ICCC 38 - Guaranteed to be a blast

While the 37th ICCC conference in Cape Town was well worth while I may give the 38th a miss.

Taller people are smarter - The stats prove it

An excellent article out of "Stuff" that indicates what we have all always known.

"While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality – tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers"

And we all know that statistics never lie.

Goodbye Africa

Well my holiday has finally come to an end. I am about to fly out of Jo'burg and while I will be sad to leave Africa I will not be sad to leave this s*#t hole. I have no idea how anyone could ever live in this crud hole. Just a short (20 hrs) flight and back to Sydney and my PhD, actually Jo'burg seems more appealing now.

Conference Time

Well the holiday had officially ended and I have had to switch to conference mode. I gave my talk yesterday and it went alright, not amazing but I am relatively happy with it. I had quite a reasonable crowd as well which was a pleasant surprise.
My aim of eating one of every animal in Africa is going quite well. So far I have had: Springbok, Wilderbeast, Warthog, Snails, Kudu, Ostrich and maybe Oryx.

Photos from Africa

While in the city of Swakopmund in Namibia Aleisha and I visited a snake park and the owner was kind enough to let us play with a Rock Python. As it was a nice day he told us to take it outside which ended up drawing the attention of the locals and creating quite a scene.

In a small town on the northern edge of Botswana we set up camp only to have a rather large Warthog wander on in and decide to go to sleep in the middle of our camp site.

On the last day of the tour we had a Township tour in Cape Town where one of the locals took a liking to me. The tour was informative although it did feel a bit like a game drive.

Photos!

I have managed to get a few photos from the microlight trip that I did over Victoria Falls. There aren’t too many with me looking at the camera as I was kinda busy taking in the amazing scenery! I will try to get some more photos up if I can.
We spent today exploring the sights around Cape Town city centre. It looks like the weather may be nice tomorrow so we hope to head up Table Mountain. On Thursday we have a full day wine tour booked and on Friday Aleisha fly’s out and I actually have to do some work!

Cape Town - South Africa

Well our 25 day tour has now finished and we have arrived in Cape Town. After 26 days of perfect weather Cape Town has decided to be wet and cold. Hopefully it will clear up some time this week so we can see Table Mountain. After much searching we still have not managed to find a single freckin computer that actually works in Africa, so still no pictures sorry.
Cape Town is a LOT nicer than Jo'burg as we dont fear for our lives during the day, just at night. We went to Robben Island today for a tour and had mixed feelings. It was interesting to see where Nelson Mandela had spent 18 years in prison but there was absolutely no information about the apartheid regime which surprised us.

Skydiving in Namibia

Well since we are in the adventure city of Namibia we figured it was a good time to jump out of an aeroplane. It was amazing as we jumped from 10000 ft over the Namid Desert and ocean. We had a 30 sec free fall and then a 5 min flight down during which time we got to fly the paraschute ourselves. Aleisha jumped just before me but I still landed a few minutes before her, due to the fact that I had a pretty crazy tandem master.
Despite my best attempts I still cant find a computer in Africa that is capable of loading photos onto the web, well it could but our trip would be over before one was finished. So no photos until Cape Town, sorry.

Namibia - Etosha National Park

Aleisha and I have arrived in Etosha National Park for a couple days of serious critter watching. The place where we are staying is located right in the middle of the National park and has a watering hole that allows for game viewing all day and night long. Last night we saw 8 Rhinos, 1 Lion, 4 Elephants, 800 Zebra and a few thousand Springbok. Tonight we are hoping to complete the big five with a Leopard but time will tell. After that we are off to the adventure capital of Namibia - Swakopmund for some non-critter activities.
Namibia seems like a lovely country and is by far the most developed place we have seen since South Africa. We are looking forward to our next 6 days here.

Namibia – Windhoek

We have left Botswana behind and have arrived in Namibian town of Windhoek. It is a city like all other western cities really and quite a change to what we have been use to over the last few weeks. I spent last night under the stars sleeping by the camp fire, luckily there were no critters around. We are off to Etosha National Park tomorrow for some more wild life watching and hopefully we will be able to complete the big five as we have the leopard and Rhino left. We stay in the park itself (which is the size of Kruger National Park) and there are watering holes that we can stay at all night to watch the critters.

