Pat’s Point of View

I’ve just added an album of panoramas to my photo gallery. Since panorama shots are quite trendy at the moment, I thought I’d show off some of ours. The shots are from our various travel adventures over the years, from such places as Paris, Malta, Egypt and the US. They’re all 1200 pixels wide in order to capture the panoramic effect, so they might be a bit slow to download.

Most of these shots were taken using our trusty old Canon IXUSv (in panorama mode) and stitched together using Canon’s PhotoStitch software. The results are fairly decent although there are some obvious flaws in most of the shots. Unfortunately the original shots have mostly been disposed of, in the interests of saving disk space, so it’s not possible to clean them up and re-stitch them.

I’ve recently been playing around with more modern stitching techniques, such Calico and Hugin for OSX (which produced the above shot of Stonehenge). It certainly gives our little Mac Mini a workout. And this is still using old shots, mostly 1600×1200 pixels, I can’t wait until I take some new ones with our new 350D!

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We’ve just arrived home from our trip to the Gold Coast where we spent the week between Christmas and New Year with my brother and his family and in-laws. We had a great time, even though it was too short!

We gave our car a good work-out (its first long trip) and there’s now an extra 1935 kms on the clock. She performed brilliantly and it was a comfortable 12 hour drive each way—well as comfortable as that task could be. After that drive, all I can say is thank heavens for cruise control!

The first few days weren’t great in terms of weather but that’s OK since we were just hanging out with the kids, relaxing and doing some ‘factory outlet’ shopping. I even caught a fish. We were staying in a nice quiet part of the Gold Coast known as Runaway Bay, which incidentally is where we caught the ferry to Couran Cove island many years ago.

On the weekend we spent time with Jenn’s sister and her family, who were holidaying in nearby Surfer’s Paradise. First up, Wet’n'Wild Water World, a theme park dedicated to water slides (in case the name didn’t give it away). I think it was pretty good, and I’m practically allergic to sun and water! By far the best ride was the Black Hole, Jenn screamed like a little girl.

Next day we did Sea World, which was more sedate but had the attraction of marine animals, even if most of the time they were part of some lame ’show’. The polar bear and penguins were my picks of the day.

Faced with the prospect of a 12 hour slog back to Sydney today (returning to work tomorrow) we decided to split the drive home over two days and stayed at Nambucca Heads for New Year’s Eve. That place was rockin!…not. Anyway it was the safer option.

So after a great Chirstmas we had a great little holiday, couldn’t ask for much more than that.

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Today we arrived back from a long weekend in the Hawkesbury region, where we went to celebrate Jenn’s 30th birthday. It was a nice relaxing stay at Loxley on Bellbird Hill in Kurrajong.

We enjoyed chilling out and taking a little break from things, as well as a bit of local sightseeing (helped along by a thorough reading of a book covering the history of Hawkesbury settlement—we were fascinated to learn about the third European settlement in mainland Australia). Among other things there was some fantastic scenery and an excellent botanic garden (Mt Tomah).

We enjoyed the area so much we’re considering moving there some time in the future :)

I’ve posted some photos from the trip.

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Last weekend Jenn and I spent five days in Melbourne. I had to go down for work (to run the Scott Berkun workshop) so Jenn came along and we extended the weekend to see my brother and his family.

We spent a bit of time relaxing and wandering around the city, which thankfully had some lovely weather—unlike Sydney where it rained for the whole time!

But most of our time was spent with our nephews and nieces, whom we haven’t seen since our wedding and not too often before that. It made us want to start a family of our own :)

My photos are now up online.

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Just got back from a week of skiing at Thredbo. The snow wasn’t that great, but we enjoyed some lovely spring weather. It wasn’t too crowded during the week, which is another bonus.

We hired a van and drove down during the day, nice and liesurely. We stayed at the Lake Jindabyne Hotel, which was basic but good enough. There are much nicer places to stay in Jindabyne but they can cost an arm and a leg.

