SplaTT's Blog

Popfly Test

A quick (and simple) test of Microsoft Popfly now that my invite arrived.

This pulls out my last 15 photo uploads to my Flickr account and displays them in a carousel.

For this to work you will need to have installed the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in.

Currently disabled due to an error that started two day ago where it wouldn't load up new images from flickr (but would load up the title of the image) and a pop up appears with the following info:

Silverlight error message
WrrorCode: 3002
ErrorType: ImageError
Message: AG_E_NOT_FOUND

hmmm....

My Top 20 viewed photos on Flickr - 3

Hmmm..its been a while since i have done one of these...October the 18th 2006 to be exact...

Since the last update, a whole bunch of new "non-geeky" photos have appeared in my Top 20 and are slowly catching up to the older "geeky" ones that i had been posting upto Flickr over the years.

SplaTT's Most Viewed Top 20 Photos on Flickr - 31st May 2007
#1 Statue of Charles La Trobe	#2 Bill Gates & Steve Jobs Magazine Cover
#3 Theres No Place Like...	#4 A Young Bill Gates and Paul Allen (moved up 9 spots)
#5 Sydney Panorama (night) (new in list)	#6 Countdown Magazine October 1986 (new in list)
#7 The Great Dividing Range (moved up 10 spots)	#8 Altair 8800 at the Microsoft Museum (moved down 2 spots)
#9 Geekman (moved down 5 spots)	#10 Master Chief at the Oz Halo 2 Launch (moved up 8 spots)
#11 Pacman in Action (moved down 4 spots)	#12 Before and during the bushfire (new in list)
#13 Robert Scoble Interviewing Amanda Silver (moved down 3 spots)	#14 Block Arcade in Melbourne (new in list)
#15 Melbourne at night (new in list)	#16 mmm.....Declic..... (moved down 7 spots)
#17 Halo 2 Allnighter After the Launch (moved down 12 spots)	#18 Mt Kosciuszko panorma (new in list)
#19 Preparing for Halo 2 Allnighter (moved down 11 spots)	#20 Mountain road covered in snow (new in list)

Looking further down the list, a lot of my more popular recent photos are of the Australian Mountains...which is pretty cool becuase I think the Australian Mountains are a little under-valued at times.

Kiewa Valley

A photo I took of Kiewa Valley in February of this year (2007)...at the Mt Bogong end of the valley.

Not a bad little shot...if i do say so myself ;)

Photos in Wikipedia

Two of the photos i have taken of a plant called "Stylidium graminifolium" (also known by its common name, the Grass Trigger Plant) have been used in the Wikipedia articles for the "Stylidium" genus and the "Stylidium graminifolium" species.

 

:)

The ABC uses my Latrobe photo

I just noticed that one of my photos of the upside down Charles La Trobe statue from my Flickr site has been used by the ABC on their articulate blog.

:)

The Mighty Bogong

A photo of the highest peak in Victoria (Australia) at 1,986 metres...the mighty Mount Bogong...

NOTE: Mount Bogong is on the left of the picture with the ski resort of Falls Creek to the right and the township of Mount Beauty at the mountains base. If you're interested, I took this photo from the Tawonga Gap lookout on the Birght-Tawonga Road.

My 1,000th photo on Flickr

So...I've been awfully busy at work...I've taken a ten day trip through the Australian Mountains...and I have been taking an obscene amount of photos since i bought my new camera...so my blogging has been almost non-existant lately, but since the camera has taken up so much of my time i thought i might post the 1,000th photo that i have uploaded to Flickr.

So...thats me standing on top of Australia at the peak of Mount Kosciuszko after a 20km / 10 hr walk (the long route) during which i must have taken over 500 photos. The peak of Australia's highest mountain (on the mainland) comes in at a mighty 2,228m above sea level.

:)

Running from camera

Just ran across this on one of the Flickr groups i'm a member of.

This guy sets up his camera on a tripod...sets the timer for 2 seconds...and then runs away from the camera at full speed to see how far he can get...hence the name of his photo blog...Running From Camera. He also has a flickr set of the same photos where you can see them all on one page...geat idea :)

Moonlight on the Mountains Festival

On the 29th of December 2006 the first Moonlight on the Mountains Roots & Country Festival was held in Warburton, in the beautiful Upper Yarra Valley in the mountains east of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.

I spotted the ad for it in the local paper a few weeks before the event so when the day arrived i spoke to two of the organisers (Tony and Shane Hammon) about coming along and taking a few photos which they were happy for me to do.

A selection of the better photos that i took of two of the three bands that performed, Gleny Rae Virus & the Tamworth Playboys and the headline act, The Detonators (who were really good), are now up on the festival website and i will also put some of them up on my Flickr site in the day or so.

