dtraCorp

The end of an era?

dtra — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:52:20 GMT

Well, I haven't posted here for almost a month, and now it comes to this! Well, I'm not shutting down dtracorp.com, but I think that it's time to move on to something more substantial. I shut down the gallery last year, and now I've pretty much decided that I will not continue the blog, well, the blog at this URL anyway. I will continue to blog, but I've taken the decision to move to wordpress and just go with that. It's a sad day, but it's been coming for a long time, I've lost interest in developing the back-end for this site, and that was the main reason behind the site in the first place. So if I can't put any effort or enthusiasm into that, then there's not much point. At any rate, maybe with the new blogging software I will be more engaged and post more frequently, I have a photo post coming up in the next week or so, and should post another product review soon. Oh, yeah, the wordpress blog will be at davidtran.org, so make sure to start checking that site out. In some off-topic news, I would definitely discourage cyclists to stay away from probikekit when shopping for bicycles, bicycle accessories, and associated goods. I ordered inner tubes from them, and they thought for whatever reason they'd send me a different brand to what I ordered, obviously that is not acceptable, so I asked for a refund, and now they tell me that I will only be re-imbursed for standard post when I sent the items back with registered post as if that is non-standard shipping (obviously I will get the refund for the tubes), but that puts me out of pocket for shipping the goods back, definitely not the a company I will have dealings with in future, if only ribble had better stock numbers.

Picture of Knut the polar bear waving taken from allvoices web site.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

dtra — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 02:04:17 GMT

I've never actually ever sat down and watched one of the previous Planet of the Apes films in their entirety, I've seen bits of the original, maybe the sequel to that, fair sized chunks of the Mark Walhberg version, the Planet of the Apes musical from the Simpsons (an all-time classic, Doctor Zaius, Doctor Zaius, ohhhhh Doctor Zaius!), and I think that I've pieced together the storyline and plot pretty much. The planet (Earth) has been taken over by super-intelligent apes who have enslaved what remains of mankind. So with that in mind, I went to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes with the expectation of finding out how the apes became super-intelligent. The plot of this film is that Doctor Will Rodman (James Franco) is working on a cure/treatment for Alzheimers disease, and they do their testing on chimps. The treatment not only repairs the brain, but improves it's cognitive abilities, if only alcohol worked like that! Just before a presentation to the board, their star chimp goes nuts and causes havoc in the office building/lab, which we then discover is because she is protecting her baby. To protect the baby chimp (I mean who could be so heartless to kill a baby chimp?) the good doctor sneaks it out and keeps it as a pet/son at his house, his ill father Charles (John Lithgow, suffering from Alzheimers obviously), names the chimp Caesar. Fast forward a few years and we learn that Caesar has inherited real intelligence from his mother and learns at a greater pace than human children. Not all is well though, the health of Will's father continues to deteriorate, and with no other option (?) Wlil decides to try the treatment on his father. Overnight, his father improves out of sight, and moving forward a further five years, we find that Caesar is still getting smarter and that Will's father has made a full recovery and is even better than before or is he? The answer to that question is obviously no, or else we wouldn't have much of a film on our hands. Charles' health quickly deteriorates as his immune system starts to fight the Alzheimers cure even faster than previously and infuriated by the aggressive stance that the neighbour takes against an obviously out of sorts grandfather figure, Caesar goes on the rampage and attacks the neighbour, for which he is put into a prison for apes.

From there, we learn how Caesar takes control of his brethren, and then perform some seriously clever tricks to escape from prison, and then lead a revolt against the humans, along the way spreading the wealth of knowledge he has gleaned from his lifetime living with humans, as well as some of that happy gas that makes apes super-intelligent, and conveniently enough, kills human beings. Watching the film, it's clearly slanted toward the apes being the heroes, and I fell for that for sure, but I always go for the underdog or the animals against the humans anyway. The apes are all CGI but for the most part, you don't really notice, the graphics are pretty amazing, not super realistic, but they look good. So I say, respect, good film, worth the time to check out, if just for the apes in the action sequences, but especially in their interactions with one another and with humans. The film was obviously left wide open for a sequel (or sequels), so I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see something there in a year or two. Picture taken from wikipedia.

