As seen from Kirribilli

This was posted directly from my Nokia N900 using the Pixelpipe photo sharing service. This note added later using WordPress for N900.

This blog post was written using the MaStory application on the N900.

Works well!

Unfortunately it started raining just as I arrived, and got steadily heavier until it was bucketing down at one point – I had to find shelter in the large Rotunda with all the bored school kids and bedraggled teachers.

Adelaide Zoo - avenue of bamboo

My main goal was to get some general photos of the zoo itself and of the various enclosures for discussion on ZooChat – so the fact that it was not ideal conditions for photographing animals wasn’t actually that much of an issue. I was able to get some fairly decent photos of the zoo, even if they are a bit dull and lifeless – at least there wasn’t many people around to get in the way! It was a little awkward taking photos with the DSLR in one hand and an umbrella in the other – but I managed.

Adelaide Zoo - food preparation area

Ever since they built them a few years ago I’ve liked the toilet block / bird aviary – although it is a little disconcerting to have a large Cockatoo staring at you while you are trying to do your business.

Adelaide Zoo - Toilet Block or Bird Aviary ?

With the zoo being fairly quiet (weekday and raining), I was able to take the opportunity to spend some time in the nocturnal house taking photos with long exposure times. I set the camera up on the flat area of the fence around the Bilby enclosure, and then with the wide-angle lens looking across the room I tried a number of different settings (without using the flash) to see what I could capture. The Bilby’s were mostly cooperative – they were too busy eating to hop around – but I didn’t even bother with most of the other animals who were all too active to show up in a long exposure photo. The photo below is one I thought worked quite well from only a half-second exposure at 10mm focal length.

Adelaide Zoo Nocturnal House - 0.5 second exposure

I will be uploading more photos to the Adelaide Zoo Photo Gallery on ZooChat.

Tweets from today

In Murray Bridge visiting my parents

22nd September, 2008 6:59 PM from web

heading up the freeway to Murray Bridge

22nd September, 2008 4:30 PM from web

in Adelaide briefly taking care of some business. Miserable weather :(

22nd September, 2008 1:48 PM from web

Anyway – we sat and had some lunch before heading off along a track which is part of the Great North Walk (which actually goes as far as Newcastle!). The path winds its way along the river, sometimes heading up along the ridgelines too. We walked for just under two hours in total – we would have walked further, but the sun was getting low and the parks closes at 6pm, so I didn’t want to be rushing back in the dark.

I took the GPS data logger – here is where we went:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.

 garfield minus garfield

Here’s one of my favourites:

A couple of months back both Leanne and I suffered Catastrophic Chair Failure (CCF) when the chairs we use in our home office failed with a week or two of each other.

I had been thinking about a new chair for a while, and Leanne was using a very old and not particularly good quality chair too.

After much searching (and some advice from a friend – thanks Stu’ !), we went and looked at some Aeron chairs.

I had used these while at IBM (one of our conference rooms had them), and thought they were okay – but they always seemed to be set wrong for me.

I found a company here in Sydney that sells them and arranged to visit to have a look and try them with Leanne. The sales rep started by showing us how to adjust the chairs correctly – and once I realised how flexible they were in adjustment, I was sold. Particularly important was the tension adjuster on the tilt function - because I am heavy, most of these chairs feel really “floppy” and unsupportive, but by dialing up the tension, I was able to set it to give me enough support to feel comfortable and actually be able to make use of the tilt function.

They also come in multiple sizes – so I was able to get one wide enough for my body, while Leanne got a smaller model that suited her better.

Given that I work from home, I use my chair a lot, and with the neck problems I’ve had in the past, posture is really important. It took me a while to get used to the chair, but now that I am, I find it quite comfortable. It will be interesting as we are coming into summer and warmer weather – the mesh back and seat allows more air circulation, which should hopefully keep me a bit cooler.

They are expensive chairs, but come with a 10 year warranty, and given that my last chair (which was also fairly expensive) only lasted about 5 years, I’m expecting that the quality makes it worth the extra cost. By the way – we didn’t get the chrome version shown in the picture, just the regular version!

Previously, we used a Brita On Tap system, which conveniently connected to the end of the tap on the kitchen sink.

This worked reasonably well, however we also use a mobile dishwasher (standard Dishlex dishwasher on wheels) with a connector and hoses that we also plug onto the end of the tap on the kitchen sink. To connect the dishwasher, we had to remove the filter unit. This was pretty straight forward, until the Brita connector got a bit old and stopped sealing properly. This lead to difficulty putting it on correctly and having it leak everywhere. The entire unit was also pretty bulky and the filters were quite expensive.

I decided to go around to The Water Shop in Cammeray and have a look at their benchtop units.

We decided to try a Royal Doulton counter top unit, which also plugs into the end of the sink tap, but the filter unit itself sits beside the sink with a hose running to it. More room taken up beside the sink, but less on the tap itself.

Advantages of this unit include a higher outlet for the filtered water, which makes it easy to fill up 1.5 or 2 L water bottles, much easier and cleaner to use, and we can also connect the dishwasher unit directly to the bottom of the connector on the tap, which means not removing the filter connector while using the dishwasher. The filtered water selector is also pressure based: you pull the pin out while the tap is running and it diverts water to the filter unit, then when you turn off the tap, the selector automatically pops back in ready for the sink to be used as normal. This means no forgetting to turn the tap back to normal mode after finishing with the filtered water.

Apparently the filters are supposed to last 12 – 18 months with this unit, and if water flow rate decreases, you can pull it out and scrub it clean to increase the flow rate again.

Will be interesting to see how it goes over time, but so far I am quite happy with it … and the water tastes … well … tasteless ! (as it should).

Ha-ha