Winifred Wilson's Exciting Adventures in Space

I’ve been getting more into photography recently and have been trying to learn how to control the various aspects of my camera to produce better shots. I haven’t quite progressed all the way to full manual mode at this stage, however I have been using the Av and Tv modes of my Canon EOS 7D pretty extensively and getting quite nice results. Hopefully I will be able to think fast enough to work in full manual mode soon, but for now I am happy to master one feature at a time!

While in Wollongong on the weekend, I took some photos of my friend Broc using my new Sigma 50mm ƒ1.4 EX DG HSM lens. This is a beautiful lens that has really helped me get some great shots and experiment with the depth of field which can so often set great photos apart from good photos. One of the shots from this weekend is the below photo of Broc, captured mid sentence (I forget what we were talking about).

Original shot with no adjustments or corrections

As I scanned through all the photos I took over the few days, this one really popped out at me. I was quite happy with the composition, so gave myself a quick pat on the back (hey, someone has to)! I took a closer look at the EXIF data displayed in Aperture and began to realise that I could improve my technical skills using feedback in the program. If there was an adjustment I needed to make inside the RAW development process, then it was likely I could actually capture that on my camera with slight settings changes. So with that in mind, I began thinking about the details and how I needed to adjust them to polish the photo (to my amateur level at least).

Exposure bias

Taking a look at the overview on the metadata tab I realised quickly that I had accidentally knocked the exposure bias out. I seem to do this occasionally by moving my thumb dial while the shutter button is half pressed. To correct this when I take a photo, all I need to do is keep an eye on the exposure metre in the viewfinder and make sure the bias is set appropriately for what I want to photograph.

Conveniently, this is also easily fixed inside of Aperture. On the Adjustments panel, I simply shifted the exposure bias up by 0.33, to compensate for the accidental -0.33 ev that I had set with the camera. This made a noticeable improvement to the photo, improving the overall colour and lighting, looking much closer to the actual scene at the time.

Image with exposure compensation fixed

Level control

I was much happier with the shot at this stage, however it still felt like the light was a little flat. The colours lacked the brightness, punch, and feel of that morning, standing in that light filled room. I took a look at the levels and noticed that the top end is entirely missing, showing up as the blank area on the right hand side. There was no clipping, which meant I was able to easily adjust this.

Still in the adjustments panel, I enabled the levels dialogue and tested the Auto features. These were just awful, skewing the light balance so badly it looked like Broc had been given a rather nasty black eye! I undid the changes and then manually adjusted the toggles to even out the light distribution better, as seen in the screenshot. This really made the image pop and I am now about as happy with it as I can be without reshooting it (and without Photoshop work, but that’s a story for another time)!

Final image with all adjustments

I am not sure what I need to do on the camera to avoid this occurring in future. It may simply be something I have to live with and correct without adequate lighting (this was shot with no flash or artificial light of any sort in a room sunlit from one side). There is also a mode in my camera called “highlight tone priority” which could perhaps help, although I don’t understand what this feature actually does. I will need to run some tests!

Auto focus points

One thing that Claire pointed out which I failed to notice before now was the slightly poorly placed focus. I shot this using the manual selection mode, so I had most of the control but somehow managed to get the focus a little off (not paying enough attention to the viewfinder again!). Impressively, Aperture is able to show me which AF points were active at the time the shutter fired, thanks EXIF data! Taking a look at this it is obvious that I had left the focus on Broc’s nose instead of shifting it one point higher to be over his open eye, giving the shot a slight focus skew to the right hand side and leaving his most visible eye slightly out of focus.

Aperture overlaying AF field from image EXIF data

What did I learn?

This little exercise has taught me a few things, chief among them being that I can use Aperture to improve my technical photographic skills and learn from my mistakes quite effectively (while simultaneously correcting them). Of course, the main thing it shows me is that I need to pay more attention to each of the settings (in this case all shown in the viewfinder) of the camera to get the shot exposed correctly to begin with, rather than relying on post processing software like Aperture. I look forward to applying these lessons on future shoots and eventually developing the automatic movements that seasoned professionals build up to get the right exposure every time.

Got any comments, critiques, or compliments for my photo? Leave them in the comments below! Once I have shot a few more photos, I will upload some other portraits I am quite happy with to Flickr (and the ones I am really happy with will show up on 500px) and you can judge me there too.

I just deleted my Facebook profile for good and man does it feel good!

I often get asked why I have done this, and I thought rather than rehash the same story over and over, I would just provide the Facebook suicide note that I sent to all of my contacts for you below. If you have further comments/questions/whatevers, drop me a comment! Happy to answer any question on the topic.

Hello all you lovely people!

Well, the time has finally come to close my Facebook account after months of feeling particularly dissatisfied with the company and the service itself.

