Kazza the Blank One

26.4.26

On our anniversary in April we got up *very* early to join CRD and a birdwalk at Mulligans flat.  There was mist around to begin with which was nice.  I didn't get many great photos of birds, but Stu got a few with his new camera.

Little corellas (photo by Stu)

Purple swamphen (photo by Stu)

Galahs on the dam

Australian ibis in flight

Probably the highlight of the morning for me was this little flock of red-rumped parrots that came down for a bath

And here's a few photos Stu took

I haven't been to Floriade in the city in *years*.  I only went this year because it was on my way from the lake to the city where I needed to take photos for my 40 years project.  It seems they're making their money from shops now, and there seems to be a lot less flowers.

Into the city I also saw Wind Sculpture

And the carousel

11.11.26

Logged off work a little early one day this week and went to Ginninderra Creek (just downstream from Croke Place Wetlands).

Blackbird singing

No, this image is not squished.. this little spotted pardalote was stretching himself up to look impressive.. or something..

And this one sat still long enough for me to get some half-decent photos

I thought this was a female satin bowerbird, but apparently the males stay green for *years* before they go black.  It's possible this one was finally getting its black plumage..

We crossed to the other side of the creek and saw some reed warblers

We also saw some red-browed finches

Then continued up to the big stepping stones at Croke Place Wetlands and came back.

I got this for my birthday and took it to Burrinjuck to do on our weekend there.

There's four paper packets inside.

You start with the ball which is very cute.

Then move onto the base.

There is a bit of movement/articulation of the frame which is cool.

Stu was disappointed the thing doesn't light up!  You can get light sets for it though, maybe someone could get it for me for Christmas! ;)

The base is so you can take off the top and bottom of the ball and have the light sit atop the ball.

As always there were *heaps* of pieces I've never seen before!

And each baggie had a heap of spare pieces.  I should have included some photos of the innards - there were a heap of tributes to Pixar characters built into the structure (hence all the different coloured spare pieces).

All in all a fun little set!

18.4.26

A little walk around Croke Place Wetlands

Gold whistler

Bin chicken in flight

Little pied cormorant

Dusky moorhen

Grey fantail

Sulphur-crested cockatoos

31.3.26

One of our earliest birdwalks this year, before I got my big lens.

Eastern rosella!

A young magpie

Grey fantail

3.4.26

We went back again, this time to try out Stu's new camera.  These are my photos, not as good as some of the ones Stu got.

Red wattlebird

Red-browed finch

King parrot

Silvereye

I was awake from around 4:12 this morning.  After three quarters of an hour of lying in bed not sleeping I remembered that Jupiter and Mars are close together in the sky at the moment.  So I got up and photographed them.  They were taken through the lounge room window.  I wasn't going outside because I was in my pyjamas and it was (almost) freezing.  Also I only used a 2 second timer not 10, so there's jiggle in some of the pics.  So they're not the best.

Callisto, Jupiter, Europa, Io and Ganymede

And Venus came up as well

Mars and Jupiter get even closer over the coming week, getting their closest on the 17th.

I've been playing a lot of Nonograms Katana lately (due to the ad experience in Candy Crush and Happy Colour being way too trash these days).  A few weeks ago this one came up.  Such a tiny little puzzle (only 10x10) but even only part way through it I picked what it was.  Fun stuff!

Went to Sydney on Saturday.  Went to the airport on Sunday.  Our flight was cancelled.  Spent two days in Sydney.  Went to the airport on Tuesday.  Went to Tamworth.  Came back to Sydney.  Caught a bus home.  You can read all about it here (photos to come soon).

Wednesday.  4th. 

Unpacking, blogging, processing and backing up photos.  I'm worried my little PhotoMate GPS logger is dying. On day 2 of the holiday I swear I turned it on and off for the day but there was no track. On day 3 of the trip I know I started it in the morning, but it skipped a whole bunch of the morning and didn't start tracking until later. This would be devastating if it died. Then for the flights on day 4 it's not displaying the track as a red line, but a series of "marker" points (it was fine until just before we took off, and also fine around Tamworth). I can't see anything wrong with the GPX file, no idea what's going on.  Upsettingly I seem to have lost a decor container. It had snackages in it I took away, but I don't remember packing it at Mum's or unpacking it here. I literally can't remember the last time I saw it. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, just a container and some snacks, but it also had an old-school mercury thermometer in it, which I'm upset about losing. Why is everything so awful?  Pizzas for dinner (since we planned to be out tomorrow) and Stargate.

