Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Along came a spider

2010-01-06T21:21:47Z

We’ve had a very interesting flower appear in our garden for the first time. I think I bought the cactus-like plant for a buck at a local church fete a few months ago. It was in an old tin can and we transplanted it into one of our own terracotta pots and forgot about it. Then a few weeks ago Jill noticed it was developing a flower bud - a very large golf ball sized flower bud. She’s been checking it daily ever since.

Early on Tuesday evening she noticed it had opened some time during the day and called me. We immediately suspected from the deep purple colour and shape it was some sort of carrion flower, plus when I looked closely I could see that a blowfly had laid some eggs on one of the petals and and a few tiny maggots had already hatched. Jill and I each had a close sniff, but couldn’t detect the rotten meat smell that carrion flowers are infamous for. This was disappointing.

I took few photos. It was 7pm. I should have checked them straight away on the computer instead of waiting for the next day. The picture on the left was the best of a bad bunch. I’d hoped that the white dots which were the fly eggs and maggots would be sharper.

A fly-blown Stapelia flower - images 17 hours apart

Then at midday yesterday I revisited the flower. It’s topmost petal had folded over and there were several blowflies present - at least three species - small, larger and whoppers. I still couldn’t smell rotting meat. The long hairs on the petals were now merged like bars of a prison cell and the flies were pretty busy trying to figure a way to get in. I gently lifted the top petal for a closer inspection of the interior and was amazed to discover that a tiny white spider had taken up residence and spun a small web in anticipation of a fly feast. Without further disturbance I immediately reset the petal and temporarily moved the pot into some better light to take a comparative photo.

We’ve never had one of these plants before. What was really amazing to me is that there was tiny species of spider present in our garden which was able to almost immediately figure out a way of exploiting the situation presented by the unusual flower. But that’s not the end of the story. I went back three hours later and the petals had closed more, and there were no blowflies. The show was almost over. Nevertheless, I could just see the outline of a larger spider of a different colour to the first one. I managed to hold a petal back with one hand and take a snap with the other. It’s a jungle out there.

Clever spider exploits evolutionary niche

I did some Google Image web research and concluded the plant was a species of Stapelia. There’s lots of different types, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one.

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

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Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Too much ocean at Fremantle

2010-01-05T22:56:00Z

Fremantle harbour has never been known for its environmental friendliness. Ever since public-works engineer C.Y. O’Connor supervised the blasting of a shallow limestone bar across the mouth of the Swan River in the 1890s to enable construction of a safe harbour, there have been innumerable assaults on the marine and estuarine environment.

These adjustments have included deepening, widening and construction of evermore facilities to accommodate the increasing demands of governments, ship owners and stevedoring companies. There have also been fuel and chemical spills, some of which have contaminated the inner reaches of the Swan River estuarine system. Many have not been well explained to the public.

Dredging has happened several times in the past, but larger ships keep getting built overseas. The latest A$250 million dollar project involves deepening the entrance and deepwater approach channels, plus the inner harbour where cargo is handled. It’s to be dredged further to accommodate vessels drawing 14 meters. A Dutch owned dredge named Cornelis Zanen arrived in the harbour a couple of days ago and will soon start pumping.

Cornelis Zanen alongside Victoria Quay yesterday

When it has a full load it will chug to a floating offshore pipeline and discharge it into to a 27 hectare ocean infill project. Apparently in due course other types of dredges will also be used to cope with expected variations in the underwater geomorphology.

Over the past few months there has been intensive development of a trucked-in limestone and rubble seawall to contain the estimated 3.1 million cubic meters of surplus slurry. There is still work taking place on the seawall.

There’s been considerable environmental anxiety about the project. Opponents have argued that the sludge from the inner harbour will be heavily contaminated with toxins and that Perth’s urban beaches are at risk from drifting silt, but these fears have been minimalised by the planners. As an apparent token gesture, the state government’s powerful Fremantle port authority, which now calls itself ‘Fremantle Ports’ has installed a ‘silt curtain’ where a pipe will carry surplus water from the infill area back into the open ocean.

The yellow silt curtain stratagem

In the above photo taken yesterday, the pipe to which the dredge will connect to discharge its slurry to the ocean infill area can be seen floating in the distance. The new seawall and infill area is to the right of the photo. It’s adjacent to another infill area which was created similarly in the late twentieth century. The granite seawall from where the photo was taken is part of the earlier project.

‘Fremantle Ports’ signage says the new project will be completed by mid 2010. Screened fencing has been erected and no-go areas declared to discourage public scrutiny. Click here to see it in the composite panorama of the infill area I created for Google Earth yesterday. All marine life within the infill area will be extinguished in the coming six months.

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The Qpix FS-170 film and slide scanner revisited

2010-01-05T00:05:57Z

Last month on 16 December 2009 I waxed enthusiastically about a small, inexpensive portable Qpix FS-170 film and slide scanner which enabled easy copying of slides and negatives. I’d tried scanning a slide and was very pleased with the result, so I also mentioned the device in similarly eager tones on the WA Mac User Group. As a result others were inspired to shell out for one.

A couple of purchasers subsequently reported to me off-list that they’d run into trouble scanning negatives. One was getting stretched images and then yesterday another person said they’d been heavily pixilated. I was starting the feel guilty that I’d been so enthusiastic. I hadn’t found time in the lead up to Christmas and the aftermath to actually try scanning negatives. The news was also perturbing because I’ve got thousands of negatives to scan from many decades past including when I was with the Australian Army in Vietnam.

So yesterday I resolved to settle the question of whether or not I’d been barking up the wrong tree with the Qpix scanner. Had I been waxing enthusiastically about a dud?

I’m pleased to report that my test images of black and white and colour negatives have been as satisfactory as the original test image I’d done from a colour slide. The first try was from a B&W negative taken of my family at Fremantle’s Port Beach in the late 1980s. Jill and I only had four children then, all boys. That’s the then youngest, Tim eating an icy pole and his three older brothers playing in the sand behind him. They are all grown men now, and yesterday afternoon I was working in hundred degree heat alongside them on number two son Ken’s stone house in the sand at Jandakot.