Some photos for June/July

dtra — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:01:27 GMT

It's been Winter here the past couple of months and so that's been my excuse for not having gone out and taken more photos. These photos were pretty much taken in June, and maybe the start of July, I know, we're in the middle of August now, but it's been a bit wet, a bit miserable, a bit depressing, and I'm not that keen on chasing photos when it's a bit cold and dark. Hopefully the weather starts clearing up and getting warmer, and combined with the longer days I will be able to hit the roads again and find some nice locations around Melbourne to take some photos before the end of the year. So they're just a couple of photos from Black Rock that I took right at the start of June, over two months ago! And the other three are of Tabby, who I was cat-sitting for most of June and the start of July, she's a cute little kitty cat. Not much more to add, so enjoy, and hopefully I will be able to add some new photos of different things in the near future.

Always be focused

dtra — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:02:06 GMT

Man, I haven't posted anything here in a few weeks, and then I come and post something that I always dread. For the first time in almost two years I've had a scrape on the road and come off my bike, it was pretty much totally my fault . I was riding on the left hand side of the left lane of a two lane road, the lights had just changed green so I was expecting a bit of an acceleration. Then the guy in the right hand lane decides to change lanes, but goes halfway, so while I was distracted by that I hadn't noticed that the car in front (and the cyclist behind him probably 5m in front of me) had braked pretty suddenly, by the time I was looking straight ahead, it was too late, I squeezed brake levers as hard as I could, but my puny and pretty worn brakes didn't give much in terms of stopping power, I rear-ended the cyclist knocking him down along with myself. Fortunately, traffic wasn't moving and we both fell to the left hand side onto the pavement at a relatively slow speed. I was apologising profusely and checking that he was all right, as you would, hopefully I didn't do any damage to him or his bike, he seemed ok. I only have a slight bruise and some cuts on my leg, my ego is way more bruised. Maybe after almost two years I had become a little complacent and over-confident with my abilities despite many close run-ins over that period, but now begins a new period of heightened concentration and awareness to make sure this doesn't happen again. I was riding my red bike, so any scratches and the like are less important, if I did this is on my black bike, I'd just about be ready to kill myself. Here's the mantra to follow, "Always be focused", concentrate at all times, I can't take my eyes off the traffic in front like that, that's a disaster waiting to happen.

Picture of my leg taken after I got home.

An Aussie Tour de France

dtra — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:43:56 GMT

In a battle of the bridesmaids (only just realised yesterday), the runners-ups of the previous four Tours de France went head to head in the time trial last night for all the marbles, and Cadel finally had everything go his way. The tour has been unbelievably exciting this year, even more so than two years ago when Lance Armstrong came back, and then last year when Andy Schleck was pusing Contador, it always just seemed like Contador would have enough. This year however, it just seemed to have that edge of uncertainty, Contador obviously didn't have the legs in the end, but you could never be sure, and then the Schlecks you thought would be the ones that could really take advantage, but they didn't seem as consistently strong as last year. Then finally, Cadel Evans who seems to have something go against him every year that costs him a chance of threatening for the tour, this year he rode like a demon. Watching the mountain stages, I kept wondering when is he going to crack? When are they going to attack him with a bunch of thankless and wicked counter attacks? But it turns out that this Tour was different, Cadel proved to be the strongest rider out there, and he stomped on his pedals last night as if they were previous disappointments to claim the Yellow Jersey when it really matters, the last day going into Paris.

Apart from the mechanical he had in yesterday's stage going up the Col du Telegraphe, his only mishap in this tour occurred on the podium yesterday when there was a little confusion as to which cheek to kiss first, that's how good this tour was for Cadel.

The way he led most of the contenders over the Galibier (twice!) with no one else doing any work was amazing, and the fact that they had a hard time just staying with him even though he was doing so much more work was crazy. I wasn't planning on watching the whole celebratory stage into Paris tonight, but I guess I will have to now. I have to admit, Cadel's always come across as a bit of a dick, well, a bit highly strung, but I never thought he'd win the Tour after 2008, but he's come back so strongly this year, I think it should be a very proud moment for all Aussies, I know I will be wearing my yellow jacket with pride tomorrow cycling to work . So big congratulations go out to Cadel Evans for achieving his dream, and becoming the first Australian to win the Tour.

Picture taken from the Geelong Advertiser.

