The Last Question

The Last Question is a short story written by Isaac Asimov. It is by far the BEST short story I have EVER read.

This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written.

After all, I undertook to tell several trillion years of human history in the space of a short story and I leave it to you as to how well I succeeded. I also undertook another task, but I won't tell you what that was lest l spoil the story for you.

It is a curious fact that innumerable readers have asked me if I wrote this story. They seem never to remember the title of the story or (for sure) the author, except for the vague thought it might be me. But, of course, they never forget the story itself especially the ending. The idea seems to drown out everything -- and I'm satisfied that it should.

If you have a spare 10 minutes, you really MUST read it. Your life will be better for it, I promise. :)

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Harris Beach Flickr Vista

( OH ) Zone
Originally uploaded by | HD |.

Another image taken during the microsoft photoshoot back in March 2006.
...captured at the north end of Harris Beach State Park - Oregon.

The Rogue River Ranch Flickr Photo

Colorful Interaction
Originally uploaded by | HD |.

The (R)ogue (R)iver (R)anch infront of the famous Table Rcok

exposure was taken using a Canon EF-S 17-85mm lens with a Hoya Circular Polarizer.

Powerful Impressions Flickr Photo

Powerful Impressions
Originally uploaded by | HD |.

Taken at the Natural Bridge at Prospect, Oregon.
The Natural Bridge is a unique lava rock formation that developed over this part of the Rogue River forming special tubes that the river runs through underground. The place is magical and I took a few snaps. This is one of them.

Hamad Darwish Flickr Gallery

I have found Hamad Darwish Flickr Gallery, and it is BREATHTAKING!!!

This guy is so good, Microsoft actually paid him to go and take photos that they could ship with Windows Vista as desktop wallpaper images.

He had to take down the ones that Microsoft bought, but all of the others are up there on his gallery. They are stunning! You really should spend some time to browse though them if this is your kettle of fish. :)

I'm heading back to it to go look at more. :D

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Pasta and Pictures

Had a VERY long and busy day at work today. I was quite pleased to be able to go out to dinner with a friend. We went to a nice pasta restaurant in the city, and I annoyed the staff by sending food and wine back. (chuckle) I am a real pain sometimes. :P

Afterwards, we went for a walk along the river front so I could practice taking some photos. I am getting a little better. :)

We stopped at a nice riverfront cafe to have some more to drink. It was a very comfortable cafe/restaurant, and I am looking forward to going there for dinner sometime soon.

Here are some pics I took of various things. Click for images and captions. :)


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The BEST Comet McNaught Photo Ever

McNaughts Comet Eyre Peninsula South Australia
Originally uploaded by john white photos.

McNaught Comet over Big Swamp South Australia.
Discovered by Australian Robert McNaught in August 2006.
Canon 5D, 50mm focal length, 30 seconds, f4, 800 ISO.
RAW converted in Breeze Browser Pro.
22 Jan 2007 at 2200 hours.

Cool Australia Day Photo on Flickr

'So what are you doing this Australia Day ?'
Originally uploaded by john white photos.

Getting in early for Australia Day Jan 26th. Just a bit of fun. 9 Friends with burning sticks from a campfire writing in the air.
Canon 5D 30 second exposure f 2.8 at 16mm. ISO 1600.
'So what are you doing this Australia Day?"!!!!

Burn Baby Burn

Birthday time for some people in the office. The traditional cake event occurs, and someone has to light the candles.

In this case, with a FLAMETHROWER!!!

Click for larger pic. :P


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Sailing on Lake Baroon

Today I went to Lake Baroon with some friends. Regulars will recall this blog article I wrote recently about the lake.

When we got there we hired some kayaks, a paddle boat, and a small catamaran. I went out on the lake quite a few times over the next hour with various people on the cat each time.

The kids had a BALL sailing across the lake. That little thing really moves when a nice strong wind catches it. It was a little difficult in some places too close to shore where the wind was weak and the water grasses tangled us, but other than that it was mostly smooth sailing. :)

Here are some pictures and a couple of short video's of the sailing. :)

Click for larger pics.





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A Black and White Self Portrait

So my photographizer friend has been learning me some good stuff. I learnt why black and white photos are sometimes better than color. I learnt that over exposing a picture is good sometimes. And I learnt what the little flower button on my camera means. ;)

So after a ridiculous number of attempts, I finally came up with this one. My mentor is impressed with how my eyes look. :)

Click for larger pic.


