Cold, Wet but Thankfully no Wind

Its a cold rainy overcast day in sydney but Hermione and I went for a long walk anyway. It turned out to be quite a pleasant morning with Hermione enjoying the adventure of playing in puddles and running in the leash free park to keep warm.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 200, 105mm f5.6, 1/20 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 400, 105mm f8, 1/250 sec
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Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 400, 105mm f2.8, 1/60 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 400, 105mm f3, 1/160 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 200, 105mm f3.2, 1/100 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f2.8 @ ISO 400, 105mm f8, 1/250 sec

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A Self Derivative Work

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 400, 35mm f2, 1/50 sec

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Painting with Light

Light painting, light drawing or light graffiti is a technique in which exposure is made in a darkened setting and moving the camera while its pointed at a light source. The first photographer recognised to use this technique was Man Ray in his series "Space Writing"

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 400, 35mm f16, 5 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 400, 35mm f20, 10 sec

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Grass Anyone?

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/64000 sec

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Going Cold Turkey on Facebook

So guess what's trending high on Google searches? "how do I delete my Facebook account?" Facebook is experiencing a backlash amongst its users at the moment as concerns mount over its privacy policies or lack of fair ones. So today after recent hacks and leaks of Facebook users data, like accidentally making users' profiles completely public, I have decided to delete my Facebook account. Some other reasons that lead me to this decision are; Facebook's Terms Of Service state that they own your data, your posts, photos everything. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then unknown to you they make it publicly available. Your private data and all the accessible data of all your friends is shared with applications that you install, Dogbook, Farmville, Mafia Wars etc etc most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account. The account deletion process is incredibly (and I think intentionally) confusing. And if you do delete your account for the next 14 days if you or any linked application or website tries to log back in to that account, you're back like nothing ever happened, undeleted and you will have no idea! Go here for instructions if you need to http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account

One interesting open source alternative gaining some popularity is Diaspora at http://www.joindiaspora.com/ and it does not even really exist yet.

Others are Flickr, Twitter, Google BUZZ etc.

Victoria Hill, Bendigo

Bendigo had rich gold bearing quartz reefs and more gold was found between 1850 and 1900 than anywhere else in the world combined at that time. Deep shafts were sunk with at least 140 shafts exceeding 300 metres in depth, 67 exceeded 600 metres, and 11 were over 1,000 metres deep and represents the largest concentration of deep shafts anywhere in the world. Quartz mining on Victoria Hill was the world's richest and deepest reef field and by 1861, Victoria Hill had yielded at least 35,000 Kg in gold. A lot of mining was also conducted on the surface as well.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/2000 sec

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The end of a mined seam of quartz. Maybe it opens out and is full of gold just beyond the surface? who knows?

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/800 sec

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These above ground diggings were all hewn by hand and the most basic of digging equipment like hand picks.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/8000 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/250 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/1000 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/200 sec

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Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm f2 @ ISO 200, 35mm f8, 1/80 sec

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The remains of part of an automated quartz crushing battery