Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Night of the goat

I was going to call it , year of the goat, but well, it simply isn't the year of the goat. So I named it night of the goat. Aparently some think thought of Satan. I was surprised by this. Across the road from where I now live is the Mui Huong Goat Meat Restaurant at 314 Victoria Road Marrickville. It has one type of meat on the dinner menu: Goat. I found the meat very mild this time, more like lamb, than when I have had it in Melbourne and Jakarta.

raw goat meat with lemon juice
Goat meat with Lemon Grass
Salted Plum

Monday, October 29, 2007

daylight savings madness

Daylight savings happened. But not as smoothly as one might have expected.
  • The VCR and Windows OS clocks changed automatically over night.
  • The mobile phone and apple OS clocks changed automatically at midday the next day. Windows and Macosx are running on the same computer.
  • The clock in the bedroom was updated manually. But then this morning, the alarm, which has never gone off, went off at 6AM.

Friday, October 26, 2007

bad driving

This morning I pulled out onto South Dowling Street, a ute (ao75ng) was approaching along south dowling with it's left indicator on. So I pulled out in front of it. Many cars turn left at that point. The male driver came up on my left and glared at me, and then pulled in front of me. I put my left indicator on to show he still had his left indicator on. About 5 blocks later he actually turned left. Just before he did so, he turned off his left indicator.

Bucket of Meterology

According to the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) we have had 0.6mm of rain since 9AM yesterday. But according to another BOM (Bucket of Meteorology, conveniently located on the north balcony) we had about 1.5 to 2.0 cm of rain. (unfortunaltey the Bucket of Meteorology is a somewhat crude and not calibrated technology.)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

In Your Face

Some of the mob from the SPB decided to have a show of portraits. They shot each other because it put them on both sides of the camera. It was a good night and there is a documentary movie that was shown on the night. Even better still it was held about 200 meters from my work. The opening night was excellent and there were many people who I only see occasionally and a few new faces.
"In Your Face" by The Department [?]
In Your Face

In Your Face - The Documentary from Wing Poon on Vimeo.

rainfall

According to the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) we have had 9.8mm of rain since 9AM yesterday. But according to another BOM (Bucket of Meteorology, conveniently located on the north balcony) we only had about 2-3 mm of rain.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Melbourne Cup

Well it can't be long now. This is on the wall of the pub across the road.

melbourne cup

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Sydney Camera Market and Dank Street Fair

Today I did a few things. I went, for the second time, to the Sydney Camera Market. There were a few photo bloggers wandering the stalls. Mostly the market has a collection of very old cameras. They even had a table of free stuff. Though there are some more modern lenses. There are very few. I picked up a ND filter for only $18, which is much cheaper than a new one. But I have no idea of it's value as a second hand item. Again there was a single, but different, 3d film camera. There were not many digital cameras. I think I find the market a little disappointing.

After that I went to the Dank Street Festival. As I walked up there was a sign in one of the industrial complexes saying no church parking. In the next building, there were many people, so I decided to go in. On the way in, I was welcomed. I wandered around for about a minute and decided that this was quite likely the church. I was a little on the wrong foot, so decided to leave. On the way out I was thanked for visiting. And then on the footpath, a man asked me what I thought. Across the road I could see that it was a hill song church. One day I might have to go in and see a service in real life.

The festival itself was well run, full of people, had high quality food and mundane art. I think that was the problem. The festival suffered from being very mundane. I was not inspired and after walking around and after a drink and an ice cream, I left.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

photo shoot

I did my first shoot up in the Blue Mountains with the group of photographers. I have quite some learning to do about how to set up photos and work with the models, but I was able to learn quite a lot from the others. I am not used to portrait shots, and I spent a lot of time trying to get my exposures right in addition the the framing. I also spent lot more time in aperture adjusting the levels and colours.

"" by yewenyi [?]


"by the convict made pool" by yewenyi [?]
by the convict made pool

Monday, October 15, 2007

sensor cleaning

My camera's sensor has never been very clean. On one of my first shoots with the new lens, I was swapping the lenses for the first time. I was all thumbs. While I had the camera open, there was a gust of wind. It stirred up a small dust storm, the kind that makes you close your eyes and cough. Unfortunately quite a lot of this ended up inside the camera. So I purchased a cleaning kit form a company in Perth as they were recommended one on the flickr groups. I am very happy with the results. You can see the results:

"Australia NSW Marrickville 20071015 IMG_0648" by yewenyi [?]
Australia NSW Marrickville 20071015 IMG_0648
"Australia NSW Marrickville 20071015 IMG_0653" by yewenyi [?]
Australia NSW Marrickville 20071015 IMG_0653

Sunday, October 14, 2007

a day of gardening

Well I spent my first weekend gardening since moving to Sydney. The plants are all trimmed, the worm farm has worms in it again, we discovered lots of mondo grass and the plants are removed from growing through one of the air conditioners. I've planted two new plants. One is a Westringia Wynyabbie Gem, a house warming gift. The other a Party Pink High Society Pandorea to climb over the southern pagola.

"where there's smoke..." by yewenyi [?]
where there's smoke...

"City Lights" by yewenyi [?]
City Lights

Saturday, October 13, 2007

wandering around manly

I went to see the chinese doctor again. Arrived a bit early so took some photos on the camera phone. For some reason the uploads were not working. But this seems fixed and the uploads are working again.

playschool

The window instantly reminded me of the children's program I watched as a kid.

There's a bear in there, and a chair as well,

There are people with games, and stories to tell,

Open wide, come inside,

It's Play School!

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Norman Lindsay

We visited Norman Linsday's house, part of the National Trust and with my new camera and improved technique I took better photos than last time. We did not really spend enough time here. But lunch beckoned. Unfortunately, after that the others wanted to head off to the lolly shop in Leura.

"the three sisters" by yewenyi [?]
the three sisters

Saturday, October 06, 2007

wind

One of the new uprights for my booshelf fell over while the paint was drying becuase of the high wind. Then the wind changed direction, so the other fell over. Now an alarm down below has gone off.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Pilfered Mail

One of the tenants in another unit discovered a man (last night or this morning) in his early twenties going through my mail box. He had used some piece of metal to open it and was opening my letters. He said the person was feeling the letters first, to see if they contained anything. Apparently they do this to find credit cards. Two of my letters had been opened. Anyway, the co-tenant, who I will have to give thank-you letter stopped the thief and delivered my mail as the mail box was now open.

A young man in his early twenties. approx 173 cm tall, 65 kg (so quite skinny), short black hair, well dressed in black and white over sized top, dark sunglasses, jeans and runners. He had a shoulder bag hanging on his right shoulder. He had a short mustache and spoke clear English.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

SPAM

According to these people I have been deemed to be an evil SPAMER using a spam IP address. But maybe it is the relay point that was rejected. Bit hard to tell really. I just get a nearly useless generic message.

Connected to 65.54.244.136 but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. We recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP), a free program intended to help senders remove unwanted recipients from their e-mail lists. For enrollment instructions, please refer to: http://postmaster.live.com/Services.aspx#JMRPP. For additional information about Microsoft's technical guidelines, please refer to: http://postmaster.live.com/Guidelines.aspx


Wednesday, October 03, 2007

dinner in Sydney

Had dinner at a Japanese BBQ place, all you can eat in 90 minutes for $41 followed by desert at the Intercontinental Hotel, one of the places that are part of the SMH good food month festival.

"Sugar Hit" by Gun Sydney [?]
Sugar Hit