Thoughts And Recollections Of A Tree Spirit

Australia’s Big Brother 2008

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

Ok, ok, I know it’s sad but the Aussie BB8 kicked off on Monday and as it had taken the spot of Who’s The Biggest Loser Australia (which Mat & I had taken to watching) we couldn’t resist having a look. Of course, the danger is that one look is the slippery slope to addiction and after Monday’s show we also watched most of last night’s too so it doesn’t look good, lol.

Well, I’m guessing that BB Australia is much the same as BB UK in that it started off as a revolutionary concept which captured the nation and then with every following year it slowly deteriorated more and more so that in order to keep viewing levels high the producers had to start introducing various twists and nasty surprises for the housemates.

Well this year in Oz it is no different. In the first 24 hours there was plenty of surprises in store. The first thing was fairly minor in that every housemate was required to bring with them their most treasured possession. They naturally assumed that they would be taking this item with them into the house and when each person had to hand it over before entering, to be placed on the momento table, there were understandably a few disappointed faces. (more…)

30.04.2008 Personal 1 Comment

Noddy The Suzuki

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

On Sunday Mat and myself became the proud new owners of Noddy, a Suzuki SJ (or Sierra as they are known as here in Australia).

We have been toying with the idea of getting one for a while now and Mat has had his eyes on one belonging to the owner of our local camping shop, The Outdoor Shack. When we were in there purchasing ourselves a new tent Mat mentioned it in passing and was surprised to find out the the man was looking at selling it shortly.

Well, the long and short of it is that we collected her on Sunday, in exchange for AU$2,000 and our word that we would spend $250 in The Outdoor Shack (something which will be all too easy as I have my eye on several items). Believe it or not this is pretty cheap for one this tidy, even though she is due to run out of Rego at the beginning of May (Australian equivalent of tax, MOT and 3rd party insurance all rolled into one).

Anyway, we took her on her first outing to Warringah Mall and here she is parked up on the roof:

New Suzuki
(more…)

29.04.2008 4x4, Personal, Pictures 2 Comments

Today is ANZAC Day

Friday, April 25th, 2008

It is ANZAC Day today in Australia and New Zealand and it’s a public holiday – yippee.

ANZAC was the name given to the Australian & New Zealand Army Corp that landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey on the morning of 25 April 1915 during the First World War. As a result this day has become a national day of remembrance for all men and woman who have fought and died in wars and many ceremonies are held across Australia for this purpose.

25.04.2008 Aussie places/info of interest, Personal No Comments

The Herd – The King is Dead

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

‘Beats’ is going to be a new category in my blog and this is my first offering. I thought it would be interesting to keep a record of stuff I’m listening to, especially new stuff, and Aussie bands that you folks in the UK won’t have heard of.

Anyway, I heard this song on the radio recently (Triple J) and really liked it. It’s not often I like a song the first time I hear it but this one has really stuck in my head even though I’ve only heard it once more since.

The Herd are an Aussie hip-hop crew from the suburbs of Sydney and this is their most recent single taken from their fourth studio album ‘Summerland’ due to be released next month. The track is about the fall of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard “The King”. He was the longest serving Aussie PM to date and after eleven years was replaced by Kevin Rudd in November last year (for you peeps out there with an interest in politics).

I think I may have to try out some more of their work and see if it’s all as good as this.

23.04.2008 Beats, Personal No Comments

Today is International Earth Day!

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

I opened my internet browser today to be greeted by the usual ‘Google’ on the Google homepage looking a little different – you know how they change their standard format when it is a special day and decorate the ‘Google’ with something relevant? – well today the ‘Google’ was in the form of trees with grass, a waterfall and mountains in the background, thus:

Earth Day Google

“How cool” I thought to myself, “I wonder what that can mean”? Well, when you run your cursor over the customized ‘Google’ it tells you what the special occasion is and today is Earth Day! Being a “greenie” I should have known that and now I come to think of it a good friend of mine mentioned it a while ago as her birthday falls on the same day (now I should never forget either).

So what is Earth Day all about? (more…)

22.04.2008 Personal, The Green Area No Comments

More Faults When Using Internet Explorer

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

I have just been having a play with my website, attempting to create a favicon.ico (i.e. a customised icon that will appear next to my url in the browser’s address bar). After testing it in my usual browser, Firefox, and finding it not working I had a look with Internet Explorer to see if this recognised my icon.

The result was “hooray” IE did recognise it but disaster – my latest post embedding a youtube video of my goanna stalking has a big blank patch where the video should be.

Oh crikey, I really don’t know what I am going to do about this. When it comes to techie stuff I am a complete blagger, I am playing around with things I really don’t understand here and know nothing about programming. It probably doesn’t help that my theme for my blog was bodged in the first place. Maybe I just need to start afresh with a new theme that is nice and clean and enlist the help of my very dear friend the blog fairy (aka Chris M), when he is back from his birthday trip to Amsterdam of course… in fact make that a good while after his return from Amsterdam to ensure full recovery :)

Anyway, short term answer to the video problem is – I will post a link to my video on youtube in addition to the embedding for those that insist on using IE. For those of you open to change, for a better brighter future, download Firefox here and use instead!