I'm dead sexy. :P

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Pics of Comet McNaught and Other Stuff

As I blogged previously, a friend and I went up to the Sunshine Coast hinterland last Sunday to try and get some pics of the comet.

Well, she has done some fantastic photoshop work to tidy up the blurred pics of the comet. They are not fantastic, but still look pretty bloody good. Of course they offer no comparison to actually seeing the comet with your own eyes, but they are nice never the less.

There are some other pics we took while we are up there. All but the last two are from the afternoon/evening on Bald Knob. The last two are from early Monday morning on the way home. :)

Click for larger pics and captions.


She had a SERIOUSLY unhealthy obsession with that damn tree. :P

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Google Cools Us Down

Playing around with the Google Custom Homepage site. Added the weather widget, and set it up to show me the weather for Brisbane, Australia.

Being that it is in the mid 30's (Celsius) outside, I am thinking that Google may have something broken. :P



I wish it was that cold! I hate the heat. :(

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Comets Frogs and Bigfoot?

Went with a friend to get some good pics of Comet McNaught at sunset last night. We thought the southern edge of Bald Knob would be a good location. We were right, it was fantastic. Great uninterrupted view from the hilltop to the south west. Very little cloud cover. Almost no light pollution. But there was one very major problem. It was blowing a bloody gale. The onshore winds were coming straight off the coastal plain and buffeting the top of the mountain, making it impossible to keep the camera still enough (even mounted) to take the long exposure shots that were needed. Not to mention how bloody cold the wind made it. :( Oh well, was wonderful to see with your own eyes though.

That aside, from here on in this is a blog entry that blatantly makes use of someone else's blog content. Now I feel like I am fitting in with just about every other blog in the world. :P

A mate got some fantastic photos of the comet the night before last. You can see them posted here on his blog. Bloody gorgeous!

While you are over on that blog, check out his blog entries about his room frog and his elephant foot. :P

Going to try and get more pics of the comet tonight. Hopefully we will get lucky. Must run, have work to do. Caio.

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Sports and Other Stuff

Went to the Australia vs England one day game at the Gabba on Friday with a workmate and some of our vendors. It was a good game. We whooped those soap dodgers real good. :P Actually, we came pretty close to losing really, so it was a very entertaining game.

The atmosphere was great. There was a row of tossers sitting across the isle from us, dressed up as convicts, clowns, life savers, and other such things. There was one guy who was wearing just an Australian flag. He thought it would be amusing to expose himself to the crowd by lifting up his flag. That did not work out so well for him when the police came shortly after and took him away to be charged. The ejected a heap of his convict buddies too for having illegal bottles of spirits there, and other various offences. After a short while, they were all gone. :P

Another amusing thing was the way a Mexican wave started up and went around the stadium for AGES. There was one part of the stadium that would not participate in the wave. As the wave went around the stadium, there is a roar of cheering. But as the wave passed the part where people would not do it, you would hear everyone boo'ing them, and then the cheering would start again as the wave was picked up further around. Was very amusing.

Went and watched the Queensland Roar play the Sydney FC at Suncorp stadium with my workmate and a friend and his brother. Was a fantastic game. It is a shame we tied. We needed a win to stay in the A-League for the rest of the season, so that will be the end for Queensland for the next 5 months or so.

Here are some pics from the cricket game. Click for a larger pic.


Here is a video of the Mexican wave with the cheering and booing. :P


There were over 32,000 people at the A-League game. Excellent turnout. :)


Here is a pic of Junior sleeping on my dad's legs. Very cute. And the other pic is of an ATM machine that is chained to the ground. How strange is that? Wouldn't you expect them to bolt it to the ground from inside it when they are placing it?


Anyhow, it is well past my bedtime, so I am off to bed. Nite all. :)

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Big Breakfast

Had to pick my workmate up for work today. Told him yesterday I would be there at 7am, and to make sure his wife had a nice big breakfast ready for me. "I want bacon, eggs, tomato, toast!" I said. He said "Fat chance! She does not make my breakfast, so there is no way she will make yours!"