Life was a beach in the 1980s

The second test scan yesterday was of a colour negative plucked entirely at random from a forgotten packet on one of our shelves. By a strange coincidence it was of a juvenile praying mantis eating a fly about ten years ago. You may recall that another more recent praying mantis was the subject of yesterday’s blog entry. Spooky!

A mantis munching - munch, munch, munch!

The only thing I can now suggest for those who are having problems is that the SD memory cards may not have been large enough. I use a 4 GB card and am very happy with the test scans I have been getting from the Qpix FS-170.

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A mantis report

2010-01-04T00:27:42Z

The praying mantis I mentioned last week has been missing for a few days. I thought that perhaps it had become a snack for a hungry bird. However it turned up again on the same parsley bush yesterday afternoon and appeared to be larger than the other day. It must have undergone ecdysis or moulting to make way for a larger set of clothes.

A Fremantle mantis watching me from swaying parsley

The very beautiful creature was not having much luck with fly-catching on the parsley yesterday. The wind was bouncing the frond back and forth quite vigorously. Nevertheless, the mantis was still confident enough on its perch to calmly engage in cleaning its antennae and leg joints.

Because of the strong wind movement I was lucky to get the photo that I did. You can see from the black eye-dot that the mantis was keeping one of its beadies on me. I suspect that with such a small aperture the mantis must enjoy a good depth of field with its wide 300° vision. But as with a camera, it needs bright light for optimisation at what would be a high ‘f’ number. I have only seen the creature hunting in bright conditions. Soon after I took this picture it turned around and vacated the parsley to head for the relative calmness of a nearby rose bush.

It seemed obvious to me that the mantis possessed a form of intelligence. It appeared to constantly be analysing its environment and making rational decisions best suited to its own preferences and assumptions. I suppose this could be said of many insects, but there was something about the mantis which implied to me that something more refined was going on. Dare I say it was developing predictive territorial independence capable of constant revision to maximise its survival. Plenty of humans can’t do that.

There is a huge amount of literature involving mythological associations with mantids. Obviously many of people over thousands of years before me have pondered over the creatures. But I think the inner workings of a mantis mind are still as mysterious as ever. Maybe I should start up a new 21st century religion with a mantis as the godhead? Tithes paid to me will of course be mandatory

More seriously though, when I see the flames of summer bushfires taking out great swathes of the Australian bushland on a daily basis I wonder if I am the only person who mourns for the countless numbers of strange and wonderful insects which must be getting incinerated. I fear that a great entomological extinction is taking place in Australia.

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

First flea market visit for 2010

2010-01-03T01:16:30Z

The dog woke me with some frantic barking just before dawn. Maybe there was a cat fight going on somewhere, but both of our moggies were safely inside.

I wasn’t intending to visit the local flea market today - usually there’s not many sellers so close to Christmas. My theory is that many prospects are still suffering from over indulgence, and maybe some of them are holidaying in their European villas.

Anyway once the sun was up and the rest of the family still peacefully snoozing I decided to take a stroll with my wallet, which by some miracle had a half dozen five dollar notes inside. They’re my favorite form of currency.

The number of sellers was down by about half. Potential customers were sufficient to keep business brisk enough for those offering stuff cheaply. Within the first five minutes I had spotted a flat Moroccan style platter which was two dollars. It will be fixed to a limestone wall in our ‘Roman garden’ later today. I think we are going to have to start referring to it as the Mediterranean garden because of the cultural diversity of stuff which is accumulating on the wall.

A ‘Marrakesh’ patterned flat-platter

There were a few people with CDs which they obviously didn’t want to sell. Five dollars is way over the top for me; and most other buyers from what I can figure. Nevertheless just before I was about to come home I noticed a few for a dollar each on a dress stall. I bought four:

A Touch of Class by Shirley Bassey.
Tenderly by James Last.
The Bush Poems of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson read by the Australian actor Jack Thompson.
Kismet, sung by the original 1953 Broadway cast - music adapted by Robert Wright and George Forrest from Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor.

Kismet

I’m listening to the Kismet CD as I type. I was eight years old when the music was originally recorded on Broadway. The 2000 digital version is excellent. Track 3 is ‘Bazaar of the Caravans.’ For a brief moment towards the end I thought it was one of the tracks from the 1962 film epic Lawrence of Arabia. It’s possible Maurice Jarre might have experienced some inspiration from earlier the Kismet rendition of an original work by Russian composer Alexander Borodin, who died in 1887. His composition (Out of copyright?) was for an opera titled Prince Igor. I wonder if I can find it on a CD next week at the flea market for a dollar?

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A ‘bold’ decision by the state government

2010-01-02T01:37:27Z

As of yesterday the display of colour-coded registration stickers on car windows was no longer mandatory in Western Australia. The Liberal led state government reckoned that it would save about $400,000 when the change was first announced last year - about the equivalent of the cost of an average suburban house in a pretty ordinary suburb.

Abolition of rego stickers plays right into the hands of crooks. The things enabled everyone at a glance to instantly tell if a vehicle registration was valid by a year-specific colour and the number of the month it expired. The brown one shown below with the number 1 expires in January 2010 - that’s this month.

Both sides of a WA rego sticker

The cops will now put their faith fully in a portable/mobile computerised device whereby a car’s indexed number plate can be typed into the system for an instant update on the bonafides of the vehicle. It’s probably doomed to partial failure because the state is so large, and such wireless gadgets have an unhappy track record of being out of range in many remote areas.

Mustn’t forget too that the ongoing software and hardware maintenance and upgrades will be big-time expensive and eternal.

Even within a communication range, the new method has potential to be cumbersome and time consuming. Visualise the following hypothetical test. Take two jolly police persons and place them in the middle of a football field. Park ten cars with registration stickers at one end of the oval and ten without stickers at the other end. The constable who draws the short straw gets to use the gee-whizz gadget on the unstickered cars. Time each constable to see how long it takes to check the regos for each group using the old and the new methods. Which will be easiest and quickest - a quick visual glance at the windscreens, or an individual entry of data punched into a computer system for each vehicle?