Back in Botswana

Hello all!
Well we are back in good ol' Botswana, nice and safe. We spent all of yesterday taking in the sights and mainly sounds of a night in the Okavango Delta. The Delta is a large inland swamp esentially, the water has travelled all the way from Angola in the North and it's stilll arriving daily to surround the reeds in water. Travelling through the delta is quite an experience in itself as the local polers load you up in their tiny little dugout canoe esentially and pole you through the hippo infested waters to your camp site, ours was an island around 1 hours ride into the delta. The Makoros sit so low in the water it is a very disturbing experience. Simon and I were glad to get an artificial one as it didn't leek like the wooden dugouts.
This morning we got up early for a game walk hopefully to see elephants and giraffes, (no one wants to see a predator by foot!).
Fortunately we managed to see wild dogs a little too close, as in they passed behind us by around 10 meters or so. I wasn't too happy with that as the look on our guides face when we told him scared me more than seeing the dogs!
Tomorrow is our last night in Botswana before we head into Namibia, can't wait!

Zim and Zam

Today was an action packed day. In the morning we took a microlight flight over Vic Falls which was truly amazing. We then popped into the town of Livingstone and went to the local markets. It was quite an experience as everyone wanted to trade anything we had on us and were pretty pushy about it. After the initial shock we soon figured things out and managed to score a couple of nice thing to remember the place by.
After that we went into Zimbabwe for a Lion encounter. It was a captive breeding program which had tours so we managed to walk and play with a number of Lions. Yet another surreal African experience, especially trying to walk from Zim to Zam (Zambia and Zimbabwe) without a guide and dealing with dodge African borders. We made it out in one piece although we were a little concerned at times, the border guy with a AK-47 seemed a little concerned about letting us back into Zim (at the same time completely ignoring all the people who were obviously entering illegally).
We are out of Zim tomorrow after seeing the falls, and back into Botswana. We have some amazing photos of us on the microlights and with Lions and I will try tomorrow to get some up.

Zambia

Well Aleisha and I now in Livingstone, Zambia. It has been a very busy few days traveling through Botswana but it has been absolutely amazing. We have seen a few hundred Elephants as well as countless Giraffe, Impala, Buffalo and Zebras.
We are off to Zimbabwe tomorrow to play with some Lions and then in the afternoon we will have a microlite flight over Victoria Falls.
Unfortunately there is no way to upload any photos of the trip so far as any computer in Africa it too old and slow to do anything without taking a day to do so.
Over the last few days we have used 4 different currencies, currently we are using the Kwacha and I have a 50000 note in my wallet which is worth about $10 US!
We have no idea when we will have internet access again, maybe Namibia, maybe South Africa.

Jo’burg

Well after a very long flight we have finally arrived in Jo’burg. It really is a city of contrast. Everyone we meet is very helpful and friendly but every house has a 10 ft high fence with razor wire and then electric fence on top of that.
We decided the best way to deal with the jetlag was to stay up so we went to the apartheid museum in the city.
Well our tour leaves in a few minutes so I better leave. Next Blog should be in Victoria Falls.

Singapore - Changi Airport

Well we have arrived in Singapore and decided that since we have 4 hours to kill that we would try and get out of the airport to meet up with Aleisha's folks. Unfortuatly Aleisha's folks were no where to be seen, but then again this airport is so bloody huge that I doubt we would ever be able to find them anyway (Sorry Sylvia and Tony, we did try). So now its another couple of hours wait and then a fun 13 hr flight to Jo'burg.
Bye from Singapore.

The final countdown...

Well Aleisha and I are off on Tuesday for our Africa adventure. All there is to do now is pack, I hope everything fits. I also thought I would repost a general map of the route we are going to take. Our plan is to update the Blog when ever we get a chance but I honestly dont know how often that will be.

Too soft for soccer, too soft for rugby, stick to what you are good at, giving the USA the reach around

Some Australian player trying to give big Kev the reach around

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, you SUCK, you SUCK, you SUCK!

32 to 15 well what can I say, time to pick yet another bandwagon!

