The Boy and I had some friends over for breakfast last weekend (apparently they read this blog – hello Adam and Vik!), who suggested that we think about getting a car and driving around Europe rather than the trains and budget airline tickets that people usually do. Apparently you can save a bit of money and have the flexibility of your own transportation, which sounds good to me! We’ve done a few driving holidays now – a short one along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, and longer ones around the north and south island of New Zealand. Driving definitely has its issues (we got a speeding ticket in the North Island, and got our campervan stuck up a hill and broke the back windscreen in the South), but with luck and common sense it’s pretty enjoyable.

From some quick research it also sounds like it makes it much easier to see smaller towns, opens up the opportunity for camping, and means you can take scenic routes and stop when you want to take photos – much better than attempting a blurry photo out of a train window! I found this (slightly old, but from what I can tell still relevant) forum post about the logistics of driving and camping around Europe if anyone else is considering doing the same.

Ever done a driving holiday?

1. Re-commit to a maximum of three servings of carbs per week day, or four on weekends - SORT OF

Okay so I haven’t been completely good with this (oh how I love bread, and beer!) but definitely an improvement over the excesses of December. Despite my indiscretions I’ve still managed to lose about 1.5kg, more than I’d planned to lose per month. I have a feeling it’s because of the crazy heat we’ve had – even at night it’s barely dropped below 25 degrees, and we’ve had several 40+ days. It’s like that crazy yoga that you do in intense heat, except instead of yoga all I’m doing is housework and drinking beer (okay, and some pretty intense group fitness sessions). Whatever, it’s working right? I’m going to consider this a sort-of win.

New health/weightloss interim goals: 1) attend Saturday morning boxing class every week; 2) stop drinking beer.

2. Stop buying clothes and accessories; start thinking about a minimalist wardrobe – WIN

I’m actually doing great on Project 333, and thus have not had any reason to buy anything new. It’s really made me think about what makes a good capsule wardrobe, and I think what I’ve picked out actually works really well for me. Obviously I have my ‘cheat’ allowing me to add clothes and things that I make to my wardrobe, but that’s just making more excited about making my own clothes, fulfilling another vague goal of mine. I don’t think I’ll have any issues keeping up with this for the rest of the 3 months, and it will definitely help me make more considered choices for the rest the year.

New Europe/money saving interim goal: Investigate extra forms of income – affiliate programs, photography work, stock website templates etc.

3. Investigate the best and cheapest way to light food photography at home, hopefully without having to buy any new gear - NOT REALLY

I made some half-hearted attempts, but haven’t really come to a positive conclusion in terms of working with lighting. I’ve found that my speedlight bounces light nicely in our courtyard and reasonably well in the kitchen, but on the dining table it just doesn’t look as nice as my regular lamp lighting. I think my post-processing has improved though (Sab’s post-processing tutorials are a huge help), so that’s something.

New photography interim goal: same again – spend more time playing around with lighting options.

So I haven’t stuck completely to my resolutions for the past month, but I’m still making progress overall! How are you going with yours?

click to see the BIG version

This year I managed to score a media pass to Perth’s anime and gaming convention, Wai-Con! It was a super warm and hectic weekend, but as always at these things I was blown away by the intricate cosplays (that’s costume + play, or dressing up as fictional characters for the uninitiated) and the energy of the event. Now that I’ve had a taste of the perks of having a media pass I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to being a regular con-goer – not having to line up for the cosplay competition and getting one of the best seats in the house was the best!

I struggled a little with stage photography (so many coloured flashing lights!) but managed to get at least one decent photo of every entrant. Perth’s cosplay competition beats every other one that I’ve seen interstate, for one main reason – the MCing of local comedian John Robertson, who even got talked into doing a rather terrifying crossplay.

These One Piece cosplayers were my absolute favourite – besides the great costumes, they stayed in character throughout their interview, made all the more hilarious and bizarre by the fact that John was still in his crazy nun outfit.

I spent the rest of the time wandering around the main hall taking photos, bumming around friends’ art tables, consuming an awful lot of Pocky and doing a few quick photo shoots outside (to be posted here soon).

