Lighthorse Interchange Pics

As promised, here's a few pics I took this afternoon which hace been manipulated using the HDR program Photomatix.

Cool Mistake

Click the above for the hi-res shot.

HDR photos.

This.........................

becomes..............THIS!

Click the photo on the bottom for a better look at Conrod Straight on the Bathurst racetrack.

Using an HDR (High Dynamic Range) program called Photomatix which I've just discovered. The technique is great for photos with differing contrasts where you'd normally lose resolution. Bit of messing around but the results seem to be very good.

You can really go to town making the photos look really other-worldish.

I'll post some others of done on Sunday.

Purple Haze's second trial.

Got a call yesterday from the guy who runs the horse syndicate I'm in. Horse aka "Purple Haze" would be trialling at Penrith paceway. Would I be interested in turning up?

You betcha!

Ok so "Purple Haze" never got the name "Purple Haze" but the more Gaelic "McMahon", however will be Purple Haze to me. The actual owner who we are leasing it off got in the naming rights ....so McMahon it is. Bummer, it's rather a dull name IMHO.

I forgot my camera, however took a few snaps with my camera phone. This was his second trial, first one he did well coming first out of six.

I'm no longer posting photos of the cat....now it's the horse!

Couple of things I noticed at the paceway. The owners were all just trialling, so things were pretty relaxed. Casual clothes, people standing around doing a lot of talking, grooming and gearing up. Food available at the track consisted of hot chips, pies and hamburgers and black brewed coffee with not a double frappe soy mile latte in sight.

Mc Mahon at the left and a heap of other nags behind.

Most of the trainers either had their children or grandchildren around, so there were kids having a ball on the grassy knoll overlooking the track, high on sugar from the cola that seemed to be the only thing to drink. Wives of trainers were yelling very loudly at children who didn't seem to be listening.

There were heaps of horse floats towed by large 4 wheels drives and American pickups. Monstrous bloody great things made to tow and tow pretty fast. Didn't get a pic but I'll get one next time.

Onto McMahon's trial, the seventh for the night. The trainer wanted him to start late and just stay behind to get a feel or racing, which the driver did. Started way back and stayed there. He did the mile in 2.03 which is good for second time up. He's the blur on the left hand side.

Better photos later when I take my camera!

There was even a race caller for the trials which was a hoot, I think he was practising for the real events, nevertheless...it added a bit of atmosphere to the night. Next trial will be next week.

Most viewed photo at Flickr

This is the photo at my Flickr account which has had the most number of views. No comments or "favourites" as yet as as it is blown up, it really is a pretty non-descript bland shot. I think people are going off the icon pic which looks better.

However in term of interestingness which is comments, favourites and views combined. This one comes up tops, which I like much better. I remember taking this shot and almost breaking the USB port trying to see what it was like in full size, I knew it was that good immediately.

This means the parrots are in with the squirrels BTW.

Those Nigerians have moved

Hmm, received my first French scam spam today. Seems those guys in Nigeria now live on the Ivory Coast.

Bonjour très cher,
Comment allez vous ? Bien je le pense !
Je m’excuse de cette instruction mais je viens par ce mail vous confier un sujet qui m’est très cher et confidentiel.
Tout d’abord j’ai eu après de long prières le temps de réfléchir avant de vous confier cette affaire. J’ai une proposition a vous ; de cet affaire je tiens a vous expliquer la nature de mon problème.

Etc etc etc.

Public Symphony- Breakthrough

For some reason the software is chopping this off at the intro.

Full (better?) version is here

http://www.yourspins.com/johnno/mixes/PUBLIC+SYMPHONY/Breakthrough/Emerald+Tablet

Bagged it.

Terminated with prejudice with my weapons of choice. A Chinese made water pistol with no serial numbers and an Irish Mattock of undetermined origin.

Taking a leaf from the GW Bush/Rupert Murdoch book of International Relations, I set about ridding my garden of a rogue Cypriot Cypress Pine that was determined to subvert the local natives with hard line Islamo-Funtamentalist dogma.

Now here me out here. Cypress sounds like Cyprus.......and Cyprus is in the Mediterranean... and the Mediterranean laps on the Middle Eastern western shores....... and the middle East has Iraq in it........ and Iraq was responsible for the Twin Towers and the death of baby Jesus.......and anyway they are only after our freedoms.

So I had an Iraqi terrorist disguised as a Cypriot to contend with. The aforementioned Iraqi terrorist had to go with some hard line coalition of the willing can-do action.

It was going to be a slow, hard exercise.....

The softwood branches were no match against some good ol' fashioned Aussie steel.

You never know with these buggers, when you think you've got them broken, they dig in harder. The roots were a different story........the insurgent had an strong underground supply network.....this was going to take a little longer than expected. However, it was possible by cutting off lines of supply by thwacking out the secondary roots utilising the services of an Irish mattock and wetting down the soil with a high pressure hose to gather intelligence on further supply networks.

It wasn't giving in easily...... however using several methods from the Joint Task Force Guantanamio Field Guide, the blighter was soon broken. Not that it admitted to being an Iraqi terrorist but I knew it was.

And for a replacement, I have a Japanese maple, from one of the more friendly countries. I read a theory today that war has never been waged between countries with McDonalds reataraunts in them. Japan has McDonalds.....so Japan is good.

So........God bless the Golden Arches and God Bless Australia...... I'm off to go and get Fox News connected now.

Strange Addiction

Did this one today. Enjoy!

Will this work?

Here's a mix I did of Faithless' "Bombs" track over at yourspins using digimpro software, I called it the "Quiet Night in Baghdad" mix. I got a nice trancey ambient feel about it, perfect for a drizzly Good Friday morning.This v2.0 web is something else, I notice Moff is broadcasting deeply though out ponderings on Youtube. Fantastic, I now have purpose.

I came across the site whilst reading about Moby and how he released a track at yourspins and encouraged wannabe mixers to do their thing. His track Lift Me Up was the first track listed there back in February 2005.

Right Where It Belongs

The artist who produced this video is Andrea Giacobbe. Music by Trent Reznor.

Some spooky pics

Taken around Rookwood cemetery in Sydney.....(Largest one in the Southern Hemisphere) and made even more sombre with photoshop.

The crow.....I had to airbrush out a tree in the background and added a "moon"......original pic here.

Maher Cross

The Maher Cross. I've done a post about this some time ago. It almost looks out of place in an Aussie cemetery. It was commisioned by the Maher family and carved from a single piece of marble by a Mr Angelo Bertozzi, research shows Mr Bertozzi was a stonemason from Carrara Italy.



One can imagine it sitting on some part of the Irish shoreline awaiting some Vikings to leap out of their longboat for some heavy duty pillaging. The below "meanderings" are gorgeous.

Some flowery masonry detail above a door on a church.

Stained Glass Window

This loses something smaller..... looks better bigger.

Tombstone

I love the effect of the sky in this one once the colour has been stripped out, looks like swirling marble in the background.