:: In a Small Dark Room ::

:: Monday, November 15, 2004 ::

I had originally hoped to put links to separate album pages on the front blog page, so that loading the main page would be quick, but that isn't how most of these services work. At least something is getting up online anyway.


Dusk at Railway Square, with Central Station clock tower 

:: Mez 05:45 [+] ::
...

Pyrmont - Harris St - traffic under Fig St overpass, with footbridge 

:: Mez 05:44 [+] ::
...

Pyrmont - work rooftop view south - St Benedict's church with palm, grass & rooftops 

:: Mez 05:42 [+] ::
...

Pyrmont - work rooftop view north - Sydney Harbour Bridge beyond Scar City on sunny day 

:: Mez 05:40 [+] ::
...

Pyrmont - work carpark north - grass, asphalt, airconditioner, shadows 

:: Mez 05:39 [+] ::
...

Pyrmont - work rooftop view south - Scar City, with World Square & beyond on a sunny day 

:: Mez 05:37 [+] ::
...

Using Hello Picasa

Here are some of the first images from my back-up "cheap" digital camera. It is an Oregon Scientific DS6628: a credit-card sized, 8mm thick (~5mm over most, this thickness includes the lens, which sticks out), with a 1.3Mb CCD. The settings are basic, being on, off & close-up. You can also choose 640x480 or 1268x1025 images. It has a built-in internal 16Mb memory or can take SD format memory cards. I did get the model where you can attach a flash. See some details at www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1059105601.html


Pyrmont - work rooftop view south - with dish & ventilator on a sunny day 

:: Mez 05:35 [+] ::
...

Midwinter on the Main Range in the Snowy Mountains.
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/18/1097951603237.html

The steep faces of Sentinel Ridge and Watson's Crags offer the finest skiing Australia has to offer. Unrivalled scenery, zero crowds and no lift queues (then again, no lifts either, and a hell of a hike back to the top ... )
Photo: Andrew Martin
Also see: www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951677187.html and
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951735119.html, or

NOTE: If you're looking at Michael Meryment's photo of the waterfall at Kanangra Walls in this gallery, check the person abseiling about halfway down the photo, on the right ( www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/18/1097951604775.html).

Explanatory story re SMH collecting these.
www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/18/1097951590937.html

In Sydney suburbs --
St Ives: www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951743850.html
Dobroyd Head: www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951742774.html

For some reason there is a suburb called Dobroyd Point, near Haberfield or
Leichhardt, in Sydney which is not at all near the peninsula on the harbour called Dobroyd Head, near Clontarf or Balgowlah Heights!
Here is an aerial photo showing Dobroyd Point, the suburb, and you can see that the view between the heads shown in the photo above is round quite a few corners from
it, and well beyond the city buildings seen in the background.
www.airviewonline.com.au/stock-photographs/photodetails.asp?ID=2228
(This bush scene brought back memories of working for my Biology thesis, and here is
some of the stuff from the Sydney University SOBS as it is more currently:
www.bio.usyd.edu.au/hochuli/article.htm ,
and
www.bio.usyd.edu.au/SOBS/RESEARCH/FACILITY/JOHNRAY/Johnray.html )

This shows you something about Dobroyd Head, from a visitor's perspective.
www.stuharris.co.uk/apple_oz/spitman/spitman.html
He doesn't mention Clontarf Beach being the site of an early attempted political
assassination, where a mentally-unbalanced Irish migrant called Henry O'Farrell shot the then Duke of Edinburgh (Alfred -- see www.wordiq.com/definition/Duke_Alfred_of_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha ) on the first Royal Visit to Australia in 1868 -- see www.shoalhaven.net.au/~cathyd/history/prince.html. Fortunately, the bullet bounced off his braces. We swiftly pointed out Henry was visiting from Melbourne, but despite his obvious derangement, he was fairly summarily tried & executed.

Am fond of the story that goes with this picture of Cox Bight on the South
Coast Track, Tasmania: www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951665813.html

Been here! www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951666139.html
(Part of a longer story of mine.) And here:
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951678102.html (see also
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951740480.html for a different
view). And this one scarcely touches the wonder & beauty of Barrington Tops
-- www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951734794.html.

These are something I had to take when I was visiting Western Australia. It's a sight you can't see from the Eastern States -- very few of the water lakes are big enough to not have anything on the horizon, though if Lake Eyre in the centre-south (the lowest point on mainland Australia), usually just salt flats, is full after a flood year it might be possible.
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951676988.html
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951677368.html
Oops: Looks like at certain angles in the geology you can get the effect. But it's rare <ahem>, e.g. Stockton Beach, Anna Bay (I believe this is near Newcastle, NSW)
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/19/1097951678108.html

These show the more common effect:
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951743386.html
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951729789.html
www.smh.com.au/ftimages/2004/10/20/1097951742843.html


Restoring Faith in Humanity, One Story at a Time
www.heroicstories.com/

:: Mez 21:29 [+] ::
...

Goldsbrough- view_0571.JPG
Originally uploaded by Mezza.

Anzac Bridge & Blackwattle Bay from Goldsbrough Mort

:: Mez 04:29 [+] ::
...

Goldsbrough-Roof_0621a.JPG
Originally uploaded by Mezza.

Lamp post on the highest level. On the roof of the Goldsbrough Mort building,

:: Mez 04:21 [+] ::
...

