New start,

It's Sunday and the day before I start my new job. I'm going to be a house husband. The kids and I are embarking on a new chapter and we really don't know where  it will take us. But we are excited.

Key things on the list are to help my son with his homework and reduce my daughters dependancy on Charlie and Lola. Other than that, have healthy meals on the table by the time the wife gets home from work and have the household jobs done by the time the weekend comes round so we can start to enjoy life a bit more.

Wether I manage to achieve all this is to be seen but I'm going to give it a good try.

Now reading... (actually just finished)

I've just finished reading Ben Elton's meltdown. A strangely appropriate, well maybe not all that strangely novel that focuses on the recent global financial crisis and the events leading up to it.  While it is predictably scathing and satirical it does have a number of fair points running through it. Obviously the comic effect a lot of the subtlety and detail is missing at the core of the events is all there. The novel serves as a modern-day parable and while it is not likely to change anyone's life it has certainly reinforced some of my own feelings about life in a post-GFC world. I can highly recommend this is an amusing read but don't go planning any economic theories or political strategies based on the content ;)

School holiday movie project....

It's school holiday and as I don't often have time off with the kids Chris and I have decided to work on a project together. 

We are going to try and make a short animated film. We have already done a little test shoot of a dinosaur walking round the kitchen table.(which was remarkably easy). 

I set up the video camera and software ready to go, I took the first few frames and from there chris pretty much took over. I doubt very much that it will win any awards but he is suitably chuffed with the results and I am very proud.

The next step is to write to plot for the actual movie. This is something that chris wanted to do on his own. Off he went to get hold of a pen and paper and to my surprise just sat down and got on with it. Unfortunately I was not really clear about what i wanted him to do so around half an hour later he proudly presents me with a very accurate description of the unplanned animation he had just finished. While this did very cleverly get him out of coming up with something new it still leaves us lacking a plot! The positive part of the story was that I was able to read and understand the whole thing, he had produced some of the best handwriting and spelling I have ever seen him do.

So we retreated to youtube to watch some short films made by other people and now I think he gets the importance of plot and more importantly the fact that we need one to make any progress. 

Time Lapse Photography

Having seen a couple of fantastic time-lapse videos on the web over the last week or two I decided to have a go myself. Rather than off to some exotic location I chose to do it from the back balcony as I had know idea of what the result would be like.....

All in all I am quite pleased with the results for a first attempt. Now to find some better subject matter....

Panorama view of the south end of skiathos

It a bit late but I found some ole holiday snaps from our trip to greece nearly six years ago so I did a quick test and stitched this image together....

The Royal National Park

In the last week I have been lucky enough to make two separate visits to the Royal National Park just south of Sydney. On Thursday last week friends from England came to visit giving me the perfect excuse and opportunity to spend a day showing them round one of my favourite places near Sydney. The Royal National Park is a place of fantastic natural beauty with amazing cliffs sea views and plant life. Having spent a very pleasant day with Fiona and Carol we decided that we would go back on Sunday with the rest of the family or a picnic and a bit of a walk. So we packed up the car drove down  into the park to our usual spot at Wattamolla  a beautiful beach and lagoon.
 We then proceeded to walk north along the coastal track for a while, something that I have wanted to do for a long time in fact I plan to walk from Bundeena  to Wattamolla  as soon as time allows.

Another blog (this time on books)

It has been quite some time since I posted anything on this blog largely because most of what has been going on has been either far too boring or far too private to share on the web. Anyway just lately circumstances have changed and I seem to have time for more leisure activities.  One of those leisure activities has been reading  something that I always love to do but sadly rarely get the time. This year for fathers day the kids got me a couple of books one of which was Imperium By Robert Harris.  A few years ago I also read Pompeii  which was a really enjoyable read.  Returning to Robert  Harris's  semi fictional Roman world has been fantastic in fact I finished Imperium  in record time  and quickly downloaded the Kindle version of the sequel (Lustrum).  I'm not going to go into detail on what goes on in the books   that in short  they are fictional accounts of the background to the actual political events surrounding the Roman Empire.

Test post

Bla bla

Coles, Proud to provide the food in the master chef pantry

As a family we shop at Coles, not because they are the best, not because they are good value but simply because they are convenient. They operate the two closest supermarkets to us, regularly we will visit and we will be unable to find fresh vegetables that I would be happy to serve to the kids. Often the stuff in packs is practically rotten. Regularly we get stuff that has already past it sell by date. Never have I gone into the store and found an array of fresh food like they have in the master chef pantry. After watching the show now I know where all the good stuff goes.

The return of the lego robot

So Lucky for us the lovely people over at arm have re posted the video of the Logo Rubik's Cube Solver. (That is relay lucky for me as I promised to show my nephew).

