On Friday Amy and I flew down to Melbourne as I was invited to judge at the AIMIA awards again this year. The presentation was in Melbourne so it was a good excuse to make a weekend of it!

Here’s a picture of me on the red carpet, attribution goes to AIMIA for this photo as I forgot to take my camera. The lady with me is Kristin who was on the AIMIA board and was nice enough to give me a lift from the hotel to the event.

AIMIA Awards 2010 with Kristin from AIMIA

Friday night was awards night and whilst Amy stayed in and watched movies (it is expensive and I got a free ticket) I went off to the awards. I luckly met up with some people I knew and it was a good time. Stephen Conroy (the reason the side bar has a stop internet censorship) was in attendance and gave a little speech about the national broadband network but did not make mention of his censorship plans, which hopefully means they are on the way out.

We stayed at a hotel called “The Cullen” which is part of some Art Hotels which were was really awesome. It was in a district called Prahan which was just off Chapel Street (which has lots of trendy fun shots for Amy to visit and me to wait outside).

Here is Amy in the lift with an Andy Cullen Picture

On Saturday morning we went out down Chapel Street, went to some shops, Amy bought a new pair of jeans whilst I had a cappucino. It was a really hot day and we had to stay in the shade as much as possible.

Here’s a building on Chapel Street that looked cool

We were tired from our adventure so we went back to the hotel and watched “Funny People” as it was $16.95 to hire out and Amy had watched it the night before but we watched it again together to get some sort of value out of it. Whilst we were watching the movie we noticed it started raining. It turned out it was a bit more than rain -

As the storm came I was thinking Melbourne gets some pretty awful weather! I’d never quite seen a day go from nice and sunny to what looked like some sort of minor hurricane and the hardest downpour I think I’ve ever seen! We carried on watching the movie and then I popped out for a cappucino. I walked down the street and noticed half the shops were closed and thought it was strange for shops to close so early on a Saturday. On closer inspection, half the stores on Chapel Street were totally drenched and without power, so it was not necessarily a normal storm for Melbourne but pretty crazy!

That night Amy and I went out in the rain to a restaurant called “FOG” which was a French influenced place just behind our hotel in Prahan. It was really nice and we were glad we didn’t have to go far as the streets were pretty messed up from the storm, I actually kicked a junkies needle that washed up on the street by accident a bit earlier so I was very glad I was wearing shoes and not flip flops when that happened! The service in Melbourne is about 150% better than Sydney which is really nice. We went back to the hotel as the club we were going to afterwards was either not open yet because we were there too early or closed because of water damage. We hired another $16 movie and made sure we concentrated and watched it to the very end, although I’m pretty sure Amy fell asleep as per usual.

Amy and I at FOG in Prahan

The next morning the day wasn’t looking too bad so we hired a little Smart Car from the hotel. This was really fun as it really stands out. They are funny little cars to drive, the red line is way too low and the steering wheel is a lot like the one I have for the PC, complete with flappy paddles for changing up and down.

The Smart Cart and Mornington Penisula

They are semi-automatic so it seemed to change down but not up, but it told you when to change up. I was either doing something wrong or they had skimped on paying for the switch the connected the computer that told you to change gear with the gear box to do it for you.

We drove down to the Mornington Penisula and the sun started to come out which was really nice. It was a nice part of Victoria complete with beach houses that you find on the English coastline!

Mornington Penisula Beach Sheds

We then returned to Prahan dropped off the car at the hotel, checked out our baggage and got the taxi to the airport, which is where we are now. I’ve got some spare time on my hands because the flight is delayed due to a massive storm sitting over Victoria!!! Hopefully we’ll get home at some time or another.

On the way back home we bumped into Simone and Stu who were returning from Brisvegas, which wasn’t a devastation zone like Melbourne -

Amy, Stu and Simone at YSSY Carpark

Peace!

A few months ago we went to Byron Bay for Simone and Stuart’s wedding. I was chief camera man and this is the video I made for them, enjoy!

I was on the Manly Fast Ferry the other day and had the camera. The little Canon camera Amy has does some pretty good quality video. The journey is probably the best tourist trip you can do in Sydney but only costs $6 (non-peak) to do as it’s actually just a transportation means to get from Manly to Sydney.