Nothing like banging your head against a brick wall

For once I am going to blog about chemistry. I have spent the last couple of bloody days trying to make the image below. Looks pretty doesn’t it?

Olympic Park

After spending far too many hours at work over the last week I decided to have a day off so Aleisha and I headed out to Olympic Park. We had been there before but had never really had a good walk though the whole area. It was a rather relaxing day and we were both surprised by the number and variety of birds in the area. Of course I had to take a few photos while we were there.

Superb Fairy-wren

Yellow Thornbill

Coldplay - look no hands!

Aleisha and I went to the Coldplay concert on Monday night and well to be honest it was average at best. After queuing for almost 2hrs (in the rain for some of it) we were finally allowed in and managed to get a great spot with only one person between the stage and us. The warm-up band, Youth Group was pretty boring but the screaming 13 yr old girls seemed to love them. As an aside people really need to understand mosh pit ethics, either be tall, arrive early or be prepared to fight for your place in the pit. The 2 foot tall midget school girls were not too happy about having to see over me, I felt so sorry for them! Anyway after Youth Group finished we waited for ~ an hour before Coldplay started. Chris Martin managed to screw his voice on the first song, but it did improve during the evening. He must have had a rough day as he forgot the lyrics to a number of songs and had to improvise with "Oh S#%T". The most disturbing part of the night was when Chris was on the piano but when took his hands off, it kept on playing! I knew Chris Martin was a musical genius but to be able to play a piano with no hands puts him up with other musical greats such as Ashlee Simpson who can sing without opening her mouth.

Then there was the fact that Aleisha nearly fainted (it must have been the effect of seeing god playing the piano) and I had to take her out of the most pit, much to the satisfaction of the 2 foot tall midget school girls. Aleisha recovered and we joined the concert again but from the back of the standing area. So all and all an interesting night and summing it all up, I like Coldplay but they suck live!

The long awaited purchase has finally occurred... no Simon did not get yet another lens! I have finally enriched my wardrobe with a long sleeve icebreaker top (Coronet, greyplum). My wallet will never be the same but a trip to Africa would not have been right had I not taken this poor little finely woven, delicately designed, piece of New Zealand merino.

Getting in some practice

Well before I try my luck photographing African critters I decided I should get in some practice. The botanical gardens were full of critters and gave me a good chance to try getting birds in flight, with limited success. All photos were taken with my new Canon 70-300 IS lens.

Buff-banded Rail

Sulphur-crestered Cockatoo

White Ibis (not the 6 legged type)

The Real Beautiful Game

While the Australian media was focused on grossly overstating Australias chances against Brazil they completely forgot about the truly epic game being played right here in Sydney, I am talking about the Australian Netball Idles vs. F11 in the USYD indoor netball comp. It was a game of two halves and Netball was the winner at the end of the day (in other words we lost 24 - 12).

Our star striker Scott

Mark outstanding in defence

There wasnt much Mark and Christine could do against the "Monolith"

Jarrod putting his body on the line

Im not trying to compensate, honest!

Well the arsenal has finally been completed as my Canon 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 IS USM lens arrived yesterday. This completes my camera lens kit so all I need to do now is to figure out how everything works before we head off to Africa. I havent had much of a chance to try it out as of yet but hopefully this weekend I can spot some critters. One downside of such a long focal length is the lens size but as it is built like a brick I can also use it as a club to beat off any baboons that give me any jip.

When the lens is fully extended it becomes quite large.

New Lens - Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 DC Macro

Today I picked up my Sigma 17-70 lens which will replace the kit lens that came with my camera. I took a few photos around Uni to try it out and I must say I am very impressed. It is slightly wider (17 vs 18mm), significantly longer (70 vs 55mm), almost a stop faster (f2.8 vs f3.5) and a hell of a lot sharper than the kit lens. It also has a very nice macro function which will allow me to get some nice critter shots in Africa. So the kit lens will now go to where all useless thing go, to eBay.

Trying out the macro mode

A random, pointless and abstract B&W image

Sydney Uni

Poliomyelitis in Namibia

Just a day after wondering if it was really necessary to get vaccinated against the various diseases found in Africa I discovered that there is a serious outbreak of Polio in Namibia. Luckily Polio was one of the diseases that we are now vaccinated against. Let’s hope this keeps the tourist numbers down in Namibia.

