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Holiday in Australia – 2006

A run down of what we did in summer 2006. Photos here.

July 2006

25 Leave Heathrow to Brisbane via Singapore
27 Arrive Brisbane, Mount Coot-tha, ants in phone
28 Mount Nebo, Mount Glorious for lunch, Queensland Raceway (Ipswitch), The Gap shopping, travel to Rainbow Sands via Gimpia
29 Car hire – Rainbow Beach, Ferry – Inskip Point, Lake Boomanjin, Lake Birrabeen (the best), Lake McKenzie, Eurong Second Valley
30 Maheno wreck, Lake Allom, Boomerang Lake, beach drive to ferry, beach drive around Inskip Point to Rainbow Beach
31 Glass House Mountains, Australia Zoo,

August 2006

1 Mount Glorious for lunch, Brisbane centre by bus, Sun Corp Piazza, Plough Inn, San Marco (dinner)
2 Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Surfer’s Paradise, lunch – burger, Ben Elton at Queensland Performing Arts Centre
3 Fly to Sydney, land at 13:45, cab to Hotel Stellar, dinner at Circular Quay
4 Blue Mountains: Govett’s Leap, Scenic World, Three Sisters, Pie at bakehouse (Leura), Table Top View, Olympic village and stadium,ferry to Circular Quay, dinner in the Subway on Oxford St
5 Sydney SkyTower, Oz Trek, Pasta lunch at Grinders Coffee, The Hanging of Jean Lee at the Sydney Opera House
6 Ferry from Circular Quay to Rose Bay, seaplane flight to Cottage Point, Lunch at cottage point Fritata, quai. Beef, venison. Poached pears, creme brulee. Flight over harbour to Rose Bay. Ferry back
7 Drink at pub, WW won $34. Sydney Harbour Bridge climb, train from Circular Quay to museum stop (moving seats)
8 Fly to Ayres Rock land at 12:40. Sounds of silence dinner
9 Bus to Uluru, walked around ¾ of Uluru, Mount Conner in 4×4
10 Fly to Melbourne arrive 14:30. Casino and dinner by the river
11 Lunch at PMs. Tram into town and see Essenden Bombers play Aussie Rules at the MCG
12 Great Ocean Road. Bell’s Beach, Erskine Falls, Teddy’s Lookout, Grey’s Road Koalas, Lunch at Apollo Bay, Helicopter flight over the 12 Apostles, London Bridge, Loch Ard Grove
13 Breakfast at Velvet Bar, motorbike racing at Phillip Island circuit. The Nobbies, Penguin Parade
14 Watched Munich and V for Vendetta
15 Ramsey Street, Lunch at Hillsville, Green Point Chandon Vineyard
16 Lunch at Tall Ships Cafe, Tram into town, observation deck Rialto Tower
17 Arthur’s Seat, Cape Schanck, leave Melbourne fly to Heathrow via Hong Kong
18 Arrive Heathrow 14:00

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Glosssary

A glossary of terms used within this website.

ww – wonderful wife
#1 – son number one
#2 – son number two
GT5 – Gran Turismo 5 for the PS3
PS3 – Sony Playstation, third version. A delight.
MGS – Maidstone Grammar School

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Shrooms

Check out these mushrooms! Saw them in the park or rec as people down here call them. Dog in picture for size reference although I could have photoshopped it. BTW it’s my policy never to mess around with pictures apart from cropping and rotating. It should be right from the start!

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Lego 4 Model 5816

Made this for #1. He has given up dummies and posted them to Santa. When he had returned from the post box Santa had left him a Duplo set. Why the dummies had to go in an envelope when Santa was visiting anyway to drop the present off I don’t know! So here we have Mack, Lightning McQueen and the Sheriff from Cars. All superglued together as usual.

Lego Model 5816
Lego Model 5816
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Blogtime

I’m so busy at the moment I just don’t have time to write anything for the blog. I am aware that this post is now a logical contradiction but I’ll keep writing.
Work is busy and having two kids means there’s no time for anything at home. Although I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the mean time have a look at a web page with some Wackos. Only a few, mind. Given the billions of humans on the Earth the wacko total is probably quite high.
Gallery of Wackos

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Plane Finder AR

Just installed Plane Finder AR onto the phone. Point your camera at a plane and it’ll tell you

  • what it is
  • where it is
  • where it’s going
  • how far away it is
  • whose it is

    • absolutely brilliant. I love it. Just right for an aircraft geek.

    Night time picture of screen! That’s what time it is here!
    20111110-193731.jpg

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    Cruel Advert

    Clicked on a google news link to Telegraph website article about diets from the BMJ. Advert is brilliant.

