Continue reading »]]>

Second critter as part of the 52 Critters project:

Common Name: White Crab Spider
Scientific Name: Thomisus spectabilis
Critter found at: City Botanic Gardens, Brisbane, Australia

Found this little guy lurking in a flower ready to ensnare any insect that came down to feed. Despite having the common name of White Crab Spider they do come in all yellow.

Continue reading »]]>

First critter as part of the 52 Critters project:

Common Name: Giant Orange Lacewing
Scientific Name: Nymphes myrmeleonoide
Critter found at: City Botanic Gardens, Brisbane, Australia

Had to increase the ISO quite a bit for the shot as it was hanging underneath leaf. Caused the noise in the shot to be somewhat more than I would like but otherwise turned out pretty nicely.

Continue reading »]]>

A new year, a new project. This will be my third year setting myself a photography project. Last years rather ambitious Photo Challenge Year did not go as well as I’d hoped mostly because I had given myself way to much to do in what really is not a lot of time. As I failed my challenge I do not get the reward (which may end up being a good thing)

The previous project 365 Before Thirty was quite successful but equally stressful (honestly a 365 project is quite a challenge but entirely worthwhile). This year I opted for a sort of mid way point and decided on a 52 week project for the year. And it involves critters. Lots of critters.

It’s no secret I have an absolute passion for macro photography, particularly nature macro photography. I love the challenge of taking photos of bugs, lizards, spiders, flies, snakes and pretty much any other critter I can find out in the open. To that end the challenge this year is to take 52 really good critter photos.

Nominally it will be one critter a week but to allow myself leeway for holidays, being sick and and occasionally just wanting to be lazy as long as I end up with 52 good critter shots by the end of the year I will be happy. The shiny little fellow above doesn’t count as that photo was taken on Dec 31st, 2011.

The Rules

As with all personal photo projects this one needs some rules (well guidelines about) on how I’m going to play it, so:

• Nominally one critter photo a week. Some leeway where needed
• Critter may be any animal I can find but preferably one in the wild (If I find a particularly interesting on in a captive environment it will be added)
• Where possible the critter will be identified as accurately as possible
• All posts will be sent to twitter and Google Plus

Help Wanted

In doing this project I need help with two things:

Location, Location, Location

I have a few local haunts that I hunt for critters but it means I’ll likely be seeing the same ones over and over and be making it quite hard for myself to meet the goal of 52 unique critters. As such I’m open to suggestions on where I might go in to find really great critters.

I’d prefer suggestions around the greater Brisbane (Australia) area but I’ll happily take any suggestions for the rest of Australia or indeed anywhere in the world (I need a good excuse to travel more). Peoples gardens make wonderful critter hunting grounds so if anyone is willing to let me roam their yard looking for critters that’d be great as well.

You can contact me via leaving a comment, twitter or via the contact page.

Identification

As mentioned above one of the guidelines is to identify the critters as accurately possible. I have acquired several excellent resources produced by the Queensland Museum to help with this (which I’ll review throughout the year as well) and have a fairly good network of knowledgeable friends but there will always be at least one critter we won’t be able to identify. Anyone willing to donate time occasionally to help identify one of the 52 critters you will be thanked in whatever manner I can find at the time.

The End Result

All good projects need to have a payoff. In previous projects it’s mostly been in the form of camera gear but for the moment I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got so this time around the end goal is to publish a photo book of collected 52 critters. Assuming doing this isn’t astronomically expensive I’d consider giving a free copy to anyone willing to help with the other requests.

So here’s to the new year, let the critter hunting begin!

Continue reading »]]>

This post is part of the very excellent ‘Your Best Photos From 2011” blog project run by Jim M. Goldstein, a very worthy project to be involved in to get your photos seen and also to see amazing photos from other photographers from around the world. This show cases some of the ones I feel are my best for the year of 2011.

Above remains one of my absolute favourites. That photo is not edited and I’m still blown away in how sharp the focus was and how well placed the subject was during this shot, particularly as it was shot outdoors in uncontrolled conditions. I liked this photo so much I made a number of versions of it for common wallpaper sizes.