But never fear! You lucky folk are all to be part of my Facebook rapture! No being left behind for you, oh no, you’ll all get to have my contact details all over the rest of the internet, my mobile, EVERYTHING! So stalk away and try not to forget me when you invite people to events ;D.

I am still as easy to contact as ever, you can buzz me on any of these juicy juicy details below. Who doesn’t love juicy details? Or juicy steaks! mmmmmmmmm, steakkkkkkkkk.

e-mail: [redacted]
website: www.teknetia.com
mobile: [redacted]
twitter: @teknetia (twitter.com/teknetia)

There are other ways too, if you want any other details, then you are most welcome to drop me a line and ask (e.g., my address for the delicious [and debaucherous] summer parties Jimmy and I will undoubtedly throw!). I will wait until next Sunday (the 16th, for those so inclined) to actually delete all this stuff.

<3 Chris

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Because so many of you ask, I am deleting my account because I dislike the direction the company is taking (and due to the good state of California passing some wonderful laws that force Facebook to actually trash the data and not keep it forever!*), trying to track users all over the web (even when not logged in) and want to be the central owners of all your data. Also, Mark Zuckerberg is a fucking arse and I don’t wanna support that shit (seriously, “I’m CEO, bitch” on his original card? What a fucking tool).

Ahhhh, that feels GOOD!

By the way, does anyone else think it is a bit pathetic that a web company can’t even send a valid HTML e-mail? Look at all those dirty <br> tags scattered throughout without even a care for presentation.

Want to get rid of your Faceobok profile too? Go to the account deletion page and follow the prompts. Make sure you do not access the account in ANY way following this or the deletion request will be cancelled! It’s also a good idea to download your stuff (photos are nice to keep hold of!), so follow these directions before you trash your account.

*Since the time I wrote this, I am not 100% sure of the exact details of this Cali law, it seems it may have been defeated in the end. Either way, I am under the impression that data is actually deleted, but of course Facebook would not confirm this.

Amazon’s eBook business is growing in leaps and bounds, faster than the company’s own expectations, even overtaking print sales just 4 years after the introduction of the Kindle. For every 100 books that Amazon sells in either paperback or hardcover, it delivers 105 (paid) kindle eBooks, not including free titles. This growth is phenomenal and is in large part due to the market leading nature of the Kindle coupled with the enormous library of digital books offered (over 950,000 books with 109 of the 111 New York Times best sellers available).

But this new distribution method has brought with it that old bugbear, geo-locked sales. Remember region codes on DVDs? Weren’t they a pain in the arse? You legally purchased a movie (possibly a hard-to-find or unavailable movie at home) in a country under a different region code to you and brought it home to play it to find that, hey it won’t work here! I certainly remember this pain, being a Region 4 country floating amongst a sea of Region 3 meant I couldn’t bring DVDs home from holidays. Over time, this system became increasingly irrelevant as region-free players became cheap and the internet made it easier to pirate a film. With Blu-ray, we now have a simplified region system however reports indicate that as much as 45% of these discs don’t even specify a region code. In the age of high-speed internet, making it hard for the consumer to use your product encourages your customer to pirate it. (Side note: I am really glad to see so many DVD/Blu-ray discs shipping with iPod & computer files now, about time the industry respected the customer [even if there are still some bugs in the execution]).

Apparently this memo never made its way to the publishers because they have embraced this geo-locked sales method with fervour normally reserved for the bedroom. Take, for example, Party Monster. Happen to live outside the US like me? No digital book for you! I live in Australia, so this book is unavailable in my region, even as an alternative(ly priced) digital version. But what if I ordered the print version? No problem! Amazon will ship that right to my door in just a few days. So why has the publisher chosen to geo-lock the eBook version and not the print version? Good question! I couldn’t find an answer to that either. In this case, all the publisher has driven me to do in this case is find a way around their ridiculous geo-locked system. For Amazon, this is a simple case of changing my residing country (even if this does flout the rules), however this could very easily have seen me turn to the internet to obtain the same content for free for the convenience.

If the current upheaval in traditional media industries (music, movies, publishing) has taught us anything, it’s that we, as customers, want the most convenient method available to consume our media. If this means pirating it because the legitimate copy is crippled at purchase, then off the reader goes to a BitTorrent search engine. However, if you make your legitimate version easy to use, easy to buy and transportable, we all win and will happily pay! (Obviously there will always be a group of people who will refuse to pay any price for anything they can obtain for free, but I am confident you will find that the average consumer is more interested in convenience).

In the digital age, alienating your customer is the last thing you should be considering. Wherever possible, you should make it as easy as possible for people to obtain your content at fair (internationally fair – none of this ripping locals off stuff [I'm looking at you, iTunes Store]) prices. As long as you refuse to, you will foster the very grey-market ecosystem you so eagerly wish to destroy. If Amazon was to block users from this simple method, consumers will likely turn to the internet for that content.

