Caitlin was messing around in the music room today, and actually managed to stand up whilst holding the guitar for a while..so I got a photo.
And then, because I’m me, I spent some time messing around in PaintShop Pro…
The results –
And, the original -
I had Caitlin last night, as Emma went to Sydney yesterday and today.
I picked her up from her (Great) Grandma’s house at 3ish where for the first time in history she was already ready to go.
I took her to see The Incredibles as I mentioned in the post dedicated to that, which we both enjoyed a lot. Then we grabbed some KFC and headed home.
After dinner she announced that she was going to do some work(!), and got out a book of various educational type excercises, puzzles and games (with gold stars!) and sat down and finished it – so she could have the satisfaction of sticking the big gold star on it.
It wasn’t school work, as school hasn’t even started for the year yet. It was just a book that she must have got for christmas, or even just randomly over the holidays. I’d imagine if she ever got a book like that for homework, it would remain uncompleted, and un-starred ;)
Next she decided that she wanted to do some more work on her web site – so I got her to try to come up with a story for the pictures she’d already put up there.
I then spent the rest of the evening telling her how to spell words as she labouriously typed her way through the five sentence story letter at a time, and then showed her how to get the layout she wanted.
After that I asked her if there was anything else she wanted to do with it – to which she announced rather enthusiastically that she wanted to put games on it.
me: Ummm, that’s a little too hard, I’m afraid
her: awwww, but pleeeassee
me: please wont help, I’d like to say we could do it, but it’s not really the same thing as HTML. What sort of games did you want to put there anyway?
her: oh, just something simple
me: Well, if it’s really really simple, then maybe we might be able to have a look at it
her: yay!
She then grabs a pen and some paper and starts madly drawing stuff, muttering to herself, whilst I feel the ominous approach of impending doom
me: Ok, that’s good – but how will it work?
her: oh, just a bit like Neopets and a bit like Blue’s Clues.
me: (helplessly) you said simple.
her: yeah, it is
me: I’m sorry miss, there’s no way I can do that….it’s not really all that simple, it’s actually really, really difficult. It’d take years, if I could even do it…and anyway…it’s kind of way past time you should be in bed…
her: (crushed) oh.
There’s nothing like having to destroy your daughter’s faith in your god like paternal powers by admitting that you’re unable to implement a massive multi user web site and an interactive multi media educational game before bed time.
But in typical Caitlin fashion, it took her about 30 milliseconds to get over it and bounce on to the next thing ;)
This morning we played a little Flipnic (a rather bizarre PS2 pinball game I picked up at EB for $20), had breakfast, then headed out.
We went to the computer fair to look for a new (or more likely, second hand) hard drive for her computer, as her one is tiny and can barely take an operating system let alone anything else. I figured I could probably find something in the 8-10Gig range for fairly cheap.
I also intended to see if I could find another second hand motherboard like the $40 one I saw before christmas so as to give her machine a little bit of an upgrade too – probably something like a 500Mhz processor.
Well…about an half an hour later we wandered out with a whole new computer for her.
After we’d done the rounds of the tables a couple of times for me to get an idea of what was there, I’d decided that I probably could put together a bit of an upgrade for her – possibly even enough to let her run XP instead of having to stick with 98. I’d seen a motherboard with a 500Mhz AMD K6 in it for $50, a 10 gig hard drive for $20 and 256 Meg of memory for another $50. That was more than I had got out, but was still pretty good, so we went out to go and get some more money.
For some strange reason though, I decided that rather than getting another $50 out, I’d get $120 – so I did.
Then we went back in, and now having just over $200 in my pocket instead of just under $100, I did the rounds again re-evaluating the situation, and looking at some of the second hand complete machines.
Most within the price range still weren’t really what I wanted – they’d be too slow, or have not enough memory, or too small a hard drive, or all three. So I was just about to go and do the motherboard/CPU + memory + hard drive thing when I saw a tag on a stack of computers that said $195 – 1GHZ Pentium III – which caught my attention, as none of the other sub $200 machines were even close to 1GHz – and I kept reading – 256Meg RAM – even better – that’s enough to run XP in – 30 gig hard drive – 30 gig? all the others were in single digits! – and 100 megabit network and keyboard and mouse.
I stood and stared at them a while to work out if they were actually real, and re-read the tag a few times. Then I did another round of the room to make sure that it really was as good a deal as I thought it was, and yes – $195 at any of the other second hand tables would get me a maximum of a 700Mhz machine with 128 (or even 64) meg of memory and a 6 gig hard drive.
So I headed back over there, and there were a couple of guys talking to the stall holder about the machines – they seemed to be having trouble believing it too, and I heard the stall holder say that he had hundreds of them in his warehouse. I managed to get his attention (getting your wallet out and counting your money tends to do that) and bought one. He carefully demonstrated to me that the specs matched the tag before shutting it down, grabbing a keyboard and mouse for us and handing it over.
So, I went in looking for a $20 hard drive and came out with a $200 computer. That’s a depressingly common occurrence for me.