Of course the new system has it’s supporters. In a perfect situation it may well be a useful tool. But my guess is that the cops won’t be bothering themselves with rego checks at all unless there’s a dead body or a stash of loot suspected inside a car. (There was also a disgraceful case recently of a dodgy WA cop secretly identifying attractive female drivers from their car registration details and stalking them.)

The truth is with the old system that expired stickers were very simple for anyone to notice, and drew immediate attention to a vehicle that it was possibly unregistered, and therefor a liability to the rest of society. Western Australian registrations have a compulsory insurance component for accident caused injuries. No rego, and our entire social system carries the burdon imposed by the free-riders.

None of the other Australian states have taken such a ‘bold‘ step. They’re sticking with the stickers. Apparently this will spell trouble for Western Australian interstate travelers because eastern states cops won’t have the computer gadgets for a non-intrusive verification. However it might be great for Western Australian car thieves using bogus plates to move stolen vehicles around the nation.

The abolition can only lessen the chance of random discovery of the petty shonks and shirkers. People inadvertently caught out can plead that because the visual reminder has gone, they were unaware that their rego had expired. They could add extra zest to their argument by claiming that the snail-mail renewal notice disappeared in the mail system.

I’m awarding a mark of C minus for the government’s dreamocrats on this one.

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

An encouraging start to the new year in our garden

2010-01-01T00:26:22Z

It’s ‘twenty ten’ already - 2010. The sun is shining, and our garden is full of birds, insects, flowers and froglets. Here’s a couple of end-of-year pics I took yesterday afternoon.

Some motor bike froglets and a lorikeet

The six Litoria moorei froglets were sunning themselves on the limestone wall of one of our ponds. They were also watching for flies. You could see a slight twitch in their bodies if one foolishly landed nearby, but they are patient creatures and wait for exactly the right moment to pounce. Jill counted seventeen froglets in the immediate vicinity of these ones, plus some big’uns. She does a count several times each day and the numbers are increasing. There are several more large tadpoles with legs in the water. We think they’ll be making their first great leap in a few days. We have a few other ponds with lots of large taddies which have developed from the pinhead sized hatchlings I depicted in Fremantlebiz on September 29, 2009.

The rainbow lorikeet was in one of our cocos palms late yesterday. His name is Laurence the lorikeet. There are a lot of Laurences in the Trichoglossus haematodus tribe. We’ve been getting regular visits to our garden by some of these flashy chatterboxes for a week or so. Usually a half dozen at a time. We enjoy these encounters.

We have quite a few flowers blooming in the garden for the new year. In the group shown below the orange ones on the left have been looking like this for a couple of weeks. They are the fully open blooms of a potted succulent we don’t know the name of. Nor do we know the name of the white flower in the middle photo. It belongs to a water plant in one of our frog ponds. It’s blooms only last a day, but there are seemingly plenty more to follow. This is the first time both these plants have put on a display for us. However, the plant on the right probably needs no introduction. It’s an ever reliable Vinca which has been flowering for months and will possibly keep doing so through summer.

From Our garden

© MMX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The end of the naughties is nigh

2009-12-30T23:50:31Z

Western Australian couch potatoes are constantly being reminded by frantic voices during TV ad breaks that today is the day for ‘end of the’ decade sales. Carpets, cars, washing machines - you name it - if you don’t buy ‘em today then it will be much too late tomorrow, because it will be 2010.

I have a suspicion that this time next year will actually be the end of the decade, so they might have to do it all over again in twelve months. Another piece of linguistic tap dancing, more in the realm of frantic uninvestigative journalists, is that tonight is the end of the naughties - the years where a zero or naught is the third number. They’ve yet to figure out that tomorrow is the start of twelve months of double naughty year, after that it’s all downhill for a while.

Here at the home of Fremantlbiz there plenty of non-naughty action planned for tonight. I’ll be barbecuing some surf and turf - prawns on skewers and rump steak with grilled mushrooms and chips. Maybe a bottle of spumante to wash it all down.

The prawns will be the last of a frozen 10 kg carton I wrote about buying over two years ago on 17 November 2007. The steak has been sliced off a whole rump we bought for $4.50 a kilogram last week - cheap. We’ve sliced or diced the rest, and frozen it for our carnivorous activities next year, which of course begins after tonight. Maybe I should buy another carton of Western Australian prawns for the next two years? They’re still about the same price.

To add to tonight’s excess we’ve bought a couple of packets of sparklers for each of our younger children. These are expected to be lit soon after the fall of darkness. According to my computer widget the sun sets for Fremantle at about 24 minutes past seven this evening - then there will be at least an hour of twilight. I’m tipping we oldsters won’t be staying up until midnight. Ten o’clock might be the max. Below is a pic I took yesterday of five of my baby boys working hard on son number two’s limestone house at Jandakot.

Men at work

Believe it or not, we had to knock off for a little while yesterday morning because of a shower of rain. About a hundred kilometers further north at rural Toodyay the remains of some 38 homes were still smoldering as a result of a catastrophic bushfire. Thankfully, there were no fatalities.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Thirsty work for toolies

2009-12-29T23:15:14Z

There’s a heck of a wind blowing gusting us from the south this morning - getting up towards 30 km/h. It spells bad news for firefighters. Yesterday there were some catastrophic bushfires north of the Perth metropolitan area. Several houses were destroyed near Toodyay, and at least three people were injured. Reportedly, the fires have continued burning out of control during the night. Today is possibly going to be pretty dangerous one fire wise for other areas.

Back here yesterday afternoon I was helping our number two son Ken to build his limestone house at Jandakot. He’d been at it alone for a few hours when I turned up. My job was to wash the stone blocks then lift them onto a scaffold from where he would set them in place. I enjoyed the physical effort and was all for continuing for a another hour or so when he declared it was time to knock off. I think the ground floor walls will be completed in about three weeks.

