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Photos from The Great Ocean Road from my 2007 trip to Victoria with Joe, Cicely and Brian. I still love the look of E-6 on a lightbox :)

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For New Year's Eve 2006 / New Year 2007 my friends Joe, Cicely and Brian came out for a visit. I am not sure how, but somehow Joe managed to score tickets on one of the boats in the parade of ships which offer the best view of the fireworks.

...a three hour tour. This is the boat that we watched the fireworks from.

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Here are the 9 o'clock fireworks they set off for the kids who can't stay up for the real deal.

There were tones of boats in the “parade” like ours, all dressed up like this sailing ship with lights and pizzazz.

More baots in the parade. The bridge's diamond jubalee (75 years) was one of the themes of the evening so there were lots of diamonds about.

The bridge is sometimes referred to as “the world's largest coat hanger”.

Of course there was something going on at the Opera House.

We all thought they had shurely set off all the fireworks for the early show since it was so impressive. We were about to be blasted with something way more exciting, starting with a few warning shots off the bridge.

Then to our left the city started to erupt in sound and light.

Finally everything went crazy.

It only took me 22 months to get around to processing these images.

Melbourne, Day 2

On the second day we toured around the city. Oh, and my camera broke, the day before we were doing the Great Ocean Road! I couldn’t believe the horrible luck. I managed to pick up a used Nikon FM body in perfect condition to replace my FE. The FM is the mechanical version of the FE from the same time period. I could have probably gotten an auto focus camera new for less, but I had been enjoying the feel of my manual Nikon which hasn’t been getting much of a work out since I moved to Australia.

I shot three rolls of 24 in my new camera around the centre of Melbourne, and I felt like for the first time in ages I had gotten my camera legs back. Whatever that means.

Melbourne, Day 3

The next day we did the Great Ocean Road. It’s pretty. There are lots of flies. If you go you should arm yourself with some bug spray.

Melbourne, Day 4

Our last day in Melbourne was only a half day, so we didn’t do much. First we went to the Melbourne museum, where they had a blue whale skeleton. Actually it was a pigmy blue whale, named on account of it being small for the species. This is kind of funny because it was still enormous. They also had a vast collection of bugs. Some of them still alive even. Cicely came into the bug section to tell us that she wasn’t going to look at the bugs because they creeped her out, but by the time she was in she started looking around and didn’t seem so bugged out.

The computer geek in me enjoyed the CSIRAC, Australia’s first digital computer, and the worlds fifth stored program computer, and the oldest intact computer of either type in the world. Joe commented that “your” calculator probably has more computing power, to which I responded, “your” phone definitely has more computing power.

They also had an IBM PC... the original which was simply called a PC, because that wasn’t a generic term when it was produced. I think the oldest PC I ever used was an XT, which came out about two years later in 1983. The XT’s major innovation was that it had a hard disk, whereas the PC had two low density 5¼” floppy disk drives. In Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, they have a TRS-80. There used to be a whole room full of them at my elementary school. Stuff I used to use is now showing up in museums. What are the museum curators trying to tell me?

For lunch we had Mongolian Barbecue. It was pretty good and all you can eat, so I wasn’t hungry again that day. After that we took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Sydney. When I looked out the window as we were landing, I saw a Tangara, which exists (I believe) only in Sydney and I started feeling oddly nostalgic being back in Sydney. It was really nice being back in Sydney after being away fro a week. It feels like home here.

Sydney, Today

I guess that brings me to today. Brian is off to Fiji. Joe and Cicely are climbing the bridge today and we are meeting later tonight for dinner, along with the girl that I met at Thanksgiving. Joe and Cicely fly back to the states tomorrow, and I’m back to work on Monday.