Goldsbrough-Roof_0555.JPG
Originally uploaded by Mezza.

Testing the possibilities for photoblogging from flickr. May tell you the sad story of Goldsbrough Mort later.

It's been a long & painful night, and I think I'm almost tired enough to sleep now.

:: Mez 04:11 [+] ::
...

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

:: Mez 01:30 [+] ::
...

Obsidian Wings re Outsourcing Torture (Extraordinary Rendition)
Obsidian Wings update on Torture Issue

:: Mez 13:59 [+] ::
...

An archive of photos related to the whole Apollo project:  www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
Sitting among a bunch of restless children on a hard wooden floor at the back of the midwinter-cold school hall, with the B & W 16" TV on the stage, after waiting through a long delay, it was very difficult to hear or see the transmission.  Luckily by then my parents had TV of their own (before would watch at my grandmother's) and we could all watch the replay together on that night's news.
Now I have seen the Full Moon exhibition, with photos up to life-size, and have the book Full Moon, by Michael Light, Andrew Chaikin (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, ISBN: 0375406344) Light took NASA's master negatives of photos taken by Apollo astronauts and scanned them electronically, there's an essay by Chaikin. 
 
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal: www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj - a good resource to argue against the 'moon landings were faked' idea.

www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/apollo11/one_giant_leap.html Memories of the Parkes connection with the first human landing on the Earth's moon (as fictionalized in film The Dish)

www.honeysucklecreek.net Memories of the Honeysuckle Creek-Tidbinbilla (aka Honeybilla)  — near Canberra  — connection with the first human landing on the Earth's moon.  They did the first bit, before Parkes took over - the last-moment crisis in The Dish is true. Order your DVD! (The DVD contains the audio of the comms loop at Honeysuckle and Net 2 (the NASA tracking station network) synchronised with the video of the first 30 minutes of the Apollo 11 moon walk.) 
www.retroweb.com/apollo_retrospective.html A personal look back at man's first voyages to the Moon, from the perspective of a young teenager at the time.

:: Mez 20:53 [+] ::
...

Some nice Sydney photos, in an alternative online photo space      
Albums - Sydney: The Inside story; Sydney Scenes

 

:: Mez 00:45 [+] ::
...

They've changed Blogger around again. Updated & refined parts of the system & code, added several new bits & pieces, revamped interface. Might make the image blog this is intended to be a bit easier. I've been looking at some of the photo blogs around as an alternative, or to link to from here, but many of them are designed for mobile phones with inbuilt cameras.

Will be interesting to see if the new camera with 4 megapixel images creates a different or better effect than the 1.2 megapixel one once the images are resized down to fit online better.

Have also been piecing together a few spaces to upload images into. After the latest health scare (looks like was a false alarm) I'm concerned to try & leave some sort of public, acessible memorial for myself -- as well as the little one for Christopher I've put up, with its photos & writing. [Chris' Memorial Site]

:: Mez 02:55 [+] ::
...

Long story. In short, bought new camera: Canon Powershot A80, an updated, higher model of the A30, which I've only had since October 2002.
Main Canon page for A80: web.canon.jp/Imaging/psa80/index-e.html (

Australian Canon Products page for A80: www.canon.com.au/products/cameras/digital_compact_cameras/powershota80.html

The major change is that this model takes 4 Megapixel images instead of 1.2 Megapixel ones. Online, I would still be putting up resized & 'optimized' images on album pages.
What I might try to do is put up one full-size of each taken of the same subject, just for comparison.

:: Mez 16:03 [+] ::
...

Life's busy. Well over 9000 digital images now.
Am gunna havta do some definite deciding of what sort of themes might be practical to have online, since it's getting rather impractical to consider the entire collection.
Another issue is that the autonumbering is only 4 digits (i.e. up to 9,999) so we'll have to consider what happens when the numbers 'turn over', like on car odometers.

Friend is asking me to supply him with some of my 'take same photo from same place over time' type images so he can track how the CCD in the digicam is changing with time & use. (Well, 'deteriorating' is the word he uses.) He's pretty impressed at how well the Canon Powershot A30 is holding up. Am rather hankering after, say, A70, which is, I think, 3 megapixel image where A30 is 1.3 Mpx
Seen the news about Kodak discontinuing 35mm consumer cameras in "developed" countries? Also Advantix cameras. Not linking at present, 'cos I saw news on Yahoo, and they don't keep their links static for long.

Meanwhile I think the US Mars Rovers have 12 Mpx CCDs onboard, and they're putting them into panoramic views, which are going to be chunky to download. But I want them.

:: Mez 02:04 [+] ::
...

Welcome to 2004.
Oh dear. It's been a while since I posted anything here. Am still working on photos. There are now over 8,800 of them. Lots of editing needed. Am also setting up place with space to keep them online.
The computer is mostly working. The other personal working-out of stuff is partly done, but there's more to be fixed before things are cleared up.

You may wish to check out the various ramblings on the other blogs (also mentioned below), viz, Hello Cruel World OR Another Dark Little Corner
There are still some problems with the images on Chris' Memorial Site, but many pictures are fine, and the rest works OK, if you're interested.
SMH has done a few things with reader's photos - will have to link to them for you.

:: Mez 00:55 [+] ::
...