Some of the limestone blocks

We had one minor setback. The Stihl stone-cutting saw wouldn’t start and he didn’t have the wrench to remove the spark plug for cleaning. This meant we couldn’t quite complete the courses and had to stagger the ends, if you know what I mean. We should be able to cut some stone today if he has found the wrench. I have a similar one for my chain saw, but when I searched last night it had disappeared from where it was supposed to be. This is the story of my life as a father of six sons. It’s not been unusual for me to discover rusted tools that have been missing for twenty or more years when I’ve been digging in our garden. My tools still keep mysteriously vanishing, and I can tell you it’s been very frustrating. Apparently some on my tool-borrowers will rock up to help us this morning.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Fremantle’s ugliest building (arguably)

2009-12-29T00:35:00Z

There’s a very ugly building in the centre of Fremantle. It’s so ugly that I realised yesterday I’d subconsciously tried to exclude it from most photographs I’ve taken of the port city over the past several years. So I had to go back in my digital collection from 2004 to find a photo of it to support today’s comments.

The building is called the Henderson Street Car Park. It’s a huge multi-story concrete affair smack-bang in the middle of town which is painted bright orange and blue on the outside. Prince Charles would love it. (Not). When did you ever see anything which looks good in orange and blue? A packet of Jaffas is all I can think of. They were the round lollies that some kid accidentally spilled on the floor at every cinema matinee I attended in Fremantle during the 1950s. Can you still buy Jaffas?

A ‘tasteful’ car park - perfect for any historical precinct

The edifice doesn’t look any better in 2009, except that the colours have faded a bit. The main reason I’ve mentioned this brutish late-twentieth century insult is that we parked our car on the top deck on Boxing Day. My wife and two youngest daughters wanted to check out the post Christmas sales. A Myer department store adjoins onto the structure and there is an interconnecting ‘back door’ access from their second floor.

The only good thing I can say about the car park is there are some excellent views to be had over the scungy rooftops of Fremantle. Below is a picture I took two days ago of Henderson Street and its other environs.

A southwest view over Henderson Street

The stone cottages in the foreground date back to the early 1850s and were constructed to accommodate prison warders. There used to be a ‘Convict Establishment’ at the far end of Henderson Street from where British and Irish convicts were dispensed as forced labour for a great variety of public works around what was then a British colony. My Irish sheep stealing, great, great, grandfather William Quinlan was one of them. Many of the architectural treasures these men built were demolished to make way for things like the car park.

Beyond Henderson Street can be seen the large roof of the Fremantle Markets. The building dates back to 1897. It was revitalised in the 1970s and now supports a range of semi-itinerant stall holders flogging fruit, vegetables and touristic trinkets. Generally however, tourists need to turn up on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and the occasional public holidays. It’s closed on other days.

Behind the market can be seen the roof and spire of Scots Presbyterian Church. It’s a Talbot-Hobbs design constructed from local limestone in 1890. An aunt and uncle of mine were married there in 1938. Adjacent to the church is the Fremantle Synagogue. In 1902 it was the first synagogue built in Western Australia - also of local limestone. By 1910 the congregation had dwindled to the extent that it closed. The building was sold and has had a variety of commercial uses since. In the distance behind the former synagogue is the Fremantle Public Hospital in pale-puce coloured brick.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A creature feature

2009-12-27T23:11:03Z

It’s going to be a scorcher today. Over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. On our front verandah at 5.30 am it was still a deceptive 62 degrees, but I could tell from the signs its going to get much worse. There’s a dry easterly wind blowing which is sucking up any excess moisture. The firebugs will probably be preparing for their despicable activities. Fire authorities are fearing the possibility of a catastrophic event.

Here in our garden we try to maintain a sanctuary for any parched creatures which wander in. Unusual insects are especially welcome, and this spring here have been more sighted than last year and the previous one. Last week we were very pleased to watch a praying mantis catching flies from a parsley plant in our front garden. It was very fast, and seemed to enjoy clipping off the crunchy parts of the flies before tucking in.

Christmas dinner for a praying mantis

Our frogs have been doing well too. I think that this spring my wife has gone through about seven large canisters of flaky fish food at about nine dollars a pop. This diet has been supplemented by boiled lettuce leaves and the more natural resources in our ponds. This week there have been several young inch-long froglets leaving their well fed tadpole buddies behind and going hunting for insects in the garden. I snapped the following pic of two young motorbike frogs a few moments ago:

December froglets catching the morning sun

Last night when we were watching the new version of David Copperfield on TV we were startled by the panicking shriek of a froglet which had gotten into the house and been discovered by our cocker spaniel’s nose. The amphibian franticly hopped around the lounge and eventually sought cover beneath a settee. Naturally there was an urgent and very careful moving of furniture to rescue it and place it back in the garden. Normal service resumed just in time to see David Copperfield rescued by his long-lost kin and live happily ever after.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A Christmas present confessional

2009-12-26T23:51:59Z

It’s time to answer the question, “What did you get for Christmas?” Well, I’m glad to truthfully say that someone asked. For starters on Christmas morning, Jill gave me Simpson and Day's Field Guide to the the birds of Australia and a very nice satchel of Hohner blues harmonicas in differing keys. I've played the mouse-organ most of my life so the rest of the family are in for a blues ‘treat’. (Zzzzzz!) I was also very pleased to also receive a box of Australian made Turkish Delight. Jill won’t eat it, but I adore the stuff. Alas, there’s only two pieces left.

My children were very generous. I’ve been steadily testing a very nice box of Champs-Elysées chocolates, and awaiting to be tasted are some Russian chocolate bars. Thankfully there’s some Australian chocolates as well. There were two books, David Mearns The Search for the Sydney and Jamie Oliver’s America. And now hanging from our back verandah is a large green bag with strawberry plants poking out from the sides. I suspect the birds might let us know if any strawberries develop. There were other excellent goodies too, as one might expect in a family with nine kids.

