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Traffic cam action.

Most of the time, traffic cams are boring. Today there was some kind of excitement on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Screen grab courtesy of the RTA Live Traffic Cam site.

Testing a blog application

just trying out an N800 blogging application.

Peekaboo!

Reward for sale!

Tim O'Connor still needs a lock up garage. Now he's posted a reward for help in finding one.

Random in Redfern #1

One of the charming things about living in Redfern is that some random and amusing things often pop up. Here are a couple of things that I saw today...

Frosty hanging out in a back lane. Sleazy!


A dirty full-length mirror on the corner.

A close sign!

A few years ago, one of the "bar fridge for sale" signs appeared perilously close to the front entrance of the building I used to live in.

Today, I found this right at our building entrance. SPOOKY! I think Tim O'Connor is stalking me!

Day Trip to Cockatoo Island

Over the weekend, we had our plans canceled on us so we had some unexpected free time. On Sunday we spent the afternoon on Cockatoo Island, checking out some of the Contemporary Art installations during the Biennale of Sydney 2008.

Now, I normally don't understand art at the best of times, so Contemporary Art really confused me. However I really enjoyed wandering around the old industrial site, looking at the old warehouses and buildings and rusty cranes.

Here are some pictures of the structures on the island:






Here is the obligatory tourist photos of the view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge from the island:


Here's a photo of a sign erected in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art (back on the mainland) with some buildings in the background:


And here's the only photo of the two of us on the day:

2 cats in a pot

More and more we are finding both of the minis in the same spot, which is usually odd. This time we know why they are sharing this big pot... we caught the naughty brown cat urinating in the other one.

Unboxing - LG LCD TV

This morning we turned on the TV to watch Sunday morning videos, but found that the TV had somehow blown half of itself up overnight. The left half of the screen was operational but the right half was dead.

We'd recently been talking about getting an LCD TV, so I guess this was the perfect time. We chose this LG 32" TV with built in HD Tuner. Awesome!

In true nerd fashion, I present to you... the unboxing.

The package.

The base, wrapped up.

The base, unwrapped, with protective plastic.

A box of stuff.

The stuff - Manual, Instructional DVD, Remote Control, Power cable, cable organiser, batteries, screen cleaning cloth.

The TV, wrapped up, lying on a pillow.

The TV all set up and in place.

Shadow enjoying the box before we recycle it.

Puppy reading the instructions.

Watching the Swans defeat the Tigers (sorry J3).

Dodgy

Whenever these two are in the same spot, there's sure to be something dodgy going on. You can tell by their Terminator eyes.

Partial Sign

Found this in the gutter. It's part of one of the signs from a couple of years ago where the Bar Fridge Man was looking for some storage space.

Ah, the good ol' days.

Sideshow Bob

A few years ago, T's mother gave us a bromeliad. It somehow bred with itself and soon 1 became 5. We separted them apart and re-potted them (in a 2/2/1 configuration) and put them in different areas of the balcony. They must be lonely plants because the pots with 2 bromeliads have not had any more offspring, but the one that had a single bromeliad in it had 2 babies to keep it company.

Recently I've been complaining because they spread out and take up a bit of valuable balcony room (hence the nickname of Sideshow Bob because they explode outwards like his hair). Also they have spines along the entire edge of every leaf and have been attacking me. We decided that it was time to give some away, but in the meantime we put all the pots together in one area.


Since doing this, the 3-plant pot has now also grown a flower. This hasn't happened in the 4 years that we've had these plants. I wonder if this has happened because the whole family has reunited?

My new setup

This is my mobile internet unit... My trusty N800 (a.k.a. Machine) & my new iGo Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard (which doesn't have a name yet).

Another sign

I nearly missed this one. My first thought was that someone had her purse stolen and the thief left it hanging there. Then I spotted the writing!

Autobot

An Autobot in Redfern

Duck Pond in Centennial Park

This is a photo taken using the Panoman application mentioned in my N82 post.

The lighting appeared to have changed as I was taking the photos. You can see where they have been stitched together.



Anyway, I'm just pleased that I now don't have to learn photoshop or use the panorama software that came with my digital camera and/or the one that came with my memory card.

To help you stalk me...

I'm trying out some Nokia Sports Tracker, Widget, and photo uploading features. I'm not sure how this works yet so bear with me.

In order to view the Nseries Widget you need JavaScript and Flash Player 9+ support

(If nothing displays here, right-click on the blank space above then select Play)

The widget doesn't look like it's displaying my rides accurately (I would have recalled riding through buildings or on top of water) so click here if you'd like to see a more accurate view of this leisurely 20km ride.

Modified sign

Found on Wilson St. Newtown

I ♥ the N82

I recently purchased a second-hand Nokia N82 on eBay. I don't mind that it's second-hand, I don't mind that it's got scratches on it, I don't even mind that it was unexpectedly a Hong Kong model so there's Chinese key-strokes next to each number on the keypad and that I can't get the latest firmware update yet*. Is it wrong to love a phone this much?

My favourite features are:

• the 5mp camera with Xenon flash
• WLAN connection
• accelerometer
• GPS

My favourite applications so far are:

• Panoman - an application that takes photos then automatically stitches them together to create panoramic pictures. I've only used this once, in my living room. I'll play around with it more this weekend and post a more interesting photo then.
  
• Nokia Maps - I haven't used it to try to navigate anywhere yet, but I love it when the GPS can tell me where I am.
• Nokia Sports Tracker - I've only used this a few times but it's so cool. It uses the internal GPS and tracks my bike ride/walk/drive/whatever. You can also take photos with the phone and upload them and they'll use the geo-tag to place the photos on the correct position of my route's map. Here's one I prepared earlier (although some of the pictures aren't in the right place because I had paused the application so it didn't tag properly)
• Photo Detagger - This application can remove the geo-tagged details from photos if I'm paranoid about someone working where I am/was.
• Share Online 3.0 - After taking a photo, I can automatically upload the photos to Flickr and Ovi in about 3 clicks. There is another application that supports upload to more sites. I'm sure I'll be checking that out sometime soon!
  

My "I can live with them" annoyances:

• the cable plugs into the side which makes it hard to hold while recharging
• the mini-USB connection is a slightly different shape to standard mini-USB cables
• the N-Series PC Suite

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Now I'm going back to hug my phone.

*[edit] I just checked the Nokia site and my phone model can now update the firmware! I'msohappy! I'll be doing that tonight!
*[edit] Firmware successfully upgraded. All is good.