GrooveShark

Just playing with a new site Lisa Bettany put me on to - GrooveShark. It's like building your own (free) radio station. Amazing! (But surely there must be some copyright breach in all this...???)

First Submission to JPGMag

I subscribed to JPGMag recently and received Issue 8 on Monday & then Issue 7 on Tuesday. Cool - 2 in 2 days! Anyway, I thought I'd start submitting the ocassional shot and I would start with this one:

It is not the best shot I have ever taken but it's not too bad and more or less fits with the theme of Entropy, which is one of the themes for the next issue.

It is a completely fabricated shot. Well, sort of. It was taken at a friend's son's 1st birthday (a teddy bear picnic). One child had left his teddy bear on the ground near the bubbler after getting a drink and I thought, since it was fairly isolated, that I could probably shoot it and turn it into a "lost favourite toy" type shot. A couple tweaks in Adobe Lightroom (dulling down - a little desaturation and a reasonable vignette) and it comes across more or less how I wanted it too, which is quite a different feel than the original.

Post-Production Software

I have been trying a few different applications for post-production of late - Picture Project just is not up to scratch and Picasa is only marginally better. The problem is that all the evals I'm trying, which incidentally all seem to be from Adobe, are timebombed for 30 days. I have recently tried Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0, followed by Adobe Photoshop CS2 and I have been playing with Adobe Lightroom beta (that was available for download & feedback on labs.adobe.com) since it was released for Windows mid-2006 (I think it was v3.0 beta back then). Unfortunately a commercial version Lightroom (version 1.0) has just been released and so the beta (4.1) is due to expire tomorrow (end of Feb 2007). So, of course, I installed a trial version of Adobe Lightroom 1.0, which (surprise, suprise) is timebombed for 30 days. <sigh>

I have to say the new version of Lightroom (1.0) is quite a bit better than beta 4.1. With the late beta I had huge issues with speed degradation when I got too much metadata in my library. I thought it was initially the number of photos in my library so I started culling the old ones that I had processed and didn't need in the library any more. However, this was extremely slow & painful (due to my speed issues at the time) and made no apparent difference. So then I started culling keywords (I was up to about 400 or so). This was also a desparately slowly process and seemed to make little difference. So when I got down to about 350 keywords & < 100 photos I thought "stuff it - I'm going to install the trial version 1.0 anyway, so I may as well try an 'upgrade' install and if that doesn't fix it then do a fresh install and start my library from scratch".

As it turned out the upgrade install went very smoothly and the speed issues I had on 4.1 beta instantly went away. Yipee!! And what's more, Adobe added a few more nice features to Lightroom, such as a Clone/Heal tool a la Photoshop. Very nice. I still miss the ability to play with layers but Lightroom is an excellent alternative and is much cheaper than the full blown CS2 (I think the initial commercial release of Lightroom is slated to go for about AUD$350 whereas the full Photoshop CS2 is about AUD$1,200 RRP...or at least somewhere in that ballpark - too rich for my blood).

There were a few things I liked & disliked about the various products. I loved Adobe Bridge, which comes with Photoshop CS2 (also came with a couple earlier versions of Photoshop I think). The way you could manage your metadata was great (and fast, unlike the Lightroom beta). However, it didn't allow you to zoom in more than the confines of your window (it didn't like adding scrollbars to an image window)...pfft! I also tried iView MediaPro (once again a timebombed trial - 21 days this time), which has recently been bought by Microsoft and is soon to be released as Microsoft Media Expressions, and I loved it. The way you could zoom in to 100% (or more) and compare the same viewpoint on 2 shots simultaneously was great - excellent for culling bad (or at least "worse") shots. However, iView was solely for cataloging & metadata, not editting. But it did a fantastic job at it. Since playing with Lightroom 1.0 though I see Adobe has improved the comparing mode of the library module so that you can do the same thing as iView in terms of zooming in nice and close and comparing 2 images side-by-side with the same viewpoint. Also, Lightroom allows you to see a variable number of shots in the viewing window at the same time with some pretty cool automatic image sizing & placement.

