Real Life Whale

Check out this site. You can zoom in and see parts of a whale at full size. It is amazing detail.

Retro Nerd Hysteria

Demo of the first Apple Macintosh by Steve Jobs, January 1984. Check out how excited the crowd gets when the chess game shows up on the screen.

Pulling the toys out of retirement

Sean and I are about to go indoor climbing this morning. This is going to be really scary as I haven't climbed for about 5 years. It was hard enough climbing the ladder into the roof to find my climbing gear, which was buried away amongst the other semi-retired toys. Toys that include...

- Climbing gear
- Camping gear
- Hiking gear
- Tennis rackets
- Squash rackets
- Kath's ski boots
- Bike helmet

... to name a few.

James is starting express interest in going camping. The two of us were going to go camping down at the farm in a couple of weekends, but with only a couple of flying weekends left before the Nationals, that has had to be put on hold.

Aunty Monkey - A new social network

I am in the process of setting up a new ballooning focused social network (kinda like a MySpace for balloonists).

http://www.auntymonkey.com


This means that this blog will now become more personal focused and all my ballooning banter will be at http://www.auntymonkey.com.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour just happened. It seemed to be a success from here. It is hard to tell when we live such a bushy part of Sydney and it is always pretty dark. However the Sydney skyline view from our carport did go significantly darker.

There were a couple of highlights. Firstly having a nice dinner by candlelight in the pitch darkness was lovely. We also saw a shooting star, which was pretty amazing to see in Sydney.

The Worlds - Danish Style

Here is a video of photos from Benny Jorgensen's (Denmark) team.

1997 World Hot Air Balloon Championship, Saga Japan

I'm on a roll of uploading videos to YouTube. Here is a short video I edited from some of Kath's videos.

Monty Python - The Golden Age of Ballooning

I can't believe I have never seen this before. Here is the first of 4 parts. The other 3 can be seen here...

Part 2 of 3
Part 3 of 3
Part 6 of 3

2006 Worlds Video

I finally got around to compressing this video (not the greatest compression) and put it up onto YouTube last night. In case you were wondering, the music is by The Cruel Sea.

Back flying again.

The flying season has officially started again. On Thursday afternoon, we packed up the car and headed down to Benalla (Victoria) , with a stop over night at Binalong. Why Benalla? Well that is where the Nationals are going to be in July. I hadn't been ballooning at Benalla since I was 15 in 1990, so I thought it would be worth scoping it out before the Nationals.

It was a very hot weekend (mid 30s), so we only got to fly Saturday and Sunday mornings. Both flights were very enjoyable and all up managed to get about 3 hours of flying time.

The big thing about the weekend was that I flew our 77 for the first time in nearly a year. Last year I managed to put a few holes in it on a tree and hadn't bothered getting it fixed as I had been flying the Kavanagh EX-65 leading up to and during the worlds. It was certainly different flying the lumpy 77 again. I definitely need to do a bit of flying in it before the Nationals.

It was a great weekend. I am now getting excited about the Nationals.

Geeks, Nerds and Dweebs

We have been having an internal argument at work for the last week or so, between the Digital Team, the Data Analytics team and the Strategic Planners, over who should be called geeks and who should be called nerds. We have kind of come to the conclusion we are all Geeks based on the following Wikipedia definitions.

Geek

A geek is an individual who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination, usually electronic or virtual in nature. Geek may not always have the same meaning as the term nerd. The Merriam-Webster definitions for the word geek are "1: a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake 2: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked 3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity," though these are only three of many definitions.

Nerd

Nerd, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to somebody who passionately pursues intellectual or esoteric knowledge or pastimes, rather than engaging in a social life, participating in organized sports, or other mainstream activities. The Merriam-Webster definition is an "unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially: one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits."

Dweeb

Dweeb, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to somebody who studies a lot so that he or she can present themselves as an intelligent person, when in reality they aren't so smart. The Merriam-Webster definition is "an unattractive, insignificant, or inept person". A "dweeb" can be compared to a nerd although a nerd has more of a passion for knowledge.

I broke my blog

You might have noticed that my blog has gone very vanilla looking. I was being an idiot the other day and tried to add lots of extra features. Unfortunately it screwed the templates up. You would think that after 11 years in digital industry I would be able to change my blog template, but no.

Oh well, when I get some time I will make it look pretty again.

Cruise Missile or Plane

This can be seen on Google Maps. Is it a missile or a plane? Link

Earth Hour TVC

Our new ad for Earth Hour. Share it with your friends.

Training Video

Imagine crewing for this guy!