We (well, I – Caitlin didn’t take long to decide that watching progress bars crawl across the screen is really not very interesting, and dragged out the mechano instead) spent most of the rest of the afternoon setting it up – installing Windows XP because Caitlin really wanted it (I’d find that depressing except for the fact that she also wanted me to install Linux on it too), upgrading XP to service pack 2, and installing the software and drivers for her graphics tablet.
So now she finally has a machine that can actually drive her christmas present.
So, a summary of Caitlin’s time here:
I wonder what she’s going to be when she grows up? heh.
(Spoiler Free Zone)
I took Caitlin to see The Incredibles this afternoon. I wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea, as I knew it wasn’t quite a kids movie (and is rated PG), despite being by Pixar, but I figured it was probably safe enough.
Well, once she started grabbing my arm and kinda whimpering or yelping and ducking every time something happened, I really started to think I’d made a bad choice. But then during one particularly fast, tense and frantic part when she was gripping my arm like a vice, and making constant yelping noises, I looked at her, and her eyes were glued to the screen, and she had the biggest grin on her face, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea afterall.
In fact, on asking her about it afterwards she said that “it was really great” and then went on to say “…but they got the idea from me – I made up all those powers years ago.” – and she spent the rest of the evening dashing around everywhere, and trying to stretch herself across and around everything.
Though she did eventually admit that she couldn’t turn invisible, or create a forcefield…
Anyway, definitely an excelent movie well worth seeing – probably the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen, and also includes some of the best family fights round the table scenes, heh.
Go and see it.
Now!
Why are you still reading? – you should be buying tickets right now!
I was just outside and came across something I’d never seen before.
At first glance, it looked like a batterd, slightly curled up gum leaf, or a piece of bark.
It was originally stuck to the back of one of my outside chairs – one I was about to sit in. So I went to brush it off, but then I noticed something kind of odd about it.
Instead of brushing it off, I picked the chair up and shook it a little, the leaf thing stayed on the chair, but it MOVED.
So I looked a little closer, and it appeared to have a body sticking out from under it.
At this point I thought maybe it was some sort of catipillar thing under the leaf – maybe both caught up in a web or something. But no, no web to be seen, and the body appeared to be physically attached to the leaf.
Whilst it had moved little when I shook the chair before, it wasn’t moving at all now, and it was starting to look like just a leaf again. So I turned the chair upside down and shook whatever it was off.
It fell to the floor, and then FLEW to the trellis on the deck where it again resumed its motionless leaf impersonations.
At this point I decided to get out the camera and take some photos, because I’ve never seen anything like it before.
I’m still not entirely sure what it is – I THINK it’s a moth, but I’m not entirely ruling out butterfly either.
It appears to have feathery antenae like a moth, and doesn’t hold its wings closed when at rest like a butterfly does – but the wing shape itself is not the standard triangle I’m used to seeing in moths.
Here’s some better pictures of it, where you can see that it’s certainly not a leaf, but at the same time can see just how much like a leaf or a strip of bark from a eucalyptus tree it looks like.
It actually reminds me of some of the nature fairies in Zanzara..heh
Update: Still no idea what it is, except that it’s definitely a moth. No amount of googling has given me an answer.
You can see some higher quality photos and a few better angles here.
The wing span is about 5.5cm tip to tip, or just over 2 inches. It actually let me put a tape measure right next to it and didn’t budge. It’s still out there now.
Update 2: It’s a Circopetes Obtusata (thanks to Heather for making the appropriate inquiries).
NIGHTWISHARECOMINGTOAUSTRALIANIGHTWISHARECOMINGTOAUSTRALIA!!!!
Sorry, just needed to get that out of my system :P
I just found out from a co worker with excellent taste in music that Nightwish are indeed coming to Australia in March. Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane.
I barely managed to control the sudden urge to take a week off work and buy tickets to all four shows, and have contented myself with just the Sydney one…heh
I have no idea who’s supporting them yet – it looks like Chalice were hoping to be the ones but seem to have fallen out with the promoters, so that looks unlikely. Which is a pity, because Chalice is exactly who came to mind as who I would have liked to see supporting them.
Oh well, if it’s not Chalice then maybe it’ll be someone else equally as good that I havent heard of yet, giving me more music I can hunt for ;)
Regardless of who’s supporting, It’s going to be an excellent night.
This is the best news I’ve had in a long, long time…
It’s been a relatively pleasant week since Tuesday – I’ve spent most of the time Not Cleaning, Not Sweeping Leaves and Not Weeding, which is always nice.
I’ve probably been ODing on Civilization too – I’ve spent abput 24 hours on a game on my own this week, and also played a game with Emma until 2:30 in the morning last night, and continued it for another four hours or so today. She recently got ADSL, which makes playing over the net quite a bit easier – before that on the one time we’d attempted a multiplayer game over the net there was quite a painful delay between clicking the mouse or pressing a key and anything actually happening.