I got very used to playing with layers in CS2 and in particular using layer masks to reveal only bits of my upper layers (or lower layers even). The more I played with layer masks the more indispensible I found them. And then, when my trial copy expired and I installed Photoshop Elements 5.0 (trial) on my home PC, I discovered that you could apply layer masks in Elements to adjustment layers only! NOOOO!!!! What about layer masks on my other layers; for example, when I copy a layer, sharpen it and then use a mask to smoothly reveal only part of the sharpened layer (ie. selective sharpening)??? D'oh!

I have to say the Elements UI was much more polished than the CS2 UI. That's probably my biggest gripe in CS2 - the user interface. You get used to it but if you see PSE 5.0 then you think "why couldn't Adobe just polish up their CS2 interface to make it look half nice???". I have yet to download & install the Photoshop CS3 beta trial, mainly because it's only a 2 day trial (if you're not a registered Photoshop user) so I'm waiting for when I have a couple days to play with it to get the most out of the eval. Hopefully they will have polished the UI a bit more. Lightroom probably is the best in terms of metadata & workflow as I can catalog, rate, cull, tag & edit a 200+ image shoot much faster than I could with Bridge + CS2 or Photoshop Elements (by the way, the Photoshop Elements "Organizer" sucks big time!). If Photoshop Elements shipped with Adobe Bridge then it would be a much more viable product, although for the price (about AUD$150 I think) it's very hard to pass up as it contains very similar functionality to the core of CS2, albeit missing a couple fundamental bits such as layer masks (on all layers, not just adjustment layers).

So, do I go Lightroom + Elements (for about $500), or Lightroom on its own (for about $350) and abandon the idea of the very flexible editting of Photoshop, or Lightroom + CS2 (for a very painful $1500 or thereabouts), or CS2 with Bridge (for a slightly less painful $1200) and just go with the less efficient metadata/cataloging workflow, or fork out the money for iView + CS2 ($1400-ish) or iView + PSE 5.0 ($400-ish)? Or do I hope that a long lost distant Aunt with a castle in Scottland dies and leaves me a wad of cash? Or do I conceed that I'll never be able to afford any of them and keep plodding along with Picasa (which is a great product for what it costs (free download from Google) but is such a disappointment after playing with Photoshop & Lightroom)? Do I trial the Nikon editors (how can they rival Adobe's offerings?)?

So much to buy, so little money... Seems to be the way with me - I have a list about $10,000 long of Nikkor lenses alone that I also want to buy, not to mention parts for my home PC, a better Nikon body, a good LCD screen for home, a good inkjet (such as an Epson Stylus Photo R2400) for home, a few extra bits such as a battery grip, Manfrotto tripod & ball head, etc., etc. And there's always the usually bills to pay, food to buy, kids to educate, ... <sigh> <mumble>...<mumble>...<mumble>...

Need a New Pair

Need a New Pair
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

Over the last couple years I've seen more and more pairs of shoes (some of them not so old or cheap) that somebody's great friends have grabbed and tossed up onto a power line. There must be an epidemic going on. With friends like that...

I've since learnt that this phenomenon is called shoefiti. What will they think of next? Such genius! (Thanks for the heads up Findo.)

Waning Gibbous Moon

Waning Gibbous Moon
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

I have to confess, the moon wasn't really this colour; it was just a standard bright white, with perhaps a slight bluish tint to it. I warmed the colour temperature significantly to make it look like it was rising close to the horizon.

Insulation

Insulation
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

I was just finishing up shooting the non-existent sunrise at Kangaroo Point a few weeks ago when I thought I'd just go for a quick walk under the bridges (that cross the Hawkesbury River). Just on the other (west) side of the old (smaller) bridge there was this metallic silver braided insulation cover something important (not to mention a bunch of video camera under the bridge - I made sure I gave them a big smile). I thought it might make an interesting snap; it came out better than I expected.