Side comment: Text-to-Speech features

On the topic of publishers “just not getting it,” why on earth would you disable text-to-speech functionality in your books? The Kindle does all the heavy lifting here and allows your book to be read by those who are visually impaired or who need assistance when reading, so it isn’t like the publisher is avoiding costs here. To me, this is the publisher actively saying: we don’t need that segment of the market, so we will make our content inaccessible to them.” Please explain to me why this is a good idea. Claiming that computer voices are not “nice” to listen to or you lose control of pacing are ridiculous reasons – you are just preventing those who need these technologies from accessing your content and I think it’s a sad state of affairs.

I was recently asked by a colleague about my sexuality and realised that the connotations that go along with the word Gay really affect my ability to associate with the word and simply say I am it. I originally intended this post to discuss that, but somewhere along the line it turned into a story about my youth. I filed it without much thought as a failure, but have been unable to write the post I originally intended and felt that perhaps I should post this anyway. So here we go, judge away!

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It’s the age of the internet and over sharing and every queer kid has their story about their coming out in video or blog or tweet or (insert other medium here) form. I feel a little narcissistic throwing my lot in with them all, but I find writing my thoughts out quite therapeutic and calming. So here are some of the current rumblings of my mind, laid out for you in glorious Constantina (or Palatino if you are missing that or Times New Roman if you are from the stone ages)!

The hardest thing I ever had to accept about myself has been my sexuality. In fact, I am not even sure I am completely at ease with it now.

My early developmental years were spent in a catholic primary school which still had a nun as a principal in mid western WA. I didn’t really have a sexual identity in those days, as most young kids don’t, but I experienced things in those early years that influenced me for quite some time. My days at this school very heavily reinforced the person that I was supposed to become and the world that I would be in. A world where normal meant being a university educated salary man with a wife and 2 kids, a mortgage, and maybe a dog or two. Needless to say, my life is nothing like this now and is unlikely to be even close to this in the future.

Future me aside, I struggled on through school, not really making friends and generally feeling like I didn’t belong in the world. I think part of this lack of belonging was the special kind of intense guilt that only catholic’s truly know how to bestow upon a child. Every week, we dragged ourselves across the road into the big cathedral for mass. At mass they reminded us how terrible we were and how we needed to absolve ourselves through the confessional, a constant spiral of doubt and guilt that really affects a child’s feeling of selfworth. As a primary school student, this just made me feel like I was never good enough. As I grew up and my body and hormones changed, it made me doubt everything going on around me.

Heading into high school, I went through that delightful stage we’d all like to forget called puberty. When you live in the outer reaches of Western Australia, and already struggle to get along with the other kids, the last thing you need is your body waking up and telling you to start thinking about sex. For most boys, this meant that the girls started to become much more interesting. For me, it meant I began to be attracted to other boys. How could this be?! Everything I had learnt so far had told me how a man and a woman fall in love, get married and have kids. Was this some cruel joke of God for all those times I lied in confession (Hey, you try remembering all the sins you committed as a kid all week!) to the priest?! Why did my body and my hormones need to be different? Why couldn’t I be like everyone else around me?

I found myself in an intensely emotional period of my life. I withdrew more and more from the people around me, scared that they would uncover my dirty little secret and judge me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to what was going on within me, all I knew was that I was terrified. When you’re 14/15 and your world view is shattered by a realisation of self, you start to fray around the edges. I began to hate being at school, hate being around the other students and hated who I was. There was nothing in my life that I wanted to be anywhere near, no part of it that I could tolerate. I frayed pretty badly and even tried to take my own life in year 10 at a particularly low moment.

I spent the next few weeks hiding the cuts on my wrists (I know, dramatic right?!) from those around me, including my mother. I felt pretty stupid that I had allowed myself to get to the point that I had taken a box cutter to my wrist. It was at this point that I realised I had a chance to start again somewhere else. My parents had divorced several years prior and my father now lived just outside Perth. One morning, I rang my dad and asked him if I could come live with him for a while, an idea that he jumped at! This was great news and I was so excited that I had packed everything I owned before my mother got home from work that afternoon, ready to leave.

Moving cities never really helped though. I tried hard to fit into my new school, but I was again in the catholic school system and I felt like I had to hide my sexuality from the other kids to gain any level of acceptance. I still had very few friends and still felt like I was not good enough and would never amount to anything. Rebecca Drysdale is certainly right when she says “There’s no one who is meaner than a bunch of asshole teens” in her song It Gets Better. So I had moved towns, 700kms in fact, and I still felt miserable and alone. Looking back, it is incredible that something as incidental as sexual attraction could have caused me so much grief and misgivings, even prompting me to attempt suicide.