There were six of us and we all took to our Snowblades, except for Rosemary who was a first-timer so she chose skis. We must be getting old since it wasn’t quite as easy as it used to be; we were all pretty sore even after the first day. At least that means there were no complaints about the odd rest :)

Not much partying either (except for the last two nights which were quite entertaining—I’ll never think of the Brumby Bar the same again). However that didn’t stop other people from partying. One night there was a band playing at the LJH and it was really, really loud even from inside the hotel room. And the walls provided no protection from the sounds in other guests’ rooms either; our neighbours liked watching TV really loud. Sleeping was difficult that night.

There were some good skiing moments, like Jenn’s first “360″ and some fantastic crashes (but no chapstick injuries this time).

Photos are online now, video coming soon.

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During my present trip to Adelaide, I’ve been catching the Glenelg tram to and from work. Other than the quaint gimmick of catching a tram (Sydney has no trams any more…except the “blue slug”) the most interesting thing is that on the old trams passengers can hear all radio communications by the operators.

Now there are some things you just don’t want to hear when travelling on public transport, such as a driver announcing I’d like to be relieved since I’ve received a blow to the head (local youths causing some fuss apparently). I think customer satisfaction is directly linked to the perception of safety and the competence of the service provider, which kinda goes down the drain when you can hear what they’re saying ‘behind the scenes’.

For example when one female tram driver spent at least half an hour trying to reach a button (presumably mounted too high) that would allow her to fix a problem and get underway. Hmmm

Anyway, the other thing I noticed is how the tram ventures rather unobtrusively through quiet suburban areas. Unlike train lines in Sydney, which are usually the focal point of a suburb and consequently the most built-up with shops etc, the Glenelg tram runs through quiet streets, often with little more than a simple wire fence between the tracks and [rather nice] houses. And there was very little ’scumbag factor’ surrounding the tram (other than the troublesome youths you heard about on the radio). Again this is unlike Sydney, where on and around trains you’ll find quite a nasty environment…the last place you’d want to spend any time, especially after dark.

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I was just reading about iWalk Dublin, a new tourism initiative providing guided audio tours around the city of Dublin. They use Podcasts you download to your iPod and then off you go!

I think this is a great idea and I hope it gets adopted by other cities. Having done my fair share of city sightseeing, I often found a distinct lack of information on the history and culture of the place. Even when I forked out for some over-priced tourist guide/book I still didn’t get what I was looking for. And with the Podcast you’d be able to stop, rewind, fast-foward etc.

Actually it would have been quite handy when I was in Dublin, since it was Christmas Eve and nothing was open, so no tours. Or even locals to ask directions of! :)

See what people are blogging about: Dublin, Ireland, tourism, ipod, podcast

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We just got back from our most excellent honeymoon, on Green Island, near Cairns. That’s far north Queensland for all you foreigners.

Continue reading ‘Honeymoon’

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Well we’re back! Back in ol’ Sydney town.

It’s been a whirlwind adventure for the last two months; travelling through Italy, spending time in Malta, back to London, then on the plane to Sydney via Hong Kong.

We’ve been back to for almost a week now but I’m still getting adjusted to the time zone and to my home I left so long ago (ok so it was only 3 years!). It’s very strange how things seem familiar but also so foreign. And so spacious! Just driving down any old street was wierd becuase they seemed so wide and there was so much space. I thought walking around the city would be strange because there would be so few people (compared to London) but that wasn’t that noticeable, what struck me was how small the CBD is! It’s only a few streets wide :)

I’ve already started looking for work, but until I get my head straight that’s not going to be a serious effort. Right now it’s a matter of getting adjusted, catching up with people and finishing off planning for the wedding.

I’ll get some photos from our extra long holiday up ASAP.

P

See what people are blogging about: sydney, travel, italy, malta, hong kong, london

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Well we’ve started packing. Almost everything we own is going into boxes, ready to be shipped off to Sydney next week. Then soon afterwards we’re off on holiday to Italy and Malta, before returning to London for final farewells. Then we jump on a plane and go home!

It’s been a long time coming - we’ve been planning our exit for more than a year now - so I’m glad it’s finally happening. Can’t wait to be back home.

My next entry may well be a true Antipodean rambling!

P

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