An annoyance (from the NBA)

dtra — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 04:27:34 GMT

OK, so there's a lockout at the moment so no one really cares about this stuff (and probably no one cares about this anyway). But, I remember seeing this play as a highlight on some NBA web site, watching it, and just thinking, this is how NBA players are so good, they don't actually have to obey the laws of the game all the time.Now, this isn't anything as blatant as Lebron's crab dribble, but this is pretty obvious I would think to anyone actually watching the game. Now maybe the players don't get away with this kind of thing as they are growing up and playing in smaller leagues, but who knows, they get to the NBA, and all of a sudden, the refs don't bother, it probably is a part of the spectacle I guess, they don't want to stop games for strict rulings. But this is the sort of play that called up every game we play, and I reckon as a player, you must not even notice it happen, because refs call it sometimes, and I certainly don't think I ever do it, sometimes you see it called on other players and it's fair enough, but sometimes it's just like the ref is being a bit over-zealous, as everyone in the stadium is wondering what the call was for. Anyway, here is my example, Dirk Nowitzki throwing a little lefty jump hook over Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum in this year's second round of the Western Conference Playoffs. See the shuffle of both of his feet, after he's already taken his two steps, so it's not even like he's shuffling his pivot foot, he has no pivot foot at that point, and he shuffles both anyway.

Skip forward to 6m03 seconds to see the part I'm talking about or go to the dirk video on youtube where it is already marked at the correct time.

X-Men First Class

dtra — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:23:37 GMT

It's been a while since I've done a movie review, I haven't seen anything of particular interest so nothing worth reviewing I guess. Anyway, went and saw the latest in the line of X-Men movies, this one being a prequel to the trilogy that came out earlier. It is based around the meeting of Professor X and Magneto during the cold war. It also shows the origins of Magneto, and a few other mutants that may look familiar to everyone. We have young Mystique (apparently Charles Xavier's childhood friend and ages as half the speed of a normal person, we learn from Hank McCoy), Hank McCoy (Beast, starts off as a normal person with ape feet) then turns himself blue and beastly accidentally, Alex Summers (obviously Cyclops' dad or something like that), Night Crawler's Russian father, and we even saw a very brief cameo from Wolverine who looks the same cos he ages so slowly. Kevin Bacon plays the villain in this film, a very powerful mutant who can rejuvenate himself (immortal) because he can absorb energy and redirect it any way he likes. He is Magneto's predecessor really, you learn through the movie that he has been looking for mutants to help him in his mission to destroy the human race. His plan is to get the Russians and Americans to kill each other through mutual assured destruction leaving the stronger, better adapted mutants to survive and rule the world. Of course this plan is perfect for him as he is able to absorb any energy and use it however he sees fit. He is also given a helmet by the Russians (wonder why they didn't keep one or two for themselves) that is capable of blocking mutants with telepathic powers from getting into his head. So while he is wearing his helmet, he is basically invulnerable. We also find out that Beast is a genius and has built pretty much everything that the X-Men have ever used. The action and look of the film is pretty good, the special effects look pretty good to me, not overdone like so many other films. These films based on comic books can be a bit difficult to gauge though, because they try to fit so much into such a short time frame, they sometimes seem a bit rushed, but in general, it was a nice entertaining film. We also had a couple of mutants that I'm not really sure how they made it into the final film, but I guess they needed some filler characters, there was the screaming Banshee who could fly using his vocal chords and could also be used as a sonar device, there was the tornado fart man who could make tornadoes with his hands, the fly girl who could fly with her dragonfly wings and spit fiery spit balls, and the guy that was adapted to survive in any situation (except that in which a fireball was placed inside him), it did become pretty apparent after the fifth time he mentioned that he was adapted to survive that he was almost certainly not going to survive into a second film.

So yeah, if you like super hero action movies, this one was pretty good and worth watching for the most part, though the ending seemed a bit like an afterthought (the part after Kevin Bacon is done, that part was pretty good, although a bit melodramatic, Professor X is telling Magneto not to kill him but doesn't actually give any other ideas as to how to stop him), and we did learn how Professor X ends up in a wheelchair. So yeah, watch it and ignore any scene with the flying Banshee and/or Fly girl I guess. Picture taken from wikipedia. Finally, just want to mention Hoyts pathetic complimentary free tickets scheme, they give you these tickets that are supposedly free, but you have no way of redeeming them for seats that will be good, so you have to phone them up, and they tell you to just show up and risk getting shit seats, or book them in and pay $2.50 booking fee over the phone, nice loophole.

Photo post

dtra — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 03:16:47 GMT

Not sure if I will be able (or bothered) to process any photos that I have taken recently, though I do have a backlog for a couple weeks worth to upload to flickr at the moment. So in a couple weeks there will be a break from posting new photos, so I thought I'd post this now and get it out of the way. These pictures were taken over the Easter long weekend, a couple similar ones have already been posted to flickr, with one more to go, which I'll probably post tomorrow. So just a photo of AAMI Park, and a couple from the early morning when I went down to Williamstown, both in black and white, I rode down to Black Rock last weekend, so I'll have some photos from that trip to go up in a few weeks time, and hopefully have taken some other photos of some other place in the coming weeks, I'm really trying to get out and find more locations, but I don't know, cos I don't really like taking architecture photos, I don't know where to find good landscapes around Melbourne (within 25km or so), I'll keep looking anyway. I might just head down to Black Rock again because I saw a nice location to do some jumping shots but I was busting to go for a pee, so it would have been too challenging to go through the whole process of jumping in that state .