Its been quite a few years since i have shot a band or a concert and it was an interesting and fun experience which I hopefully be doing a bit more of as the organisers of the event, Ramblin Sound, will be contacting me when they have another festival on in or around Melbourne.

A White Christmas

You don't often get a chance in Australia to have a white christmas complete with snow...so when i heard that parts of Australia down to 900 meters were expecting to have snow fall on christmas day, i grabbed the camera and headed up to the top of Mt Donna Buang in the Upper Yarra Valley.

The crazy thing is that around 40km to the east the bushfires were burning out of control and are still burning...and we are expecting to have temperatures around 34 degrees celsius by the middle of next week...what the???

You can find a few more photos over on my Flickr site

Photography obsession

"Obsessed"...this would be a good word to use about my little photography fling going on at the moment which has certainly been fueled by the recent purchase of my Canon 400D DSLR.

On top of the camera purchase, i got notified the other day that one of my photos of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra that i had up on on my Flickr account, has been used in the new Schmap Canberra Guide (with attribution of course)...cool :)

I also recently submitted a panoramic photo i took of Mt Kosciuszko to a Flickr group called "Perfect Panoramas - 2000 x 600 minimum" and after scrutiny by the admins it was let into the group. I already had a photo of Sydney knocked back because of imperfect stitching so it was great to get one accepted as it looks like a lot of the photos submitted don't get in :)

And to top it off...I spent last weekend taking a "truck-load" of photos in the Upper Yarra Valley with the new camera and they look pretty good...though now i have a perfect camera I guess i really should brush up on my photo taking skills...

fun fun fun

Canon EOS 400D...my new camera

New toy time...after battling with the gadget monster all day I just went and bought a Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR camera :)

My old camera, an Olympus C-5050 Zoom, has been a great camera for me over the past three or so years, but for some reason (and as you can probably tell by the number of my photo related blog posts over the past few months and my ramp up in Flickr activity) i have really gotten the photography bug this year and i figured it was time to upgrade from a lowly 5 MegaPixel single lens halfway decent semi-SLR camera to a kick-ass 10 MegaPixel interchangable lens camera that not only looks like a real camera but has all the features and acts like a true SLR.

My old Olympus C-5050 Zoom camera

My new Canon EOS 400D camera with 17-85mm lens :)

The battery is charging at the moment and i can't wait to take this thing out and give it a go :)

Oh yeah...thanks to my mate Garth Kidd (see Garth's Flickr site) for his advice as I was faltering...I owe you a beer or a coffee next time we catch up Garth :)

(added on 24 Nov - Bugger...deleted all the comments on this post by accident...grrrr)

A big view

Below are some panoramic photos that i have taken over the years which i have been uploading to my SplaTT Flickr account recently.

Mt Kosciuszko - Australia's highest mountain

Sydney by night

Sydney by day

Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco

I need to take a few panoramic shots of Melbourne and the Upper Yarra Valley as well :)

Flickr Toys

A nice selection of toys and tools for Flickr users.

Photos of Melbourne at night

A week or so ago I wandered down to the banks of the Yarra River at the Eastern edge of Melbourne CBD and took a few photos (my Melbourne set at Flickr) which came out pretty well i think.

Thanks to Jane from Foghorn for pointing out that the sculpture below is called "Angel" and is by Deborah Halpern.

I think these two shots came out pretty good as well :)

With the move to Sydney in the early 1990's (i moved back to Melbourne late last year), its been ages since i have been down to the banks of the Yarra in Melbourne at night...it looks even more impressive then it did back in the 1980's...I might wander down over summer and take a few more shots and just enjoy the view ;)

My Top Flickr Sets

Instead of checking out my top 20 individual photos on Flickr, i though i might look at my "sets" in Flickr this month...

Halo 2 - 505 views

ROKR Launch - 423 views

Australian Mountains - 294 views

me @ midday - 283 views

Melbourne - 279 views

Tilt-Shift - 271 views

Microsoft Museum - 265 views

Architecture - 259 views

WiFi - 225 views

Space Stuff - 214

Tech.Ed 2004 Canberra - 181 views

GeekDinner - 161 views

Canberra Deep Space Centre - 148 views

Warburton & Upper Yarra Valley - 142 views

Wallpaper - 128 views

Misc - 107 views

2001 Trip to Outback Australia - 90 views

Records / CD's - 62 views

1980's - 21 views

SplaTT - 18 views

Heres a bit of trivia for you. I had the pleasure of being at the Flickr launch (which was at the O'Reilly Etech conference that was held in San Diego in February of 2004) so i got to sign up for Flickr pretty early on, which explains why my Tech.Ed 2004 Canberra set is numbered as the 3,331st set created...for some reason though i didn't post my first photo till August of 2004....hmmm.