I gave my wife a silicone dive mask and snorkel to take to Rottnest. Also some genuine Chanel perfume and a Japanese designed decorative plate with dozens of cats wearing Santa 'Claws' hats. I bought the plate at the flea market a while back. It was a great temptation not to give it to Jill earlier. I can say it received a much better reception than some New Guinea highlanders' penis gourds which I found at the flea market a few years back.

A JA Santa-pussy platter

Yesterday we had to make a trip back to The Good Guys mega-store. We returned a small, inexpensive CD player we'd bought for our youngest daughter. When she unpacked it on Christmas morning she discovered the volume knob was broken off and the CD didn't play. Someone in a Chinese factory had obviously a bad day, because the outer carton was undamaged. There was no problem in returning it, apart from finding some parking. The Good Guys were were having a 30 percent off Boxing Day sale, so we opted for a better known brand as a replacement and paid extra - like 70 bucks extra.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Eating out for Christmas lunch

2009-12-25T22:49:32Z

Yesterday our family enjoyed a Christmas lunch at the home of my wife’s nephew and his kind hearted wife, whom happens to be a theraputic hypnotist during normal business hours.

There was no mesmerism amongst the 40 invitees as they tucked into a full buffet style roast dinner with all the trimmings in at least 35 degree heat beneath a garden marquee. This was followed by delicious deserts, including some large home-made plum puddings which had been boiled for hours in the traditional manner in a cloth wrapping. It was a first for me.

Any spare time amongst the hungry guests was occupied by filling in brain teaser questionaires, and compulsory participation in a game of charades. Every person had randomly found themselves in a small team of charaders via a marking on the back of their seat. The challenge was to act out the names of old fashioned Christmas carols for the others to guess. I was in the ‘Snowflakes’ team, which was a bit funny in itself because if there is one thing that is alien to this neck of the woods, it’s snow. It was so hot yesterday that the marquee had been rigged with mist sprayers to keep guests cool.

There was 'secret Santa' gift exchange too. Everyone had contributed a wrapped present. Some gifts were terrific, but some might be destined to keep circulating in 'secret Santa' affairs for many years - like the one I received - a magnetic light for a barbecue. It requires three AAA batteries.

The entire affair was a mighty organisational effort which went without a hitch. Nevertheless, I’d bet our hosts were feeling totally exhausted by the time they hit the sack last night. I’ve made a mental note not to try to outdo them at future Christmas occasions.

Before and during Christmas lunch, 2009

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Christmas morning at Fremantlebiz

2009-12-24T23:17:06Z

It’s Christmas morning, the sun is peeking through an overcast sky and all the kids are still asleep. I started the day with a refreshing dip in our salty pool. I can hear Jill in the kitchen making me a cup of tea.

There's evidence on the back verandah of a reindeer visitation last night - a carrot has had a few bites taken from it. In the lounge room a large glass of water has been emptied, and a couple of chocolates which were left on a plate near it have disappeared as if by magic. There are some pillow cases nearby which appear to be full of presents. It’s all very mysterious.

The official weather forecast is for “A mostly sunny day with some high cloud. Moderate E/NE winds shifting moderate to fresh S/SW in the afternoon.” The temperature is expected to reach the mid 30s C, which is around the mid 80s in good old fashioned Fahrenheit.

Fifteen minutes have elapsed. Formerly sleepy people are now awake and the pillow cases have been unpacked. Max our tabby cat has taken a great interest in the proceedings so far:

The wisdom of Max

There is a lot of present unwrapping to come today. Santa doesn’t get all the credit in this house, especially for the really cool stuff.

I wish you a Happy and Safe Christmas.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

My last ten bucks for Christmas - Machinarium

2009-12-23T21:50:03Z

It’s Christmas Eve all day today and there’s not a lot to do except wait for Jesus’s birthday tomorrow, right? Well wrong! I’ve found something to spend my last ten bucks on. Well actually it was A$11.73 with the online conversion to US ten bucks with PayPal.

What sucked me in was a family-friendly computer game called Machinarium. I accidentally found it when I was looking for something online which I’ve now forgotten about. The game has wonderful artwork depicting a rusting junkyard world populated by cute robot survivors. The trick is to try to help them explore their world by clicking cryptic clues hidden in the complex artwork. My kids will love the game. I just love the artwork. Here’s a sample:

Machinarium - The alley

According to Wikipedia, “Machinarium was developed over a period of three years, by seven Czech developers, who financed the project with their own savings. The marketing budget for the game was a scant $1,000. It won the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival.”

To move things along, the authors have offered a generous Christmas bundle of their clever stuff for ten bucks. The deal finishes on 25 December, so you’ll need to be quick.

The US$10 package includes the following items:
The full download version of Machinarium.
The full download version of another family friendly game called Samorost 2.
Downloads of cool artwork.
A download the MP3 albums of original soundtrack music for Machinarium composed by Tomáš Dvořák. I’ve heard that surname before. (The music download also includes a second unmentioned bonus collection of MP3 recordings from the game.)

My PayPal transaction went through effortlessly and the links to the goodies were emailed instantly by a non-rusty robot. There’s a choice of operating systems, Apple Mac OSX, Linux or Windows. The Apple Mac downloading links worked perfectly and the software came down quickly.

Here’s the link to the Machinarium demo. http://machinarium.net/demo/ The $10 Christmas-offer package comes up when you click their Store link.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A perfect storm passes through Sandfire

2009-12-23T01:40:26Z

We are still feeling the side effects of tropical cyclone Laurence which crossed the north west coast near the Sandfire early yesterday and is now cutting a swathe overland in a south easterly direction. At it’s peak, the mighty storm was generating wind speeds nudging up towards 300 km/h and because the energy has to come from somewhere, a vast quantity of air has been flowing north over Perth and Fremantle from the Southern Ocean. It’s still happening this morning. At Rottnest Island just off Fremantle just after 2.30 am the wind was coming directly from the south, gusting just under 70 km/h. It’s was less than that on the mainland, but was still strong enough to make our house rattle.