After school I had a series of menial jobs, eventually landing a position with a German company in Sydney, meaning another big move and another chance at starting afresh. This time I was 3,000kms away from anything I had previously been and could really create my own identity without the pressures of school or other kids. For the most part I started off pretty poorly. I didn’t make friends easily and those that I did meet were less than desirable. I tried to talk with people I met, but I felt like once they knew my sexual leanings, I just became “the gay guy” to them. Suddenly it felt like it didn’t matter what I was or what I did, I just “the gay guy.” I began to retreat into myself again, gained a lot of weight and rarely left the house except for work and grocery shopping.

So when did it get better? When did I begin to accept who I was and move beyond it? It’s hard to pinpoint an exact time, but the answer is simply: when I met my real friends. Over the course of 18 months to 2 years, I met people that had long since stopped being hung up on minor details and started maturing into good people. I hung out with them, met their friends, drank with them, ate with them, laughed and cried with them. It no longer mattered whether I was into boys or girls, it just mattered that I was genuine. With belonging came acceptance. Acceptance by my new friends and also acceptance within me of the person that I was then, and am now. A person that continues to grow and mature, who holds a steady job, who loves life and is even starting to love himself. I still haven’t been to uni, hell I didn’t even finish high school, but I am happier by the day and look forward to the times ahead.

I look back on the darker days and know that those days made me who I am today, they made me the person I have grown into. Now, I am only too happy to be a shoulder and listen to help other people out experiencing the same terrible ups and downs. It sucks now, and no child, or anyone really, should every have to go through it, but small steps are taken every day towards creating a more open and accepting society. One day, stories like this won’t need to be told anymore because queer children won’t feel like they don’t belong. I dream of that day, but in the mean time just remember there are people out there for you.

Last year, I had the good fortune to meet Denea Buckingham (@GourmetRabbit) on a road trip to the Illawarra region of New South Wales. Since then, Denea’s been widening my food and wine horizons; from enjoying cooking and eating food to loving and living it. Recently, I was lucky enough to be invited to the introduction of the #summermenu at Flying Fish (@FlyingFishAU) in Pyrmont.

At the end of Jones Bay Wharf in Pyrmont, Flying Fish offers beautiful views of the harbour towards the Balmain peninsula, particularly from the outdoor lounge bar area. When I arrived at the restaurant, I was greeted by the early showers of the nights gang and a very pleasant waitress who promptly brought be a delightful French Sauvignon Blanc. So the evening was off to the great start!

Passing around some liquid joy

Arrival & canapés

After the rest of the crew arrived, we were greeted by Rob, the Flying Fish bar manager, who presented us an off-menu cocktail called Breakfast at Tiffany’s, quite a delightful tipple, I must say. This was soon followed by some imaginative (and moreish!) canapés. We started with Claire de Lune Sydney Rock oysters with ocean trout pearls I’m told they were delicious, but unfortunately I’m not an Oyster eater, I wasn’t able to try these out. These were followed by Paleta jamon iberico crostini with espresso mayo, a wafer thin and absolutely delicious combination that I enjoyed, even as a non-coffee drinker! Pop corn prawns with mayo and coriander where next up and amongst the most imaginative canapés I have ever been presented (and I do a lot of corporate events!). Flashbacks of being a kid at the movies caused a sly grin of childlike joy.

Delicious King Prawns covered in mayonaise and popcorn.

As the evening progressed, we made our way into the private dining room to begin our degustation service. The private dining room is a double height space, featuring a 2-storey wall of wine and topped with the pastry kitchen, definitely a place I would love to run an event. Head Chef Stephen Seckold and Sommelier Joe Turnaturi introduced each course of the degustation menu and fielded our questions with the gusto of men clearly passionate about what they do. The passion and wisdom of these men was matched by the helpful and polite staff of the restaurant, certainly a cohesive crew.

Degustation start!

Our first course of the night is one of Flying Fish’s signature dishes, Seared yellow fin tuna with ruby red grapefruit, sweet crackling pork & black pepper caramel. The dish has an overall earthen colour from the red tuna meat, pork cracking and brown sauce in stark contrast with the white plate. I come from country WA, so I find this comforting and beautifully homey. Tuna is one of my favourite fish (please leave it raw though! It loses so much magic when it’s cooked through!!) and I just can’t go past Pork crackling (my poor waist), so I was very excited to try this dish. The Tuna was prepared to perfection and eaten with a portion of the small wedge of grapefruit concealed below created a taste I have not experienced before. The twice cooked Pork belly below complemented the fish well, although I never would have thought to put this kind of thing together myself. My only complaint with this course is the sweetness of the sauce, while delicious, did tend to overpower the taste of the Tuna. This was enjoyed along side a 2010 Rogers & Rufus Grenache from the Barossa Valley.