Cairns, Day 1

Day 1 of Cairns actually started at 4:00am in Sydney. We took the red-eye to Cairns, which required getting the very first train into the city from Artarmon. e can attest that flying makes me grumpy. Flying on no sleep doubly so.

btw- I would like to thank e for still being my friend after having to fly with me :P

After checking in and checking out the resort, we took a taxi into town and had over priced sea food. The view was nice, but I vowed that I would not spend $30 on bad food again this trip. I can eat five or six times for that much usually... and it’s better.

Cairns, Day 2

Quicksilver cruise to the Great Barrier Reef where we went snorkeling. This was, for me, the highlight of the Cairns trip, as I had not been snorkeling since the last time I was in Cairns which was about 15 years ago! Still the whole experience left me feeling that I had been hermetically sealed from reality. I think it would have been better to have gotten a smaller boat that didn’t go out so far and spent more time snorkeling.

Cairns, Day 3

The third day we did smallish bus tour around areas south of Cairns. Our tour guide was obviously a local bloke who was highly entertaining. I often wish I could sound Australian like that. We got to see some of the devastation which Cyclone Larry had brought in March of last year. We also got to see this crazy water soluble castle in the tropics, which I think I mentioned in a previous post.

Cairns, Day 4

Our last day in Cairns involved a train ride up to Kuranda, which was lame, followed by some tourist shopping, a so-so meal and the “sky rail” back down the mountain. Sky rail is a fancy name for a gondola. The Gondola was pretty cool way to see the forest, especially since there were two stations to stop at and take a look around, but not worth the hefty price tag.

Then we went to Djabugay World (or whatever it was called), which was a little park dedicated to presenting local indigenous culture to tourists. There was nothing new here for me, except for actually being shown how to throw a boomerang by a true native. I was kind of nervous, but with all the other white people behind a net I made a pretty good throw and it did actually come back to my approximate vicinity.

For dinner we had really nice fish and chips. Actually I had prawn cutlets. There were of course too many chips. There seems to be a correlation between the quality of sea food and the amount of chips. The best fish and chip places seem to have way too many chips. They had fresh sea food in the window (which you can also buy to take home and cook), which also seems to be the mark of a good fish and chips place.

Melbourne, Day 1

After fish and chips we flew to Melbourne and arrived today at 12:30am. Slept in, then I went looking for film. I got to know Melbourne a little better. I haven’t been here since 1999. I have to say, for the whole Sydney/Melbourne rivalry, that Melbourne is a pretty cool city. This is definitely the sort of place that I could live if I knew anyone or if I landed an awesome job here.

All of this, despite the fact that I was born in Sydney and thusly should be biased in favour of Sydney. Sydney does, however, have much better beaches, the opera house and the bridge, so I think I will stick with Sydney for now.

Then the kids went down to see the penguin parade. I wasn’t much interested in seeing penguins so I stayed in the city to check out things here on my own.

I am a big fan of the city circle tram which is free and uses these really old looking trams. I don’t know why, but I really have a thing for old stuff. I have always been a big fan of the old Sydney ferries, even though newer ferries would probably be safer, despite not looking as cool.

So far...

So that is where we are so far. I still have three days in Melbourne, although the last day is only a half day. Then we are back in Sydney and my friends will be headed back for the states. It’s been really wonderful having them visit. I’ve done a bunch of things that I wouldn’t ordinarily do, and I’ve gotten to know Australia a little better.

I am ready for more visitors, so book your tickets today!

The Chrissy^[1] decorations are out already. In America don’t they usually wait until after Thanksgiving for that? Anyway, it’s not the timing that is unnerving for me, but the time of year. I know I will have to get over this, but this isn’t the time of year that you expect to see snowmen and fat guys in cold weather gear.

(weekend and food stuffs...)

On Saturday I had a tele-conference with Joe, Cicely and Brian about our summer vacation (summer vacation = this December/January). I was making fun of Joe for making a spreadsheet to plan our vacation, but I admitted that the tele-conference was my idea :) Anyway, it was really nice talking to them again. I know I am like el broken record, but I really miss those guys! Inexpensive calling cards are awesome.

