JamesX

I forgot to make an entry about my latest header pic when I uploaded it a few days ago so I thought I had better include one. The photo is unedited and almost got thrown out for being blurry (I took it while the car was speeding down Mt Hotham) but then I thought it was perfect for the blog.

This trip was one of the hottest with the temperature soaring into the mid 40s. It was a good opportunity to take lots of photos with the new camera though. I still have a lot of learning to go with that thing, but it’s good to be able to relate some of the features with practical, real-life examples.

Being up in the hills only makes me long for the winter ski season to begin!

I’ve just uploaded some photos from the Bright trip. The one above is a photo of the trees alongside the Great Alpine Road on the way up Mount Hotham. It was really beautiful terrain and driving up each day, seeing the transition from a normal sunny day, to the foggy, snow-capped mountains was breathtaking. It makes me wonder what it would be like if it would snow in Melbourne. In any case, you can have a look for yourself in the gallery.

It’s been over a month, so it’s time for a new picture (don’t want the Sydney-siders getting too big headed!). This one was taken on my last trip Bright and despite what you may think is not Photoshopped! It was snapped near the town, down along the bank of the Ovens River. Not a bad shot at all and a bit of a change from the current weather around Melbourne.

Three days away from work. Who would have thought that were possible! For the first time, Chris and Mel have ventured up to share the country air, sunshine and pleasant surrounds. The weather is great and we spent most of the morning roaming along the bank of the Ovens River taking photos and paddling in the cool water. The photo up top is one that Penelope managed to snap of a forklift that was parked alongside the Bright Brewery - which is where we stopped for a quick break before lunch at the Riverdeck Cafe.

Now we’re back home and Richie is cooking up a storm in the kitchen. We just finished mounting the screen for the data projector on the landing upstairs. Maybe a movie night is on order…

When I’m back in Melbourne, I’ll upload some of the photos for everyone to see. Ah it’s so good not having to actually DO anything.

Well it’s been a while since I last splashed out and bought a new gadget (almost a year with TomTom being the last major purchase in November 2005), but I decided I needed a compact digital camera. I have my big digital camera, but it’s just too clunky to carry around everywhere. Enter the Canon Digital Ixus 65. It’s a great little 6 megapixel camera with a giant 3-inch screen on the back. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket and loaded with a 2GB SD card, it can take a whopping 1800 odd shots at medium resolution. I got a great deal on it - just over $400 from an online store. The RRP is $580 so I’m happy with that.

I’m sure that the new purchase will inspire me to take far too many photos than I need to, which of course makes it tough to keep them all organised. Which brings me to Aperture. Apple recently released Aperture version 1.5 and this new update fixes many of the problems that stopped me from using it to manage my media when it first came out. Now that Aperture allows you to keep your photos in any folder instead of importing them into it’s “library” and it lets you keep thumbnails of images and burn the masters to CD for archiving, I think it’ll be a great asset to have. Time will tell of course, so I’ll just have to wait and see.