Oops...I've Been Seen

Oops...I've Been Seen
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

I was just about to finish up shooting and go back to my desk (at work) to see what I had on my memory card, when this guy sat down on the bench just in front of the bandstand structure on Observatory Hill to take a few shots with his P&S. So, occasional opportunist that I am, I thought I'd fire off a couple final silhouettes of this guy (who I'd never seen before) from about 20 metres away. I'd taken about 5 or 6 shots by the time he looked up from checking his LCD display to see me pointing a big fat lens in his direction. Oh well, I was finishing up anyway. Thanks for being my model, sir...whoever you are.

Harbour Bridge Walkway

Harbour Bridge Walkway
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

The East side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a pedestrian walkway (bikes on the West side). You get magic views of Sydney Harbour from the walkway and it takes about 20-30 minutes to walk from one side to the other (depending on how fast you walk). It's a very popular spot for joggers.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Rain, Rain, Go Away...
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

This is a tiny crop of a shot taken from a long way away (probably 800-1000 metres) with a 400mm lens (600mm efl). It was shot through a double glazed window 50 floors up and, since it was already looking pretty grainy & poor quality with a little internal reflection from the window, I decided to keep going & give it that old "in need of restoration" look in post-production with Picasa (Picasa is great especially for a free tool, which makes it even better!).

Saturated Sky

Saturated Sky
Originally uploaded by The Sage of Shadowdale.

I went for a wonder down the firetrail at the end of Turner Rd last weekend just before sunset to see if I could get a decent shot of the sunset (as you get a great view from that ridge line). However, the clouds just weren't very cooperative. There were hardly any to start with, clouds that is, so the colours from the sunlight refracting through the atmosphere weren't reflected much in the sky. Secondly, what clouds there were were mostly on the horizon, thereby obscuring the setting sun. So what I ended up with were mostly clear skies and a vague horizon.

The only redeeming feature of the shots was a colour gradient from the horizon to directly overhead. So I exploited this as much as I could when I was mucking around with Nikon PictureProject post-production. I was really just playing with the colour saturation to see if anything would make the shot interesting. The end result is a little more interesting than what I saw through the lens, but on the whole not that great. Oh well...

Adobe Lightroom Initial Thoughts

The download was small (about 7MB). Installation was quick and simple (took about 30 seconds stepping through a "next, next, next" wizard). I have to say that my initial thoughts, after playing with the beta for about an hour, are: IT ROCKS!!!

Being a beta, Adobe Lightroom is still a little buggy and not feature complete yet, but the RTM of this product is definitely going on my wishlist. I want, I want, I want!

Adobe Lightroom Beta Available for Windows

After what seems like the wait of the Century, Adobe have released the Beta 3 of Lightroom for Windows. This is especially significant because it has been available, as a beta, for Mac users for ages and it looks damn cool! After seeing what it could do in the tutorial videos on the Adobe website, I signed up immediately to be notified when the Windows version was available. I got my notification email last night...wahoo!!

It fills a big gap in my digital photographic kit, being mainly a workflow tool but also allowing considerable tweaking of the images themselves (mainly the typical curves for hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, shadows, etc.). Not being able to afford Photoshop, my image tweaking is limited to what Nikon PictureProject (the Nikon image tweaking tool they throw in at no extra cost when you buy a D50) allows, which is basically just cropping and some fairly rudimentary brightness/contrast adjustments. However, PictureProject is almost entirely lacking in the workflow side of things. It allows you to categorise your photos in "folders" and "collections" within those folders, which are purely logical structures, not physical on disk. There is no feature to rate photos or any of those other fairly basic workflow elements.

The other tool I use is Pixmatic RawShooter, which has recently been bought by Adobe anyway. RawShooter allows much better control over the image tweaking (shadows, contrast, tint, whitebalance, etc.) and has some basic photo rating (1-3 scale, trash & flagged) but not physical structuring (except what there already is on the filesystem), no cropping (which is really dumb as cropping is one of the most basic, fundamental image manipulation tools) and it only works on RAW files (which means if you're low on disk space and therefore shoot JPG, you cannot use it at all). RawShooter, however, is much nicer than PictureProject on the memory consumption and response times when tweaking & viewing RAW images.