It was all rainy and cruddy this weekend. We went down to Wollongong to meet Don at the finish line of his bike ride^[2] and to have a picnic. The picnic was cancelled on account of rain and wind and windy rain. Instead we went to this fabulous little mom-and-pop restaurant, where we ate well and had a wonderful passion fruit ice cream dessert. I totally want to go back there to try out the waffle cones.

The other day I had one of the best mangos that I have ever had. I can’t understand how it is that American’s can live without mangos or passion fruit^[3]. I mean, I do understand why they aren’t into Vegemite; I love that but I know it is an acquired taste. But mangos and passion fruit... they are just goodness.

In the elevator after a wet and windy day, mum and I were talking about what a miserable day it was, when the old lady who was also in the elevator told us that it was actually a wonderful day for all the people who were born today. She was a “philosopher” as my mum later described. Personally at that exact moment, I could do with a little less philosophising. It’s terrific that someone was born today, and it is super that you are thinking on the bright side of things, but think also of all the people who died today, but most importantly the fact that my shoes are soaking wet and it’s miserable outside god damn it.

Actually, I’m kidding. My shoes were actually pretty dry. My point is that whenever you start getting philosophical in your elevator small talk then lets face it: you’ve gone too far.

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1. Australian for Christmas
2. the “Gong Ride” or Sydney to Wollongong bike ride
3. Or for that matter, how I managed to get along without it when I was over there

This morning I was talking to e on the phone, and she told me that after seven months down under I “have a slight accent.” This made me happy, although I doubt I would fool any Australians. This and the call directly proceeding it to Joe (to plan Project NYE2006, wherein my friends are coming to visit), was the first time I had talked to anyone in America since I got here. I finally bought myself a calling card, and it costs me like 4¢ a minute, which is less than it used to cost me to make a long distance call in the US. That is shocking.

Australians no longer sound that odd to me. I expect when I go back to the states that Americans will be the ones to sound odd. Not my friends though. e and Joe don’t count because they just sound like e and Joe, not like Americans, since I know them well. It’s only American strangers that I expect to sound funny.

Today I went to the coast and took a walk along the ocean. It was nice, and it sort of reminded me of February 2005, when I came to Australia for a visit and had this strong desire to just stay after spending a few days in Sydney and Collaroy by the beach. Although now I have a bit of a sunburn, which is no good.

Here is an old photo that reminds of the days when I would get up early to capture the morning light. Brrr. I think it was cold that morning!

Today, in contrast was quite nice! Weather wise I mean.

Today was the farewell lunch for Rory (not sure about the spelling), which I was sort of not looking forward to on account of having to be social and stuff, but it actually went pretty well. After ordering my lunch at the bar I got to the tables reserved for us, and all of the seats were taken at tables that had people so I had to colonize a new table. Sitting alone in a group like that is pretty disturbing, especially if you are mildly socially phobic antisocial. Some office folk with mildly recognizable faces came over to my table shortly after and introduce themselves. I think I talk too much in those situations. I can't think of anything to say so all sorts of irrelevant stuff starts to regurgitate without my thinking about it. I had this theory that it would be easier to deal with my shyness in a place other than New York, and I think I was right, or maybe I'm just getting older and more able to deal with this stuff.

Ah, but the really good news is that Cicely, Joe and (allegedly) Brian^[1] are coming out to visit for New Years Eve! NYE is, quite simply, the best time of year to be in Sydney, and Sydney is, quite simply, the best place to be for NYE. I was just thinking this morning that I really love Sydney and I am fairly certain that Sydney is the greatest city on earth (no offense to my friends in New York, which I also adore), but of course I miss my friends! I am super excited about having some friends out and being able to show them around and hang out with my friends.

Yesterday my new 23" Apple HD monitor arrived and I am using it right now. It looks really good. It's a new toy that is yet another reason for me to despise the inferiority of my work equipment. My friend e was telling reminding me that most places are like "that" ... and she's right to an extent (but at least she can IM from work!), but I think I will continue to complain about work anyway. It beats complaining about my personal life!