Garmin etrex Legend Hcx

dtra — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 05:47:29 GMT

Decided to buy one of these while the Australian dollar was high, still is I guess. The main reason being that I can't trust my iphone to have enough power to run gps on some longer journeys (ie. more than 2-3 hours), and also for use overseas and in areas where the phone doesn't get a good signal. It seems prety handy, but there are definitely a few things that I haven't worked out and would definitely be very happy to get to the bottom of. I've managed to find some open source maps that plug into the Garmin software ok, but have not been able to import the maps onto the GPS unit yet, the Garmin software seems to start doing it then stops and complains of some unknown error. The maps on the device aren't that important, I just want to be able to save waypoints and tracks really. For that, the unit seems to work fine and be very accurate. That covers the geographical part of the unit, the trip computer however, I can't say that I'm overly impressed with, well it seems to work ok, even keeping stopped time and moving time separately, but the fact that I cannot (it seems) export the time with my track is quite annoying for me. This means that when recording tracks I will need to save the waypoints, and make sure that I take note of the duration at each point, and manually enter that stuff in later. It seems very good at getting and keeping a signal, so that's a positive, we'll see how it goes at Around the Bay, hopefully I will have worked out these issues that I'm having (one way or another) and I'll have them sorted out by then, otherwise it may just be a combination of GPS and iphone (for recording times) to keep track. I'll update this or make a new post (I guess) if I work out this track stuff, and have a good track to post (obviously).

Picture taken off the garmin site.

I'm back! Rant time...

dtra — Tue, 31 May 2011 12:37:44 GMT

Well, after a torturous four weeks (or so) without proper internet at home, I'm finally back, I do apologise for the lack of updates here, but that couldn't really be helped. Anyway, so I made the switch from the TPG offnet plan to the unlimited plan so I don't have to be watching the stupid clock all the time now, I can just go with freedom. Meanwhile, with all this time with no internet, I've been able to brood and to stew for a while about a few things that have really irked me, and so I thought what better time to vent than now. Let's begin with the TPG, I have to say I'm really happy now to be on the unlimited plan, but boy was it a hassle (and a rip-off) getting on to it. First of all, I had just been charged in advance for the next month of my old plan, when I discovered that I could finally switch onto the TPG network, so I went to switch, but now they tell me that I have to cancel my current plan before I could be set up with the new one. OK, fair enough, but this is where the pain starts, I had to call up several times just to clarify that I would be guaranteed a port, and to find out what charges I would be hit with. There's the cancellation fee (fair enough I was on a contract), there's another setup fee, a phone deposit (?), and a new 6 month contract to sign up to. But the thing that really got me, was that I had just been charged for the month (in advance mind you), and obviously the previous month wasn't even through yet, so in essence, I paid for a month that I never got to use, and I didn't even get the whole previous month's worth. And no, they won't give you pro-rata for continuing on with them and on a new contract, you just have to absorb that. TPG will keep me updated on the progress of my installation, I didn't get an email when my ADSL2 became active, that would have been very useful to know three or four days ago when it did become active. Bah!

Moving on, without the internet on my computer for a month, I had to rely on my iphone which is usually ok for internet, but as it happens, I'm pretty much in an Optus blackspot (I live in Melbourne), so the best I can hope for, Edge or GPRS, Edge only started coming up recently, and it seems to be a bit faster than GPRS. But anyway, I have a Virgin mobile broadband modem, oh wait, that uses the Optus network, so in fact I have two useless internet tools. I only have a month and a half left on my contract, so in all likelihood I will be switching to a Telstra prepaid plan at that point, and then will decide whether to get a new phone and on a contract, but I can safely say that Optus will be out of my life for good very soon.

The following are just minor things that have popped up recently. I got a Garmin GPS unit (more on that later), and I was finding it a bit difficult to get some of the software working, so I wanted to sign up to their forum to get some support (I eventually found something without that), but when I went to log in (to the forum, separate from the account section), it kept telling me my login details were incorrect, they can't be, then I noticed that my username was displayed in uppercase on the account page, so I tried that and managed to login, now that is usability!