So for everyone in the Christmas snow here’s a typical Southern Hemisphere summer day trip from Manly to Sydney Circular Quay on the Manly Fast Ferry at 9h25 -

We are off to Brisvegas for Christmas which should be fun and then on to Copacabana (NSW not RIO) for NY!

I just found this video of London from 1927, it’s pretty incredible having lived around the areas where the film first starts it’s amazing to see this in pseudo-colour!

Then and Now

And here’s the full 10 minute video -

The video was made by Claude Friese-Greene who’s father was an early day pioneer of cinematography. The colour was created by one frame being tinted red and the next frame tinted green, when played at full speed the brain makes the images appear as colour. The video above is better than the original as some modern day techniques have been applied. Loads more into at the BFI.

Last night Nancy tipped us off that there waves were lighting up again. Nancy and Marcus saw this last year and told us about it and if it wasn’t for photographs on the internet we would never have believed them. So we drove down with the video camera and recorded some footage. It’s obviously better in real life but the video gives you a taste of what it was like, it is very cool -

What causes it? It appears after doing a little bit of internet research that an algae called Dinoflagellates is the cause of these blue lights appearing from the water. I think Dinoflagellates are almost translucent in the day time, you only really notice they are there whilst in the water when you paddle and your hands feelslike they are going through some tiny jelly fish.

When the wave starts to break the membrane of the Dinoflagellate is deformed slightly which causes it to give off a burst of photons for 1/100 of a second, hence why it looks like the waves are lighting up. Source

I took the recently repaired video camera away on holiday with us and had a bit of fun trying to get over jet lag by making this video, hope you enjoy it.

Recently when I went up in a helicopter over Sydney I took some photos which I changed to make look like little models the inspiration came from various sources on the internet but the guy who has taken it to the next level is Keith Loutit who also lives in Sydney, he has created some fantastic videos here’s his latest one -

You can see more of Keiths work at his Vimeo Page

Last weekend we went to Boomerang Beach for a couple of days of nonchalance for Marcus’ Stag / Surf weekend. It was an extremely good trip with 8 of us in total. Six of us drove up in a people carrier that Marcus had hired from Budget. It was a good vehicle as it fitted us all in and was fairly comfortable to drive. The journey took us about six hours in total which included a few stops and the obligatory shopping/booze stop. Bobby felt sick the entire way but he’d had five drinks the night before and a dodgy pizza apparently.

When we got to the house we had rented it was fantastic and a short walk across the street to the beach. The surf wasn’t really going crazy but we managed to get out that afternoon and hoped for some decent waves to come for the rest of the weekend.

Marcus, Troy, Bobby and me Surfing at Boomerang Beach

That night we retired back to the house for a relaxing evening of a few beers and some guitar hero, which ended up being a bit of a theme.

Mark, Iain and Marcus on the Balcony Chillaxing

The next day the surf was not as good which was ashame as it made it very small indeed. I took my softie so I was able to catch the shore break and claim some waves which was good fun and a lot more exercise than I thought I’d get at the weekend.

That night we went into Foster, which was the main town. We couldn’t find anywhere open so we asked someone who said the “best place” (we think she meant only place) was Club Foster or something along those lines where the ladies choice of drink was a “Goon Sunrise” – so it was a classy joint to say the least but it was good fun and involved two shots too many of Sambuca.

Tom on Drums, Me on Guitar, Marcus on Guitar/Bass, Bobby on Vocals, Troy on Camera

There was another dimension to the weekend which isn’t on the blog (you can find some dodgy pictures on Flickr if you really want to look) because older people (35+) read this and they would be appalled but to give you a hint it involved chocolate sauce, girls, money and Boston and not necessarily in that order.

The video camera broke on our trip to Bali and I thought all the footage I had was of me filming Starbucks, which probably wouldn’t make the most interesting holiday video. Last night as I prepared the camera for its trip to the repair shop I noticed I had a few more clips of Bali so I made this little video of the first few days of our trip back in July this year -

This is a fantastic animation of Jerry Levitan’s conversation with John Lennon that has won a lot of prizes for best animation at various film festivals. Here’s the trailer for it -

What the full version at YouTube (click high resolution to see it in better quality). From the website I Met the Walrus via DoobyBrain.