But this blog entry isn't supposed to be about RawShooter & PictureProject, but rather Adobe Lightroom. I can't wait to install it and play (the installer has finished downloading now). I'll be interested to see how much Adobe are going to charge for Lightroom. I'll be really stuffed if I get hooked on it and, when the beta expires at the end of Jan 2007, find out they're selling it for around the same price as Photoshop CS2 (if that happens I think I'll cry, or maybe I'll sell a kidney so I can afford Lightroom & Photoshop; after all, isn't that why God gave me two kidneys?).

Here's a link to the beta, for those of you who are interested:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

Anyway, I have no more time to waste typing this blog - I have to go play with Lightroom! (There goes my productivity for the day...maybe I should go home "sick".)

To write or not to write...

A friend told me recently, after reading a couple things I had written, that he thought I was a good writer (at least in the particular niche that was the subject of the articles). He said I should send some things I had written to publishers and make some money out of my hobby. I was, and remain, unconvinced. Initially I thought it was a bit of a joke but he later reinforced his opinion by telling me he thought I was wasted as a "cube rat" and pointed me to some courses the Sydney Writing Centre conducts. I often think he is wasted as a salesman and should try his hand at comedy where I think he would be quite successful.

I know most of the rules of grammar and when you can break them; however, I choose not to follow them most of the time. If I did not have other things to do, like work, house maintenance, yelling at the World Cup referees on TV, etc., then I would most likely read myself into a mild stupor. I used to buy and read the classics, like Frankenstein, Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. just because of their reputation and to say that I had read them. However, after a while I decided that I actually enjoyed reading them and started reading them for enjoyment (I originally started on the action genre, reading authors such as Tom Clancy, Patrick Robinson, and Geoffrey Archer, and quickly expanded my repertoire to fantasy as well - Tolkien, Salvatore, Jordan, etc.). What I mean to say is that I am fairly well read and not just modern day, "cheap" authors but top calibre authors as well such as Dostoyevsky, Hemmingway, Shelley, Melville, Dickens and Shakespeare.

My first reaction to subjects I am not intimately familiar with is to get more (written) information on them, which normally takes the form of books, as is evidenced by the bookshelves at home all struggling under the weight of tomes stacked 2 deep and piled on top of others. I should have bought shares in Dymocks and Borders 15 years ago before I started pumping cash into them (are they publicly listed companies? I will have to check that out...); a few floor to ceiling bookshelves would not go astray either. I think that all the books I have read are probably the reason I seem to implicitly know (yes, I know that I just split the infinitive; it was intentional) what is grammatically correct and what is not. The couple small books I have read about good writing style mostly confirmed what I already felt to be good writing style, but they were both excellent brain food nonetheless (How Not To Write, Bill Safire and Writing Good English, a Fairfax publication).

Of course, I do not expect to be able to just start writing and be good at it. I am currently far too impatient to be a good writer and most things I write, which seem to be newsgroup postings, work emails and blog entries, are rushed and full of grammatical abuse. If I were to revise and correct the things I write before sending or publishing them, then they would probably do me much more credit, and I have the perfect literary critic at home since my wife is a University-trained English/History teacher. I cannot deny that the extra cash would be welcomed but, to be honest, I do not know if I could be bothered. Areas that I consider to be my field of expertise, such as database management, I take due time & care on since I pride myself on my technical ability in those areas but writing is at best an outlet for expressing my miscellaneous thoughts and at worst a mistake.

To add to this, I rarely have a plan in mind when I start to write something and do most of the actual writing, or rather typing, either on the train between work & home or late at night in front of the TV; two environments not highly conducive to quality thought. It would appear that the cons in this internal debate, not the least of which is my own laziness, far outweigh the pros. Therefore, for the time being, I think I shall not write, at least not in any kind of professional capacity (I still have my own biased opinions to express on such vitally important subject matter as the sorry state of refereeing at the 2006 FIFA World Cup).