The evenings second course was Confit of Petuna ocean trout with pea & black sesame mousse, puffed quinoa & tangerine oil or as Iggy (@IggyPintado) put it, Fish n’ Peas! It was certainly the most delicious (and extravagant) Fish n’ Peas I’ve ever had! A brightly coloured dish of red and green, topped with black roe, it inspired bright and uplifting feelings, backed with clear and subtle tastes. The only part of this dish I didn’t eat was the Roe, as I find it a little too seafood tasting (like I can complain about that on a menu dominated by fish!). Served along side a 2008 Vouvray Sec Champalou Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley in France.

Prawn ravioli with poached scampi, shaved abalone, zucchini flower & tomato & coriander vinaigrette paired with a 2009 Vinhos Verdes Quinta do Ameal Loureiro (Mihno, Portugal)

A brief breather and the nights stunner was presented. Reading the description of Prawn ravioli with poached scampi, shaved abalone, zucchini flower & tomato & coriander vinaigrette, we knew we were really in for something really special and boy did it deliver! This is one if the best dishes I have ever tasted and I was not alone, Denea and Helen (@helenlovesfood) both rated it in their top dishes ever, no small feat for a meal. This plate is just full of surprises, from the way the flavours combine as you chew to the incredible sensation as Finger Lime pieces explode in your mouth, delivering a burst of citrus to the ravioli. The 2009 Vinhos Verdes Quinta do Ameal Loureiro from Mihno from Portugal provided a swirl of flavours along with these different incredients and really emphasised the meal. And who can go past some Zucchini flower, really? This is definitely a dish I would come back for, over and over again.

By this point in the evening, many of us were starting to feel full, but the food just keept coming and those delightful smells and tastes quickly override any feelings of defeat. I wish my body had a ‘degustation’ setting so it would ignore the feeling of full just a little while longer! Our fourth course would be Pan roasted hapuka with hazelnut, white balsamic potato, green grape, Pantelleria capers & beurre noisette. Stephen informed us that each plate comes with a single green grape, hand peeled by the chefs in the kitchen. I certainly feel their pain having to prepare such a laborious item for so many people, but the taste of this grape left no doubt in my mind that it was worth it. A mixture of spices coated one side of the fillet on the plate and certainly lent some beautiful flavours to the meat. The hapuka was served alongside several hazelnuts and potatoes, which gave it some interesting textures as you ate – soft fish, crunchy hazelnuts and starchy potato. Texture variations like these are what makes food such a fascinating affair and are far too often ignored so I enjoyed this mix immensely. Served with a 2009 Gabo do Xil from Valdeorras from Spain.

Wagyu Mb7+ sirloin & braised short rib with smoked leek, king brown mushrooms, beetroot & horseradish paired with a 2006 J. Bouchon "La Mercedes" Cabernet Savignon shiraz (Malbec Maule Valley, Chile)

The final ‘main’ dish of the night was Wagyu Mb7+ sirloin & braised short rib with smoked leek, king brown mushrooms, beetroot & horseradish. The colours of this dish are so vibrant that photos don’t truly do them justice. The beetroot and horseradish purée has such a rich, reddish pink colour that almost perfectly matches the colour of the medium rare meat. This is accented with the greens of the meal, providing a beautiful sash through the plate. I am quite the fan of a well cooked steak and this did not disappoint, with a subtle yet full flavour that mixed well with the purée and mushroom. It was paired with a 2006 J. Bouchon “La Mercedes” Cabernet Savignon shiraz from the Malbec Maule Valley in Chile. I don’t normally drink red wines and was expecting to be put off by this early on, however, once I had tasted it after eating some of what was on my plate my entire perception of red wines shifted. The only thing I could have asked for with this course was some extra greens. I often feel that restaurants focus too much on the meat and leave the sides a little light on the ground.

Gingerbread crumble, apple ice cream, black salt, roasted almonds & fennel paired with a 2006 Coteaux du Layon Domaine Beaumard 'Cote d'Or' Chen Blanc (Loire Valley, France)

Still reading? I’m impressed! Obviously you were just dying to get to the dessert, after all that’s the first place we wanted to be as kids, why not as adults too? This dish is something that Stephen and his team truly excelled at, mixing flavours and ingredients I would not normally associate with a dessert at all! Gingerbread crumble, apple ice cream, black salt, roasted almonds & fennel, a formidable mix of wonderful flavours that really appealed to my love of savoury flavours. Put simply, order this dessert! Joe presented us a 2006 Coteaux du Layon Domaine Beaumard ‘Cote d’Or’ Chen Blanc, also from the Loire Valley in France, alongside this final course and it was a wonderful wine to end the night on.

It’s been an epic post…

Well, this small blog post has quickly morphed into an essay! If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me as I poured my experience out for you. The meal was definitely one to remember and was accompanied with a great crowd of people I am all the better for meeting and who really made the night memorable. I want to take these last few words to extend thanks to Denea for planting the seed that grew into the night and to Stephen, Joe, Rob, Holly and all of the Flying Fish team for their incredible efforts on the meal and location. While it is a bit expensive, Flying Fish will provide you a night and a meal to remember fondly. Definitely a great special occasion venue with private rooms I would love to book sometime for an event.