So when I showed up at 7am, I was expecting to put on a good show of throwing a tantrum because there as no breakfast, and was expecting to stop in at McDonalds on the way to work.

But I was quite amused to see that he had just finished making me breakfast. (laugh) His wife was awake, and also quite amused that he was making breakfast for me. :P

It was VERY yummy. I eated it all up. Thanks buddy! :D


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He Has Problems

One of my workmates (the angry hands dentist guy with the network problem) was proudly(?!?!) showing off some pics of his "Lego airport" collection.

He has started buying these things, off eBay I think, and has informed everyone that he has dedicated a room at his home for setting up and playing with his airport, and intends to spare no expense growing the collection. He went into excited dialog of how wonderful the set was, pointing out the air traffic controller with the binoculars, the captain with the beard, and the hip first officer. Serious... SERIOUS!!! problems. :P

Anyhow, I told him I would blog the pics, so here they are. :)

Click for larger pics.


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How lucky is this guy!

A mate emailed these pics around with this short description.

This happened in Western Australia's north west.

He crashed through the barrier, bounced off the spoon drain and ended up where he did.

That's what you call "Lucky..."!

Click for larger pics.


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Live Blogging

So last night I learnt all about what all those strange settings and numbers and other funky stuff mean on a camera. What does this mean? Well, for one, it reassures me that I really SHOULD leave the camera in automatic mode. :P But for another, it lets me be able to second guess it when I am giving it something that is just plain strange... like taking a photo of soylent green perhaps. ;)

Yeah, that's an "in" joke, sorry people who don't get it. Trust me, you are better off not knowing what I am talking about. :P

Here is a pic of me "startled" by the flash. Well, I was not startled obviously, but I think I look much better when I look like a fool. :P

Click for a larger pic.


Oh yeah, the entry title says "live blogging", so here is a pic of me blogging the pic. :P


Tee hee. I am so funny. :P

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Google Earth Panorama Viewer

Now THIS is cool!!!

There is a beta preview of the Google Earth Panorama Viewer from Digital Urban which is REALLY funky.

Watch this YouTube video to get an idea of how it works. :)


Now as you can see from the tutorial, it is not so "user friendly" right now. I imagine they will improve it and make it "point and click" in no time, but it looks VERY bloody cool.

I love the Internet so much. How did we ever get by without it. With Blogger and YouTube and Google Earth and Digg and Picasa and HEAPS of other cool stuff that is TOTALLY free, it is only a matter of time before something REALLY big changes our lives dramatically. The next big thing since email. ;)

I LOVE the Internet. :)

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Funny Lawyer Joke

Short and sweet. A peer mailed this to a list I am on, and it made me smile, so I'll share it. :)

Lawyer sneering to witness in the stand
"you're obviously a person of integrity and intelligence"

Witness
"I'd like to return that compliment, but I'm under oath!"

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Sulfur Hexafluoride Rocks

Oh man, this stuff ROCKS. :)

Sulfur hexafluoride is a colorless odorless non-toxic non-flammable gas that is 6 times heaver than air. It has the oppisite effect to helium on your voice, and it looks cool to see stuff "float on air" in a tank.

Watch this YouTube video on it. It bloody rocks. :D


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More Crazy Katz

I found over 200 more of those crazy katz pictures. :D Have posted them all up for everyone to look at. :P

I still love the invisible bike one the best. But boobie cat is a close second now. ;)

Click to see the album. :)

CrazyKatz

I'm off to see if I can get a few hours sleep now. Nite all.

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Screw this for a joke!

This is mental. I have spent five hours, yes FIVE HOURS, uploading the pics to Picasa and modifying the HTML code in previous blog entries so that the pictures will work.

I have so far done all of 2007 and 2006. But there are still HUNDREDS more entries to be done. This is going to take forever.

I will do more over the weekend, and hopefully get it finished. Until then, if anyone wants to see missing pics from old blog entries, check what the file name is and go find the pic in this Picasa gallery.

Almost 6am, and I still am not tired. :( That sucks!

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New Blogger Hosting

Yay, Blogger have finally let you host with them using your own domain name! Previously, if you hosted with them, you could only use your blogspot.com hostname, which was pretty lame.

