It'd been over 5 months since my last dive so was great to get underwater again and take a look around at the Shelly Beach area, about 30 mins North East of Sydney.
I was diving with a mate Paul and through the guys at Pro Dive Manly. The team at Pro Dive are cool guys with a lot of experience and a good set-up, our Divemaster Rob was open to ideas of what we wanted out of the dives and as we only had a small group of four we didn't have to wait around for too long.
Given Shelly Beach is a marine reserve (no fishing allowed) the sealife seemed larger and more mature than usual. On dive one we saw a massive Cuttlefish that took a liking to my mask (the Divemaster seemed to think they like bright colours and mines purple and orange) and swam slowly toward me like playing chicken getting very close before I moved to avoid a collision - it's eyes we're amazing, we definitely had a moment! Apparently they have a strong jaw and can grab onto things quite quickly and aggressively, I was right to move away I guess.
On dive two we saw a massive Flathead, I didn't know they got that big, this one was about a metre long and would've tasted brilliant I'm sure.
The visibility was generally good and the bottom temperature a mild 18 degrees considering it's winter in Australia now. It did get cold about 15 mins into the second 45 min dive when we all wished we had dry suits on!
I'll definitely dive with Pro Dive again, hopefully Long Reef and soon!
Cheers
Tim
Friday, 19 June 2009
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
My Worthy Watch blog
Over the past few months I've been watching a lot of DVD's at home. I've always enjoyed films but more recently have almost become addicted. We have a local DVD rental store just a few minutes walk from home, who know us well enough now not to have to ask for a card or name - they don't even expect us to pay at the time and generally say 'just bring the money next time if you don't have it on you'!
Also, given Mel (my wife) is heavily pregnant we don't spend as much time socialising or 'going out' as we used to which is all part of the nesting process of having a child (so I'm told).
Anyway, I've started a new blog to document the films I'm watching and will give my own unprofessional and potentially useless view on them. I've added a ratings module (which kind of works) so anyone can rate the film if they've seen it too and a comments module to write personal comments on the film or my blog post.
http://worthywatch.blogspot.com/
Cheers
Tim
Also, given Mel (my wife) is heavily pregnant we don't spend as much time socialising or 'going out' as we used to which is all part of the nesting process of having a child (so I'm told).
Anyway, I've started a new blog to document the films I'm watching and will give my own unprofessional and potentially useless view on them. I've added a ratings module (which kind of works) so anyone can rate the film if they've seen it too and a comments module to write personal comments on the film or my blog post.
http://worthywatch.blogspot.com/
Cheers
Tim
Monday, 18 May 2009
Losing my Mac virginity
Thanks to the clowns who broke into our house a few weeks back and stole our HP laptop, we're now the proud owners of a new MacBook Pro! A few years back when I was a programmer I wouldn't have contemplated using a Mac for fear of loss in efficiency and productivity. I was not alone in this thinking, there was only one Mac in the office used mainly for testing our websites actually worked on one - not that we really cared too much if they did or not back then! Fast forward to present times, I work at Yahoo! with many talented developers and engineers walking around with their MacBook's tucked under their arms. Gone are the days of only designers, gadget geeks and rich folks using Mac's, but why is that all of a sudden? It was well known back in the mid-late 90's that only around 10% of computers we're Apple manufactured and most of those we're used by design folks.
Personally, I switched for a few reasons but mainly because of build quality, software & hardware from the same manufacturer (always been the case I know but...) and my increased interest in photography. As I'm no longer programming that's not really a factor but with even developers now turning to Mac for their front-end experience if I did decide to chip the rust off the coding side of my brain again I'm confident I'd be in good hands.
I'm still learning the ropes (thanks Seb for the Mac Command = PC Ctrl tip last week) and must get a mouse to bring back the right-click but so far I'm impressed. Looking forward to when I get time for a decent session with the camera, that's when it's value will truly manifest I think!
Concluding point, stuff just seems to work on a Mac (and how many years have I ignored pesky people saying that to me).
Cheers
Tim
Personally, I switched for a few reasons but mainly because of build quality, software & hardware from the same manufacturer (always been the case I know but...) and my increased interest in photography. As I'm no longer programming that's not really a factor but with even developers now turning to Mac for their front-end experience if I did decide to chip the rust off the coding side of my brain again I'm confident I'd be in good hands.
I'm still learning the ropes (thanks Seb for the Mac Command = PC Ctrl tip last week) and must get a mouse to bring back the right-click but so far I'm impressed. Looking forward to when I get time for a decent session with the camera, that's when it's value will truly manifest I think!
Concluding point, stuff just seems to work on a Mac (and how many years have I ignored pesky people saying that to me).
Cheers
Tim
Friday, 8 May 2009
Holidays
Having spent the best part of the last month on holiday I've plenty to blog about, sadly I'm a bit short on the photo front given my camera was nicked from our house; but I won't dwell on that!
Mel's parents arrived end of March, we had a full itinerary set up on tripit.com and wasted no time getting into it. Long walks around Sydney, a trip down to Melbourne with drive on the Great Ocean Road and a night in the Blue Mountains we're highlights with plenty of nice dinners and a good few beers along the way too.
