New photos.

I have posted some new photos on Flickr.
Some of our house.
And some of Ween.
I will let you know when more things go up.
Thank you.
That is all.

Photo of The Hero

Oooh!
I just received an email telling me that a photo that I took at the Hero of Waterloo (for Boggle's Birthday) has been "published" online.
You can see it here.
I'm so famous.
And so is Ross, coz he's the fellow in it.
Woo!

Awesome Guy On Flickr

Leanne showed me this guy on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/people/merkley/
This is a link to his "about me" page. Read it. It's awesome.
Then check out his photos. They, too, are awesome (and sexy).
Go have fun now.

The Kangaroo Valley

The Kangaroo Valley (and the drive to it) is possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.
Just amazing.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos on my phone, so I can't upload any right now.
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Freaks of nature | smh.com.au

Freaks of nature - World - smh.com.au
Awesome little collection of freak animals.

NIN Photos

Just finished uploading the NIN photos.
You can find them here.
There are also plenty more photos to be found in the Super Fun Happy Times Group.
You probably also noticed (if you've been able to take your eyes off of me on the crapper) that I've added a Super Fun Happy Times badge down the bottom of the blog. It's fun to look at. Try it.

Tristan's 24th Party Photos

I've just finished uploading photos from Tristan's 24th Birthday Bash.
Funny that I call it "Tristan's" when it was actually on Belinda's 24th Birthday, but because Belinda had her party the night before, this year I give Tristan the rights to the 11th August.
I ramble.
Just look at the darn photos...

Best Half an Hour of My Life.

Holy cow.
First, Josh shows me the drunk guy with itchy nuts video, and as if that wasn't enough, Josh then pulls out a mutated double banana. As soon as I get the chance, I'm posting the photos on Flickr.
Stay tuned for updates.
Holy cow.
EDIT: Here are the photos.

Listening to: Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble of Shadows - Eldorado (strangely upbeat song by them/him/her/it - it was originally a poem by Edgar Allan Poe)

Wollombi on Flickr

There is a Flickr user called "Wollombi" where it seems that locals post their photos.
There are some great photos of the recent floods.
Check them out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wollombi
Wollombi was an island...

New Flickr Group for Simon & Leanne

Because Leanne and I have two different flickr accounts, and because we go to a lot of the same places and take photos together, we have decided to create a group where photos of our adventures together can be seen in one place - this will save you from having to visit both of our accounts.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/simonandleanne/
Such fun!
We will post any photos of events where we were sharing a camera.
If any of you become members, then you can even create discussions about stuff, but with so many other places to do this (MySpace), I doubt that will be a used feature.
Have fun!

The Cold Makes Me Late

Yargh. Winter. I hate it. I love it. I hate it because I can't get out of bed in the morning. I love it because it makes bed so nice to be in. I hate it because remaining in bed makes me late, which means I leave late, and because it's winter, it's dark when I leave work. Today is one of those days. I slept in an hour today. I was meant to get in at 7:30am so that I could leave work at a decent hour. It's 8:15am, and I'm in the Lane Cove Tunnel. And I'm hungry - but that's another matter.
But that's one thing I like about my job, you're not late until it's 9am. So, while I'm late because I wanted to start at 7:30am, I'm not late in my manager's eyes. So, yay!
I (or Leanne) will be uploading the photos from the Hunter Valley soon, and I'll give an accompanying blog post when they are up.
Cool. On the bridge now. Be at work soon.

Listening to: Solaa - Steps in Time (those that opened for Shapeshifter).
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Photosynth Technology Video | Clipaday

http://www.clipaday.com/videos/ridiculous-image-technology-coming
Wow. Just. Wow.
This is a really cool application of technology. It's like we're in the future!