Big congratulations to all the cosplay competition winners, props to everyone who had the courage to cosplay or step up on stage for the first time, and well done to the organisers for putting together an excellent event!

Photos from around the con on Saturday and Sunday are up on my ChiGarden Facebook page – if you’d like a high resolution version of any of these photos of you, please get in touch and I’ll send them on through.

Color - a color matching game by Method of Action

Try to match up colours on the colour wheel, for hue, saturation, complimentary, analogous, ternary and quartenery. It times you and gives you a score at the end, which made me panic a little. Surprisingly fun, and extra geek points for being made entirely in HTML5 and having support for colour blindness.

Munsell Hue Test

Arrange color blocks in order of hue from left to right. Definitely not for the color blind (or those with badly calibrated monitors).

Kern Type

Adjust the kerning (spacing between letters) to make the letters as readable and visually appealing as possible. A lot harder than you would think!

Shape Type

Manipulate the bézier curves to fix letter shapes (I was the worst at this one!).

The Rather Difficult Font Game True to its name, this game is rather difficult. Since I work primarily with web, it’s only recently that I’ve been able to use much more than Arial, Verdana and Georgia (all of which did come up in the test), and I’ve actually never heard of a few of these fonts. You can sort of figure some out through a process of elimination though. The game didn’t seem to be working/scoring properly when I tried it, so click through to the mobile version if your score/font numbers aren’t increasing.

Happy playing!

Between the current heat wave (it’s been around 40C all week, and not cooling down much at night), being sick and impending deadlines, this hasn’t been the best week for me. In quiet moments and middle-of-the-night coughing fits, I’ve been flicking through Cabin Porn on Tumblr – page after page of beautiful little places to escape to, even if it’s only in my imagination.

Hope everyone here in Perth is staying cool this weekend!

To be honest, from my (limited) personal experience, I don’t think it’s awfully different from being a male freelance web/graphic designer. I don’t feel marginalised, underpaid or intimidated, and I’ve never had any indication that a potential client has decided whether to hire me or not based on my gender. I don’t think I’d win more jobs or get paid more money if I had man-bits. Around half of the clients and people that I work with are female too – intelligent, driven and successful women doing pretty well for themselves in this man’s world.

That said, I do tend to be a bit oblivious to this sort of thing because I was brought up surrounded by tech and never saw any reason why I shouldn’t be as good at things as boys are. I never saw myself as being disadvantaged in any way by being female; if anything, I felt that being good at traditionally male-dominated things just made me more special. I’m also in a country and culture that’s fairly progressive in terms of women’s rights – I wouldn’t have the same opportunities if I wasn’t born into a privileged middle-class life in a Western first-world country, had less encouraging parents, or married a less awesome husband.

I’m interested to hear if anyone has had a different experience – are you like me in never experiencing any real disadvantage to being a woman, freelancing or in a male-dominated industry? Have you ever suspected a client decided whether to work with you or not based more on your gender than your skills or portfolio? If you’re a freelancing mum, how do you balance that with work? Are you ever suckered into doing more chores and errands than is fair because you ‘have more flexibility’ or are ‘always at home anyway’? Any guys out there – what’s your opinion of women starting their own businesses and working in traditionally male-dominated industries?

I have to admit my thoughts on this topic are not particularly well-formed at the moment, but I’d be really really interested in having some discussion around it!

Yesterday was Australia Day (or Invasion Day really, I suppose), and The Boy and I had some friends over for a BBQ. I made the mistake of telling our friends that I was making kangaroo burgers, which resulted in an awkward silence followed by “um, I think I’ll just bring some sausages… you can eat your kangaroo”.

I’ve been pretty much converted to this meat, so here’s a few reasons why:

It actually tastes pretty good

Gamey but not strongly so, and very tender when cooked properly. I’ve been replacing recipes calling for beef mince with kangaroo mince, without much of a noticeable difference in taste. I’ve also done roasts and steaks, which are nice and tender and juicy cooked medium-rare.