I have to admit to being surprised and astonished at the beauty of the Great Ocean Road and Blue Mountains, it's often hard to get excited about other countries natural beauty coming from NZ but it did not disappoint - there we're even some friendly Aussies to chat with here and there too! My fav accommodation on the trip has to be in Apollo Bay where our place was within spitting distance to the ocean boasting empty beaches and some near perfect waves.
My return to work was short lived (1.5 weeks) before setting off again to NZ on a trip based around two Super 14 Hurricanes matches in Wellington. Mel stayed at home in Sydney while I 'swanned off' (Mel's words not mine) to NZ for a week. I spent a lot of time with family and friends and two nights away fishing (unsuccessfully) with my mate Tavis. It was awesome to catch up with everyone again.
Now it's back to work until Bruce arrives in July when I'll take yet more time off to go surfing (I mean look after him)!
Cheers
Tim
Mel's parents arrived end of March, we had a full itinerary set up on tripit.com and wasted no time getting into it. Long walks around Sydney, a trip down to Melbourne with drive on the Great Ocean Road and a night in the Blue Mountains we're highlights with plenty of nice dinners and a good few beers along the way too.
I have to admit to being surprised and astonished at the beauty of the Great Ocean Road and Blue Mountains, it's often hard to get excited about other countries natural beauty coming from NZ but it did not disappoint - there we're even some friendly Aussies to chat with here and there too! My fav accommodation on the trip has to be in Apollo Bay where our place was within spitting distance to the ocean boasting empty beaches and some near perfect waves.
My return to work was short lived (1.5 weeks) before setting off again to NZ on a trip based around two Super 14 Hurricanes matches in Wellington. Mel stayed at home in Sydney while I 'swanned off' (Mel's words not mine) to NZ for a week. I spent a lot of time with family and friends and two nights away fishing (unsuccessfully) with my mate Tavis. It was awesome to catch up with everyone again.
Now it's back to work until Bruce arrives in July when I'll take yet more time off to go surfing (I mean look after him)!
Cheers
Tim
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Flickr Interestingness, Contacts and The Commons
Some of the most interesting things happening in my life over the past couple of weeks have been work related, presenting and evangelising Flickr to external partners (sadly nothing particularly interesting personally) so I thought I'd plug some pretty cool features on the photo sharing site (which those of you who know me well know I not only love Flickr but happen to work on it at Yahoo! as well).
Interestingness
Flickr takes a whole bunch of things into consideration when selecting photos for the interestingness photostream, for instance where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favourite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing (I copied that last bit straight from flickr.com, sorry). One feature within interestingness I particularly love is where you can browse using a calendar and see most interesting photos from a particular month like March 2009, wicked!
Contacts
Flickr has recently redesigned this page to make it easier to browse your contacts and to straight away see who your most active contacts are, you need to be logged in to see this feature, just head for 'Contacts List' in the nav bar. You can even sort so you see who out of your contacts has uploaded the most public photos to Flickr, one of my Flickr meet-up (another story) contacts has over 15,000 public photos!
The Commons
Another fantastic initiative from Flickr is The Commons where you can find the "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives". You can add tags and leave comments on photos to make the collections even more descriptive and worthwhile to others. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours browsing these, we even have a few Commons partners from Australia & NZ including the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, State Library of NSW, Australian War Memorial, State Library of Queensland and the National Library NZ!
With holidays on the way in April I hope in my next post I'll be able to show off some new pics from my own Flickr photostream and tell some stories, or perhaps I'll just end up plugging the cool (and very useful) tripit.com website we used to build the holiday itinerary!
Cheers
Tim
Interestingness
Flickr takes a whole bunch of things into consideration when selecting photos for the interestingness photostream, for instance where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favourite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing (I copied that last bit straight from flickr.com, sorry). One feature within interestingness I particularly love is where you can browse using a calendar and see most interesting photos from a particular month like March 2009, wicked!
Contacts
Flickr has recently redesigned this page to make it easier to browse your contacts and to straight away see who your most active contacts are, you need to be logged in to see this feature, just head for 'Contacts List' in the nav bar. You can even sort so you see who out of your contacts has uploaded the most public photos to Flickr, one of my Flickr meet-up (another story) contacts has over 15,000 public photos!
The Commons
Another fantastic initiative from Flickr is The Commons where you can find the "hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives". You can add tags and leave comments on photos to make the collections even more descriptive and worthwhile to others. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours browsing these, we even have a few Commons partners from Australia & NZ including the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, State Library of NSW, Australian War Memorial, State Library of Queensland and the National Library NZ!
With holidays on the way in April I hope in my next post I'll be able to show off some new pics from my own Flickr photostream and tell some stories, or perhaps I'll just end up plugging the cool (and very useful) tripit.com website we used to build the holiday itinerary!