The evening comes to an enjoyable end.

A note on wine

As someone who is a little daft when it comes to selecting and enjoying wine, I learnt a lot about the way the taste of wine can vary enormously with a meal. Some of the wines we drank on the night where not wines I would have selected myself (particularly anything red!), however, paired with the meals and the ingredients and flavours within them, their true nature exploded on my palate. If you’re like me and don’t know much about wine, I highly recommend you learn, as I am slowly doing with the help of wonderful people like Denea and passionate Sommeliers like Joe. There is simply nothing like experiencing new flavours and I hope to keep doing it until the day I die. A life lived in the comfort zone is, after all, a life not truly lived.

Flying Fish
Lower Deck, Jones Bay Wharf
19-21 Pirrama Road, Pyrmont

Tel: +61 2 9518 6677
Web: http://www.flyingfish.com.au/

It’s Saturday night and I’m at an incredible Amanda Palmer ninja gig at Carriageworks with friends. The show: amazing. The location: incredible. We had spontaneous dancing during Leeds United, the back of a James Boag’s bottle sung to us, and a mosh pit powered only by a ukulele and good spirits! We laughed and sang along and enjoyed ourselves, met Amanda and her support acts and I caught up with people I haven’t seen for a while (and in some cases haven’t even met before).

Now it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m lying on Bronte Beach with my friends chatting, laughing and generally having a good time in this stunning weather showing Sydney at its best. The water is a perfect temperature and everyone is friendly. I don’t even feel awkward with my shirt off around so many people.

Bronte Beach and Pool
Photo credit: sachman75

But inside I feel completely numb and am bewildered by the person projecting from me. From the outside it is as though nothing has even happened, from the inside it is like nothing will ever be alright.

A few months ago a very close friend of mine was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He is 22 years old, still in university studying to become an architect. This news hit fairly hard, but there was hope that during the next month or so a more accurate overview of the situation would emerge and hopefully the cancer could be pushed into remission with treatment.

On Saturday, he was given just 18 months to live.

Since I received this news I’ve felt like I am somehow removed from my body. How can such a terrible cancer progress so far and do so much damage to someone so young? How does someone so young even develop something as terrible as cancer and why is modern science, with all its incredible abilities, unable to pick it up at a manageable stage?!

I hope there is still a chance that he will get better and will live on to see old age; lord knows I want to enjoy it with him and maybe one day in the future, take him along to an Amanda Palmer gig.

I also hope that I will feel normal inside again soon. I hope that I can continue to spend time with him and can continue to make him feel loved in this world. I’m sure soon enough I will return to my normal state of being the same inside and out, instead of the current disconnect.

I currently have a public Twitter account, however it is only really followed by a mixture of friends, spam bots and a few people I haven’t met but converse with online regularly. My account doesn’t have any visibility or followers from the industry I work in, meaning that it is used very openly and without much (if any) censoring of my thoughts, activities, etc.

I also feed the tweets from this account into my website as part of the design.

This has served me well so far without the need for a private account or censored feeds however I find myself in a position where I am about to embark of a few projects with various people inside and outside the industry. This means that my online personality will become much more public with the possibility of potential and current customers and partners following my streams. As much as I like to tease my industry for being very backwards when it comes to online technologies, they are slowly catching on.

This leaves me wondering the best course of action. I have a priviate account setup that I have tweeted to twice (a free beer to the first person to find it and request to follow!) however I am unsure how best to maintain the separations of life and work/projects. The options I see open to myself are as follows:

1. Change my current account to private and create a new one for these new projects.
2. Leave my account open and don’t mention is anywhere, using a new account for that. This has the possible problem of my account sharing the same username as my website url and therefore being easily searchable.
3. Heavily censor my current account and turn it into a work style account and use my private account to converse with people (this is the least attractive option to me).

At this stage, the most attractive option is to create a new account to use for these things, however it means starting from scratch with no followers and ensuring I actually use it to converse and such with possible industry followers. It may have the best long term pay off though.

What does everything think? I know a lot of my friends are in social media so this is a very real thing for them to consider. What would you recommend or do you have another option I could consider?

With the general negative reaction to how the ABC handled the hosting situation in Manilla tonight, specifically in relation to the body out the window images, I would to heat from people on this.

• What was your specific take on the broadcast? Do you think it was handled well or could have been handled better?
• What is the general standard on how these kinds of difficult situations should be handled, who set this standard and how is it kept in line with changes in public opinion?
• I vividly remember the image of people falling from the WTC during the news broadcasts of the horrific events of 9/11. This was also a very difficult series of events which was broadcast to the world in a reasonably raw format, how does it place in modern ideas of how news broadcasts of difficult situations should be handled?
• Where and how do we draw the line between broadcasting the reality of an event and gratuitous imagery? What impact does this decision have on the quality of the news, positive or negative?