The Mystery of the Invisible Individual

Is it only me or are there other people in the world with my amazing ability to become completely undectable? If it were not for my deft dodging and expert evasion I would be continually involved in pedestrian pile-ups as fellow peramublators failed to notice me walking towards them, as they similarly walk towards me, from 20 metres away. Am I wrong to be incredulous regarding the general populaces ignorance? I don't know. However, I do believe this is a common problem in modern "civilised" societies and that this problem is escalating.

My run-ins, or rather near misses, with other people too rude or ignorant to show me the same common courtesy of mutual collision avoidance aggravate me on a daily basis. Perhaps I am permanently adorned with a magic invisibility cloak ala Mr Potter of Hogwarts fame. No, that cannot be correct because my wife always notices whenever I slip quietly upstairs to the computer to play games when her favourite (boring) TV shows start. Perhaps I'm just being a little anal but this topic is one of my pet peeves and, since I'm too polite to verbally abuse those I choose to avoid whilst walking from A to B (or even from A to nowhere in particular), I need to get it off my chest somehow (and isn't that basically what blogs are for after all?).

There, I feel better already, at least until the next time I have to do some emergency evasive maneuvers to avoid someone nearby. Maybe I should move to the wide open country...

Hostility & Peace

This afternoon I was listening to one of 1100 tunes (shuffle mode was a great idea) I have ripped & saved on my notebook - it happened to be Narrow by Nathan Tasker. Everytime I listen to this song there's 1 line in the lyrics that I can never make out. I never have the cover notes with me (because I ripped the CD ages ago and leave the original at home) and each time I hear that line I think "I should look it up in the lyrics when I get home". This time, for some unknown reason, it bugged me enough to Google 'lyrics "Nathan Tasker" narrow' and, sure enough, hits came up for Nathan's website (www.nathantasker.com). So, in one of those typical tangents you find yourself on, I soon found myself flicking around Nathan's site - I used to go to church with him so I thought I'd see what he was up to these days, and the short version is he's a very busy boy (this blog wasn't supposed to be all about Nathan...another of those tangents).

Anyway, there was a reference to a Sydney Morning Herald article (Radar:In God we trust) in which Nathan made a few comments about today's youth and an apparent increase in church attendance over the last few years. I read the article and was interested in reading what some readers' responses would be, so I started trawling through the article comments that had been posted. The thing that struck me the most was the hostility the subject evoked (almost exclusively from those on the "religion is a crutch" side of the discussion). I've read and engaged in plenty of Christianity debates on forums and newsgroups before and it's almost always the same so I don't know why I was surprised...but I was. Perhaps because most of the internet discussions I read on the subject usually involve a large percentage of Americans (who, by reputation/stereotype, usually hold strong opinions) but rarely do they involve many Australians (as far as I can tell). But the comments I read today, being on the smh.com.au website, I'm assuming, were mostly from Australians - probably even mostly local Sydney folk. I just hadn't considered that the same reactions would be evoked from my own community - naivity perhaps.

I know that Jesus himself said he had not come to bring peace but a sword (Matt 10:34), essentially saying that, because of him and what he was preaching, nations, communities, even families, would be divided and sometimes quite violently. This has been most obvious in the Middle East over the last few decades with relations between Palestine & Israel (and also with the recent Muslim unrest, particularly in Indonesia). But I find it hard to reconcile the fact that such a faith, that is mostly about restoration, seems to spark such hostility. One of those oddities of human nature perhaps or part of God's divine plan? I can see how the Christian Gospel would be hard to swallow for many people (1 Co 1:18) and how those that spread the Gospel (ie. evangelists) would be downright offensive for many others (1 Co 2:15-16) primarily because of the ramifications of their message, although it's true some evangelists can really get in your face. It just seems strange to me that this should be part of God's plan, but I know there are some, or rather many, things I won't be able to figure out (not that that should stop me from trying) and I just have to trust in God's wisdom. It's like Nathan says in God's Plan: "I'm glad I don't know God's plan because He holds me safely in His hands."