Cheers
Tim
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Coldplay gig at Acer Arena in Sydney
It's rather ironic that this post is about the very thing I said I wasn't planning to do again in my previous post! Mel had been talking a lot about how much she wanted to see Coldplay in Sydney but given the previous experience of the Acer Arena we hadn't really bothered looking around for tickets.
I've seen Coldplay at a festival in England before, in their early days together as a somewhat less popular band. They were good but not hugely memorable. Anyway knowing how much Mel wanted to see them I went onto Gumtree Australia to see if I could pick up tickets last minute from someone who could not make it after all. I sent a few emails to people advertising tickets at face value $140 each, telling them all I'd be willing to pay $200 a pair. Fortunately one guy wanted a quick sale and even drove over to Balmain to make the exchange, result!
I have to say, I really felt like I was taking one for the team by going along and tried to show enthusiasm beyond what I was feeling before the gig. I had no idea Chris Martin and the band would put on such a great show, worth every cent we paid and more... One of our friends in NZ said when she found out I'd bought Mel tickets as a surprise "has Tim had brain surgery or something", I'll take that to mean I'm losing my "squeaks when he walks" reputation!
I'd definitely recommend seeing Coldplay live if you've not already done so; Chris Martin is lively, energetic and bloody funny at times. The floor show is fantastic, enough said and it would be like telling you the end of a movie to say more.
Oh and the sound in Acer Arena was great this time round!
Cheers
Tim
I've seen Coldplay at a festival in England before, in their early days together as a somewhat less popular band. They were good but not hugely memorable. Anyway knowing how much Mel wanted to see them I went onto Gumtree Australia to see if I could pick up tickets last minute from someone who could not make it after all. I sent a few emails to people advertising tickets at face value $140 each, telling them all I'd be willing to pay $200 a pair. Fortunately one guy wanted a quick sale and even drove over to Balmain to make the exchange, result!
I have to say, I really felt like I was taking one for the team by going along and tried to show enthusiasm beyond what I was feeling before the gig. I had no idea Chris Martin and the band would put on such a great show, worth every cent we paid and more... One of our friends in NZ said when she found out I'd bought Mel tickets as a surprise "has Tim had brain surgery or something", I'll take that to mean I'm losing my "squeaks when he walks" reputation!
I'd definitely recommend seeing Coldplay live if you've not already done so; Chris Martin is lively, energetic and bloody funny at times. The floor show is fantastic, enough said and it would be like telling you the end of a movie to say more.
Oh and the sound in Acer Arena was great this time round!
Cheers
Tim
Monday, 2 March 2009
Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney
Weekend before last Mel and I went to see a Fall Out Boy gig in Sydney. It was actually my birthday that day which I decided to keep pretty quiet this year, must be something to do with turning 33!
I booked the tickets quite a while back and missed out on standing, they only had seated tickets left and I'd contemplated not going for that reason as last time I sat at a rock concert (Linkin Park) I vowed to never do it again! It turns out sitting was better in Mel's condition anyway, well it would have been if it weren't for so many overweight (not really relevant but a fact) screaming girls who we're acting like they'd never been let out of the house before. I've got nothing against people having fun but was never stupid enough to buy a seated tickets at a gig and then stand the whole time so no one else could see (unless everyone stands up therefore defeating the purpose of a seated event). We certainly felt our age as well!
Fall Out Boy we're OK and played all the favourites as expected. I was disappointed with the quality of sound, not sure if that was the fault of Patrick Stump (lead singer) or the Acer Arena acoustics. Sound did not seem to be an issue when The All-American Rejects played as backup, they rocked!
As with the experience last year in going to a game of Rugby at ANZ stadium in Homebush, I'll be unlikely to return to Acer Arena (also in Homebush) - it's just too far out of the city and not good enough to be worth the hassle in my opinion.
I'll not stop listening to Fall Out Boy on my ipod at the gym though, where I can enjoy the music without the loud obesity looming!
Cheers
Tim
I booked the tickets quite a while back and missed out on standing, they only had seated tickets left and I'd contemplated not going for that reason as last time I sat at a rock concert (Linkin Park) I vowed to never do it again! It turns out sitting was better in Mel's condition anyway, well it would have been if it weren't for so many overweight (not really relevant but a fact) screaming girls who we're acting like they'd never been let out of the house before. I've got nothing against people having fun but was never stupid enough to buy a seated tickets at a gig and then stand the whole time so no one else could see (unless everyone stands up therefore defeating the purpose of a seated event). We certainly felt our age as well!
Fall Out Boy we're OK and played all the favourites as expected. I was disappointed with the quality of sound, not sure if that was the fault of Patrick Stump (lead singer) or the Acer Arena acoustics. Sound did not seem to be an issue when The All-American Rejects played as backup, they rocked!
As with the experience last year in going to a game of Rugby at ANZ stadium in Homebush, I'll be unlikely to return to Acer Arena (also in Homebush) - it's just too far out of the city and not good enough to be worth the hassle in my opinion.
I'll not stop listening to Fall Out Boy on my ipod at the gym though, where I can enjoy the music without the loud obesity looming!
Cheers
Tim
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