I really want to hear peoples opinions on this in the comments below. Let me know what you think and point me to any references that you think would be relevant to check out.

For those who don’t know, CeBIT is the show intended for the technology industry to all get together and show off their wares to one another and potential customers (as in distributors, etc. not end users). A few years ago this was a really great idea and very relevant to everyone. Companies used to time their entire product release cycles around shows like CeBIT to get the maximum possible impact on their clientele, that’s how relevant they were.

CeBIT 2009: A show that is no longer relevant to it's own industry.

However in the last three years of my (enforced) attendance at this show with my employer, I have watched the show shrink and fade into obscurity. In 2008, CeBIT was all 5 halls of the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, along with conference facilities in the Bayside Convention Centre and Parkside Convention Centre. This year, it is a measly 3 halls plus a small, under visited e-Health hall in Parkside.

In isolation, it is possible to view this as a vendor revolt against the obscene costs SCEC impose on their exhibition companies which then impose on the exhibitors, however CeBIT Hannover is faring no better on the other side of the world. I attended last year with my employer there and found that even though the show stretched over an impressive 22 or so halls, most of them where only half full with walls up to give them impression the show is still large!!

With the rise of the Internet and the savvy nature of the technology business, shows like CeBIT are beginning to lose their value to the industry. I for one would never employ someone into a technical role who was not able to research solutions to their problems using the Internet, telephone calls and maybe the odd vendor meeting here and there and therein lies the problem – any technical person worth their salt knows how to leverage the Internet to avoid shows like CeBIT.

We, as a company, have decided to roll back out exhibition presence worldwide. Once of the first shows to be cut: CeBIT Australia.

It’s not every day you wake to someone cooking your breakfast. It’s certainly not every day you wake to one of your travel companions cooking you breakfast. But that is exactly what I woke to on Monday morning. This is certainly no bad thing as Monday and I are known to not be on speaking terms. By the time I had showered, Mal had prepared a pretty sweet spread for the three of us, including mushrooms, ham, scrambled eggs and tomatoes which we promptly devoured!

Local ingredients used to make an awesome breakfast, thanks Mal!
Photo credit: Alison Young

We didn’t want to leave Crystal Creek at all, however check out time was approaching and we still needed to shoot some video and take some photos of the place! Luckily, Alison had been wandering about the gardens and bumped into Sophie who was happy for us to take a little longer to get all packed up to head off so that we could continue filming and photographing the place. She was even kind enough to allow us to look through one of the couples-only cottages. These are just as beautiful as our cottage and definitely make the sexy weekend list!

Once again, we got to drive the awesome road through the mountains to head back to Berry. This is such a fantastic road, but this time we decided to stop at the Fudge stand we saw yesterday! At the top of the mountain is a fridge filled with fudge for our eating pleasure! Naturally, we all brought some fudge (and yes, we were honest!) and left a little note in the visitors book. I really loved the visitors book idea, there was a very cool comments – one from Argentina really stood out to us all as the lady writing it had mentioned that this idea would be impossible in her home land. Really cute and reminds you which part of Australia you are in now.

The fudge fridge - the fudge from this was delicious.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Onward we drove! Another exciting journey through the mountain roads on New South Wales and we arrive back on level ground, headed towards Berry. Berry is a cool little town with a pub literally COVERED in canoes! The whole thing! Roof, verandahs, everywhere! It’s quite an awesome site. Anyhow, we were here to try the sourdough from the Berry Sourdough Bakery, so off we went in search of it. When we got there, we remembered that it is Monday – the country weekend, so the place was closed. Luckily, Chris has told us about The Treat Factory which was around the corner. This is the place that produces all the (complimentary!) chocolate for Crystal Creek, so we were excited to visit the place.

The Treat Factory has an awesome lot of Jams, Relishes and such, totally work a visit!
Photo credit: Alison Young

We poked around the offerings here for a bit before a huge bus load of adorable old ladies arrived. Watching these ladies was like watching a room full of young kids run around being excited at all the different types of lollies and chocolate that The Treat Factory has to offer. These ladies where a real highlight to the day because they were just so damned cute! As they busied themselves selecting all their fantastic sugary treats (you know, so they can manipulate their grandchildren), we poked through the jams and honeys offered. The strangest one? Patersons Curse honey. Coming from a farm-boy background, this stuff is an absolutely pest and it really surprised me to see honey of it available! Naturally, I grabbed a tester pot of it, but haven’t tried this one yet.

These lovely ladies where like kids in a candy store - totally adorable.
Photo credit: Alison Young

Buy chocolate. Lots of it!