It’s better for the environment

Kangaroos emit less methane than cows, for example, and their soft padded feet are better suited to the Australian environment than hooved animals. Most kangaroo available for eating is wild, so many of the other environmental impacts of farming (such as growing corn to feed traditional eat animals, and then pumping them with antibiotics to make up for the fact that what they’re being fed isn’t actually good for them) are avoided.

The species of kangaroo that are hunted are not endangered, and the percentage that is allowed to be culled is varied according to the current population roos.

It’s really good for you

High protein (roughly the same as beef), low fat (~2%, much less than other red meats), doesn’t taste like cardboard. Sounds pretty good to me.

It’s cheap!

I’m a cheapo, so I started buying kangaroo mince because it was a lot cheaper than the 5 star beef mince I usually buy. I’ve started switching out one meal a week that would usually be beef for kangaroo, and using the extra money to buy free range, organic or grass-fed versions of the other meats we eat regularly.

My kangaroo burgers actually turned out pretty nice, and I made almost everyone eat them in the end. The general consensus was that it didn’t taste much different from regular beef burgers. Thanks everyone for being a bit adventurous!

These ‘Confessions of a Designer’ quotes put together by Anneke of AMS Design Blog made me snigger. I agree with her that there’s often misconceptions about how long graphic design takes, since it’s just “makings stuff in Photoshop” and “choosing fonts” right?

I should probably note that I’ve been really lucky with clients, and haven’t had to deal with these things much!

I’ve thought about putting some sort of advertising on my site in the past, but always decided against it as I wasn’t serious enough about actually updating content. But lately I’ve been getting a few more visitors (hello!) and have started to put some serious thought into monetizing this site, even just a little bit.

Now don’t worry, you won’t see animated musical banner ads plastered all over my lovely website layout. And I definitely won’t start promoting products that I have no idea about or don’t personally enjoy. I’m going to try and go about this in the least obtrusive and most useful way possible.

At this stage all I’ve done is register for an Amazon affiliate account. This just means that when I review books or other products that they sell, I’ll link through to them on Amazon. The review will still be entirely my own thoughts, and I’m not going to pretend that a book or product is awesome if it clearly isn’t. At this point I’ll get 4% of any purchases through these links (and nothing if you just click through and don’t buy anything), so you can be sure that I’m not going to get rich off of this.

Okay yes, Amazon is a bit evil in the way many big monopolizing corporations are, and their business model is in some ways spelling the end of indie bookstores and traditional publishing. You have to choose your battles, and at this point I’m saving my fighting spirit for sustainable and ethical eating practices. If you’ve chosen boycotting Amazon as your battle then that’s great, I wouldn’t expect you to abandon that – any books that I review can probably also be bought from your local bookstore or BetterWorldBooks.com, which donates books and funds to charity.

I’ll put a note at the bottom of any post or page that has affiliate links. I hope no one holds this against me!

The days are getting longer (and hotter!) here, so I tried taking a few pictures outside in our courtyard and a few inside on our dining table, which is my standard setup.

Outside: ISO 1250, 1/30s, f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, with speedlight pointed directly up at a white ceiling (the bottom of the balconey of the apartment above us) at 1/64

Inside: ISO 1600, 1/50s, f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8 lens, no flash, lit by our dining room lamp

I’ve been playing around a little more with using my speedlight with food photography (only at home of course), with mixed results. Obviously firing straight at the subject produces some horrid shadows, but indoors I find pointing it at the ceiling or (white) walls doesn’t produce the best results so far either. When I try taking photos both with flash and some with just our lamp light, I always end up choosing the lamp ones. I think I need to do a lot more experimentation to get the hang of it, or bite the bullet and accept that I actually have to fork out some more money to get some decent lighting equipment.

On the other hand, using the flash outside seems to produce some fairly nice results that mimicks daylight quite nicely (possibly because it was outside where there was still quite a lot of daylight).

Both of these photos were edited in Photoshop so I suppose they don’t tell the full story (the indoors one had to be lightened quite a lot and I don’t think I handled the white balance very well, for example). I also barely thought about styling at all, which shows. I have a lot more learning to go!

You can see the recipe and other details over on The Boy’s blog.

P.S. Happy Year of the Dragon! I hope you all get lots of red packets. We have to give them this year now that we’re married!