Shot in the same area as the first photo this extremely large (roughly half the size of my hand) dragonfly sat quietly on a wire for quite some time allowing me to get some fantastic photos.

This one was the most technically fun to make. It involved a dark room and a green laser with a jury-rigged setup to make it happen.

While not the most exciting photo of all time I just liked how the play of light and shadow combined with the shallow depth of field really made this photo pop.

A rather nice sunset shot of a ferry working it’s way down the Brisbane river.

Another lucky shot. I’ve never seen a fly as brilliantly orange as this one before and it was offset so extremely well against the verdant green of the leaf it was resting on.

A long exposure shot of the Brisbane CBD from South Bank. Image originally shot in greyscale, not post converted. I really enjoy long exposure shots near the river as it generates some really nice smoothing effects.

I don’t enjoying photographing people but zombies that’s an entirely different story. This years Brisbane Zombie Walk was absolutely massive, possibly to the point of world record setting but as yet there’s been no official confirmation. I also prepared a quick article on How To Shoot A Zombie Walk to help prepare others for their zombie invasion.

This photo is purely for the purposes of scaring people. It’s an extremely close macro shot of a discarded huntsman spider skin.

And finally this photo. It’s less what this photo is and more what it represents. I am now finally getting over my prejudice of post-production methods. I used to staunchly be in the “I don’t edit my photos” but after reading a lot from seasoned photographers, debating the pros and cons back and forth I’ve decided to move on and embrace post-production.

I’ve invested in Adobe Lightroom (which has turned out to be a very fine product indeed) and the above photo is the first photo that I’ve shot in RAW and post-produced. The post-production used is minimal, a slight colour correction and some contrast adjustment. Not much but small touches that made it look much more that way it saw it with my eyes. I still believe in getting as much right in the field as possible but I do now admit that post-production can be used as a force for good as well.

Continue reading »]]>

2011 has been a tumultuous year for me work wise and I’d like to share the story of one of the most gut wrenching scary decisions I’ve made in my life. Quitting a job without another to go to.

The Job I Left

First off I loved this job. The pay was reasonable, the perks were good, my co-workers were competent and the work I was doing was something I believed in. So why oh why did I leave it?

A combination of factors but more or less it came down to bad management, poor work environment and most importantly the job wasn’t going anywhere. Same old grind each and every day.

Bad Management

I was working in a very large organisation which by their very nature tends to be management top heavy and rife with inter-office bickering and politics. This entity was no different. The group I worked in had been happily ticking over for a decade or so when an event occurred that resulted in us losing more than half our staff, most of them the more skilled to another competing entity.

As you’d expect this was a bit of a body blow to the group, to lose that much staff in such a short period of time and still be expected to produce the same amount of work was a huge source of stress for all involved. Unfortunately one of the people that moved on was our team lead and a replacement had to be found.

This is where it went bad. Management placed a senior into the team lead position. A technically quite competent person but it became clear quite quickly they were lacking the team leader skills needed for the position. Work schedules weren’t provided in a timely manner, they wouldn’t enter into discussions on how to approach issues, people were shouted down and demeaned if they dared disagreed. In short the workplace turned sour.

Complaints were made to upper management, meetings were had but it was clear they had no intention of fixing these issues anytime soon. The stress in the work place became palpable and simply the act of getting up to go to work was enough to raise blood pressure through the roof.

The Work Environment

To add to this fun little crockpot of stress the powers that be decided this was the perfect time to renovate the building we worked in. It’s an older building, initially scheduled for demolition in a few years time but due to budget issues it was to be renovated and used for ‘the medium term”.

The building was already in a state of disrepair and so renovation meant work and lots of it. Asbestos had to be removed, the buildings staircases had to be retrofitted to bring them into line with the states fire codes, the roof had to be removed and redone (which they did during the wet season against all logic).