17.04.2008 Personal, Techie Stuff 2 Comments

Goanna Stalking

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Spot the Goanna :)

This was a video I took on my camera over the weekend whilst out at Milbrodale for the Tough Dog Tuff Truck Challenge 2008.

It’s another Lace Monitor (Varanus varius) but this one was somewhat more shy than the one we saw at Illawong Bay a couple of weeks ago. Mat and Tom spotted it whilst collecting firewood in the bush next to our campsite. I immediately grabbed my camera when I heard their shouting and made a very poor attempt at a David Attenborough (make that Sir David Attenborough) impression. On top of the fact that my quarry really didn’t want to be on film, Youtube seems to have compressed my video in such a way that the quality looks even poorer than the original.

Hmm, I should have taken Chris’ advice about videos and compressed it myself rather than letting Youtube have it’s wicked way with it. If I have time I will try and give it a tweak but until then it at least gives you an idea of how fast they can move – and yes Chris, this one is definitely a “Flaming Goanna”!

14.04.2008 Australian Flora & Fauna, Personal, Videos No Comments

Tough Dog Tuff Truck Challenge Weekend

Friday, April 11th, 2008

We are off camping again this weekend. This time we are off up the central coast to the Hunter Valley to go and spectate at the 2008 Tough Dog Tuff Truck Challenge! You can read more about it here.

It’s basically a weekend packed with events involving some of the most experienced 4×4 drivers in the country driving over the craziest terrains. I’m really excited. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get there but we won’t be leaving until at least 5pm tonight so traffic will probably be pretty nasty. Tom is also coming with us and as his Scooby Doo wagon broke down last week he will be squeezing into the ute with Mat and myself.

Collaroy to Milbrodale

Here is a map showing our route which should (traffic dependant) take appoximately 2.5 hours. I have been wanting to include maps on my posts for a while now and have just discovered this handy piece of software, MW Snap, which allows you to capture images from your screen. It is free to download here but donations are gladly accepted.

Anyway, time to start work. I will give you the full low down on our weekend next week (along with more posts on our Easter weekend in the Blue Mountains which I haven’t forgotten about).

11.04.2008 4x4, Aussie places/info of interest, Personal, Techie Stuff No Comments

Our First Goanna Sighting

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

After discussing my various lizard sightings with Hayley in the office, she told me of a picnic site she had been to where there were loads of Goannas to be seen. Apparently they seemed quite used to humans and when she went there, there were several of them just wandering about the site amongst all the picnicers. Now it has taken me a while to find out exactly what a goanna is. You hear the word a fair bit in Australia and I was always (perhaps stupidly because being a reptile enthusiast I should really know) under the impression it was an Aussie word for Iguana. Anyway, after asking a few Aussies and getting nothing more than “it’s a big lizard” I googled it to discover a goanna is in fact a monitor. “Cool as” I thought. I definitely want to get me a look at one of those little beauties. I didn’t know what sort of monitors they would be but I was damn sure going to find out.

So, last Sunday (30th March) was a pretty fine hot sunny day and Mat and I had gone for little drive up to Cottage Point to see the scenery in the daylight (last time we went by the light of a full moon but I haven’t got around to writing a post on that yet). After a drink and ice cream at the yachting club we decided to hunt down the picnic sight that Hayley had said was nearby. I had a look on the map and saw a picnic site symbol a few Ks down the Coal & Candle Creek at Illawong Bay so this is where we headed.

No sooner than we had spotted the picnic site and turned in Mat spotted something crossing the path ahead. I leapt out as Mat parked up and sure enough, we had us our first goanna sighting:

Lace Monitor and here’s a closeup Lace Monitor closeup (more…)

08.04.2008 Australian Flora & Fauna, Personal, Pictures 1 Comment

Friday’s Beer O’Clock at “The Office”

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

This Friday Gideon wasn’t in after work so we had to make alternative beer consumption arrangements. We decided to go round to Tom and Chris’ but as we all had to stock up on beer first we stopped off at the bottle-o, BWS (Beer Wine & Spirits).

As this particular bottle-o tends to be on a lot of people’s way home from the yard it has become a bit of a haunt for Plateau employees wanting a quick beer and chin wag before going home after work, hence the nickname “The Office”. As we were making our purchases it wasn’t long before we were joined by more fellow Plateau colleagues and somehow everyone ended up converged round Mat’s ute for the usual beer and gossip of the day.

Of course I was armed with my trusty camera and thought I would take the opportunity of taking some pics for any of you who are interested in seeing what Mat and I get up to and so you can see some of the cool people we work with and put some names to faces:

The Office
From the left, Aaron, Darren “Dirt Bike”, Mat, Chris, Lee, Tom, Jack, Colin (just visible from the back) and Ant. (more…)

01.04.2008 Personal, Pictures No Comments