I have just recently downloaded both the WordPress app and the Moments! app for the iPhone. I’m hoping that these apps, along with others such as Instagram (and many other photo apps) will assist me in putting together some ‘daily’ posts from now on. That is other than the regular daily posts of a photo, video, link or quote. So hopefully some further original content to come.
To have a look at the Moments! app, visit:
http://www.vitastone.com/
Work and sessions. Sessions are the periods of work in a given day. There are three. Start to morning tea, morning tea to lunch and lunch to knock-off. That’s three sessions a day.
It is now the weekend, which means I now have 60 sessions to go before I am on holidays again. I give the lads at work a daily reminder and often a session by session reminder of how many more sessions I have to go.
I have 60 sessions to go.
It’s another wet and windy day in paradise, so not much to do but sit it out. It also means I haven’t got a lot to type about (as opposed to write about, given I’m using the keyboard). So I’m going back a little and posting about some photos I’ve taken in recent months here. In fact, what I’m posting about today is one of the great things about living here in Tea Gardens, which differs a great deal from other places I have lived down Newcastle and Lake Macquarie way and that is the abundance of wildlife around here. Sadly we have managed to kill of most of the wildlife down around Newcastle, or at the very least drove it all away. Here it abounds and I love it being so.
I’m not talking about just the smaller animal and bird species you might expect to find in a suburban area, but even the bigger examples of wildlife also. Kangaroos and Wallabies can be found all over the place in this area and it isn’t unusual to see them bounding down the main street in numbers. In fact, sadly, you often find them as road kill on the main road out to the highway. Where I work we have smaller wallabies and kangaroos actually living in and amongst the homes, with joeys in their pouches as well. The odd Dingo can also be seen from time to time. Koalas are known to live in healthy numbers around the area – not that I have spotted one here yet.
Reptiles abound here also, with large numbers of Red Belly Black Snakes, Diamond Pythons (pictured at above left) and Tree Snakes readily found in the warmer months, along with Blue-Tongued Lizards and Goannas. I have seen some Goannas that have been at least 1 metre long. Some of the Diamond Pythons have been closer to 2 metres in length.
It is the bird life that really thrives around here, especially the wetland varieties. The area is rich in bird life. At work you can see on a daily basis Wattle Birds, Blue Wrens, Finches, various Parrots and Rosellas, Black Cockatoos, Galahs, Water Fowl, Wood Ducks, Ibis, Egrets, Spoonbills, Herons, Black Swans and many, many more species of birds. There are the rarer sightings of birds also. A Tawny Frogmouth (pictured at below right) has made its home near where I live, trying its best to look like part of the tree in which it chooses to roost.
The area also abounds in sea life, of various types and sizes. It is not unusual to have Humpback Whales sighted of the coast here and Dolphins can be spotted almost every morning if you know where to look. The Sting Rays are also easy spot at the right time of the day.
You do get your not so welcome species of wildlife also, such as mosquitos and sand flies, but I guess these play their part in the general run of things, being food perhaps for the more welcome members of wildlife society.
One of the things I’m doing down here, tieing in my interest in web applications and social networks, is being involved with the Project Noah social network. This is a place to log wildlife spots with GPS markings using the iPhone application, along with the web application. I haven’t long been involved in it, but it is something I will be doing more and more. It will be good to build up a more complete picture of what species live in the area. Others can get involved in recording and mapping the wildlife of the area here by joining the ‘mission’ I have started at Project Noah.
The mission I have started for Tea Gardens can be found at:
http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/12346009
I don’t know what it is about work and I, but I always seem to find some way to injure myself – pretty much on a daily basis. I don’t believe it is about being careless, as I generally attempt to do things carefully and with awareness of occupational health and safety. However, I seem to always find a way of injurying myself.
At the moment I find myself in a fair amount of pain from a knee injury. How did I do it? I was getting into a golf buggy (we use these to get around the work site) and managed to collect my knee on a section of the buggy that juts into the passenger/driver space. It’s a very pointed section of the vehicle (extremely poorly designed actually and I’m not the only one who keeps hitting this spot) and I hit it fair in the middle of my knee with some force. The immediate pain was terrible and the the bruising appeared immediately. I couldn’t walk straight away (and being a fella I attempted to walk it out as we do), but eventually was able to do without pain – though the knee area was quite painful to touch.
Now being home from work, it’s getting late into the night and also quite cold (winter here) the pain has returned, its stiffened up quite a bit and walking has become an issue. I can’t wait for tomorrow morning when I try to get out of bed. Two days until holidays – keep telling myself that and I may be able to drag myself to work.
Today’s link is to a Blog that is concerned with the latest Internet start ups, including various social networks and web applications. Being right into this sort of thing, I check out the site on a daily basis. A great Blog to go back to again and again.
Fore more, visit:
http://betali.st/
Today I’m posting a link to another web application (of sorts), this one called Wordnik. Wordnik is a place about words. At Wordnik you can discover meanings of words, spell checks, pronunication assistance and comments can be made on words. You can also get a daily email with a word and definition – a good way to expand your vocabulary. There is a wealth of information available when a word is searched or looked up on Wordnik.
Have a look at:
http://www.wordnik.com/
I Rate My Day is a rather simple daily Blogging type tool. All it is is a simple way to let your friends and family know how your day is going. It is a simple micro-blogging site, with very brief notifications posted as to how the day is going for you. You can also link your ratings to your Facebook profile.
Visit at:
http://www.iratemyday.com/
Today’s daily is a bit of a stretch I think you could say. By that I mean, it is stretching it to define the post as a single photo/video. It is really a single slideshow, which sort of looks a bit like a video I suppose.
Anyhow, the slideshow is just a few photos taken at Carson’s Lookout on the Thunderbolt’s Way, between Gloucester and Walcha in New South Wales, Australia. The photos were taken on my ‘Waterfalls Tour 2010’ holiday last week.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinmatthews/sets/72157625448890347/show/
If you like taking photos and would love to have a place where you could post them in a way that is like a Blog, you may want to check out DailyBooth. It is a Blog for posting photos on a daily basis – or as regularly as you would like. Check out the site at:
I have just started my own PhotoBooth Profile at:
http://dailybooth.com/Particular_Kev
It is my intention to continue to maintain this Blog with daily posts of a photo, video, quote or a link. However, with DailyBooth, I’ll be seeking to post a photo a day – but the photo will not necessarily be taken on the particular day that it is Blogged there. I simply don’t take photos on a daily basis – I do however have quite the collection of photos from over the years.
Wow, it has been almost two months since my last post on this Blog. Time has gone by quickly as I have struggled to keep up with the demands of running a number of different Blogs and websites. In fact, I have done very little with many of them – just been too busy and too tired. Hopefully that will change a little now. I’m trying to become a little more disciplined with my time in order to allow myself to get on with the task of maintaining the various websites I own.
Today’s ‘daily’ is a website called ‘Topsy.’ Topsy is a search engine for Twitter posts or tweets as they are often called. If you would like to search Twitter for a particular topic or even a username, Topsy could be just the place you are looking for. I found it today and experimented a little with it – a very good little site I thought (for Twitter). Just another of the seemingly countless Twitter applications that are out there.
Visit Topsy at:
Kevin's Daily Photo, Video, Quote or Link 