This is the second part of my update spanning most of October and the first part of November.
It’s been an exciting month for me, mostly because I finally got the new lounge chairs (or sofas, in more international English) that I ordered back in July. These are the first non-second-hand lounge chairs I have ever owned, and were custom made with my choice of colour and style.
(The shade is greener in life than in the picture, but it depends on the light.)
Herewith another link collection and general update. This one’s a little out of schedule (given that I aim to post these things near the 7th and 21st of each month), but sometimes it’s a battle to keep my queue of to-read links from growing a lot faster than I can read them….
There’s a little personal news at the end, including one 3D photo.
I heard about the death of Neil Armstrong from my alarm clock radio. It’s unusual that my alarm clock radio tells me something I care about; normally I look upon radio as merely an inoffensive noise to get me out of bed. But this was an exception. I linked to an interview with Armstrong back in May, but never got around to listening to more than the first two episodes. Should do that.
It seems appropriate this month to put my space-related links first, and let everything else follow.
I visited my parents on the weekend, and while I was there I also tested a new digital camera, which I bought on Thursday. This blog post therefore serves two roles — a report on my latest trip home, and a gallery of photos from my new camera.
I travelled home on Friday morning — as far as Moonta with friends and then (after a coffee, walk, etc), the rest of the way with Mum. It was a good trip home, and the second time I’ve visited Mum and Dad since they moved into their new house in the town. Here are a couple of photos from the first time (back in Easter, via my blog archives): [1, 2]
The new camera is an Olympus VG-170, and replaces my old Olympus D-545 Zoom, which had been getting worse for wear lately. The new one is capable of up to 14 megapixels, but I have it set on 5 megapixels for now.
So … here are some shots of the outside of my parents’ house.
It’s been ages since I shared links, so I’ve got some catching up to do. First I’ll share older links. Then I’ll share some photos from my Easter break (think of it as an intermission). And finally I’ll share recent links.
Over Easter I visited my parents, and saw the inside of their new house for the first time (they’ve recently moved from the farm into the town). Here’s a sample photograph. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, but it meant getting every room in my house clean and tidy at the same time. This happens about as often as a conjuction of five planets. Which room corresponds to which planet is left as an exercise for the reader.
The following thumbnail, if you click it, will take you to a 4.4-megabyte animated GIF image. The content of this 41-frame animation is a quick tour through my home. You can think of it as an overview of all my renovations and furniture acquisitions over the last few years. Or you can think of it as a peek into my mind, and try to analyse it psychologically. Or you can look out for interesting objects that raise questions you’d like to ask me. Or you can compose a fictional real estate ad for it. Or you can write a text adventure game based on it. However you choose to think of it, I welcome all comments, no matter how whimsical.
Some interesting articles that I’ve found recently, followed by some personal updates and other bits & pieces.
A little more about that last item. Some years ago I figured out that the opposite side of the world from my present location could be determined more or less as follows: take the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar, and the longitude of the southernmost tip of Greenland, and where they intersect, there you are. But how close is that? What location in Australia is precisely opposite those coordinates? Using the online Antipodes Map above, I’ve discovered that the answer is a point off the west coast of Kangaroo Island. Are you opposite any location that can be succinctly described with reference to landmarks and not distances/coordinates?
Now on to some stuff that’s less generally interesting and more about what I’ve been doing lately.
Last time I wrote about home renovations, I posted photographs of the curtains in my living room and office. I didn’t get curtains installed in my bedroom at the time, because I couldn’t find a material that suited the colour scheme (sunset theme, with purple walls and orange skirting boards and architraves).
I have now, though, and here’s a photograph of my new bedroom curtains which were installed today.
First, a brief notice to the effect that this blog is now being syndicated on Livejournal. It’s still better to read it the way it’s intended to be read, but the syndicated version is an alternative if you happen to find it more convenient. Let me remind readers that my archives are indexed here, where you can browse through them at your leisure.
Anyway … further to my previous post, my floors have now been renovated. They look great, and there is a very noticeable improvement in insulation.
I’ll shortly be offline for a day and a half. My carpets and lino will be ripped up and replaced with cork tomorrow, so I certainly won’t be using my computer then. And because the workers will be moving furniture around, I am trying to simplify their task by packing my possessions away either into the bathroom or onto the kitchen benches. Soon I’ll be unplugging the computer and putting it away on the kitchen benches, too. (This isn’t merely generosity on my part; if I let the workers move my stuff around, they’ll put things back wrong.)
Yesterday morning I woke to discover a bird in my house, trying to fly out through the glass of the kitchen window. The only explanation I had for how it got in was that it must have flown in the evening before when I very briefly had the door open and been trapped here all night. This is incredible, but there was no other explanation. I got it out, but sometime later it was back. In my house. With no possible way of having got in. This morning I chased it out at least three times, and cleaned various messes off the sink, basin, benchtop and floor.
My home is reasonably clean and tidy at the moment, as I’d been told that my floors would be renovated on the 28th, which is two days from now. But I received a phone call this morning to say that the stock has not arrived, so I don’t know when my floors will be renovated. This sort of thing is annoying.
I have previously explained the difficulty of taking photographs of my kitchen – in summary, a camera insists upon rendering as dark blue that which the eye knows to be dark green. However, what with the kitchen being clean I decided to have another go at taking that photograph, in order to show off the colour scheme that I’m so proud of.