The storm late yesterday

The eye of the storm is now further to the south east and currently making its effect felt on the Aboriginal community of Warburton. Winds are still reaching about 100 km/h, which is plenty strong enough to do some damage to roofs. However the region where the cyclone passed was mostly unpopulated.

The great bonus is that an incalculably large quantity of rain has been dumped on Australia’s parched interior. This will be good news for the native vegetation and millions of wild birds and animals. The runoff over the next few days will head either west or south according to the topography. The trans-continental railway may soon be stalled by floodwaters. This is not unusual.

Here’s a photo of wild ducks rising from a fresh water soak amongst secluded some dunes at Sandfire. I took it in July 1982. Jill and camped there a couple of times. We only had three children in those days.

Wild ducks at Sandfire - July 1982

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Multicultural Christmas indulgences

2009-12-21T23:09:15Z

One of the nicest things I’ve enjoyed in the lead up to Christmas this year has been the cherries. The weather is too warm for them to be grown successfully around Perth, so they have traditionally been freighted in from the Adelaide hills in South Australia. However this year there are also cherries coming from Albany on the south coast of our state. They’re all expensive about $8 to $10 a kilogram. Last Friday we saw them in 4kg cartons for $28. That seemed too much of an indulgence for us. We bought a half kilo for about $4.50 and they are all gone now, Sob! We might buy some more, they were so sweet. I guess they’re the sort of cherries that are compared to the lips of seductive young maidens.

Strawberries are really the way to go here. They’re much cheaper. Someone should declare Perth to be the strawberry capital of the world because there are many Vietnamese/Australian farms here growing a great product. When you drive past the farms you can often seek the workers wearing conical hats picking the fruit. We’ll buy some more strawberries tomorrow.

My Akela wife received a few gifts of chocolate from grateful Cub Scout families last week. There’s been a bit of indulging in that area going on since. One soft centered chocolate is never enough. There are lots of small chocolate factories in this state giving the multinationals a run for their money. Dunking fresh strawberries in melted chocolate seems to be a popular fad at the moment. I hope no one gives one of those dunking machines for Christmas.

We bough a small ham last Friday afternoon from Coles. They guarantee that all their hams are 100 percent Australian. At $7.80 per kg it cost us a little over $24. It will have to wait until Christmas before it’s sampled.

An Aussie ham

The fisher folk have been advertising Australia seafood heavily for the past few weeks - prawns and ocean crayfish especially. One of the largest operators, Kailis Brothers (Greek/Australians) are boasting in this morning’s newspaper that they are having a 36 hour marathon, non-stop sale with cooked crays on offer at the bargain price of $42.95 per kilogram, which doesn’t seem very cheap to me. Alternatively The Spud Shed people(Italian/Australians) are offering whole cooked crays for a much more modest $9.90 each. Dead crayfish at any price don’t appeal to me. They are such beautiful creatures. I’d rather watch live ones under the sea.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Writing the family’s Christmas newsletter

2009-12-20T23:42:59Z

Aside from my writing letters to the future with a daily dose of Fremantlebiz, one of the other literary tasks I’ve set myself over several years has been to write a cheery Christmas illustrated newsletter titled Weaver News for distribution to family and friends.

I used to start writing it in January, and add to it through the year as events occurred, but slacked off a few years ago and started doing them a few weeks before Christmas. This puts the pressure on because now that so many of our kids are young adults, it’s much more difficult to remember who did what to whom, and when and where. I’ve determined that next year’s resolution will be for me to keep a more detailed note of certain matters, and that means going back to the old way of compiling the Christmas newsletter through the year. Making sure I have suitable photos of everyone is essential, and also sometimes difficult.

Anyway, Weaver News - 2009 is now complete - just in time for Christmas. There’s a degree of secrecy about its content, and only my wife Jill gets a preview with the proofreading. When work is in progress, everyone else is shooed away when they poke their heads through the office door. When I checked the size of the final file yesterday I was startled to discover it was almost 40 megabytes, but I had a few software tricks up my sleeve and was eventually able to shrink it down to less than one megabyte without any appreciable loss of quality in the imagery. Phew!

Christmas Newsletters, 2002 - 2009

This year the postal workers have decided to inflict their wrath on the ever-suffering Australian public by engaging in industrial action, so it’s probable that our relatives in other states may not receive their copies of the newsletter by Christmas Eve. However, those with email access will be clobbered with a ‘less than 1 meg’ PDF file in a day or so, but I’ll still need to write a personal note to go with some of them.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Sunday reflections

2009-12-20T01:07:43Z

Our sharp-eyed eldest daughter spotted an unusually large fly which had roosted on a wind chime on our back verandah last night. It so beautiful that I hesitate to call it a blowfly, but I suppose it must have had maggot brothers and sisters at some time in the past. I took some photos. They make me think of a senior Australian political leader who recently went to Copenhagen for the smorgasbord and discovered the party was pretty well over.

A lonely blowfly

I went to the local flea market this morning. I knew from experience gained in past years that there are never very good pickings to be had in the final week before Christmas. It was no different this time. Even the number of sellers was down by about a third. Prices were generally high. There were quite a few casual sellers who didn’t understand that a flea market is a place where price negotiation is a standard custom. I heard one haughty woman telling people she’d rather take her stuff home than lower her prices.

There wasn’t an abundance of cheap CDs. However I found two Chris Isaak albums for $2 each - Baja Sessions and Forever Blue. I’ve since remembered that I already have the latter. Never mind.

At the risk of being accused of religious mania, for two dollars I also rescued an old book titled Bible Pictures and Stories (1911) by Mrs Adelaide Bee Evans. It was published in Australia, but as to who she was is still a mystery for me. I suspect American. There are many interesting pictures, including one of Mary and Jesus when he was a boy. The image shown below on the left bears a resemblance to a modern bronze sculpture of Mary MacKillop, (1842 - 1909) whom has just overnight been given the nod by the Catholic Church for canonisation as Australia’s first saint. A pioneering educator, she was a radical, outspoken nun whom at one stage of her life had been excommunicated for insubordination.