    20111106-074350.jpg

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    Mobile Phones

    I have owned a number of mobile phones and most of them were rubbish. Going to give you a rundown of them from the earliest.
    Phone number 1 – sometime in 1999 or so:
    Brick
    The Ericsson A1018

    The order of the next few phones is not remembered easily. But here goes:
    O2 X1

    The next was:
    A200

    then:
    Nokia 3210

    And then the nifty fold-out keyboard:

    Nokia 6280 Nokia 6230

    Then we get to the first smart phone:

    Nokia N70

    Then the brilliant and pretty usable N95, it was the last Nokia I owned that worked well:

    Nokia N95

    Then the big memory but pretty useless N97:

    Nokia N97

    Finally, a phone that works. The iPhone 4. Until then the iPhone specification was pretty rubbish. It took a lot of soul searching to convince myself that selling out to the walled garden of Apple was worth it. However, I have to say that the iPhone is brilliant. It works!

    iPhone 4

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    Definitely Autumn

    Took this picture during a dog walk (there’s a surprise). The colour of the leaves was gorgeous but probably not captured without decent filter or image editing software (which I don’t use).

    Carpet of Leaves

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    The holiday will be a failure

    I had mentioned to WW that I really wanted some time playing GT5 this holiday with the steering wheel. I may have said:

    If I don’t get to play GT5 this holiday it will have been a failure!

    This means no kids or anyone for about 2 hours. The time was set. Monday afternoon. Number one son would be in nursery and WW and son #2 would be seeing friends so I had about 4 hours when I could play uninterrupted!
    I needed to complete around 10 online races to get the money and just because they are there to complete. The four hours would be pushing it but I reckoned that without lunch I could have done it.
    So I set up the PS3 with steering wheel and pressed play.

    GT server down for routine maintenance 12 to 4pm

    Arrgggghhh. The only races I could do offline was a World Championship and I didn’t want to spend the time and effort and have to save mid-championship.
    I shut down GT5 and played Rock Band. The original save file is copy protected and so I had to start from scratch. Definitely didn’t do the easy or medium – straight to hard.
    So far the holiday has been a failure. Going to try tonight.

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    Talk Talk Part 3

    This will probably come as a bit of a surprise but I have been really impressed with Talk Talk. I know that they have most complaints out of the media providers bt I haven’t had any issues.
    Download speeds in the evening used to be crippling. It just wasn’t worth trying to download any large files and almost not worth browsing the internet. However, since moving to Talk Talk our evening download speeds have really improved. What I do not know is whether that is down to Talk Talk or some other changes that have been made with the infrastructure in our area. The thing is I can’t be bothered to see which it is.
    Now I’m looking forward to downloading iOS5 this evening and getting my iPhone up to date.

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    Death of the PS3

    So it happened again. My re-conditioned 60Gb PS3 from Sony has died. We were watching Wall-E on blu-ray and we got about 2 minutes into the film when:
    Pvvvvvvvvvvvvv
    The Ps3 turned off and the red light just flashed. The unit is still under warranty and so will be replaced with another re-conditioned 60Gb model, which is good because that is a classic model.
    WW agreed I can suggested that I buy a brand new PS3 as well. So Amazon had a great deal on a 320Gb version bundled with a game and blu-ray movie. So until it arrives I am in limbo.
    I managed to get the GT5 game save file copied when I tried turning on the PS3 to check it was FUBAR.
    Updates later.

    Tues 3 Oct
    New 320Gb PS3 arrived with Resistance 3 and a blu-ray film. Plugged in and now vertical next to AV amp. Looks very nice. I have noticed though that the disc grabbing motor is much noisier than the old version, the disc reader motor makes a bit of noise and the buttons are real buttons rather than touch sensitive. However, the fan noise is much quieter and so much preferable.
    Firmware update completed and GT5 save file copied after a bit of hassle. I’d been saving game files on a SD card because the 60Gb has lots of lovely memory card slots. Had to transfer the files to a USB memory stick using my PC before I could get them onto the new PS3.

    Weds 4 Oct
    Installed lots of the extra GT5 files onto the PS3 to reduce load times. That took about 40 minutes. Planing to install every game I’ve bought from the store over next few weeks as I now have the space for them. Also looking forward to DLC for GT5 by end of October.
    PS3 stand arrived so I don’t have to worry about it falling over. It’s much thinner than the old version and so less stable. Now have a few more USB ports and some snazzy blue LED lights if I want to impress WW.
    Old reconditioned 60Gb now taken and on its way to console heaven. Just waiting for the return of the next one.

    Fri 7 Oct
    New old PS3 delivered. Sony have kindly replaced my recondition PS3 with another (although it was within warranty). I have not yet checked it works as I need to be free of children to do it. New PS3 is wired in so this 60Gb will have to wait until half term.

    Tues 11 Oct
    GT5 version 2 download released and so very excited. Just waiting for DLC.

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    Cars

    We tried searching for films suitable for a sensitive 2 year old and all the interwebs came up with were:

  • Winnie The Pooh
  • Cars

    • So we bought Cars from eBay.
    It’s brilliant. The sons love it and have watched it about 10 times in the last week.
    As expected from Pixar this film is really well written and directed. The artwork is fantastic and the detail is awesome.
    I said to wonderful wife that I thought the cars suspension moves the wrong way when they go around corners. She replied

    that’s your issue with a film with talking cars?

    Fair enough. Although I guess they could have cool active suspension so the side of the car on the inside of the corner is lower rather than higher than expected. Essentially a car rolls to the outside of the corner not the inside, hey you could have cool lever linkage also!
    Anyway, great film and sons obsessed with racing cars! Brilliant.

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