All of this work was done during work hours and involved hammer drilling, concrete cutting and other activities which generated a lot of noise and vibration through the entirety of the building. There was gluing and painting happening on a regular basis filling the building with dizzying fumes.

There were frequent issues with power and air conditioning failing. In one memorable incident a construction worker cut through a live electrical line with a power saw. Fortunately he was unharmed but it was a close run thing.

It became impossible to concentrate. Staff were told to basically suck it up and deal with it. It went on for months, indeed it’s still going on now months after I have left. I pity my former co-workers who still have to work under those conditions.

The Final Straw

I was stuck in a bind. I loved the work I was doing but the bad management and poor work environment were making me hate my job. What finally made my walk away however was the unending grind of no change.

I am not a person who is happy to sit down and do the same task each day forever. I know people who are and more power to them if that’s what they want to do. Because we had lost so much staff management seemed to get stuck in a panic loop. Decisions on moving forward weren’t being made, we’d constantly be told that a new way forward was coming but it never did.

Wheels were spinning but no progress was being made and managements approach was to keep us in the dark. Hint to managers: Technical staff like answers even if the answers are bad ones. Keeping us guessing is not a smart move. If you don’t know the answer just tell us that.

That’s when the stress really started to get to me. No matter how much I loved my job or how good the pay was it wasn’t worth the stress. I started having troubles sleeping, I was overly snappy to my co-workers and others in my life. Eventually I ran out of excuses to stay in the job. No amount of pay, perks or of love for my work was worth this trade off.

The Jump

I agonised over quitting for months. I’ve never before quit a job without another to go to before. Because I did like the work I did I felt morally bad about looking for another job and as such didn’t put the effort into it I really should have. A mistake in hindsight.

The decision to jump wasn’t made easily. Having an uncertain future troubled me deeply and had me constantly questioning everything. I discussed quitting with my girlfriend and talked about the worst case scenario if I didn’t have an income for a while. Could we pay the rent and living costs on just her salary? What would we have to give up?

My girlfriend and friends were very supportive despite the potentially risky move. After a particularly bad nights sleep I woke up and made a decision. It was time to go. I wanted to be as nice as possible to my workplace so I provided six weeks notice in the (rather vain) hope they would hire a replacement I could help train to take over. Alas this never happened and eventually my last day rolled around it was time to go.

The Double Edged Sword Of Freedom

So here I was. Unemployed but free of a job that was killing me through stress. First thing we did was attend a friends wedding which worked wonderfully as a stress breaker. Took my mind off the cloudy future and let me genuinely enjoy life for the first time in months. Then it was time to go back to the real world.

It took me four months to find a new job. I learnt a lot about myself and the world in those four months. I was forced through necessity to look at the world in a new way and change things appropriately. I had saved money up and my final payout was quite reasonable but as I had no idea how long my unemployed situation would last I became quite frugal.

I cancelled services that weren’t all that necessary. I cut back on impulse buying and thought more about whether I actually needed items. I always ensure I could at least pay my part of the rent. My girlfriend picked up a lot of the slack for which I am eternally grateful and fully intend to pay her back for.

I searched for new jobs. I interviewed with recruiters (most of whom seem to be universally useless). One of the biggest issues was job in my industry weren’t in huge numbers in my city, most of them are in Sydney and Melbourne but we really didn’t want to move.

After a few weeks the novelty of being at home and not working wore off and bouts of depression would kick in. Some days I would become immobilised by self doubt. Did I really do the right thing by quitting? Was I ever going to find a job? How bad were things going to get? Guilt kicked in big time and there were days I was reduced to a blubbering mess.

Again my girlfriends and friends supported me through this. Without their help it’s likely I’d still be stuck in the old rutt of a job becoming more stressed probably to the point where I would have said or done something that would have turned into a career limiting move.

The New Job

Thanks to a friend who let me know about an upcoming position and industry contacts I ended up getting a contractor job with an overseas firm. I’ve never worked as a contractor before so this is a new and exciting experience.