I'm not sure what they have changed but the robot is just As cool as it was. I am very tempted to go out and get some of this Lego stuff to play with Chris.

Handshake etiquette (or lack there of)

Handshakes are supposed to be a friendly form of greeting, There is plenty that can be read into handshakes, was it too soft or too hard, too short or too long. In the normal course of a day we probably shake hands for a number of reasons and in a number of situations.

Today a work acquaintance decided that he wanted to use a handshake as an opportunity to impress on me his masculinity or possibly simply wanted to causes pain. He actually used so much force that I now have an injured hand, typing is painful and I will not be able to play guitar properly until it heals.

Why on earth people feel the need to use handshakes this way I will never know but the upshot is there will be no new you tube video this week as I can’t play properly. If I get time I may try to mix a demo up from some of the stuff I have on the go so I can at least keep up my one song per week target.

More Lego Video

This is not quite as impressive as the mobile phone powered video I posted a few days back, but as it has been taken down this is the next best thing. I understand that the original version will be put back up again soon with some modifications. As soon as it is back up I will be reposting .

I cant wait for my son to be old enough to justify buying some of this stuff for myself err I mean him.

Cool free music sites,

If you live in the US then you have access to a whole load of cool streaming music sites. They let you listen to a huge range of music for free and you pay if you want to download. There is a problem though, none of them have licences to provide the content in Australia. Instead you have the option of bandit.fm. It’s not a bad site but there are a few problems.

In Australia we pay per meg of bandwidth and mobile access to the web is still very expensive so while the basic price they charge seems reasonable your ability to access the content reduces the time you can use it and pushes up the real price. The net effect is I wont be signing up past the free trial and I whish we had access to the Layla, Pandora and all those other cool sites.

So I’ve started to look for good sources of free streaming music so here is the list, I’m sure it will grow

www.thesixtyone.com

www.triplejunearthed.com

There are many more i’m sure so if you see this then please e-mail me with links I can check out and add to the list.

The Sixty One (A music web site)

I have been sick for the last few days which has given me more time to look at the web than I would normally have. What have I found? Well I found this cool music web site (www.thesixtyone.com) . It is full of really cool music, and it look nice as well. It would take far to long to describe the site in a post so all I have to say is it involves quests and go check it out.

Lego gets a bit extreeme

I was a lego fan when I was a kid, My son has quite a lot of lego, possibly more than I should have bought him but never have we built anything like this!

Me Live in a Pub

I played live last night for the first time in quite a ling time. Thanks to Mark and Julia at Village Guitar for putting on such an inclusive event, I am starting to get more comfortable with the idea of playing on my own in public.

Playing live in front of an audience has always been something that has been an intensely scary and uncomfortable thing for me, while at the same time being incredibly satisfying and life affirming. The event that Village guitar have put together is a perfect training ground for musicians who like me want to improve their performance chops but don’t want to run the risk of ridicule. The other musicians and audience seem to genuinely understand how hard it is to get up and do it. The result is a relaxed friendly room full of people who you know want you to do well.

There were some fantastic performances last night from covers to original material and as long as technology is on my side I will post a youtube video of my slot in the next few days.

Oh... and I made it through to the final of a competition I didn't know I was entering s that was cool as well.

The first week of the month (Busy in a good way!)

The beginning of the month always seems to be busy for me, I have my day job that always has “Extra Stuff” that needs to be done to short deadlines and at the same time there a two evening activities that I enjoy and hate to miss.

On the first Tuesday of every month here in Sydney a group of talented and enthusiastic people get together for the monthly Songs Alive Workshop. The evenings are informative and improving every time. Over the last few months I have been semi regularly and when I do turn up there has always been something that I have learned either about my self, my songs or song writing and songs in general. Songs Alive is a not for profit organisation Founded in 1997, by songwriters Gilli Moon and Roxanne Kiely.

The very next night it is the Village Guitar Open Mic Night held on the first Wednesday of every month at Allawah Pub in the Sydney suburbs. It starts at 8.00pm and is a great environment to try out new things and hone your live skills.

Both events are fantastic community activities and I feel lucky that there are people out there willing to put in the effort to run this sort of thing.

5 Reasons I got back into doing music (By the way, I’m back),

1. I love singing live. It scares the crap out of me, quite literally, but love it.

2. I love to write songs. They mean something to me and I hope some of them mean something to others

3. I like to feel of my own voice. I can’t really say that I am a great fan of how I sound as a singer but I do love how it feels to sing.

4. I enjoy watching a song grow. Sometimes I surprise my self how a song turns out. I may start with words, chords or a riff but quite often by the end it is nothing like where it started

5. I’m a geek. I like tech stuff and there is a lot of very cool tech stuff for recording studios.