Happy New Year, 2008
01/01/08 08:45 Filed in: General
Chinese year of the
RAT.
We are supposed to be in the height of summer. Sweating. Cursing the heat. Instead, we have unseasonal rain and cool temperatures over most of the continent.
I've been getting around in slippers and a coat today, the first day of 2008. Do I care? Not bloomin' likely. I'm a cold weather person.
Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully this one won't go as fast as 2007, which for me seemed to fly past in a blur.
I'm not really a resolutions type of guy. I like to remain flexible. However, I will be making one or two this time, that I will write down, as I intend to place these a little higher on my list of "todos". No numbering of importance here, like I said, I like to remain flexible.
I should mention before I move on, that one of my resolves for 2007 was to ditch a lot of my computer stuff. I managed to just squeeze this in last weekend. I took a load of old working computers to the tip. 486's, PI's, PII's and a few other bits 'n bobs. I had considered salvaging parts from some of these but in the end decided that if I hadn't turned them on in over 2 years then I probably wasn't going to need any of the flotsam and jetsam. I offered some of the stuff to the local "tip man" but as there were no monitors with the collected computing history, he didn't recognise any of them as "computers". He's a fairly simple kinda guy. I can recall a TAFE teacher with the same level of PC savvy. I must admit a sense of evil joy as I threw them from height into the skip, watching them bust to bits.. MMWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
..ahem.
Resolutions for this year.
Spend a bit of time communicating with my World Vision sponsor child. I'll send photos and letters a little more often than I did last year, which I am ashamed to admit was not very often at all. In one of his letters he did say he wanted me to go over and visit him, which I'm not sure I can accomplish this year, but you just never know. If you have thought about sponsoring a child (not necessarily though World Vision) it's a worthwhile thing to do.
Spend more time on photography. I let this slip rather badly in 2007 and it's starting to show in the quality of images I'm producing just at the moment. Laziness is what it boils down to. I hope to purchase a telescope this year to do some astro-photography out in the dark skies of central QLD. This, along with an upgrade to my camera. My trusty Canon 10D is still going strong, but long exposure noise is starting to irritate me. Maybe even a lens or two, who knows.
Do some riding. You may know that I upgraded my motorbike this year. The intention is to do some serious tripping around the place on it. This is the year. I'm a solitary fellow and riding a bike gives me the solitude I crave. I just need to pick up some panniers and I'm off. My first real trip looks like it will be to Longreach via Emerald. I have also been looking into some guided/self-guided tours of Tasmania, NZ, and Africa. I think I'll do them in that order over the next couple of years. I could try to tie in the ride through Africa with a visit to my sponsor child. That should be fun!
The ticking of the clock behind me is saying 2008 is moving steadily forward. I'm off to have a coffee and fortify myself for the coming 12 months of joy and frivolity. I hope yours will be a good one too.
We are supposed to be in the height of summer. Sweating. Cursing the heat. Instead, we have unseasonal rain and cool temperatures over most of the continent.
I've been getting around in slippers and a coat today, the first day of 2008. Do I care? Not bloomin' likely. I'm a cold weather person.
Happy New Year everyone. Hopefully this one won't go as fast as 2007, which for me seemed to fly past in a blur.
I'm not really a resolutions type of guy. I like to remain flexible. However, I will be making one or two this time, that I will write down, as I intend to place these a little higher on my list of "todos". No numbering of importance here, like I said, I like to remain flexible.
I should mention before I move on, that one of my resolves for 2007 was to ditch a lot of my computer stuff. I managed to just squeeze this in last weekend. I took a load of old working computers to the tip. 486's, PI's, PII's and a few other bits 'n bobs. I had considered salvaging parts from some of these but in the end decided that if I hadn't turned them on in over 2 years then I probably wasn't going to need any of the flotsam and jetsam. I offered some of the stuff to the local "tip man" but as there were no monitors with the collected computing history, he didn't recognise any of them as "computers". He's a fairly simple kinda guy. I can recall a TAFE teacher with the same level of PC savvy. I must admit a sense of evil joy as I threw them from height into the skip, watching them bust to bits.. MMWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
..ahem.
Resolutions for this year.
Spend a bit of time communicating with my World Vision sponsor child. I'll send photos and letters a little more often than I did last year, which I am ashamed to admit was not very often at all. In one of his letters he did say he wanted me to go over and visit him, which I'm not sure I can accomplish this year, but you just never know. If you have thought about sponsoring a child (not necessarily though World Vision) it's a worthwhile thing to do.
Spend more time on photography. I let this slip rather badly in 2007 and it's starting to show in the quality of images I'm producing just at the moment. Laziness is what it boils down to. I hope to purchase a telescope this year to do some astro-photography out in the dark skies of central QLD. This, along with an upgrade to my camera. My trusty Canon 10D is still going strong, but long exposure noise is starting to irritate me. Maybe even a lens or two, who knows.
Do some riding. You may know that I upgraded my motorbike this year. The intention is to do some serious tripping around the place on it. This is the year. I'm a solitary fellow and riding a bike gives me the solitude I crave. I just need to pick up some panniers and I'm off. My first real trip looks like it will be to Longreach via Emerald. I have also been looking into some guided/self-guided tours of Tasmania, NZ, and Africa. I think I'll do them in that order over the next couple of years. I could try to tie in the ride through Africa with a visit to my sponsor child. That should be fun!
The ticking of the clock behind me is saying 2008 is moving steadily forward. I'm off to have a coffee and fortify myself for the coming 12 months of joy and frivolity. I hope yours will be a good one too.