All that Civ playing has taken its toll though – I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been trampled over by a stampede of Oliphants. You wouldn’t think playing a strategy game would hurt – but the tendency to stare unblinking, unmoving at the screen for the duration of the session causes more than a few seized up muscles…heh.
Apart from that, I spent the rest of the weekend taking photos of my various dragons and other things that I have scattered around the house for the purpose of letting people who tend to buy them for me know what I already have, as well as providing the oportunity to show them off a bit ;)
That was quite an interesting excersize – experimenting with lighting and stuff to try to get the best results.
Originally I experimented with draping some black cloth I had lying around over the small CD rack on one of my desks, and putting the dragons in front of that.
That worked OK for the first one I tried, but for most of them it was too short – to avoid a noticeable shadow behind the subject, I needed to have it quite far forward from the backdrop, but that meant that you could see the wall behind.
So I ended up draping a queen sized black bedsheet over the front of the desk and on to the floor, and that seemed to provide enough height.
I also then wrapped a stack of CDs in the black cloth I’d used in my first attempts and used that as a platform for the subjects. With the addition of a bendy standing reading light, a desk lamp, and a tiny tripod that Emma had given me because she never used it, I completed my make-shift studio.
For most of them, I used the flash, as that would usually illuminate the subject enough that the backround completely disappeared to black – which was the effect I was looking for.
However, the flash on my camera is very bright, and in some cases was way too much – so for a few I had to experiment with using no flash, or using the flash in fill mode (which is when it opens the shutter – flashes, then holds the shutter open for a while longer to let the ambient light have a chance to make an impact).
Here’s a sample of what the three different ways look like –
| Flash | Fill Flash | No Flash |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
It took quite a lot of time all up, and resulted in the taking of easily 200 photos – for one item I took 30 photos to get it right, although that was fairly extreme. It was the hanging tealight candle holder I got for my birthday and I was trying to photograph it with the candle lit. So as well as trying to make the subject itself look good, and attempting to drop out as much background as possible, I was also trying to emphasize the light from the candle.
Most only required one or two photos especially the ones that were all very similar – once I’d got it right for one, I could just swap in the next, take the photo and move on.
Anyway…it was all rather satisfying, and you can view the results here.
The trouble with inspections is that you never know when they’re gonna come on the day, and you never know who’s going to do the inspection and how thoroughly they’re gonna do it…
The last couple of inspections have been pretty much dead on 9:00am, and involved peeking and poking in all sorts of nooks and crannies – some of which I didn’t even know existed.
So after my week of moving furniture, cleaning, sweeping, vacuuming, I then sit here for half the day waiting for them to turn up, and then when they do, they don’t even LOOK at anything.
She didn’t even so much as open the toilet door, didn’t check the oven, vaguely peered into the bedrooms from the hallway, and didn’t go outside.
My aching muscles and sleep deprived mind want compensation! Gah!
However, at least it’s over, and I pass with full marks again, and I’m getting some of the Gum trees trimmed and my fly screens fixed.
So that’s something :)
…keeps the property manager away?
It’d be nice if that was all it took.
Just finished all the cleaning I’m gonna do, all paved areas swept, all cobwebs vanquished, and all funny marks on carpets, benches and desktops artfully covered with something. Now I just await the inspection itself and I can get back to my life again.
On the topic of Apples – Apple’s new Mac mini has got me probably just about as close to purchasing a Mac as I’ll ever get. They sell iPods for more than that….and it’s not much bigger than one either, in fact, it weights half as much as my laptop! If I weren’t currently so burried in holiday debt, I’d have probably bought one by now.
I probably wouldn’t want to use one for a desktop machine – at least not beyond the obligatory experimenting with OS X – as for one to really be suitable for more than web browsing (I’d probably want to use it for Java development), I’d have to get more memory, and that would start pusing the price up. But as a nice little server, it’d be brilliant especially since I’m currently using two ancient machines as my servers now – a 233Mhz Pentium II, and a 350MHz K6-II. It would probably be quite a lot quieter too.
Of course theres lots of other things I want to spend money on once I get money again – upgrading Caitlin’s computer, buying more music gear, upgrading my Music computer – but it’s still very tempting. It’s probably just as well that I don’t have any money, as I might have forgotten about it by the time I do.
I just got back from seeing Finding Neverland with Emma.
It’s the story of J.M. Barrie and the family that were the basis of Peter Pan, with Johnny Depp as Mr Barrie.
It was a very emotional film….from tense awkwardness at the beginning (or pretty much any scene in which he’s talking to his wife) to crushing sadness at the end.
By the time the closing credits came there were quite a number of sniffles and snuffles coming from various parts of the audience, my seat included….
I don’t really have anything more to say about it, partly ’cause I’m no good at reviews, and partly ’cause it’s too soon after, and I’m still feeling a little wobbly..
It’s definitely well worth seeing though – if you can catch it before it disappears…
….must resist temptation to play Civilization…..
….
arg….
…too late…
…if you don’t hear from me for a week, someone come and unplug my computer……..