom like I used to have, and what I do have is no better than I could get on my G5X.  I should probably take the G5X and the 600D for the next round of testing.