Oh yeah..my latest set is the SplaTT set which is set number 72,157,594,341,447,066 ;)

My Top 20 viewed photos on Flickr - 2

The first update (see the 1st post) to my "Top 20 Viewed Photos on my Flickr site"...a bit of movement but nothing new. The views ranges from 1004 down to 204 but a few of my recently posted photos are getting quite a few views so maybe a new one might appear next month...anyway...if you are interested here they are..and if your not...well...it really doesn't matter as i'm really doing this so i can just track it myself :)

SplaTT's Most Viewed Top 20 Photos on Flickr - 14th Octber 2006
#1 Statue of Charles La Trobe	#2 Bill Gates & Steve Jobs Magazine Cover
#3 Theres No Place Like...	#4 Geekman
#5 Halo 2 Allnighter After the Launch	#6 Altair 8800 at the Microsoft Museum
#7 Pacman in Action	#8 Preparing for Halo 2 Allnighter
#9 mmm.....Declic.....	#10 Robert Scoble Interviewing Amanda Silver (moved up 1 spot)
#11 Halo 2 on the Big Screen (moved down 1 spot)	#12 ROKR Launch Schwag Bag
#13 A Young Bill Gates and Paul Allen (moved up 3 spots)	#14 Halo 2 on the Big Screen (2) (moved down 1 spot)
#15 The Boys Playing Halo 2 (moved down 1 spot)	#16 The DK Blue girls and me at Tech.Ed 2005 in Australia (moved down 1 spot)
#17 The Great Dividing Range (moved up 2 spots)	#18 Master Chief at the Oz Halo 2 Launch (moved down 1 spot)
#19 Geek TShirt (moved down 1 spot)	#20 WiFi at the Hotel

Apart from my Halo 2 photoset being my popular photoset, another one that gets a bit of attention is my Wallpaper photoset even though it only has six photos in it...guess i need to find more wallpaper to take photos of which shouldn't be too hard since wallpaper does seem to be making a comeback :)

My Top 20 viewed photos on Flickr

I was just checking out my Flickr site and noticed that a few of the newer photos that i have posted have had quite a few views and are catching up to my older photo sets...so i thought i might do a post every month showing my top 20...

SplaTT's Most Viewed Top 20 Photos on Flickr - 14th September 2006
#1 Statue of Charles La Trobe	#2 Bill Gates & Steve Jobs Magazine Cover
#3 Theres No Place Like...	#4 Geekman
#5 Halo 2 Allnighter After the Launch	#6 Altair 8800 at the Microsoft Museum
#7 Pacman in Action	#8 Preparing for Halo 2 Allnighter
#9 mmm.....Declic.....	#10 Halo 2 on the Big Screen
#11 Robert Scoble Interviewing Amanda Silver	#12 ROKR Launch Schwag Bag
#13 Halo 2 on the Big Screen (2)	#14 The Boys Playing Halo 2
#15 The DK Blue girls and me at Tech.Ed 2005 in Australia	#16 A Young Bill Gates and Paul Allen
#17 Master Chief at the Oz Halo 2 Launch	#18 Geek TShirt
#19 The Great Dividing Range	#20 WiFi at the Hotel

My most popular photoset by far is my Halo 2 photoset taken during the lead-in and the launch of Halo 2 in Australia in 2004...closely followed by my Microsoft Museum photoset taken during one of my trips to Redmond...the most popular photos are all pretty geeky even though i have a pretty wierd mixture of photos uploaded.

2001 trip to Outback Australia

With Flickr now allowing you to geotag your photos onto a map really easily, i thought i should get around to uploading some of my older photos.

So last night i upload 154 photos from my December 2001 trip into the Australian Outback. This was the first of many "big" trips for me into some amazing places which all started because i had just bought a brand new Landrover Discovery 4WD.

I was gone for around one week and covered everything from visiting friends in Canberra, to visiting Broken Hill, exploring the Sturt National Park, standing on top of "Cameron's Corner" (where three Australian States; NSW, QLD and SA join), travelling through some amazing desert country (complete with huge sand dunes), checking out the biggest gas making facility in the Southern Hemisphere at Moomba in SA, visiting the site where Robert O'Hara Burke died and was initially buried, going to Woomera (the first of many visits), Andamooka and the Roxby Downs Uranium mine as well as checking out Nurrungar and one of NASA's first sites in Australia at Island Lagoon which is right next to a "HUGE" salt lake.

I have a large bunch of photos taken while travelling around in my Discovery and will get around to posting them up over the next few weeks.

Enjoy :)

Tilt-Shift Photography

What a great effect....making real life images look like little models...

If you can't afford a tilt-shift lens for your camera...you can always fake it up with Photoshop. I'm going to go out and shoot some photos specifically to do this in a few days...but check out some of the photos i have been playing with at the photoset i created on my Flickr site.