(And now that I'm at home I've looked up in the lyrics the line I can never understand...but I'm sure the next time I hear the song I will have forgotten again. C'est la vie.)

So I really am a dog...

You Are Rowlf the Dog

Mellow and serious, you enjoy time alone cultivating your talents. You're a cool dog, and you always present a relaxed vibe. A talented pianist, you can play almost anything - especially songs by Beethoven. "My bark is worse than my bite, and my piano playing beats 'em both."

The Muppet Personality Test

The Road to Empyrean

OK, maybe the post heading is a bit grandiose... So sue me.

For the first time in living memory, Australia has beaten Uruguay in the World Cup Qualifiers to make it through to the World Cup in Germany next year. Well, my living memory at least - the last time Australia qualified for the World Cup was in 1974 (and I was born in 1973). Wahoooooooo!!!! (OK, yes, I'm a little bit excited....just a little...wahoooooo!)

In front of a crowd of almost 83,000 at Telstra Stadium in Sydney last night Australia scored (through a play started by Cahill, then Viduka, Kewell & finally Bresciano) after 36 minutes. That levelled the aggregate score (after Uruguay beat Australia 1-0 in Montevideo last weekend) and forced 30 minutes extra time when the game ended at 1-0 (despite some very dubious Spanish referring IMHO). Extra time yielded no more goals but Uruguay were very lucky to hang on that long - Australia was pushing very hard and obviously wanted to win but Uruguay just looked tired.

Next: the dreaded penalty shootout. The heathen tend to complain that soccer (i.e. football) is too slow, there aren't enough goals and that shootouts are exciting. But they can't grasp the fact that the elusiveness of goals just builds the tension making the game all the more exciting. (My wife was laughing at me last night because I was literally on the edge of my seat for the last hour fidgeting & jigging around.) Well, despite the 1-0 scoreline at the end of 120 minutes of football, I don't think anyone could claim that the game was boring.

Schwarzer is a bit of an Aussie legend this morning after saving two penalties in the shootout. I think Kewell & Schwarzer were the 2 best players on the pitch. Keepers are very under-rated (and being a keeper in a previous life and participating in a few shootouts I know what the pressure is like (although on a much, much smaller scale)). I lost a great deal of respect for Recoba not long before the game when he gave a press conference and was quoted as saying said stuff like Uruguay had a much grander football history, were much better than Australia, deserved to go to the world cup, had a divine right to go and he was sure at the end of the game Uruguay would be going to Germany next year. (I may have to trade in my Inter jersey for a Juvi one.) Well, guess what Alvaro? Australia aren't quite as weak as you think! And it wasn't just luck - Australia deserved that win and they deserved it in normal time (and then again in extra time) and not just as a result of a shootout.

I know it's "just" the qualifiers and not even the world cup itself, but to us Aussies this is a big deal. And while it may not literally be Empyrean, Elysiam, Heaven or Paradise, it's one hell of a national high! (gotta love endorphins).

Aussie Aussie Aussie...oi oi oi

Football Fever

A mate asked me a couple weeks ago if I was interested in coming to the next Sydney FC game at Aussie Stadium (previously Sydney Football Stadium), which was last Friday night. I went. We sat in the 4th row from the pitch. We got soaked for 2 hours. It was a reasonable game I guess but the idiots in the row in front detracted somewhat from the guys on the pitch.

There were about a dozen of them and their average age, at a guess was around 16 or 17. They were obviously just trying to impress each other with the comments they were yelling at the ref, the linesmen, the other team (Central Coast Mariners), the ball boys... The 1st half would have been rated R18+ for sure. They calmed down a little in the 2nd half (estimated rating: about M). Actually a few of them didn't return from going off at half time to get something to eat/drink - I guess they'd had enough sitting in the rain. They were just yelling for the sake of hearing their own voices. Ridiculous comments. Telling the ref he was making terrible calls when there was no question about his decisions - they were fine.