I just wanted to throw my voice in (very late now I know, but whatever) to the Jack Trengove suspension debate, I find it difficult to watch a game now without seeing a tackle, or bump, or any kind of physical contact, that based on the ruling for Trengove, I would judge to be a suspendable offence. Johnathan Brown's broken face, the contact from the guy that hit him was accidental of course, but it was high, high impact, reckless (maybe not), negligent (maybe, who knows), and put Brown out for 7 weeks I think. How many points (and weeks) should the suspension be?

One last thing before I go to sleep, passwords, every bloody institution talks about security, and I'm talking about banks especially, but when they ask you to set a password, they've got a bunch of rules that actually prevent you from having a properly secure password, limiting the number and type of characters that can be used in a password to just alphanumerics and to a single digit number of characters? You know who you are, that's just lame, and that push button javascript thing is awful, the great security of people standing behind you watching which numbers you push on the screen. Damn number generators, I lost mine, and now don't have access to online banking to one of my bank accounts, great, really useful, also they limit the password to alphanumerics only . Yes, I had an unfortunate issue where I had to change all my passwords, damn mainlanders, I'll talk about 1password in more detail later.

Need I mention Ritmo, that company (from China I'm sure) that produces the extremely cheap and low quality computer hardware (peripherals mainly I think), even after I promised myself I would never buy another Ritmo product again, I ended up at msy and needing a USB hub (with power), so I just got what they gave me, a cheap Ritmo 4 port USB hub. I'm not even sure all the ports work properly, I just know the power cable was next to useless, it is about a foot long, the USb cable is next to useless, it's about 6 inchces long, and the power that is provided to each port is probably enough to support a USB key, it wasn't enough to support my external hard drive (which has it's own power supply), it wasn't enough to support my usb keyboard, it was enough to support my virgin broadband modem, but it didn't work properly, and we all know how that turned out anyway. Never again, will I buy a Ritmo, even if I have to pay five times the price that I need to, even if I have to buy from Officeworks or some mainstream shop like that.

I have no picture to convey the frustration of these rants, that is something I will work on, I'll come up with a stock, standard rant picture for this site. I've got a bunch more posts (with photos!) on the way, be patient, that's what happens when you're down for a month.

Four! and more printouts

dtra — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 01:04:21 GMT

So we went on the annual IT retreat last week, a changed venue for the first time in a few years, we went down to the home of Australian golf, Moonah Links. Fortunately, we didn't have to torture ourselves with a round of golf, I took my camera, but didn't get a chance to go down to the beach for some wonderfully generic, yet obviously beautiful sunset shots (and obviously I was never going to get up for a sunrise shot which would've been in the other direction so probably wouldn't have worked anyway). I didn't really manage to get any particularly great shots, thinking that the beach sunset would have been the optimal location for some landscape specials, but anyway, hopefully over this long weekend I will get some nice shots of Melbourne, weather permitting. So here, we will settle for a couple of shots that were taken around sunset on the Friday and Saturday last week, as well as a photo of my formerly blank living room walls, well, they've had some decoration for a while now, but I think I've more or less completed one side of the living room (in terms of large prints, I may add some smaller prints to the walls in the photo).

I told you I would get the Machu Picchu shot up on a wall, I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer, so calibrated the monitor, worked out the whole printer profile thing (export to the printer profile colour space provided by the print shop), and bit the bullet and ordered an 18"x40" shot of my Machu Picchu panorama, and a 12"x40" of my Achachiwa Lookout (in the Colca Canyon) on stretched canvas. They're hanging up there next to my 12"x26" Bolivian panoramas I printed earlier this year. I've got a couple of panoramas from India that I will probably print out in the future (save some more money I guess), and I've got so many other photos that I want to print out bigger as well, but I'm not sure how big at the moment, probably more like the standard 12"x18" for the normal 3:2 shots, and probably a few square prints too. Does anyone want to sponsor my prints?