Meatlovers and Moroccan lamb

Thursday.  Didn't sleep very well. Was awake from around 3 for ages, mostly stressing over Qantas being turds. Stu didn't sleep well either. Around 6 he was like, wanna go birding? So we did! Didn't see the caspian tern that Stu wanted to see at the Fyshwick sewage ponds, but we did go for a wander around Jerrabomberra wetlands and saw a few interesting birds.

Got home and called Qantas again. Did some catchup blogging in the afternoon. I'm also annoyed at IFTTT (which I use to save Foursquare checkins to a Google docs spreadsheet). They suddenly started using up credits to do this, but they charge like 30 credits per checkin and you only get a couple of hundred per month. So it died after just a couple of days of them starting this new system. On a lighter note, Foursquare have fixed their checkin RSS feed which was broken for years, so now you can get it via RSS feed. But I bet there's still no easy way to backup the checkin history without a lot of hacking of APIs. Sigh. For dinner we finally used the gift card Stu got for Raku for his retirement. Very nice but very expensive dinner. Came home and watched V for Vendetta. Also - I saw Chrissie's clown loach today!  Haven't seen it in weeks, was worried it had died.

Friday.  Up early and headed out to Tidbinbilla to do the cascades walk.  All. The. Kangaroos.  !!!  So many kangaroos around on the drive in, although didn't actually get any photos of them, and they'd literally all disappeared for the day by the time we left.  Had a lot of frustration trying to get bird photos because of the little turds sitting in trees in the bush with all different levels of trees and the camera struggled to focus. Nice walk otherwise.

Stu's phone GPS app had a couple of brain hemorrhages and sent us in the wrong direction *twice*. Retarded.

Stopped at Murray's Corner on the way home for snackages.

Had a look at my raw GPS tracks from my PhotoMate. It's meant to do "smart logging" where it will log every 30 seconds if you're going lower than 6km/h, every 15 seconds between 15 and 60, and every five seconds over 60. But it's only logging everything 30 seconds no matter what. It seems to have changed some time between December 2025 and March 2026. Before that it was logging every 5 seconds no matter what. Every 5 seconds makes for much bigger logs, but is much more accurate. I dunno what's changed or why. Maybe another sign that it's dying. Also, our new neighbours turned up today!  Looks like a young couple.  Kievs for dinner and Black Mirror.

Saturday.  Awake from around 3 for ages, mostly stressing about Qantas. Did some food shopping in the morning. Called Qantas after lunch (third time lucky?). Might get some resolution on that. Did some culling of the trip's photos. Kievs for dinner then watched The Manchurian Candidate (I'd still like to see the original film one day).

Sunday.  Early night and slept relatively well for a change. House, photo and hobby day.

On a lighter note, Windoze has been remembering my folder view settings for the past week or two.  I wonder how long that will last...

On Thursday the sweetie and I went to Raku.  When he retired he'd been given a voucher for $150 to spend there and we'd been meaning to use it for a while.  We'd last been with Annie and Stu back in May 2024.

We were sat at the preparation bar so that was cool to watch them work.

I put Stu in charge of ordering food.

He ordered two of the 6 piece signature selection nigiri ($75).  Yes these two little plates of food cost us the entire voucher.  It was quite a bit cheaper to order them like this.  We had Aburi otoro (seared bluefin tuna belly, normally $30), I think it was Tenaga ebi (scampi, foie gras, truffle oil, soy jelly, normally $34), and Aburi wagyu (seared Tajima wagyu 8+ striploin, garlic soy, fried leek, normally $30).  All delicious (except for the wasabi flavour on the scampi), but I was like, well that was a nice entree (for $150), what's for mains?

So we ordered more food.

First up though, a cocktail!

Nekuta martini - spiced rum, passionfruit liqueur, peach and basil syrup, lime ($27)

First was kumogani tempura (soft shell crab, potato starch w kimchi mayonnaise $30)

And then probably the highlight of the night - Jidori karaage chicken (soy marinated free range chicken, bonito w yuzu lime mayonnaise & chilli ponzu $26).

So with a prosecco each it came to something like $274, with $150 off, so about $124 for the night out.  

We may or may not have gone to Anita Gelato for dessert afterwards!