Technically the pay is lower but thanks to the four months of unemployment I’ve reduced my expenditures to the point where I have more disposable cash on hand and I’m saving even more money than before. I’ve lost the perks of the old job but gained several new ones.

I now work from home meaning no commute (a great savings on time and money), a comfortable work environment (I splurged on a decent desk, chair and new workstation). My new boss despite being on the other side of the world is firm but fair in how he deals with me.

My stress is greatly reduced, I have my own income again and feel like I’m no longer sponging off my girlfriend, I’m paying for more things than I need to try and restore the balance of the previous unemployed months. In short I feel like a functioning member of society again.

I’ve been working steadily for close to 4 months now and couldn’t be happier. New job gives me responsibilities and appropriate levies of pressure. It gives me new challenges to defeat. It’s not all rainbows and puppies, there is still the usual daily monotonous work to be done but it is sprinkled with changes and obstacles to overcome. Exactly the kind of thing my brain needs to be happy.

The Wrap Up

This year has been terrifying and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my girlfriend, my friends and my family. They had the guts to tell me when I was being stupid, to disagree with my reasons for staying in the old job and to generally provide a good smack if I needed it.

As this year wraps up I feel enormously thankful for these people in my life. I’m glad I made the decision to move on. Enjoying life more has been worth it.

Continue reading »]]> Back in March I wrote an article on Inane Terms & Conditions on Australian websites, namely those that “prohibited” linking to those sites. Seems silly doesn’t it? These entities actually have laid out rules in their terms and conditions to somehow prevent people linking to them. Given the concept of the internet is to be able to provide interlinking data this seems all a bit silly. Now that it’s been a while I thought it might be time to revisit this subject and see if anything has changed.

The Good News

Firstly the good news. At least two of the entities I called out in the last article have changed their website terms and conditions to allow linking. Harvey Norman quietly removed the section that prevented linking altogether whilst Vodafone amended theirs to allow linking as long you agreed to remove it if they didn’t like it.

The Bad News

Only one entity in the last list actually reached out to me about it and that was Virgin Australia. Their social media team were very friendly and tried to blow it off as simply a “precautionary” measure which raises the question why is it there at all? Why not take the Vodafone, approach and allow links on the acceptance they can ask for it to be removed? More importantly how are they ever going to actually enforce this precautionary measure? I doubt very much these terms and conditions would go far in a court of law although I am not a lawyer and don’t pretend to understand the complexities of law.

The other two entities, Fairfax and JetStar, have not changed their terms & conditions in any way. By now millions of people must have violated the Fairfax terms and conditions hundreds of times over.

The New List

So with all that in mind it was time to go hunting for new sites that have the same inane prohibitions. Initially I was thrilled to find that it was getting harder to find them. This didn’t last long however. A quick shoutout asking for suggested sites to check quickly resulted in a deluge of sites that continue to deny linking. Before you ask yes I am technically breaking their terms & conditions by linking their terms & conditions pages here. The irony does not escape me

Qantas

What is it with airlines and prohibiting linking to their sites? Qantas doesn’t exactly have the best reputation at the moment after their little “lets ground all our planes to win a dispute” stunt so you’d think they’d be doing everything possible to help promote their brand. Seemingly not. If you want to link to the Qantas website then you need to follow this rather lengthy piece of instruction from their Terms of Use page:

“In order to be able to link to information on this site you will need to agree to the linking conditions and obtain approval from Qantas Online Sales. To obtain a copy of the agreement send a request through our feedback page by selecting ‘Website’ then ‘Site Content’. Ensure your e-mail contains the following information:

• Company Name
• Contact Name
• E-mail Address
• URL of internet site that will link to qantas.com
• Nature of your company’s web site”

Got that? Give them all of your personal details, submit it to a faceless form and then maybe, if they like you, you might be able to link to their site.

Air Australia

Australia’s newest airline. So new in fact it hasn’t even started flying yet. Being new they are also hip to this social media thing with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Blogger integration! But if you want to link to them? Oh sorry the Terms of Use page has this to to say:

“You must not provide a link to, or frame, this website without our prior written consent.”

