Dreaming of turquoise and beaches

Posted by hil

It turns out my ankle has a fractured bone, so I now have a cast on it for the next six weeks. I hope it will mean more blogging and maybe revamping my website, but much of the time at the moment I’m just feeling like reading and watching DVDs, and doing crosswords and sudokus.

I’m posting some favourite beach photos to celebrate my birthday today. These first two are of Carrickalinga North Bay, alternatively Dame Roma Mitchell Bay, in South Australia, taken by my son, Tim Raupach:

Carrickalinga

Carrickalinga

Kids always have favourite colour, but as an adult you often don’t. After years of not having a specific favourite, I realised that this almost-not-there nearly transparent turquoise is mine. I find it almost achingly beautiful.

Then there is this one taken on the wild east coast of Tasmania on the northern beach of Macquarie Heads, looking out to … South Africa. The straight is called Hell’s Gates.

East coast, Tasmania

Go the ABC!

Posted by hil

The Australian Broadcasting Commission has again shown it’s willingness to adopt and make the most of new media with it’s shiny new ABC News site. It’s really cool – personalized tagging, great embedded video and audio, and an attractive interface, among other features.

Goodbye blue cable network, welcome wrlssgrrl

Posted by hil

network

I’ve been offline for a few days, the upshot being our house is now on a wireless network. Of course, there is still an orange and black tangle behind the tele where everything comes into the house to the set-top box. Funny to think that when we had the cable network put in seven years ago when we extended our house, it was the latest and best option. The blue cable has been great, but the wireless network is cool.

Wrlssgrrl looks like a friendly soul, don’t you think?:

Wireless router

I have lots of online catch-up reading to do now, but today I have to make a small and simple 1960’s liner.

Backyard creatures

Posted by hil

Yesterday morning I looked out to find 18 king parrots in my garden! There were also a trio of young crimson rosellas, and a pair of eastern rosellas. At first they were in a tree, looking like bright red decorations. This is a king and an eastern (smaller):

kingp

Today there was a strange animal nosing around in all the twigs and leaves the parrots had nibbled off and dropped on the ground. Can you see it’s back legs and long tail?

IMG_3907

A wider view:

IMG_3908

Yeah, just the plumber’s electric eel. I was interested to see that he kept the eel rolled up in a car tyre. I meant to ask him if that was just his particular invention, or one most plumbers have taken to. It’s a great idea.

Butterfly colour palettes

Posted by hil

Swatch

I once had an idea to make colour swatches from Australian landscapes for people to use when designing webpages. My main site Spirits Dancing dates from that time; it’s sorely in need of updating in other ways, but I still like the colours, which were sourced from a eucalyptus tree. So I was interested to come across a thriving community website based on a similar idea, COLORlovers. Check out their colour palettes sourced from butterflies.

(via Laughing Squid)

Cockroaches

Posted by hil

Cockroach

(photo credit: Ella Misso)

This very cool cockroach puppet, made by my friend Ella Misso, looks as if it could come straight out of some Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers trip! Incidentally, here is a pilot of a proposed clay-animation film adaptation of the Freak Brothers.

TiddlyWiki

Posted by hil

TiddlyWiki, a ‘reusable non-linear personal web notebook‘, looks as if it offers lots of interesting possibilities. I’d like to try it out when I have some spare time.

(via Doc Searls)