Land of the Setting Sun: in HDR

dtra — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:57:58 GMT

So the last photo I posted on flickr I also took in bracketed mode, after reveiwing the shots I decided that the silhouette shot was probbably the way to go. Even so, I thought I'd process the bracketed shots to see how they turned out. To be honest, I think the tone mapped shot is pretty good, just with a couple of issues. While initially I thought that the shadows in the foreground were probably too dark to be anything more than a silhouette, in the tone mapped version, you can see that there is actually quite a bit of detail that can be recovered, so that's a pro for the HDR. On the negative side in my opinion though, the chromatic abberations are really quite strong and obvious (around the towers in the skyline). It's quite difficult to work around them because they are apparent in the two brighter shots (and even in the reflections on the cars). I'm not sure if I prefer the more silhouette stlying of the skyline, or the brighter, slightly more detailed, but more unrealistic looking skyline in the HDR shot. Anyway, I'll let you decide which one you like better, I'm almost leaning toward the HDR shot after having processed it. But the light is just great either way, and I'm certainly happy to have found this spot for taking pictures of the CBD skyline at sunset. Though I'll have to find somewhere else rather than snapping the same shot in the same spot every time. Hopefully be heading a bit further south over easter for some different shots of sunsets near Melbourne. I'll be posting some pictures taken down at Moonah Links in the next week or so, mostly on flickr, but I'll probably throw some up here as well.

To HDR or not to HDR?

dtra — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:01:37 GMT

As promised, I have uploaded non-HDR (well, non-tone mapped) versions of the last three pictures that I uploaded to flickr. They are single exposures taken from the bracketed shots I took last week. I processed them the same way I would normally, picking the one (from three) that would produce the best result. The main differences that I see are that, the colours are more vivid (especially green), contrast seems to be greater, and they appear a bit sharper (but that's probably just the higher contrast output). Obviously the shadows are brought out a bit better in the HDR's (not a whole lot better in the Cracking Sunrise or the Freeway sunrise), but certainly the Northcote sunrise the trees are a lot better, although, the clouds are actually more contrasty in the under exposed shot (which I probably could have put up in the HDR version I guess). My favourite of the three is the freeway shot, the one posted here is the normal exposure, and really, the main differences are that the shadows, there's more punch and contrast without losing too much to the darkness I think. And then the rays of light are much clearer in the HDR, the clouds also have more contrast. These were all done using Photomatix 4 by the way. I only just worked out the de-ghosting tool which is something I've been wanting for a long time, and I have to say, it does seem to work very well, meaning I no longer have nice images with blurry sections, just really nice pictures (as long as my hands are steady). So maybe it wasn't absolutely necessary to go the tone-mapping route, but I think it just gives that little bit extra headroom to work with, and can be the difference between a slightly off exposure and a perfect shot. I'll keep experimenting and working at it, I definitely think Photomatix is worth it if you get the results you're after, and I'm definitely getting the results that I'm looking for.

Holy Guacamole!

dtra — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 05:06:02 GMT

It's a dtraCorp double hit! So I learnt this recipe while I was in Peru (not when I went to Mexico ha!), and from our tour guide on the Inca Jungle Trek of all people. We were pretty much at the last stop before hitting Machu Picchu, and had stopped for lunch before making our way to Aguas Calientes for the night (and Machu Picchu in the dark early morning). We only had crackers, but this was avocado (aguacate) country, so for our entree to lunch, our guide made a quick gucamole dip. I'm sure everyone has their own twist on guacamole, it's a very simple dip/sauce to make, but I thought I'd throw mine in the mix. The ingredients are as follows:

avocado (1 for two people)
1 (small and juicy) lemon per avocado
2-3 garlic cloves (or more, depends how much you like garlic) per avocado
black pepper (crushed is good)
salt (I don't measure it, I taste the guacamole until the amount is right)

The following are optional extras:

2 chillis if they are hot, sliced, the amount depends how hot you want the guacamole really, I found two was good
onion, I am not a big fan of raw onion, so I tend to only have cooked onion with chicken tortillas and not in the actual guacamole
I really like the smell of oergano (I don't get the fresh stuff cos I would never get through it), so just dried oregano mixed in

So if you have a ripe avocado (apparently you can tell if the top is a bit soft, google it for a better method), just crack it open and scrape the contents into some kind of bowl/dish and mix it up (or blend it if you like it smooth) with a fork to start with, and then a whisk to clean up.
Cut the lemon(s) in half and squeeze the juice in till it's all in more or less
Crush the garlic and throw it in and mix it up
If using chilli, slice up the chilli and mix that in as well
If using pepper, crush it in
Keep mixing it with the whisk and adding salt, all the while tasting it, once the flavour is right, you have your guacamole

I've tried this guacamole with both corn chips and with chicken tortillas, and for my personal tastes, it was really good, I was very happy to say the least, because it was the first time I actually made it, for the chicken tortillas, and I was working from memory. Give it a go, but I think avocados are seasonable fruit, so don't bother if the avocados aren't in season I guess. That's a fast, easy dip for chips and chicken based tortillas/tacos. Enjoy, the picture is quite a poor quality, but it definitely tastes at least as good as it looks (depends on how you view the picture ).

