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I wanted to put this photo into a post of it’s own. This is my little brother rocking it out with the band after his wedding over the weekend. I’m so proud of Troy having gotten married and seeing the large group of friends who came along to party with us all afternoon. Of course my sister couldn’t resist getting in on the act as well!
I hate the last day of any vacation. I did have one day working last week. But tomorrow I return to full time working again. I have a few projects held over from last year that I’m looking forward to getting in to. Late last year I discovered the advantages of using my colleagues in India to help me with some of our work and I want to explore that some more. I’m sure it will seem a long time ago since I was swimming in my mum and dad’s swimming pool at Christmas in a few days.
You may have noticed the nice sharp photos in the new webcam image lately. They are coming from the new 2 megapixel Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. Another gift from Christmas. I was amazed when I sparked it up on Christmas morning and took a snap of my family opening their presents. It takes nice sharp and clear photos. I haven’t quite worked out how to adjust the white balance settings just yet. Now that I having a webcam that works without failure on my Mac I can run the webcam more often.
I’m very excited about my Christmas present. The Lumix underwater camera takes brilliant photos! I can’t wait to take it on the next trip down to the beaches. Now I won’t be so silly with carry my SLR out in to the surf. Posted below are some shots taken with the camera in my parents backyard swimming pool. It also takes very nice “out of water” photos.
I often take for granted living right in the middle of the city. last night as the rain came down I was watching the fireworks from the front bedroom window. And then I checked over the Yarra River and I could see the fireworks going off from the top of the Eureka Tower. In fact I only had to move my computer chair slightly to the right to watch the show. How lazy is that!
It’s not looking so good for the midnight fireworks show in Melbourne tonight as the BOM website’s radar shows a huge band of rain heading right toward the city. The city has been preparing for this night for weeks. The government has put 600 police on patrol to monitor the crowds and the liquor stores stopped selling beer in glass bottles. If the rain comes then I think crowds will be a lot lower than previous years.
My first underwater Christmas? It’s been a very busy time in the lead up to Christmas. Tyson has been working like crazy to get the MelbourneLoft site moved to a new server and at the same time turning it into a more “blog style” page and keeping the webcam section. He’s done a great job on it!
I had a little bit of bad news in the week leading up to Christmas about my health. I have to get some surgery on my leg early in 2010. And then I was running about like crazy getting ready to come to the Gold Coast to see my family. But it was all worth it seeing everyone so happy on Christmas day. I think it’s always important to have things to do on Christmas day. So I got an underwater camera for Christmas and took a whole lot of photos in mum and dad’s swimming pool. I’ll post a lot more once I work out how to insert a gallery in wordpress.
These shots are of me and my older brother. I also got a new higher res webcam to bring sharper shots to MelbourneLoft.
The department stores Myer and David Jones have been having a big makeover in this past year and I believed it was all going to be completed for Christmas.  Last week i even told some tourists to go in and check out the new completed Myer store.  And then I spotted this! It hardly looks to be anywhere near completion!  I was really shocked when I saw that the back end of the building is still just a skeleton.  The makeover must be pretty impressive seeing that they are actually ripping down the building.
In the meantime my favourite part of David Jones, mens casual clothes, has been moved up to the first floor. Â It’s just not the same cutting through DJs on the way home from the gym to see who’s out shopping now.
I’ve been busy this past week showing my friend Bill from Ohio around Melbourne and Sydney. So I took a few days off work to show him around. In his short stay in Australia we squeezed in a tour around Melbourne, a trip to St Kilda, a visit to Sexpo, a trip to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary, then flew to Sydney to ride the ferries across the Sydney Harbour, do some shopping and check out Manly Beach.  Phew!  it’s been a busy one!  He has even been helping me sort out my wardrobe. I’ll let you guess from the photos which each one relates to.
I have my friend Bill from Ohio staying with me this week. I love it when Americans come to Australia for the first time. It gives me so much power! I feel like I could almost tell him anything and he would believe it.  On Day 1 we hot the ground running as I started to fill him in on some of Australia’s culture.  So we started off with a stop at Federation Square and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).  He Bill meets the robot Dexter from the TV dating show “Perfect Match”.