Two Marys

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Enjoying the pain of recession before doomsday

2009-12-19T00:20:50Z

I enjoyed my trip to the GP yesterday afternoon. He applied liquid nitrogen to to some small, benign encrustations near the antenna points on either side of my forehead. They will have peeled off by Christmas Day and I’ll be beautiful again. I’ve had this done before. The procedure has always been a success.

The Christmas junk mail keeps rolling in. I don’t remember seeing as much in previous years. There’s no doubt it’s going to be a bumper profit quarter for Apple. iPods, iPhones, iMacs and their various accessories are all still getting the hard sell by all the major chains. We Aussies will probably bail the USA out of recession in no time at all.

A bit of junk mail which arrived from Big W this morning reveals that on this coming Monday they’ll have 1TB Iomega desktop hard drives on sale for $114. A limit of 2 per customer. I wouldn’t mind buying one at that price so that I can have a secondary backup. Iomega is a reputable brand.

I’ve noticed that since the recession started to bite in this neck of the woods, the price of memory related media like CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and large capacity hard drives seem to have been considerably higher than 18 months ago, and that the reputable brands have been much scarcer. The Iomega price is the cheapest I recall seeing for a 1TB drive. There won’t be any shortage of customers on Monday.

There’s been a lot of mystery shopping expeditions by cashed up members of this family in recent days. I occasionally see them sneaking past with bags of stuff. They seem to be possessed of guilt that they haven’t bought quite enough. My wife’s sellotape stash gets shown no mercy. Someone has ‘borrowed’ the good biro from my desk and not returned it. That annoys me. I loved using that pen.

I notice that the environmental gabfest in Copenhagen has been a fizzer. The developed nations were getting the blame for not offering enough backhanders to the leaders of the dodgy nations. How many iPods do they need?

So now the doom and gloom experts are ranting that the planet is doomed. Hopefully, it’s not going to spoil Christmas.

From Cats and dogs

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

School’s out for summer

2009-12-17T22:39:30Z

Yippee, no more school for the best part of a couple of months. The reports are in and nobody failed. What more could we ask. Now it’s time for some serious fun, like delegating who will do the dishes each day.

My wife and I tend to play ‘good cop, bad cop’ in this house. I seem to always get to be the bad cop. Everyone, even the dog and cats snuggle around their mother rather than me when watching TV.

From Cats and dogs

I don’t ask for much. Turning off excess lights is one of my pet themes, not messing up the kitchen just after I’ve cleaned it is another. I had a dream last night that we had some unexpected visitors and there were piles of dirty dishes all through the house - like everywhere. Analyse that.

Another of my bugbears is people who refuse to remove their dry laundry from the clothes line, or put a load of washing in the machine and then forget to hang it out. I haven’t had a dream about that yet. I also get fed up with petty bickering - it usually revolves around the “I didn’t do it’ argument.

So what’s on for today? Well beady eyed son number six, (the trumpet player) has insisted he needs his eyes tested. After my wife is at Garden City tending to that chore she’ll go to the Rivers store to try and get a free bottle of cologne they offered us in some solicited spam yesterday. While she’s doing that I’ll be at home trying to finish off the family Christmas Newsletter which gets distributed amongst the ingrates and our extended family. We’ve gotta buy some bread and milk too, and maybe an Australian ham. Only a small one this year because prices are high since the great import scandal was exposed this year. I still can’t get over how some manufacturers had the gall to wrap imported meat around Australian pork bones and pretend it was Aussie ham last Christmas.

This afternoon I’ve got an appointment with our GP to have him dab some liquid nitrogen on some some small facial imperfections. No pain, no gain.

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Santa helping - secret mens' business

2009-12-17T00:14:18Z

I’m pretty sure most of my fellow Santa helpers would have been as outraged as I was when I was in a large Fremantle store earlier this week and an announcement with an American accent came over the PA that it was only a few more days before ‘Kris Kringle’ arrived down the chimney bearing gifts for the children. Kris Kringle indeed! What a cheek! It’s either Father Christmas or Santa Claus in this country. I’ve made a mental note to instruct the reindeers to defecate on the roof of that store when passing over it on Christmas Eve.

Like most Santa helpers, I seem to have more trouble squeezing into my red suit each time I’m recalled for special duties in the lead up time to Christmas Eve. Last night my number two daughter Peta the Pixie and got the calling to the 1st Fremantle Cub Scouts lair on the riverside at East Fremantle. Thanks to my Akela wife Jill, we had presents for every kid, even the very little ones who are not yet old enough to be Cub Scouts:

Santa helper Paul visits the 1st Fremantle Cub Scouts - 2009

This is not the first time I’ve had the honour to be involved in such secret mens’ business. Heres a a few flashbacks going back to the 1960s:

Santa helper Paul’s flashbacks

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The Qpix FS-170 film and slide scanner

2009-12-16T00:14:21Z

Yesterday was hot, and smokey from bushfires in the southwest. It’s cool and overcast (smokey) this morning. There’s been a tropical cyclone dispersing the oil spills in the northwest and a lot of air has been getting sucked in that direction. Winds have been reaching 260 kilometers per hour near the centre of the storm. It’s going to dump a huge quantity of rain on inland Australia.

I got sucked in the direction of the Officeworks Fremantle store yesterday. I’d been there the day before and seen a large stack of Qpix FS-170 film and slide scanners for digitising old 35mm colour slides and negatives. They were priced at $139, but before committing myself I came home and posted an inquiry on the local Mac user group (WAMUG) asking if anyone had any experience with them. After 24 hours there’d been no reply, but I had a phone call from my eldest son alerting me that he’d seen an ‘interesting scanner’ being advertised by OfficeWorks in their latest junk mail for $129.