Protected against everything but Ebola

Well today Aleisha and I went to the Travel Doctor to see what vaccinations and drugs we needed before venturing off to Africa. So we are now vaccinated against Typhoid, Hep A, Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio. We also have a few months worth of anti-malarial drugs, some broad spectrum antibiotics and various other drugs to help with stomach "problems".

Unfortunately there was no vaccination against Ebola, I guess will just have to take that chance.

Another Flogging at Netball 22 - 0

Last nights game was a complete flogging but for once we were not on the receiving end,we actually beat a team 22 to 0. Hopefully this form will carry on and we can finish in the top half of the competition this season.

Canon EF 50mm f1.8

Well I picked up this lens a few weeks ago but havent had much of a chance to play with it yet. At f1.8 it is very fast and gives a very shallow depth of field, something that was never possible with my FZ10.


Here is an example of the shallow depth of field at f1.8.

You know you have really made it in life when...

You become a member of the royal family.

Group Lunch

Karena (an ex-group member) and her partner Pete are back in Sydney at the moment for Karena’s graduation. To mark this exciting occasion we went out to the extremely classy Royal for lunch. Life must be getting pretty boring when all I have to Blog about is a group lunch.

Karena and Pete

The group

My photographic skills leave a lot to be desired as I managed to not get Karena into this photo.

The new lab

I managed to get into the room that will become our new lab today and get some photos for some before and after shots. The new lab will be ~10 times bigger than our old lab and we will have a office right next door as well.

Out and about with the 350D

Had a chance to have a bit more of a play with my new camera today and even managed to try out Jarrods 70-300mm lens which gave some alright results.

First photos with my 350D

Since I have a shocking hangover I decided to can the idea of working on a Saturday and take some photos instead. It is going to take awhile to get use to using a SLR camera as what you see in the viewfinder is not what the image looks like. But other than that I have been very impressed with the camera and it certainly is a lot better than the Pansonic. All I need now is a couple of nice lenses as the kit lens is a bit nasty.


While playing with the camera I took a few photos of the blinds and though it looked kinda interesting.


The kit lens is 29-90mm equivalent which gives a bit more room to move at the wide end compared to the 35mm of the Panasonic.


One of the real advantages of a dSLR is the decreased depth of field allowing you to isolate the subject a lot easier, look at that creamy bokeh.

Canon 350D

Just picked up my new camera this weekend, a lovely Canon 350D. I got the cheap and nasty kit lens with the camera which is a 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 (29-88mm equivalent). I have a great prime 50mm f1.8 on order as well which I plan to use for my night photos and portrait work. Then in the not too distant future I plan on getting the Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 (16-32mm equivalent) for landscapes and funky wide angle shots. Now all I need to get is a memory card so that I can actually take some photos!

THE CRATER

Over the long Easter weekend Aleisha and I went for a bit of a hike to Wollangambe crater. It was a short hike (only 3 1/2 hours in) but the camp site is rather nice so we stayed for a couple of nights. The Sugar Gliders were out again but were too high in the trees to get any photos. There were fresh signs of Wombats but unfortunately no sightings.

The Campsite

There is a lovely stream that runs through the campsite.

Of course it wouldnt be a trip away without some lame attempt by me to make a photo look artistic in Black and White.

It is also a way to spend the ~2 hours we had to kill at Bell station while we waited for a train.

Blue Gum Forest Photos are up

I know you have all been waiting anxiously for these so sorry for the delay.

Bridal Expo

Well there is no turning back now as today Aleisha and I went to the Sydney Bridal Expo. There were plenty of fancy dresses but just as many fancy chair covers. Apparently chair covers are very important, heck I didnt even know about chair covers.
We managed to enter a few hundred competitions and score a whole heap of free stuff as well as look at fancy chair covers. We did get some good ideas and also saw some not so good ideas such as wedding toilet paper (only $15 a roll). Maybe it was the cost of chair covers but I now have a cracking headache (It could also have something to do with giving blood today).