The Treat Factory really produces an impressive array of chocolates and lollies that you really need to get hold of. I brought a mix of a bunch of different chocolates from the cabinet and worked by way through them recently. My favourites were the amazing truffles, in particular the rum truffles. Certainly something I would recommend. You can also get loads of nut clusters and rocky road here, all of which are deliciously tasty! If you can time your visit to include old ladies, then you will get the real Treat Factory experience!

It was getting late and we still needed to make our way back home to Sydney tonight. As we left Berry, I shot a quick, cheeky message to Kate (@wollongong_nsw).

@teknetia: We don’t wanna go home yet. Can you house us a your place, @wollongong_nsw? We’re real good houseguests and we can cook! #S2MT

To our incredible surprise, Kate came back to us with:

@wollongong_nsw: @teknetia You guys want the roadtwip to last 4eva! If you’re serious about staying in Wollongong we’ll sort you some accommodation! #S2MT

How freaking awesome is Kate?! That’s right, cooler than your Mum and your Mum’s Mum! You can’t touch this girl, she rocks that hard! We hold a very special place in our memories of this trip for Kate and all the work she did to make us feel welcome.

We were all hungry so we headed down to the highly recommended Diggies (@diggies) for a late lunch. Diggies has a fantastic view of Wollongong’s North Beach as well as being very classy (Mal and I both approved of the font and layout of the menus!). Diggies was another place where the #welovethegong campaign was in full force, our waitress, upon finding out we have #welovethegong t-shirts wanted to know where they could be purchased for all the customers that kept asking for them. We were really impressed with this! Kate and the rest of the Wollongong Tourism staff have done an awesome job on this campaign and we saw it only a few days into being active, I can only imagine how much it has taken off now.

Diggies make an awesome lunch. Go here.
Photo credit: Alison Young

While we sat here, enjoying our meals and the amazing view, all three of our phones vibrated at the same time. We checked them out to be greeted with awesome news:

@wollongong_nsw: Hey @Alegrya @maldamkar @teknetia The guys at @NovotelNthBeach are putting you up in ocean view rooms + balcony for the night! #S2MT

How awesome was that?! Not only had Kate gone to the effort of getting us somewhere to throw ourselves for the night, she had secured amazing rooms in a gorgeous hotel with stunning ocean views of the harbour! We were quickly welcomed by the Novotel North Beach:

@novotelnthbeach: Hey @Alegrya @maldamkar @teknetia Looking forward to welcoming u 2 the hotel 2night. We hear u love the Gong almost as much as we do! #S2MT

To be honest here, we were all flabbergasted by this. We had never expected that we would receive such a warm welcome and be taken in by such awesome people all in response to a cheeky comment as we left Berry. We have many time and will continue to offer our enormous thanks to everyone on Wollongong for being so awesome. It’s certainly true that #welovethegong!

We headed up to the rooms and dropped all our gear (got to get those phones charging, kids!) and decided what we wanted to do for dinner. Earlier in the day, we had received a suggestion to visit Amigos Mexican (@Amigos_Mexican) for lunch, although they were only open for dinner. Amigos is the oldest Mexican restaurant in Australia, so of course this is the place we chose to go to! While chatting about this, we realised we needed to thank Kate properly, so we DM’d her and invited her to join us for dinner. We set a time for dinner and then went about getting ourselves ready.

Absolutely stunning view from the hotel over Wollongong
Photo credit: Alison Young

Kate was kind enough to pick us up from the hotel to go to Amigos (yay Kate! This means we can drink, thanks!). We met her in the hotel lobby in time to head on over to the restaurant, presenting her with a box of flowers to thank her for her hospitality over the road trip. On the way, we where updated onthe progress of how the #welovethegong campaign was going so fair for her (great, for anyone interested!). Just as we were walking up the street to the restaurant, I recievied this:

@Amigos_Mexican: @teknetia when you get to #Amigos_Mexican ask Katie at the front counter for a cocktail on the house

So I replied that we had just entered! We took our table and started looking through the amazing menu that Amigos offers. If there is a Mexican food that you want, they probably have it along with several variations! Amigos service is very friendly and very prompt! We were served our food in no time at all and all got to demolishing the fantastic offering in front of us. Just as we were finishing and preparing to be on our way, Katie (our waitress) popped over and said “I believe we owe you all a round of cocktails!” We were impressed at her detective work to find us (we had been all very inconspicuous on arrival!) and where promptly served 3 enormous Margarita’s and a Mexican Hot Chocolate (hey, Kate had to drive, give her a break!). These where fantastic, I can absolutely see myself visiting for the cocktails alone! But it wasn’t over yet, we where also treated to a fantastic sticky date pudding dessert to share. This was amazing and I am a big fan of sticky date, so it was a double win!

When Amigos say cocktails, they mean cocktails! This is serious business folks!
Photo credit: Alison Young

All of us stuffed to the brim and well and truly cared for, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep. Not too much of course, we still had to be in Sydney in time for work the next day!