Anyway, the nearby high school idiots notwithstanding, the game was OK. Sydney scored first after about 10 minutes and Central Coast drew even about 5 minutes later from a penalty (I have to say the penalty was a little dubious - looked like it was outside the area to me but it's hard to tell from the sideline at about the halfway line). Central Coast went further ahead just before half time. Second half, nothing much happened for some time. Finally Sydney drew level with a simple put away for Dwight Yorke right in front from a cross (that drew the backs off - shocking defense) with about 15 minutes to go. Yorke was definitely Sydney's star. My mate and I were with 2 other guys who decided it was time to go at about the 85 minute mark - bad timing. Central Coast popped in the winner right on 90 minutes - free kick from about 5m outside the box towards the far post, through the wall, off a defender, wrong footed the keeper who was heading for the far post and it snuck in the near post. The 30 Central Coast fans (total attendance was 15,614) behind the Central Coast goal went crazy and in the rest of the stadium there was stunned silence. With only 3 minutes stoppage time remaining my friend & I decided it was time to go.

A reasonable game, exciting finish. Shame about the morons in row C. On the whole it was kind of fun (late night though - kick off at 8pm, home at about midnight...<yawn>) But being soaked for 2 hours (trying to keep my laptop dryish) at about 10 deg C gave me new respect for the poms that sit in the rain/sleet/snow at < 5 deg C for a couple hours to see a Premier League game...although they do get to watch a couple teams full of Dwight Yorkes. For that kind of talent I might be willing to sit through that more than once as well.

Google really is taking over the world

I was just reading a Paul Thurrott blog about Google and the areas they're expanding in and I came across Picasa (a sort of photo compilation tool) recently bought by Google and then redistributed for free (it's pretty nice too). And playing with Picasa I discovered a button to publish images within Picasa to Blogger blogs via Hello (another tool Google bought and redistributed free). And, low and behold, I even discovered that Blogger was owned by Google too (when did that happen?? I must have been asleep at the time).

Anyway, this post was really just a test of the "Send to BloggerBot" button in Picasa - it works, surprise, surprise.

There's not much of a story behind this photo. I was just driving down a road in Mt Kuring-gai headed for a firetrail with my Dad's Nikon D70 (borrowed for the day) to play with it (I was toying with the idea of getting one) and suddenly the sun went behind one of the few clouds that were in the sky that day (a couple months ago). I pulled over quickly (thankfully there wasn't much traffic), whipped the lens cap off, jumped out and took a snap leaning on the roof of my car. Actually, I almost got run over by other drivers who were either trying to see what I was photographing or didn't thinking that standing on the road taking a photo was a very good idea (Philistines!). It's a bit of a shame about the powerlines but the cloud burst does make for a fairly dramatic effect.


Dramatic cloud burst in Mt Kuring-gai

I wonder how long it will be before Google tries to buy Microsoft. :-P

For Unto Us A Child Is Born

Today, July 1, 2005, at around 2:45pm at Sydney Adventist Hospital, Wahroonga, NSW, Adelaide Grace Hodgson was born. And she is beautiful.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Well, winter has arrived with a vengeance. This morning, when the missus dropped me off at the train station, it was definitely time to don the jacket. It's been cooling down for a few weeks in Sydney maintaining a reasonably balmy 10-16C (50-60F for all you Yanks who seem destined to be stuck in the dark ages of imperial measurements forever) but overnight it dropped to a chilly 4C by about 6:00, which made the trip to work less pleasant than normal (<sarcasm> because going to work is always such a brilliant experience </sarcasm>). For those of you who regularly go to work in subzero temperatures that may sound perfectly normal, even nice, but Sydney-siders are used to a slightly warmer climate.

