Ashes Memorabilia

Yesterday we set out to visit the rocks market. Actually... it was Pancakes on the Rocks we were hoping to visit but the line up was simply outrages! It spanned a good 100m long just to get in the door! So that idea was quickly knocked on the head and we settled on a German style feast instead at the Rocks famous Lowenbrau. After a round of German Hotdogs we headed to the street markets which are located right in the middle of one of the tracks used in Project Gotham Racing 2 (Xbox).

As soon as we arrived the very first stand you notice a sculptures stand selling spoons, knives and forks bent and sculptures into Australian animals. It's simply amazing and at first we figured we had stumbled upon the find of the weekend. However, after gazing at that my brother dragged me away from that to point out a stand selling stamps. At first I figured I'd skip it. Stamps. Seriously. How exciting could stamps be? Well these were no ordinary stamps. The stand owner explained how these 3D stamps were formed. She painstakingly collects numerous stamps of the same kind and cuts out layers of which she re-lays on top of one another. This then gives the stamps a real third dimensional aspect with the main objects of the picture within the stamps standing out. These are then later re-framed by her husband and sold.

The very first stamp that stood out for me was the Ashes 2006 commemorative stamp featuring three stamps that were issued last year showing the Aussies celebrating on the field after a Shane Warne wicket, the Ashes urn and last a stamp showing the post win photo with the urn. It's fixed in a extremely well produced frame that is in traditional display cabinet colours and looks like something channel 9 would have Ritchie Benaud flogging off during a live broadcast!

Yutang also purchased 2 stamp frames. One of an Australian Tree Frog and the other was of a blue bird. They were not cheap. I would normally not even consider these within my reach. But we figured the Ashes one would perhaps one day increase in value as its limited to just 200. But it's a new addition to the house and will definitely be a conversation starter for years to come!

Shiney & New – PC Not Maddona

After three years running my Dell Dimension 2400 without a reformat the time had finally taken it's toll. Installing, removing, re-booting (sometimes without shutting down) and other register killing activities had slowed the PC down to a crawl. So what inspired me to take the plunge into my first re-format? Buying Norton 360. I know alot of folks see Norton branded items and cringe. But it's easy. Just add water style software that I've come to appreciate from the bigger software houses. Basically I could get to study into how to clean my registry manually. How to maintain the PC and keep it running smooth. But quite simply I can't be arsed! I free up more time by buying these style of programs to do it all for me.

 

Just like my car. I could change the oil myself. I could even change the brakes myself. But I'd rather just give the keys over to someone who does it for a living and free up time for other tasks. Such as gathering up achievement points in 360 games!

 

So how did the reformat go? Sweet! I've backed up all my docs to a portable hard drive. It's only a 40G drive but partitioned into 2 x 20G drives so room was somewhat limited. However I was able to send the photo's to DVD (2 DVD's in fact) and after some stumbling I managed to figure out how to re-install XP. First major challenge was how to re-install the drivers for the video, sound and other primary functions. So I installed the wireless adapter (D-link DWL-6510) driver. The great thing about having a wireless router (D-Link DSL-G604T) is that all the internet ISP settings are saved in the router/ modem itself so no need to dig it all up and enter it all in. Once I got past this hurdle it was just a matter of digging in and installing away. XP SP2 was the first big installation. That took some time to download as I couldn't find the discs I have for that. Then there was Internet Explorer 7 to deal with. Only hassle there was that Norton 360 failed to re-install my Favourites. Damn. All my cool sites gone. I do have the fav's saved via Google Bar but that is such a pain to use I don't bother relying on it.

 

After installing Google Desktop, MS Office 2007 and some other minor stuff it was all a matter of housekeeping the PC. I still have to install a fair bit of software but the main thing that where I once only had 10G left in the tank I now have 50G. Soon I'll add a 2^nd hard drive to the equation to back up files (320G should do the trick!) and I'll be hunky dory! Heck… I may even install MAME again!

New Pics Uploaded...

Just a brief entry (as I am up past my bedtime now with a morning shift on tomorrow) to let y'all know that I have uploaded a sprinkle of photos from our recent trip to QLD (Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Townsville & Cairns) and I'll blow my own trumpet by saying that I think some of the pics are damn great. But... you judge for yourself!