Not much else to report.

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1. I say allegedly, because he said we was "for sure" going to come to Salt Lake for at least one of those ski trips that I organized, but he waited till the plane ticket prices were astronomical

2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)

The shoe is on the other foot

People usually ask, when they see pictures of my parties, "Yes Graham, but where are you in these pictures." Usually the answer is "behind the camera." Anyway, I asked someone to take this picture so as to provide some evidence that I actually attended my own party. I am looking off in the other direction so as to pretend that it is a candid shot, when in fact it is not. I am such a good actor.

Anyway, the party went off really well. Unfortunately, e couldn't make it because her dog got injured while frolicking in the snow, but before she left (and well before anyone else arrived) she got me started on the apple martinis. Kathy and Steve showed up bringing treats from the southern hemisphere. They were in New Zealand over Christmas, and apparently Kathy did what I do when in Australia, which is to buy up the sweets section of the grocery store.

Some people actually wore green and gold. I had a green "jumper" which my mum knitted with real Australian wool and a yellow T-shirt underneath which I got today for the occasion. Kathy had some beads and Mike had a tie-died T-shirt which included some green and gold and a basketball. When are Kathy and Mike going to go head to head on the basket ball court anyway? But I digress.

Joanna called to wish everyone a happy Australia Day, which was sweet.

The meat pies got devoured. I had like three and a half pies, and there is about half a pie left over. I should actually be able to finish it off before I leave on Thursday. I owe this to the indestructibility of the recipe, which I will be posting here at some point, because I am sure there is stuff that I got wrong.

Oh speaking of candid shots, here is one

Cicely, Joe and Mike

of Joe which is totally candid. He had no idea I was taking this photograph while he was pointing his finger at my camera. Anyway, here are some more shots:

They must have uploaded a virus into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I really shouldn't have had that one glass of wine at Joe and Cicely's tonight at Action Tuesday (now scheduled weekly on Mondays). I really should have had two or three. Now it's making me tired and I have to submit some jobs to prove that Parallel Abstraction actually runs faster than Serial Abstraction. One would hope. I should really work on getting DoubleThink II up and running as well, but my mind isn't clear enough to focus on that right now.

They must have uploaded a trojan into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I was watching that trashy show 24 over at Joe and Cicely's and the bad guys were using massive amounts of bandwidth to hack into the nuclear power plants across the country. All these years I thought it took talent and knowledge to be a hacker, and here I found out all I need is a faster computer! I need to upgrade to a Pentium 4 so that I can hack into the CIA and download Adobe Acrobat and Micro$oft Word. At least they weren't abusing the term virus tonight. No, they instead decided to use trojan incorrectly instead. It really irks me when ever they start using computer techno babble on TV. Now I know how physicists feel when they have to listen to Data or Geordi drone on as they are oft to do.

They must have uploaded a worm into our download stream to counteract the hexadecimal code rectifiers.

I checked in a whole heap of code today. It's the first time in months. I am now hoping that I don't break the build. Lint is useless. It flagged a whole heap of non errors when I checked in my code. This for example is not a syntax error in ANSI C :

...
for(int i=0; i<max; i  )
  ::printf("%d\n", i);
for(int i=0; i<max; i  )
  ::printf("%d\n", i*2);
...

because unlike earlier versions of C , each i is scoped for just its loop, not the entire code block.

Dude, my bastard child of Bill Gates and Debian burned this trojan virus to this cheesy media; have you checked it out yet?

Update: Sure enough, I broke the build.