Bienvenidos a mi casa

dtra — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 04:42:18 GMT

OK, so I've finally pretty much got all my furnishings complete, so I can post some pictures of my interior decorating. The idea is to keep it as simple as possible (I think), don't want to fill the place up with crap that I don't need. No pictures of the kitchen, I mean, who really cares what's in there (a borrowed fridge and dining table FYI), or the bathroom (normal stuff plus a washing machine), or the study (computer desk, and bicycles), or even my bedroom (bed and drawers). Just my living room, which has the most interesting stuff, and the stuff to show off. I was thinking that I wouldn't have much wall space initially, but since I am very unlikely to rent our the study as a bedroom, I probably have a lot of wall space now to print out some pictures to hang up. So without further ado, some pictures of my living room.

You can't see my hammock (with stand) in these pictures, I did post that in an earlier blog, the couch is ozzy's (I will be doing all I can to get my hands on a nice leather couch when I get some cash and ozzy takes his couch back). Finally was able to mount my giant Mexico City print on the wall, it's got bubbles in it, but from the right angle you can't see them, and my Angkor Wat painting (I didn't paint it).

The moth that you probably should have seen already:

My new coffee table that matches my bookshelf and TV cabinet with the "marble" coasters that I got from India (they did survive unlike the coaster holder).

The main picture is obviously of my coffee table with TV and bookshelf in the background, and a couple of canvas prints (at the side). Those prints are 12"x26", I am planning to do a couple of much bigger ones to put next to them, maybe later in the year (in total, a combined 30"x40", so I really need to save some money since I want to go on holidays again next year, I've pretty much written off this year. Let's just see how much money I can save, so that I can take a nice break next year.

It's alive!!! But what to do with it?

dtra — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:57:50 GMT

I was notified of the availability of davidtran.org a couple days ago, and jumped on it on the spot. It seems that I get three domains for free in my dreamhost package, I'll probably have to pay for it next year, but it's not much anyway. I've been wanting davidtran.net for a while, but it seems that that one is being hogged by some other David Tran. So for now, davidtran.org will have to suffice, still I'm happy to be taking up the davidtran real estate on the net. Now I just have to work out what to do with it, at the moment I'm just using it to mirror trandavid.net, but I would think in the long term it should be used for something slightly more constructive than that. If anyone has any good ideas, please submit them in an orderly fashion, and I will see if any of them are worth my while contemplating. It has been a while since I've posted here, I do plan a couple new posts in the next week or so, probably with photos, nothing special, but just to keep this site afloat. Anyway, that's all for now, I will definitely have more updates in the next couple weeks, so stay tuned. The stupid DNS may still not have propagated for davidtran.org where you are, I know it is a bit flaky at the moment for me.

MS Melbourne Summer Cycle

dtra — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:48:57 GMT

So I rode in this last Sunday, it was just a 40km fun ride really, but it's for a good cause, to support people with Multiple Sclerosis, and the course was good. It was very busy which did take away from the day a bit, but at least the weather held up for the most part, only got rained on in the last couple hundred metres from home. Went over the West Gate Bridge again, which is fun, although the view is not particularly special. The view from Williamstown however, was quite beautiful, I wish I had my camera with me (my digital SLR, not my iphone), definitely would've been nice to snap some shots, but maybe slightly earlier in the day. I lent ozzy my red bike for the ride, and we arrived really late, so ended up meeting alf at the finish line, the ride actually turned out to be only about 37km, and so we were a bit undersold, but thinking about it, it probably would have to have been twice as long to actually thin out the masses, it's more of a family ride that's just for a morning rather than a whole day ride like ATB. Anyway, definitely thinking about the 210km ATB this year, but going to require quite a bit of commitment and training, it's getting toward that cold weather season, so the amount of cycling done in free time will probably be minimised (not that I ride that much outside of commuting anyway). Back to the topic, feel free to continue donating to the cause even if I go past my stated goal.

Picture taken from the official photographers site of the event. Apparently my image is copyrighted to the photographers, so I'll probably have to remove the photo at some point (although they do mention something about a free photo, I think it's ok, they say it's for personal use). I am aware of the face I'm making.