The latest ‘must have’

Seeing as no one else seemed to know about these things, I went back to Officeworks Freo yesterday afternoon and sure enough I discovered they had indeed gone on sale at $129. I bought one and on getting home quickly have found it to be a excellent 35mm slide copier. It takes maybe less than half a second to scan a colour slide.

The device can run on four user-supplied AAA batteries which they reckon provide about 90 minutes use. Alternatively there is a USB cable which can draw power from a computer or the special AC power plug, which is also provided.

It comes with a disk of software for direct connection and image processing on a Windoze machine, but this is of little relevance to a Mac user like me. However the unit can be used as stand-alone and creates .jpg images onto the HD card as if it was a camera, which I suppose is what it is really. I prefer to use it not directly connected to the computer anyway. There’s also a unique brush/wiper supplied for cleaning the optics inside the device.

A robust 3 slide holder is provided. When inserted in a slot on the side of the thing the slides can be lined up easily on the colour preview screen. There’s also a holder for a strip of 6 x 35mm negatives (or less). The scanned images are stored on a user-supplied SD card. I simply borrowed a card from one of my digital cameras. Later I uploaded the scanned images via the camera to iPhoto. The test images I’ve done so far are technically very satisfactory. Here’s one of me looking pretty scruffy when I worked on preserving some very ancient books at the New Norcia Monastery in the early 1990s.

A test scan from a 35mm slide

The scanner is one of the niftiest gadgets I've seen for a long time - it’s a sophisticated, well designed precision bit of gear. At $129 I think they'll go out the door of OfficeWorks pretty quickly once the word gets around. However be warned, the instruction book takes a little study to figure out all the options. I'm still working on it.

I suggest if anyone has old slides to digitise then this gizmo is going to be the ant's pants. At least it will be for me. My collection of 35mm slides and negatives goes back to when I was a teenager. Zzzzzz!

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
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Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The night lights of our suburban paradise

2009-12-14T22:46:31Z

When we were coming home from the jazz carol session on Sunday evening I was in the passenger seat. It’s a treat for me because I get to see the passing burbs rather than have my eyes glued to the road ahead.

We took a longer route through the ‘wealthy’ western suburbs of Subiaco, Claremont and Cottesloe in anticipation of seeing some houses cheerfully decorated with Christmas lights, but we were disappointed. We saw none, apart from one or two garden bushes feebly winking away in solitude.

I was struck how gloomy many of the prestige suburbs’ houses looked at night. It’s possible for an observer to get a quick passing glimpse into the interiors of some of these places. Forty watt light bulbs are pretty dull at the best of times, but they seemed to be in popular fashion for illuminating some very grotty interiors.

We got to the coast and headed south through the grotty booze and cafe strip of North Cottesloe and Cottesloe. There were a lot of young people gathered on the footpaths outside the hotels - a swarm of Sunday night fashionista bar flies. They appeared to me to be lost souls - a bit glassy eyed and lonely in spite of being in a crowd - as individuals desperately seeking stable loving relationships with other humans through their common attraction to alcohol; and not understanding why they were failing. They looked so different to the many very happy, and sober young people who had gathered in the piazza at St Joseph’s church for the jazz carols.

All roads lead to our house, as the saying goes. When we turned the corner our Christmas LED lights were brightly shining like nothing else we had seen that night. They’re not ostentatious. There’s no twinkling Santa, reindeers, stars, candy canes or any of the illuminaria which features on some of the houses in our southern suburbs. Just a simple string of multicoloured lights strung along the roof gutters. The same ones every year. Because they are LEDs they only cost a few cents to run, and this is easily offset during the day by the output from our rooftop solar panels.

The two-story construction project across the road has been proceeding at great speed in recent weeks. The scaffolding was up to the rooftop level on Sunday and there was a ladder securely fixed. I decided that if I wanted a night photo from that height across our house towards Fremantle it might be my last chance. The sight was splendid. The orange glow in the distance was from the lights of the Fremantle wharves. You can see some of the cranes. I’m a bit envious of the view the new residents will have, but the photo will have to do:

A night view across our house towards Fremantle

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Christmas music on the piazza at Saint Joseph’s, Subiaco

2009-12-14T01:26:25Z

Last night Jill and I took our two youngest children to an inaugural twilight Christmas jazz concert on the piazza at Saint Joseph’s Catholic church in Subiaco. We’d been invited by our youngest daughter’s saxophone tutor Cameron van Reyk. We took a picnic tea with us to munch on the lawn while we listened to the Saint Joseph’s Chamber Choir and the Saint Joseph’s Carols in the Piazza Concert Band. Notice how I don’t abbreviate Saint. Even though I was Christened as a parsimonious Presbyterian, I can afford the three extra letters.

Cameron is a final year student at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. After hearing him play last night it’s reasonable to assume he’ll be a rising star in Australian jazz circles. We’re lucky to have him as a tutor for our daughter. He’s a very good teacher.

Cameron van Reyk

It was a beautiful evening - warm and calm. Totally perfect for the occasion. The newly renovated piazza is on the eastern side of the church. It comfortably accommodated the crowd of several hundred people of good spirit who turned up last night. I think it was the most pleasant Carols event I’ve been to.

Twilight carols at Saint Joseph's, Subiaco

Saint Joseph’s is part of a very large precinct owned by the Catholic Church. In the picture below, the priests’ presbytery can be seen behind the carolers. There used to be a large convent with matching architecture to the left of it, but the site is now occupied by the new metallic looking building which is the Ear Science Institute Australia. Out of sight behind me from where I took this photo is a large, modern specialised research and treatment facility for cancers, and to the west of this is the much renowned Saint John of God’s Hospital.

The presbytery and the piazza

I wrote about Saint Joseph’s last year on 19 August 2008. At the same time I placed a composite panoramic image of the church on Google Earth. When I checked yesterday it had been viewed 234 times.

There are high definition versions of the two above piazza images at my Panoramio site. See: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/29881593 and http://www.panoramio.com/photo/29881600

© MMIX Paul R. Weaver.

Please email the Fremantlebiz experience to a friend.
RSS feed.

Rottnest essays:

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!