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Holiday photos
I just finished sorting, processing, uploading and detailing photos for the first two days of my holiday. They are in the album Auckland Day 1&2 in the Auckland Holiday collection and it will be in chronological order if viewed within the album.
You can find the album here.
Still to come:
- Day 3 (and beyond)
- Turning 50
- Birthday Surprise
- Absent-mindedly almost 50
I’m hoping to continue the Auckland posts shortly but may do birthday/turning 50 posts before that since it’s still quite fresh in my mind.
Perhaps when I get caught up, I will think about creating a gallery for my trip on this website, probably with a pared down collection.
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Flickr
I’m been using Flickr off and on for several years now. I have photos going back as far as 2005 when I started my account. Back then I just used the free account as I wasn’t uploading a whole lot. Over the past few years, I’ve been taking heaps more photos and posting more on the website. It’s interesting to see how my photography skills have changed over the years. I also have been far more ruthless about keeping only a handful of photos most of the time rather than keeping 1o shots of the same thing. Well, I still sometimes keep multiple copies but oftentimes I delete far more than I keep. It’s usually just a matter of not being able to decide between photos.
Back in the early years, I didn’t have all that many views of my photos, aside from family and friends. Once I started uploading more photos, my views went up but then there would be many days where I’d have none at all. I’ve noticed lately that I’m getting quite a few views daily without even trying. What’s funny is the photos being viewed. Probably the most popular ones are the photos I took at our science museum, Scitech, a few years ago of several plastic bottle sculptures in an exhibit about plastic waste…I think… They aren’t great photos but the subject was interesting. People keep coming to see these same photos all the time. I guess they must be doing searches and my photos come up but it’s kind of funny they are the most popular when they are pretty mediocre overall.
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Up late
Despite my efforts, I don’t seem to be able to get to bed very early these days. I’ve just spent a bit of time going through some of my recent photos to weed out bad ones and do a bit of work on some others. I also managed to upload some to Flickr today. I have quite a few more to upload but I’m still getting my head around the interface for uploads on Photoshop Elements (plus editing details on the website). Those will have to wait until I get the motivation to get more done. It was a bit tricky working without the right mouse button. I have a trackball that does work fully but it’s so uncomfortable that I am avoiding it and just using the broken trackball for what it can do.
I got to the gym this evening after procrastinating for quite a long time. It was probably a good idea since I think I hate a few too many air fried chips for dinner. I did my whole workout on the spin bike by doing the video class and then adding extra time to it. I had to take it easy through the workout as my knees were both sore from something stupid I did yesterday. I was walking the dogs and thought I’d try to run/jog a bit with them as I realised I can now run a short distance if required. I only jogged 20-30 seconds but both my knees were feeling wobbly afterwards. I think I’ll just avoid the jog/run thing altogether except for emergencies.
I think it’s time to end this nothing post and get myself to bed.
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Storm that wasn’t
At least in our area, the storm was relatively benign. Sure, there was plenty of gusty wind but not enough to cause damage. There was also plenty of rain but it came along in showers that usually didn’t last too long. There was even a bit of thunder and lightning…for about two or three minutes. It definitely wasn’t the big storm we expected but it did bring plenty of rain and cooler weather that is more typical of this time of the year. Further south they fared considerably worse but it seems we were on the edge of the system and missed out the worst. That’s one good thing about where we live though. When we had the big hailstorm in March about three or four years ago, our area missed out completely, aside from a massive downpour and a whole lot of noise from the clouds above…even that didn’t last all that long. We’re still getting showers after a few days and possibly will have more tomorrow but it looks like the sun will be back by Sunday.
Today I took Lego Lover to see the New York photo exhibit that’s running here from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I would have liked to wait until next week as he’s not totally recovered from the virus that started with a sore throat but the exhibition closes on Sunday and a weekend visit wouldn’t have gone well with all the last minute crowds going. He wasn’t keen to go but this was part of his “school” program and we compromised on our travel by taking a train into the city from a not-too-distant suburb (closest station to us)…Anyway, we arrived and he first got to have a look at all the construction going on near the city train station for a couple of minutes. We moved on to the art gallery and had our visit. It took far less time to look at everything in this exhibit. I don’t know if it was smaller or if we just didn’t spend as much time looking at the photos. Lego Lover didn’t like much of it although he did like one that showed double decker buses in the 1950s, I think. To be honest, I didn’t find this one nearly as good as the last one. Even though I didn’t like a lot of the Modern Masters series, it was more interesting to me overall. Afterwards we went to look at the grade 12 student exhibition in the next gallery. We didn’t linger at that for long as Lego Lover was wanting to go but I thought there were some very interesting pieces and it was amazing to think these are high school students’ work. Next month a new exhibit from MoMA comes out called Van Gogh, Dali and Beyond: The World Reimagined which I plan to visit with Lego Lover and the Scientist. Hopefully we can find a weekend when it’s not too terribly crowded. There is also a new exhibit at the nearby WA Museum which is about Ancient Egypt and includes two mummies that we plan to see after it begins later this month.
After we left the museum we had lunch in the city and wandered around the city for a little while before we came back on the train. We must have left around 4pm and the train wasn’t nearly as crowded as I’d have expected.
I was quite glad to get home because I’d suddenly gotten very itchy while at the art gallery. It started mostly to the side of my belly button and was bad enough that the skin got red and blotchy and it looked like I’d broken the skin with the scratching…not sure if that really happened as it seemed to show up rather soon after I was aware of the itchiness or maybe it just looked like it. I’ve been finding myself itchy all over my body  since, although thankfully not all at the same time. I’m wondering about the cause of this and I wonder if I got something irritating onto my skin somehow or had some sort of insect bite…or maybe there’s something else. Hopefully it will be better in the morning.