stripethree

I ended up with over 750 pictures from the trip, and whittled it down to about 300 that I actually posted. So, pick a link depending on what you want to see.

Everything – Adelaide, Canberra, & Sydney

Everything Sydney

Places of interest:

Cleland Wildlife Park in Adelaide

Bondi Beach

Manly Beach

Jonelan Caves outside Sydney

Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney

Sydney Aquarum

From the top of Sydney Tower

Sydney Wildlife World

Landmarks:

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Sydney Opera House

And more…
Cars of Sydney
Streets of Sydney, random street shots including some places we ate
Aussie Signs (they’ve got a good sense of humor)

I’ve been slacking on the blog front, mainly because February has been extremely busy. Work has been hectic for two reasons, the first being upcoming deadlines on the project I am working on and the metric ton of work that needs to be completed before those deadlines come and go. Second, I’ve been figuring out the ins and outs of a work transition, as it is more than 95% certain at this point I will no longer be working from home starting next month. I am changing projects, changing teams, and changing what I do on a daily basis from a software engineering focus to a software vulnerability testing and evaluation focus. So I’ll be driving to the fort in Sierra Vista everyday, but I have the chance to learn and participate in some very interesting and cool (as in nerdy cool) things and get sent to all sorts of fun (as in nerdy fun) courses such as ethical hacker training. So I’m excited, but I have been very busy organizing things and getting as much done with my current work as I can before the transition.

Besides that, there was the SSCC autocross on the 3rd, which I did ok, sort of. Apparently there were some issues with the radios and the course and a lot of course deviations did not get called in and recorded, on my runs included. So I have no idea how I actually faired since I know my times on the results probably aren’t right. In addition, I had some battery with my camera issues so the in car video I thought I took didn’t really come out well. I did get some good pictures with my XTi. This has lead to design thoughts on a way to secure the charger to have it in the car running off the 12v power adapter. On the other hand, I have taken a step into further involvement with the Tucson folks and have designed a course which we will be using at the February event next weekend. It took some time and some input from other members, and of course, approval of the design for safety and feasibility, but hopefully it will be fun to run next Sunday. I’ll post the map with my usual post event ramblings.

Last weekend Summer and I spend the weekend in Bisbee, which is a small town about 90 miles southeast of Tucson. Bisbee was a copper town before the mines were shut down in the 1970s and now sort of straddles the border of a small arts community and an old west ghost town.

We went down on Saturday, attended the annual Chocolate Tasting, and stayed at the Gym Club Suites. The suites building was originally a YMCA, then was converted to an apartment building, and now is a hotel. The loft we got was excellent and had a small balcony with a nice view of most of the town.

On Sunday we walked around ‘downtown’ and checked out the shops and sights. We also went on a tour of the Queen Copper mine and rode down the tracks over 1000 feet into the mine, 600 feet underground. I didn’t bring the camera on the tour because I had no idea how rough the ride would be and how much possibility there was for the camera to get damaged. After all, before we got on the rail cars we were outfitted in bright yellow jackets and hard hats along with battery packs hooked up to lights. Let me tell you how flattering that outfit wasn’t.

Yesterday I dropped by the Tucson Animal Fair which Summer was working at, which provided some good photo ops.

It was basically a mass gathering of animal rescue shelters and services located in and around Tucson ranging from breed specific rescue foundations, to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, to various dog agility and dancing (yes, dancing) classes/groups.

That’s all for now, next stop: New Orleans with Summer and 5 of the Maryland VW kids. Louisiana has no idea what it is in for.

Back at the airport!

Wasted my first two runs missing gates. Oh well. Here’s video of my three clean competition runs and my first couple time only runs.

Finished 11th out of 37 in raw times and 8th overall in PAX. I also took some pics with my new camera and got some good action shots. They are posted here.

If you have never heard of this, check it out. I entered two photos this year and you can see them in the galleries. One in the black/white category and one in the people/portrait section. I didn’t win anything, and I didn’t expect to either, but it’s something cool that I plan to enter again.

If there is one thing that that I dislike about the so-called ‘digital age’ we are in it is how it has long since been rumored that digital imaging will kill 35mm photography. Well, some of those long-standing rumors and fears are slowly coming true. In the past week two serious blows have come across. First, the announcement by Nikon that they are pretty much abandoning the 35mm SLR market, cutting their 35mm SLR lineup to two cameras and a handful of lenses, as well as cutting production of their medium and large format lenses and their enlarging equipment. Secondly, Konica-Minolta has announced that they are selling their digital camera business to Sony (the ‘how long until a root kit on your camera’ jokes have already started on /.) and that they are ditching the rest of the camera market including production of film and paper. Granted, the end isn’t immediate, it has been written.

Wow.

