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My wife and I brought our first house!! Yay Woohoo!!

It’s not a new house, probably about 40-50 years old, I’m not exactly sure yet, but we are both really excited about it. Now we just have to pay the loan back.

Anyway, it’s a nice small 3 bedroom home with a single car garage out the back. There is decent back yard space, and it has a brand new bathroom, and kitchen. So all the work it done, and we can just move in, which suites our busy lifestyle.

There are a few little things to do on the outside like re-coating the roof, concrete in front of the garage, and put up a fence to fence of the back yard to keep people out, and kids in.

Here are some photos of the house. They were taken from the real estates website.

Read more…

Chris Personal life, purchase, real estate

Well, as most people would know by now, Apple have released the latest update for the iPhone, iPhone OS 3.0. If you didn’t then it’s time to come our from under that rock. I’ll must admit thought that I did stay up till 3am Sydney time for this, though I didn’t plan on doing so.

iPhone OS 3.0 brings with it many new features, of which I’m not going to list, but I will make not of some of the ones that I have grown fond of already. The install went without a hitch though it was slow downloading as every man and his dog was also downloading it.

I have already noticed that my phone is much quicker and snappier at launching apps, though I haven’t test them all out, and the addition of Spotlight to search most places is great.

So, features that I’m loving so far are:

• Spotlight: it’s so much faster and easier to find a song, contact or email;
• Landscape Keyboard: For those who like landscape mode, and it does make it easier to type;
• Push Notifications: I haven’t had a chance to use this yet, but I’m looking forward to have an IM app that supports it;
• Tethering: Will come in handy, though Optus are charging AU$9.95 to do so, there are ways around;
• MMS: Finally able to send picture messages like every other phone out there.

I spose one of the biggest downfalls so far though is with my carrier Optus. Their MMS system is not working to well. Currently all MMS’s recieved have a number in the format of 614xxxxxxxx which is missing the + at the start, so when you recieve a MMS rather then having it listed under existing conversations, it starts a new one and doesn’t list the persons name. Optus are aware of this and are working on a solution.

The other downer is that Optus is going to charge users AU$9.95 to be able to tether your iPhone to your PC for mobile internet. The problem with this is that tethering will use the data allowance from your plan, so they are double dipping here. Not very Australilan in my books!! So, to fix this little problem, so wonderfull users over at the forums on Whirlpool have worked out a way to bypass this, though no one is sure when it will cause excess charges. Stay tuned for more on this.

Overall, iPhone OS 3.0 is a great update and should keep the iPhone 3G going for a little while longer, till next year at least.

What are you favourite new features of OS 3.0? What are your gripes? Leave comments below.

Chris Technology

I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks. I have started volunteering my spare time to my church in helping out with our Food Care ministry which provides very cheap food to low income families. On top of that I have also starting helping out with the IT equipment and other technical problems. As of this week I am now head of IT for the church, and I’m loving it, though this is not a real job, it’s still a voluntary position.

Almost two weeks ago I got my new HOYA Close Up Filter set consisting of +1, +2 and +4 filters. These filters are great and really help out with macro photos that I have been trying to take. Here is a shot of a seaside daisy from my front garden with the +2 and +4 filters attached, oh, and  this flower is approx. 1 inch in diameter.

All I have to say about these filters is that I’m going to have a lot of fun with them. I’m planing on one day soon going to the botanic gardens in Wollongong for a few hours and see what I can do.

Chris Personal, Photography life, Personal, Photography

I’m currently really enjoying night photography. I don’t know why, but there is something about the peacefullness at night time. The air is clear, there isn’t as much noise about, it’s just relaxing.

Here is another photo I took the other day. The sun had just set beind the mountains about 45 minutes before. I was trying to make it in time to get some sunset photos, but got held up and missed out.

Tonight (May 9th) is a full moon, so I’m going out again to see what great shots I can get. My current camera, a Fujifilm finepix S9500, as most cameras, has a Bulb setting, but for some reason, it has a time limit of 30 seconds, which is pretty useless, so I’m only currently able to do a maxium eposure length of 30 seconds.

I’m planing on getting a new camera possible towards the end of the year, something along a Canon 50D. That way I’d be able to take some better photos.

Chris Photography Australia, flickr, lighthouse, night, NSW, Photography, Wollongong

Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby each film frame is captured at a rate much slower than it will be played back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography.

From Wikipedia [link]

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video called Bathtub IV by Ketih Loutit (see video below) on Vimeo. What grabed my attention is that it wasn’t filmed with a normal video camera, but with a Digital SLR and time-lapse photography and use of a tilt-shift lens giving the impression that you are looking at a scale model. Since then, I’ve been facinated with time-lapse photography, and would love to try some myself, but unfortunatly my camera lacks the function. So until I can afford to purchase a new Digital SLR, I’ll have to settle watching other peoples videos.

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Today I came across Ross Ching who also does some time-lapse photography. His latest work Eclectic 3.0 is also mind blowing. He using a telescope paning tripod and has some amazing shots. Video below.

Eclectic 3.0: The Roads Less Traveled from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

If you know of any more time-lapse photographers, please do leave a comment below.

Chris Photography, video Photography, time-lapse, video

Now that I have a tripod, night time photography is much much easier, no more blurry shots!!

Here are 2 photos that I’ve uploaded onto my Flickr account that I took with my new tripod (see previous post). Both photos turned out well, and of the two, I like the one on the right the most.

Click on the photos to go to the flickr page. Please leave any comments you have on the photo page.

Chris Photography hobbies, Photography

Tomorrow is my birthday (yes, 28 yrs old) and my wife decided to buy me something that I’ve wanted for a while now, a tripod for my camera, so today we went out and had a look around. She gave me the chance to choose what one I would like. I ended up getting a Manfrotto 190XB with a 804RC2 Head. I don’t know a lot about tripods, but so far, I’m liking it. It’s pretty solid, and has a level bubble to make sure that your photos are level.

I haven’t had a chance to take any photos with it yet, but I’m hoping that I’ll get some good ones. I’ll upload them to my flickr account, so keep an eye out for them.

Chris Photography birthday, equipment, manfrotto, Photography, present, tripod

As of today, you can now leave comments with your Facebook or Disqus account. This makes it easier to leave a comment, just a simple click to log in, and type your comment. You can still leave a comment without a Facebook or Disqus account.

Chris Asides, On The Web, Site Related cjsimmons.net, comments, Disqus, Facebook, WordPress

Just got this emailed to me. Made me laugh, so I thought I’d share. Sorry in advance if this offends anyone.

In Florida , an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians, Jews and observances of their holy days.

The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days. The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, “Case dismissed!”

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the ruling saying, “Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays.”

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, “But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant.”
The lawyer said, “Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists.”

The judge said, “The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day.

Court is adjourned.

Chris Emails, Entertainment email, funny

Ok, so the default theme for WordPress (kubrick) looks good, and has served well, but it’s time for something new. I have just stumbled upon this one called iNove (English translation). So far I’m liking it, so we’ll see how things go.

Chris Asides, Site Related cjsimmons.net, theme, WordPress