What sucked about that is the new Blogger "layouts" style templates, the ones that let you do 'drag and drop' template configurations and other cool stuff, were not supported unless you hosted with Blogger on their blogspot servers. Of course, because I wanted to host my blog using the fitforpublicconsumption.com domain name, that meant I had to host my blog on my own web server, which meant old school templates.

Well, now the blog is over on the new blogspot servers. I am using this template for now. I will actually design/customise a better template soon, getting a nicer layout, but this one will do for now.

Unfortunately, moving them to the new server breaks all the other stuff I had hosted, such as all the pictures that were in my blog. I am moving them over to Google's picture hosting service (Picasa) right now. Once they are over there, I will have to go through EVERY blog entry EVER made that includes a picture, and modify it to show and link to the picture on my Picasa account rather than on my server. This, as you can imagine, is no small task, with over 400 pictures spread over hundreds of entries. But I will try to get it done as quickly as possible, so be patient.

For your entertainment right now, I have uploaded a "test" picture to my Picasa account. It was taken by a good friend of mine, and he has HEAPS of excellent pics over on his website (matt.carter.name), so you should go have a look at them. I don't really have his permission to publish this pic just yet, but he has not put it up on his website, and it is such a gorgeous pic, so I have used it as my "test" pic. I will link over to the full resolution pic on his website as soon as he publishes it there.

From Nature

Anyhow, must run now. Have HEAPS more work to do before all this is done. :)

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The Gorgeous Sunshine Coast Hinterland

Late yesterday afternoon I was driving though the Sunshine Coast hinterland with some friends. We were on our way up to Montville from Landsborough, and we were awestruck with the beauty of the landscape dappled with the setting sun.

We stopped on the side of the road, and I took this photo of Lake Baroon.

Click for a larger pic.


The roads that Google Maps show running "through" the lake are from before the was dammed back in 1989, creating the lake. You can read more about it at this web site. You can find heaps more info if you do a Google search for "baroon pocket dam". :)

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Yay, another submission accepted!

Long term readers will remember a few years back I blogged about my photo essay submission being published on A Picture's Worth. It was titled "It's all gone" and was a photo of my Junior standing in freshly cleared bushland trying to work out what had happened.

Well I submitted the Red Rock Gorge picture I took during my weekend away that I blogged last October, along with an essay, and they have published it! YAY!!! :)

Click on the picture below to read the submission. :)


Sweet. :)

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Free Online Learning from MIT

This is unbelievable. MIT has put THOUSANDS of complete courseware on their website. That's like over 1600 courses, for every possible area of university level education you can imagine.

Seriously, go read this article, and you will understand how truly fantastic this is.

MIT OpenCourseWare ROCKS!!!

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Hillarious Cat Videos

Spending the evening surfing YouTube, and I just HAVE to share these two. They are positively hilarious!!!

Poor kitties. :P

Click on the videos to play them (embedded youtube). They have choreographed music, so be sure to have your sound on. :P



YouTube rocks! :D

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Saints Row Bugs - The Musical

Oh my god, this is BLOODY HILARIOUS!!!

This guys blog entry has a little video clip he made up of all the bug he experiences in a new computer game called Saints Row.

Here is a clip of text from the entry:

A number of months ago, during the pre-Wii game drought, I partook in a little game cassette called Saints Row. Saints Row (plot: shoot stuff) was a pretty average game by any measure — for starters, it was literally, down to almost every detail, an exact clone of Grand Theft Auto.
...
So many bugs that I would keep my digital camera on hand while I played the game. And every time I came across a bug — and I came across a whole lot of them — I'd take a short video.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, he made a hilarious clip of the game bugs, and authored up a side splitting song to go along with it. You have GOT to watch/hear this. Be sure to have your sound on when you watch it. :P

Click below to watch the embedded YouTube stream of it.


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Happy 2007 Everyone

Happy New Year!!!!! :)

Well 2006 is gone! It went REALLY quick too! I am sure I have said it before, but the years seem to go by faster as I get older. I wonder how fast the year felt for my nan. I think I'll ask her. :)

Went out with my friend and her dad to ring in the new years. Was fun. :) Now that I am home, I remember how noisy it is to live in an apartment complex. Everyone is still up and VERY much partying, so I don't imagine I will get to sleep any time soon. Lucky I slept in this morning. :P

Anyhow, I'll blog again soon, so hang in there peoples. :)

My new years love to those who deserve it. Miss you all!

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