VW Balloon Ad

myearthdream.com

This is a really interesting concept. The Honda F1 Racing Team have decided to race a car that has no corporate sponsorship. Instead they have painted the car as the earth. They are then asking for people to pledge their commitment (and sponsorship) to the earth, raising awareness for global earth issues. Visit myearthdream.com

Geocaching by Kayak

Ever since we moved into the house, I have always been meaning to get out the kayak and paddle up Middle Harbour and the valley that our house looks over. Now that I am into Geocaching, I found that there was a cache right there. So I got the kayak, brushed off the dust and spiders, strapped on the GPS and went for a 8 km paddle. It was lovely, even though I only found 1 of the 2 caches along the way. The second looks like it has been stolen (as the previous 3 people have also not been able to find it.

The photo below is of where I got to. It is where the water stops, right near the cache and the point where our house looks our over.

LASER Grafitti

Only in Japan

Why anyone would go to the effort of doing this, but this Japanese guy decided he would like to take a hot bath in a balloon. Very odd. link

Bill Gates v Steve Jobs

Kiwi

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager

This is the first of 6 episodes. Very amusing.

3 Legged Lamp

Ellie is wearing a lampshade. She had an operation on her knee last week because she had popped a ligament. So she is now wearing a neck cone to stop chewing her stitches. She is slowly getting more cherpy, but it will be some weeks before she can walk properly on her bad leg.

The five stages of a giraffe in quicksand

Bugatti Veyron - Top Gear

Geocaching

I went geocaching for the first time today. Basically this involves going to geocaching.com and type in your postcode. This brings up a whole list of locations of hidden "caches". Many of them have the coordinates of the location that you can put straight into your GPS. Others have puzzles that you need to work out to get the coordinates. You then take your GPS and start searching the landscape to fine the hidden cache.

I went tramping around the hills and bush in Belrose, with little success. I had 2 caches to find. I got to the location of the first, but couldn't find the actual hidden cache. I fell short of the second because I ran out of steam and the tracks took me the wrong direction.

It is a great excuse for running around in the bush and places that you would not normally think of going.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a Leo Burnett initiative that has been supported by Fairfax Digital and WWF (2 of our clients). Basically the idea is to build awareness of global warning, so they are encouraging people and businesses around Sydney to turn their lights off for an hour at 7.30pm on 31 March. Heaps of companies have already committed to it. So hopefully Sydney is going to be nice an dark. Link.

An old classic

This is the internet at its best. Trust me you will have this song stuck in your head for days. Link

Japanese Advertising

God bless Japanese advertisers

Happy Birthday Kath!

It is Kath's birthday today. Her folks kindly offered to baby sit James, so we decided to hire a "Tinny" speed boat for 4 hours and cruised around Pittwater from Cottage Point. It was a beautiful day. We found a lovely little beach and had a gourmet picnic.

James decided to give Hungry Hungry Hippos to Kath for her birthday. He is addicted to it. I must admit, it is a pretty fun game.

3D Thermal Riding

Recently I have been playing around with OziExplorer's 3D profiling program, looking at some past flight tracks.

In September last year I had a very interesting flight that involved getting caught in a thermal. We took off in the afternoon, which was warm but not hot, from the paddock behind our house at Binalong for a short flight. As part of my practice for the Worlds, I was flying a Kavanagh EX65, which is designed to handle fast vertical speeds. We cruised (quite quickly) up to 3000 feet above the launch site and then leveled out. Then a strange thing happened...

Without putting much heat into the balloon, we found ourselves in a sudden rapid ascent and within a minute and a half we were at 5500 feet where it rounded out. The balloon handled the climb very well, it was more a surprise to find ourselves at that height. After a fast descent, we landed on the other side of the hill having only traveled 2km.

Australia Day

James (now asleep) and I have just returned from our annual trip to Parramatta Park for the Australia Day ballooning. We haven't flown there for a few years, but we are making it an annual tradition to let Kath sleep in and we go and crew for Sean.

Useless Dog

A nice film about a useless sheep dog.

An age to remember

James turned 4 on Friday! Wow he is growing up fast.

Four has always been a significant age to me because most of my earliest memories are from when I was 4. I think it is probably because a lot of memorable events happened to me during that age, like starting school, starting ballooning and my grandfather dying. I probably remember events earlier than 4, but these milestones give time relevance to memories. We had a pretty full on year last year (Japan, America and moving house), so I wonder if James will remember these things.

One thing that has made me very happy is that James (thanks to some nice birthday presents) has discovered the joys of Lego. He is not ready to start building things, but he really enjoys playing with it.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We had a quiet night at home last night for New Years Eve. We did however discover that the view of the Sydney fireworks from our car port is fantastic. Sydney has 6 barges of coordinated fireworks situated in different spots on the harbour. From the carport we can see 5 of them. So even though we are a long way away, we still get a great perspective. So much so, for both the 9pm and the midnight fireworks, we had strangers (who were looking for a good vantage point) hanging out in our carport as well.

We also watched Kenny last night. Geez that is a funny film.