Going to be interesting promoting a brand new airline when you legally disallow linking to it.

Myer

Yes that giant of shopping. That mecca of splurging and spending cash. They are well and truly into the Christmas sales pitch now (which is a rant for another day) and with it their website is festooned with gift ideas and products galore many of with Facebook “Like” buttons and “Share by  Tweet” functionality. Before you touch either however you should be aware that Website Terms page states:

“Myer Pty Ltd does not permit any linkages to this site without prior permission.”

This of course raises the interesting question – does the existence of the like and share buttons imply permission? If so is linking only allowed through those mechanisms? This sounds like the sort of things that keep lawyers well paid.

Suncorp

Unlike Qantas, Suncorp is actually surfing a very large wave of consumer approval after floods earlier in the year. Their excellent PR and handling of the situation has paid off extremely well for them and they are going out of their way to utilise as much of this good sentiment as possible. Apparently this does not extend to linking their website as their Legal Disclaimer page outlines:

“Linking to this Website is only permitted when authorised in writing by Suncorp. Please contact Suncorp if you would like to link to any part of the Suncorp Website.”

The idea that one needs a written permission slip to link to anything on the internet is laughable especially when it might be a site you actually want to link to.

AAMI

This is not really surprising since AAMI is part of the Suncorp Group. Weirdly however they take the prohibition a step further by actually singling out social media linking as being not on. Here’s the excerpt from their AAMI Online Terms of Use & Privacy Statement:

“Unauthorised linking to any part of an Online Site (including any part of a Social Media Site or website operated by a related body corporate that is part of the Suncorp Group) is expressly prohibited. Please contact us if you would like to link to any part of our Online Site(s). Only written permission from us will constitute authorisation of a link.”

More demands for written permission slips. I don’t think they’ve grasped the idea of this internet thing.

RACQ and RACV

Both of these entities have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter Both encourage their followers to retweet/share links. Both technically prohibit their followers from actually doing this.

From the RACQ Site Legals page:

“ You agree not to create a link from any Web site, including any site controlled by you, to our site.”

Update: 16th of November 2011 – In what must be a new world record in getting legal changes made to a website the RACQ team has completely pulled this term from their site within hours of this article going up. Nice work guys!

And from the RACV Conditions of use page:

“What you cannot do: … provide a link to this web site from another web site without RACV’s prior written consent.”

Update: 17th of November 2011 – Correction. Initially I thought this was an update – the above entry still exists and the below one may have always existed and I simply missed it yesterday.

“7. linking to this web site

7.1 If you wish to establish a link to this web site you must, in the first instance, use the Contact Us link at the top of the page and provide the following information:

a) the URL of the web site that you seek to establish a link from;

b) a brief description of your web site; and

c) the reason that you wish to establish a link.

7.2 If RACV agrees to your proposed link, you must comply with any terms and conditions imposed by RACV as a condition of such agreement. If the nature and/or content of your web site changes in any significant way, you must contact RACV and provide a new description of your web site”

Yep that should work out wonderfully for you.

Conclusion

Many entities still have this strange idea they can control things on the internet by simply stating it in their terms and conditions. Sorry but it just doesn’t work that way. I’m hoping more of them will follow the examples set by Harvey Norman and Vodafone (never thought I’d say that) and adjust their terms and conditions to be far more realistic.

Update: 7th December 2011 – Alas Harvey Norman has updated their Terms & Conditions have brought inane conditions back in. I can no longer give them props for being sane.

Continue reading »]]> Greetings avid The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim players: This is not the game site you are looking for. Many of you seem to be ending up here looking for “dawnstar museum” but alas you will not find the location on this site. I can however point you in the right direction.

I don’t play the game (sorry of no interest to me) but this handy Elder Scrolls Wiki seems to have the answers you seek. Thanks for dropping by, feel free to browse around but I suspect you won’t find what you want here.