When the mercury drops my mind wanders off to fresh powder, back-breaking moguls and long, steep tree-lined runs, which just make me more depressed because since getting married, having kids and buying a house I haven't had the money to go skiing (or at least I can't justify spending it on skiing - things like food, mortgage repayments, clothes, daycare, doctors, etc. tend to take priority for some bizarre reason). <sniff><sob>

My two forays into the Canadian snow-fields have given me a taste of the good-life, in terms of quality snow & quality mountains. Unfortunately, Australian skiing doesn't compare - we just don't have high enough hills. My favourite, out of the places in Alberta and BC that I skied, was Blackcomb, BC. Those were the days...when the only things you worried about were whether you were going to do a black or a double-back run down this time and the prospect of breaking something (such as your neck, or worse yet a ski!) on the way down. I was an above average skier when I could afford it (i.e. when my parents used to pay), shunning anything less than a black run and snickering (inwardly) at those who snow-ploughed over to the start of a designated trail (yes, I was a teenager and a bit full of myself but I was a pretty good skier). I tended to stick to the Horstman & Blackcomb glaciers and the Jersey Cream Bowl & the West Bowl on Whistler Mountain. I think my favourite at the time was the Saudan Couloir, although they've since changed the name, I think, to the Couloir Extreme (bit gay if you ask me).

Ah...to reminisce about coming back to a lodge worn out & sore after skiing hard all day. The stifling heat & humidity of the drying room compared to the crisp, pure mountain air outside. Goggles so fogged up in the drying room you can barely see where your boots are. Snow/ice-encrusted beanies. Boot warmers & thick socks. Settling down near a log fire watching Warren Miller movies. Playing pool & cards till late at night and fantasizing about Mike Wiegele heli-skiing tours. Going to bed at a ridiculous hour and getting up with the sparrows so you can do it all over again.

It almost makes me feel young again.

Buzz Lightyear & Human Nature

My kids love Buzz Lightyear.

I have two boys (3 & 4) and they know Toy Story & Toy Story 2 backwards. They also love "shooting" each other and "putting fire on" each other; that is, they pretend...obviously. There's definitely potential there for them to become homocidal, pyromaniacal psychopaths, if their imagination is anything to go on. But how did they get like that?

I have my fair share of violent video games (Xbox: Fable, Halo 2, Splinter Cell, Dark Alliance 2, etc.; PC: Battle for Middle Earth, Call of Duty, Enemy Territory, etc.) but I never play those games in front of my boys. In fact I rarely play them at all these days (work, family & a crappy public rail system leaves little time for playing games; and now I've started blogging - what's wrong with me?). They love playing Midtown Madness on Xbox but that's not violent (that's the only Xbox game simple enough for them to play that I'll let them play). They've seen all the standard Pixar kids DVDs - Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Dinosaurs, etc. and my wife & I have taken them to the movies to see a couple kids movies (Finding Nemo & Robots from memory). I guess some of those can be a bit rough in places, but they're not exactly the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Towering Inferno.

They also both go to daycare a couple days a week. They do the whole role play "I'll be Buzz, you be Woody" thing, although recently it's been "I'm mean Buzz [the 2nd Buzz from Toy Story 2], you're Spiderman". They've never even seen spiderman! Ah...the power of merchandising. I used to think that perhaps all the kids at daycare (well, the boys at least) run around shooting each other with invisible guns and that's where they got it from. Perhaps.

But my latest theory is physiological - that God preprogrammed that behaviour into our brain chemistry. There's no denying that there are substantial neurological differences between men & women. What and how we think is not entirely influenced by society & the experiencial data we absorb. People have, in greater or lesser degrees, a predefined disposition that directs our thoughts. (This, in essence, has been the subject of many an in-depth philosophical debate of greats such as Descartes, Kant, Hume, Plato...)

Obviously the friends our children come into contact with and interact with influence their behaviour but I think it's inevitable that little boys will shoot each other with imaginary guns. That doesn't mean that they're going to become serial killers when they get older, just that they're little boys. I'm not so naive as to think that passively experienced glorified violence has no affect on children. I'm in no way endorsing exposing children to violence in movies or games. I'm just saying I think there's more to it than that and a certain acceptance of human nature has to be arrived at before we can manage those tendancies in our kids and cultivate the qualities we want them to exhibit (kindness, gentlenss, sharing, confidence, self-control, patience, etc.).

Anyway, enough psycho theory babble for now. I'm sure my kids will be the subject of future blogs (especially since #3 is due in July).