Shapeshifter + Sunday

Shapeshifter were totally cool. Both of the opening bands for them were awesome, too.
They played at The Forum (in the entertainment quarter). Because of this, Leanne and I decided that driving in was the best way to get there. So Leanne drove in via Café de Hong Kong in Carlingford. We bought "Chicken and Chinese Mushroom Hot Pot" and "Chicken and Rice Cake in XO Sauce" for dinner. We also had San Choy Bow for entrée. I was very full. The food was pretty good, but not great. I don't think they were their best dishes.
After dinner we drove straight to Moore Park, and actually found a parking spot nearby fairly quickly, which was nice. We decided to stop by the Fox + Lion and I bought a Jäger and Red Bull (I felt tired and wanted the caffeine to wake me up) and Leanne had a "snickers" cocktail, then we headed over to The Forum.
We arrived during the first band's set. Budspells were their name. They were a dub reggae band from Bondi (I didn't get any photos, but this is not to say that they weren't worth it). They were pretty cool. I will keep my ear out for more by them.
After Budspells, a group called Solaa played. They were an awesome soul hip-hop band. See my flickr photoset for photos of them (and Shapeshifter). I bought their CD Steps in Time (which will be in stores Monday), and it's smooove. Freakin cool. Horn section, female singer, male MC, sampler/keyboard guy, a drummer and a percussionist.
There were a lot of Kiwis in the audience, and a few of them talked to me (a few of them were high at the time, so it made sense). One woman in particular was a little crazy. And annoying. And she wasn't even high. Just drunk. I don't remember her name. But I do remember that I met another Simon (although I didn't/don't believe that was his actual name), a Luke and a Michael (in that order). Michael was happy to tell me that him and his friends were on E and "heaps of K." He was like "look at my friends, we're all so high. We're all falling over. We're fucked." He then grabbed his girlfriend, and was like "this is my girl. Look at her." The girl looked a little uncomfortable, and was like "What?" he just laughed and said "She's so high!"
It was pretty funny. I'm getting ahead of myself; that was at the end of the night.
Leanne and I stood to the side of the mezzanine for Solaa and most of Shapeshifter, so we had a good view of the action, but we were standing under a light. I didn't really notice though. I took some pretty good photos. I'm happy with my camera. I switched it to manual, opened up the aperture (although it only goes to F8.0), and just changed the shutter speed. I didn't need a flash, but the flash was bright enough when I did use it to light up the crowd. The photos turned out pretty well. Check the photoset link I posted earlier in this entry for a selection of the better ones.
Shapeshifter started around about midnight, and they were very cool. Unfortunately, I still felt tired (despite having a second red bull based drink - this time Vodka), so I didn't get into it as well as I would have liked, but every so often I found a burst of energy and was able to funk out - if only for a few minutes.
But they were cool, and I'd like to see them again (when I have a little more energy).
Leanne and I didn't get home until about 3am... and we slept in like crazy this morning/afternoon. I don't think I needed quite that much sleep, but I wanted to keep sleeping, so I did.
We made burritos for lunch (breakfast), and went for a bushwalk in Leanne's local. We took along Leanne's DSLR, and I had a play around with it, as I'm trying to learn how to use it. I'm getting used to it, and the photos I took weren't terrible, but I still need practice, and a read of the manual would be beneficial. I will decide if any are worth uploading, so if you want you can take a look. I'll let you know (on this post) if I upload any.
Sorry that that is such a stark recount of last night's events... but my creativity is pretty low at the moment.

More Flickr Photos

I started uploading some older photos to Flickr last night. Not many. Some.
I have also started getting together a list of the events that I want to put up onto Flickr.
There are still more to come, and I still have to put up the high rez Infected Mushroom photos, too.
Take a look. Leave comments. It's fun.
I bet.

Wish I could take a photo

There are times when I see something that would make a good photo, but I either don't want to look like a knob when I take my camera out, or I don't think it's a good idea to photograph people I don't know.
I wish I could take those photos, they're often interesting.
Just then for example, there was a group of 4 or 5 people sitting together on the bus, all asleep. It looked awesome. I wanted a photo. But I didn't get one.

Listening to: Traffic Noise (I haven't put my headphones on yet... and probably won't today, coz I don't feel tired, and I want to read)
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Finished Uploading TGE

Finally... geeze take forever.
I finally finished uploading the full rez Great Escape images. Man, I wish there was a way to do a batch replacement. It took me that long to do 45 photos.
I will do Infected Mushroom next (25 photos), and I think that will be the last of the photos that I uploaded at a reduced resolution.

Re-Uploading Some Flickr Photos

I'm spending my time at the moment re-uploading my Great Escape and Infected Mushroom photos onto Flickr. The reason is that when I started on Flickr, I resized my photos to save bandwidth when I uploaded them. Now that I'm a pro user, I figure I might as well upload the full-rez version, as it will come in handy if/when I want to print them later.
So I'm currently doing that, rather than going through the photos on my HDD and uploading some of the best of them.
And I'm a little bored, because there is no way (at the moment) to batch replace photos onto Flickr. Which kind of makes sense, until you search for the function and you find out how many people are in the same boat as me (having uploaded reduced rez images when they were a free user). And seeing as I left the title of the photos as their filename, it wouldn't be hard to implement. Just noone has yet.
Why don't I just batch upload them again, like I did the first time? Because I have already created links for them, and I don't want them to change. I'd also lose their descriptions, comments, geocoding, any groups they were put in, as well as the sets they are in. So yes. A bit of a pain.
When it's done I will start going through my older photos and uploading some of them. Hot.

Possible moblog photo upgrade

Hmmmmmmmm... last night I had an idea.
My phone runs on MMC cards, which are half size SD cards (without the "security")... this means a MMC to SD adaptor is a common piece of equipment (there was one in my bag when it was stolen, and I think Alex has one kicking around... but I might be wrong... because, unfortunately, one of his memory cards was in my bag when it was stolen... and it had photos of his on, too).
Anyway.
Basically, I thought that if I had an MMC to SD adaptor, I could easily pop my phone memory card into my Canon, take a photo, pop in back into my phone and upload it to my blog/flickr. All on the move. Which would yield much nicer pictures than my camera phone does at the moment. Which is handy when your photographing mushroom pies.
Of course there are a few problems.

1. I'm not sure I have (or can get) an adaptor
2. My phone may not look for pictures in the DCIM/Canon1xx folder
   
3. A 2-4MB image will take a lot longer to upload than the 400Kb images I am uploading at the moment
4. Swapping the cards will take time - which may not always be available, and will be fiddly
   
5. I'm about to get a new phone (in a few months) that will take decent images anyway (although not as good as my Canon) - and add GPS data to them.

So I'm not so sure it's worth it.
But because I like geeky things like that, and because I'm bored at work, I thought I'd write about it. I would like to try it anyway.