Continue reading »]]>

Updated – Now identified!

Thanks to an amazingly fast turn around by the Queensland Museum the mystery creature has been identified as a fly belonging to the family Nemestrinidae and the genus Atriadops more commonly known as ‘Tangle-veined Flies’.

This particular fly is a female of the species so the scary looking protrusion is in fact a ovipositor used in egg laying (note that wasps stingers are also ovipositors although highly modified ones).

They are of no threat to humans but their larvae are parasitic on other insects such as grasshoppers and possibly katydids or cockroaches.

This information was provided by Dr Christine Lambkin the Biodiversity Curator of Entomology at the Queensland Museum.

–

Living in Australia you get used to see all sorts of odd and interesting critters, many of which can possibly kill you (not entirely true but it is fun to keep tourists on their toes about it). Whilst walking around the Brisbane Botanical Gardens at Mt Coot-tha I found this impressive and just a little scary critter.

I’ve not seen anything quite like it before. It was quite large being roughly the size of my thumb in terms of length and width. I’m not entirely sure if the protrusion from the abdomen is actually a stinger but I wasn’t game enough to get close enough to find out.

The wings were moth like whilst the face resembles something from the fly family, overall it’s a very strange critter indeed. I’ve submitted it to the Queensland Museum‘s inquiry systems so hopefully they might be able to shed some light on it.

Meanwhile does anyone else have any idea what this strange critter could be? Another shot below shows the profile just before it took off.

Continue reading »]]>
So here’s the thing. I love my Olympus E-30, it’s a damn fine camera and its served me very well. However things have cropped up that have stopped me buying new kit simply because it would seem Olympus has no interest in continuing to support the E (standard 4/3s) series.

• The last E release was the E-5 which was over a year ago and was really only a minor hardware refresh. There’s been zero sign from Olympus of that changing any time soon.
• All effort is being pushed into the micro 4/3s cameras such as the PEN series. Extremely nice cameras to be sure but they are a) too small for me to hold comfortably and b) DSLR replacements they are not (for the moment).
• The continuing scandal surrounding them regarding their CEO being kicked out, allegations of massive kickbacks, criminal business implications and plunging stock market price aren’t exactly inspiring.

So I think it’s time I bit the bullet and started seriously looking at jumping systems. This is somewhat sad and annoying since I have invested a reasonable amount of cash into Olympus gear but I have to face the realities that the 4/3s format seems to not have a future and throwing further money into that system might not be the wisest investment.

Basically I’m after a camera system that can provide:

• Proven ability to work well with macro
• Be able to provide good Image Stabilisation (IS)
• Good range of lens (manufacturer and/or third party)
• Something that can take a bit of rough housing (light rain, dusty conditions, out in nature basically)

What I’m looking for is advice on best methods to jump camera systems, arguments on why your preferred camera system might (or might not) suit me and most importantly what features you like about your preferred camera system.

Continue reading »]]> And so it came to pass that the undead hordes descended on Brisbane to march through it’s heart demanding brains and donations to the Brain Foundation of Australia. It was a huge event that was aiming to break the world record on most zombies in one place, so far there’s been no official word on if that record was made but it did seem like there were a lot more shuffling creatures this year than previous.

It was, as always, a hell of a lot of fun. I normally don’t take photos of people but since zombies are ex-people this works out nicely. None of these photos are award winners but they do show the inventiveness and spirit of the attendees to this fine charity event.

Huge thanks to the Brisbane Zombie Walk organisational team, the police that oh so patiently dealt with hundreds of zombies screaming for brains in the CBD (it was actually a scarily impressive moment) and of course the hundreds of zombies themselves of all types including many children and pets.

My personal favorite of the day was the Mr Squiggle zombie, complete with the words “I told you to hurry up” written on blood on his back. A fantastic Australian pop culture reference, I for one sir salute you for your brilliant concept.

Below are some of my favorite shots from the day but you can find the full gallery here (118 photos). Happy to provide full copy originals to those that ask.