The Incredibles

When I went to see that horrible movie Team America with my friends Joe, Cicely and Brian, the sound was as terrible as the movie, barely audible in parts. On leaving the theater the establishment gave us a free tickets to our next movie for our trouble. Tonight we used those tickets to see The Incredibles, which I have to say was incredible. It is reassuring to know that the $8 I spent to see Team America actually went toward seeing a much better film. I hope that Pixar one day escapes from the evil vice grip of the Disney Corporation

Mike

My high school and CORE coding buddy Mike came up yesterday and brought his wife Sarah so they could attend my much anticipated Halloween party. It is hard for me to convey just how nice it was to see Mike. Sarah is also from Los Alamos, so I had the rare opportunity to talk with people who grew up on green chili and who know about Mrs. Moss and have heard about Mr. Farley's Butt-Ear. They stayed at my place last night and this morning we wondered around the city of Beacon. I am equally looking forward to seeing Tyler in February now!

Mike, Mike's manager, and Mike's weed

Anyway, the enchiladas came out like clockwork. I've got a fairly established procedure for it now. I threatened to give people costumes if they didn't bring their own, but alas... they were not worried, because most didn't come dressed up. Enchiladas, Posole and Guacamole were a huge success, and everyone was super impressed with Mike's fire breathing prowess. When I get the slides back (and if they come out) I will scan them and put them on my web site, along with the digital general party milling about pictures.

For some reason, iTunes "randomly" chose to play Born Slippy like three times during the course of the party. Granted, they were different versions of the same song, but still. The third time I swore vociferously and got up to advanced to the next song. My consternation made Steve laugh quite vocally, which is always fun, because he is usually so quiet.

I was so glad that Mike was able to meet all my friends. I love it when friends from different aspects of my life come together and get along well. It sort of affirms what I already know: my friends rock!

Went to the bar tonight to meet up with some friends. The idea was to hang out for a bit before the movie. I asked Joe if he and Cicely were coming to my party, and he said that he might stop by, but that he also wanted to hit someone else's party that night. So it has come to this: The Halloween Party Arms Race.

Mike

Personally, I think I have the advantage, since Mike "The Blowtorch" is going to put on his fire eating, and I got the Enchiladas. The Enchiladas gets me Brad, and Brad gets me Sherry. Apparently Brian was sold on the fire eating. Joe and Cicely are a harder sale. I guess I will be working on them. I just wish I knew what my opponent had in store. Perhaps if I could intercept an invitation...

The movie we went to see was Team America : World Police. If you like Southpark you may feel the need to go see this movie out of devotion to its creators. I thought it was pretty terrible, although it did have me laughing at times. But anyway, I was watching this silly movie and it occurred to me that I have been taking life too seriously again. I have to get in touch with my humorous side.

Yellow Rust

My friend e, who lives in New Jersey and works in Manhattan, called me up this week to see if she and Jack could come up to go hiking with me today (Sunday). I always like to see e, so I told her that I'd love for her to come up for a visit. She didn't call, however, on Saturday, as I had thought she said she would, so I assumed that she wasn't coming after all, until after a lazy morning I got a call from e saying that she had just gotten off the thruway (about fifteen minutes away) and oh by the way how do I get to your place again?

Quick shower before she arrived and decided we would take Bull Hill trail which goes past some old ruins which I always find interesting to photograph. There was a large group (like 30 ) up ahead of us that we were eager to avoid, so we took evasive action onto a less trekked trail which took us to the top of Bull Hill and back around to her car. This actually worked out even better than the trail I had planed to take.

The whole time, of course, Jack was running up ahead and then running back to check on us. This helped tire him out, as by the end of the hike he was doing less of this. Jack, I should mention is e's German Shepard.

Then at four I was due to help a friend of mine unload her contents of her old home into her new home in Wappingers Falls, which not coincidentally is also her boyfriends home. We watched the SNL debate, which Joe had recorded from the night before. I thought it kind of sucked compared with what I remember of the SNL debates, and post election satire four years ago. Then again, they had more material to work with. We had a one sided political discussion. I have very strong opinions, but I prefer not to talk about politics, because I find it only affords me the opportunity to get me into trouble.

I'm tired, going to go to BED!