The digital age is going to kill my dreams of having a (small) darkroom in my house before I even have the chance to realize it. Granted, these two things ultimately won’t affect me much right now as my 35mm SLR brand of choice is Canon, but still, the thought that you will soon walk into a Penn Camera (or wherever you shop) and not have nearly as many choices as you used to for 35mm equipment and materials is daunting. Don’t get me wrong, I love my digital camera, it’s great; it’s small, takes great pictures, and has survived a heck of a beating over the last couple years. There’s still something there though that keeps me from selling my 35mm equipment. I don’t shoot that much film anymore but when I do there’s something about it that feels different. It still has a certain purity to it. Printing in the darkroom (as frustrating and tedious as it can be sometimes) still has great appeal to me; the reward of when you print a photo with just the right contrast and just the right tones; you can step back and really your work. To be able to display it somewhere and know, even if no one else does, that you created it, from start to finish. For me, there’s still the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Good. Real good. Low key for the most part. Family card game Friday night which was excellent. We missed two or three months of this, hopefully that will not repeat itself. Saturday, went to the Mazda Zoom Zoom Live event which was fun. Long lines, but drove a 6, an RX8, and a new Miata. The 6 was bleh, boring, even in with a 6 under the hood. The RX8 was fun, especially with an instructor in the passenger seat giving out pointers, after we sat through a 10-minute ‘class’ on, let’s call it, precision driving. Think of it as a crash course in autocross basics. The RX8 was fun to drive, but it needs more power. The Miata was a handful. It was fun to watch people spin it all day long; coming out of the first S-turn in the course people were hitting second gear and the rear end would swing out. Some drivers recovering from the tail wag, a handful spun around in fantastic fashion, and a select talented few smoked the tires and clutch giving those in line something wonderful to smell. I managed not to spin it, but after getting through the first half of the course quickly and smoothly, I pushed a little too hard and had the rear end breaking loose in the second half. Which cost me some time. I missed the target time by 4 seconds. Oh well, it was still a blast; definitely gained some respect for light, well-balanced rear drive compacts. Went and saw Derailed Saturday night and was pleasantly surprised. I was like, c’mon, what movie (other than Office Space) is Jennifer Aniston going to be that will be good? Well, this one is. Good flick. I also got my replacement headlight this weekend and put that in Sunday. The rest of Sunday was a lazy day, spent in good company however. The weekend was finished off with my parents and grandparents at Bertucci’s. I went and got my two rolls of film from last weekend and was somewhat disappointed. I’m definitely out of practice with the SLR and been spending way too much time in point and shoot land. Hopefully the roll I took on Saturday at the Mazda event will turn out well. We’ll see. Here’s a couple that I thought were good from the two rolls I got:

I really need to pick up a circular polarizer in the very least and start shooting more film. Penn Camera’s prices from develop only and scan to CD are decent. Anyway, that was the weekend in a blog-shell.

So you would think. I could do without the heat, but just when you think things are winding down…

09.04.05: Bug Out 58, Manasses VA – I’ll be in ‘04 Modified
09.27.05: H20 International, Ocean City, MD – I’ll be in Mark 4 Golf Mild
10.09.05: Fall Classic Show n Go, Englishtown, NJ – If I feel like driving to Jersey, again
10.22.05: Return to the Tail, Deal’s Gap, NC – I can’t wait for this.

I went and finally developed the roll of 3200 black and white I had sitting since April. Yeah, April. The results were okay, they need some tweaking in Photoshop because there is a lot of grain, more so then the last 3200 rolls I shot. We’ll see what I can pull from them. I bought a bunch more film, which I hope will help in my desire to get out and shoot some more. After Waterfest and the Schnell Dyno Day, I’ve had a major itch to get more into photo stuff and video as well. Unfortunately both can be ridiculously expensive hobbies, so I’ll work with what I’ve got.

I guess I noticed I hadn’t written much of anything in like a month and was like damn, what the hell has been going on? Nothing out of the ordinary, just the same busy schedule as always…

Oh yeah, here’s the dyno chart from last weekend!

She threw down 224.2 fwhp and 217.9 ft-lbs. Here’s the video (’Save as’ for best results).

It is an odd feeling how this semester seems to have crawled (the work/school weeks) and flown (awesome weekends) at the same time. I keep thinking that once this semester is over, I somehow want to keep up the photography stuff. We (photo class) went on a field trip to Glen Echo Park, which houses Photoworks, offering classes and open darkroom opportunities. A bit of a drive, but very well worth it if happens to be the only place of its kind in the area (I have yet to research this more). I keep thinking of more little projects (see this) I would like to do with the stuff I have taken from classes as well. ::Gasp!:: I would really like to mess around with digital video stuff a lot more, especially if Mic I am not going to tell what the plan is, what fun would that be?

I have realized that I am putting a lot of expectations up for how things will change once school is over and done, specifically, with time and how I hopefully will be able to do a lot of things I have been wanting to do and just have not had the time to plan and execute. I held back from forming a whole host of expectations for this current semester, and I know I am having a better time as a result. Lofty expectations are not getting let down. I let myself slip into the expectation of the change after school, basically because the part/full time job that is class work outside of class will be gone. It is kind of scary, but what if that falls though? Major disappointment. Worry about that when it comes about, next thought.

May 20th. August 20th. Soon.

I don’t remember the last time I was this psyched after the first day of class. Maybe it was the snow on the ground (and falling, again!!!!! Yes!) or the weekend’s plans, or that photo class is going to rock.

I would like to go to my other art class tomorrow though. We’ll have to wait and see what Maryland has to say about mother nature’s nighttime antics in the AM.