True Grit

dtra — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:22:48 GMT

It's been a busy period the past few days, so I'm only finally able to post my review of this film now. Starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and some little girl (I do my research well, don't I?), it's directed by the Coen brothers and is based in the midwest (I guess) of the US during the late 1800's (possibly, the wild, wild west period anyway). The gunslingers, cowboys and Indians, sheriffs, and US marshals abound in this one, some cool scenery, and interesting camera work, as well as some great acting, and direction (I guess) make this a really cool film to watch. Maddy Ross (the little girl), is in town to look after her father's business since he's been murdered, she is a precocious youngster, and decides that (after hearing of how her father died, and how unlikely it would be that his murderer would be captured) she will offer a reward/bounty to a US marshal to bring the murderer (Tom Cheney) to justice. Along the way she meets Matt Damon (his character has a funny name), who is also on the hunt for the crook for a murder he committed in Texas. Due to some shrewd business dealings, Maddy is able to earn a bit more cash which she eventually uses to convince Rubin Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) the US Marshal, to track down and capture Tom Cheney. I'll leave the synopsis at that, and needless to say (unless you've actually read the novel), the film has it's twists and turns, and you never really quite know how the story will end, although, you might be able to guess based on the start. Good film, I'd definitely recommend it, Jeff Bridges is awesome, and Matt Damon performs his role well, the little girl is a bit odd, and the character is a bit hard to believe, but her role is performed well. The baddies are really well played, and very interesting characters, I have to admit as well, that the film reminded me very much of Red Dead Redemption, which is not a bad thing, cos the game was cool too.

Picture taken from wikipedia.

Home is where the hammock is!

dtra — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 23:22:10 GMT

Yes, so I've finally achieved the true Australian dream of owning my very own hammock frame (with accompanying hammock), so I thought I'd post a bit about that. If you can actually believe that I managed to put this hammock frame together with my own bare hands, I don't have any pictures of me doing it, just the finished product, the hammock frame I bought last week to finally go with my hammock that I got in Mexico, but never had a place to put it. So, after pondering the situation, the likelihood of my getting a nicely shaded tree on my own property seemed unlikely, I decided to go for this hammock frame. I didn't time how long it took to put together, but it was probably an hour or less, for someone as manual labour skills deficient as me, that is a pretty impressive effort and says a lot about how simple it is to put together I think. The instructions say that the hammock should be at least 35cm from the ground, and my giant hammock was hanging quite low, so just put in the extra hooks and it'll be sweet right? Well, not quite, it was still a little bit low, so in the end (and I hope this is not to the detriment of the hammock, or stand, or user), I had to tie a knot around one end of the hammock to shorten it a bit, and I think it has a nice balance now. I was lying in it having a bit of a rest afterwards, and must say, those Mexicans sure know how to make a hammock, so relaxing, so score one each for the hammock makers and the hammock stand. The only problem with the current placement of the stand is that the legs and the frame do jut out quite a bit, so hopefully, no one takes an eye out, or breaks a toe, and I am able to fit a couch and coffee table (not to mention TV and assorted AV stuff) in without the living room being a hazardous obstacle course.

Oh yeah, that is my exercise bike in the background, and yes, all of this is made possible because I own my own flat now, my living room, as you can see, is going to be quite a mess. We'll see how long I can persist with the hammock, at least I can finally say that those $230 pesos weren't a total waste of money. I'll definitely try to take a better picture with my proper camera when it's all decked out. In closing, although I am obviously a true handyman now, you can expect my rates to be prohibitively high.

The Fighter

dtra — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:44:55 GMT

Again, it's been a while since I watched a new film at the cinema, and for whatever reason, it's another one based in Massachusetts, USA. It seems that a lot of these gritty, blue collar type stories are coming from that area and being turned into films, the last one being "The Town". Anyway, back to The Fighter, a story about a couple of brothers (Mark Walhberg and Christian Bale), boxers from the neighbourhood or Lowell, Massachusetts, chasing a dream. It is based on a true story and part of it is sort of documentary-based as there is a documentary crew following Dick Eklund (Bale) around documenting his life as a crack addict. He harbours delusions of coming back (he fought Sugar Ray Leonard (cameo appearance) once), but in the meantime he trains Micky Ward (Walhberg), while their mother manages them. Bale is really the main character of the film even though it follows the ups and downs of both characters, the extremes of his character are much more intense. While it is a pretty intense film, the family in general, and the sisters and half-sisters of the brothers in particular, provide some light hearted moments. It's a massive family, I lost count of the number of sisters, something like seven, and like the mother, they were all a bit one-eyed for Dicky. I don't watch boxing so I have no idea how true to life that part of the film was, it didn't look particularly great (maybe not as bash and smash as Rocky), I certainly didn't get the feeling that they were professional boxers, but at the same time, it wasn't unrealistic. So in conclusion, much better than The Town and a pretty decent film, but to be honest, the preview for True Grit looked like something special, but I won't let that take over this review.

Picture taken from wikipedia.