Out of toner.

Amazingly I'm not upset about this, I've had the printer five years and the cyan and yellow are the first to expire, the happy surprise was checking online for replacement cost and I smiled, cheap enough that I may use the printer more often now.
I already had a spare set so no drama for now, though I did decide to empty the waste container, which resulted in deciding to have a shower immediately afterwards, perhaps that's the reason they advise against emptying?

Multiplication.

I get back from my morning travels and find more bunnies not doing a good job of hiding in the fridge. My doctor isn't going to like it when I cull them.

Just a view.

Taken from the viewing tower at Tyto.

Talking of Grace.

Her grave is looking quite good now.

I dunno whether single people should cook.

I cooked up that reduced lamb last night and cooked too many chips because they were all that was left in a bag that was part of Grace's last meal. Of course I managed to salvage the feed with the magic ingredient, gravy, done in my usual lumpy style.
The lamb was good.

I'm a sucker for reduced price goodies.

But with my budget it's about the only way I would ever get around to trying some things.

 This was eaten last night.

 This will be tomorrow, don't worry these vacuum packed meats keep very well.

 My Dad would run for cover but the price is right.

 Dinner tonight

Finished this morning, normally I'd stay clear of things with a light label, but the price was keen.
More piccies using my new toy, the Olympus XZ-10

The Jimmy method of using camera files.

This will be a bit of a tutorial that shows my very simple method of processing photos from camera to computer to being ready to post. The only tool needed is the excellent free image viewer/editor Irfanview.
You should also download their addons as well as they really help.

Firstly remove card from camera

Place in card reader, then plug into a USB port in your computer.

Or if like this Samsung that uses the excellent but fiddly little TF cards you can plug in the supplied USB lead and plug into computer and switch on.

This will then show up as a drive on your computer, with a list of files that are the photos you've taken, I use a file manager to make my life easier but you can navigate with the clunky windows system as well.

It looks like this with windows.

Next open the first file using Irfanview and hit the B key, or if you're a true mouse lover use the drop down menu as shown.

This opens the batch conversion menu, a very handy part of Irfanview. All cameras produce generic file names, these will soon cause angst as duplication will abound, I use a file system and you could easily think of a better file system but mine works fine for me. In my case the first letter "T" is my year code for 2013, and "C" is code for march, I four digits afterwards for incrementing, I only take about a thousand pictures a month these days. Note the settings in the menu here and the fact I have a separate directory for each months photos. Hit the add all button.

This puts the files on the card to the ready to process area. You can process fewer files but in practice it seldom needs to be split. Hit the options button

In my case I had to reset the starting counter to 1088 as I have files up to 1087 already in the March directory. Hit OK and Start Batch.

Now you'll have the photos on your computer with a naming system that will at least have a little bit of logic.
But for posting, most photos are way too big and need re-sizing.

The 3968 pixels across in the original photo here is way to large for posting, plus there are dead areas that should be cropped out.

So using the mouse just draw a box around the area you wish to keep, and Ctrl +Y or crop selection.

2944 pixels across is still far to large for this photo so go to the Ctrl +R or resize menu.

1000 pixels across is ample for this photo, given the nature of it smaller would be fine too, some photos justify larger but with most monitors being 1920 pixels across there isn't much need to be larger.

And that's about the end of this little bit of fun. On a personal level I never use supplied camera software nor do I bother with fancy photo editing software, Irfanview has all the tools that I ever need plus is quick and free.

Go Cowboys

More chocolaty goodness being marketed, still way above my pensioner pay packet though.

There's something odd about this.

We have a John Deere dealer but don't have a Ford dealer, nor some other popular makes like Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Mitsubishi. With the difficulty of buying genuine parts on-line that does make things awkward. Hopefully sometime in the future Australian businesses might discover the Internet as a means of trading.

They look happy.

But a bed isn't a safe place for a chocolate bunny, so I put them back into the sterile comfort of the fridge.

And this is for the pixel peepers who may wish to see a pixel sized crop from the new Olympus XZ-10.

XZ-10 one shot

I was killing a few moments waiting for the pathology to open this morning so they could drain some blood, and I took one photo of a flower, happily it's good enough to post.
The current trends in photography are not good for flower photos, with an overbearing push for shallow depth of field with the fast lenses and large sensors that help that, the slapping mirror of course has no effect on that but many still think the legacy device is needed to make it a real camera.

I swim against the current stream but feel there's far more use for a deep depth of field than a shallow one, and it's one thing that a small sensor is better for, despite other weaknesses.

Suspicious activity?

I put the Easter Bunnies in the fridge for safekeeping, and this morning I discovered these eggs in there, I don't remember them being in there before. I think the bunnies are up to something and they must be very clever bunnies, masking their tracks by putting an early best before date on the bag to avoid suspicion, they must suspect they and their children will be eaten shortly, although the eggs may be safe for a few more Easters yet, possibly even outlasting me.

A Sweet Easter couple.

I hope they breed many chocolate babies.
Unlike that Cowboys egg a while back these were only $1 each for 125g from Coles, ordinary food like meat and vegetables tend to be more expensive than these.

Eight years now....

Since laws came into force preventing smoking within 4 metres of a non-residential entry, and still I often have to sneak past smokers to gain entry into Coles, altogether too often.
Checking on the law it's obviously toothless with only 80 officers in the state who can dole out the $220 fines, because we're a distance from a major town it would be practically unknown for any enforcement here.
I have had a terrible addiction to alcohol, yet could always go up the street without having to have a drink.

Nice clock.

I was press-ganged into mounting this clock for the Shed, a job that naturally didn't go too smoothly, but the second screw for mounting worked.
A neat touch is the number 6 acts as a pendulum and happily swings from side to side. The hands are nice and visible too, which is great since we're all just shy of using white canes now.

Weird tyre.

In hindsight my fault for not monitoring enough, but noticed it was rather flat when I parked in town the other day, being rather lazy I just plugged in the cheap pump to have enough air to get home. What's odd is this tyre was only flat on the bottom, I removed it at home inspected it, and pumped it up again, and it's still holding pressure.
When I did an oil change on Sunday It looked down so I thought I'd pumped it up but later it appeared the gauge had a fault and maybe all I managed was to remove a critical amount of air, which BTW I do fancy style and withing a budget by using a 80% nitrogen mix, the 100% being beyond my reach.
Somehow though I know this tyre will fail again at a time that will be least convenient to me, so I ordered a couple of new ones yesterday. The spare also needs replacing as it has had nearly 50 birthdays and is really too old to rely upon. At least they're not an expensive size.

Pull string.

Lid lifts up, drop rubbish in. Saves walking down stairs, also stops bins floating away when flooding happens.

And of course the usual luck struck.

Cranked up the mower and the belt decided to jump off the pulley, naturally by the time I worked out what was going on it had chewed itself into ruin, oh well life returns to normal.

Fancy.

I suppose if you look like a pro and have a serious face then the newish rule barring cycling in the Tyto precinct doesn't apply.
Really though they aren't hurting anybody and this country already has too many rules and regulations, it's time we rediscovered the right to think.

Clear air today.

I took a wander about Tyto with the new Olympus XZ-10 this morning, the hills in the background are about 12 km away.

Bees like these flowers.

So do I.

New hat.

Pity about the horrible head. Scored it yesterday, nice blue.

Men's Shed moving day.

Sadly I found myself guilty of helping out with the move to the new play area for the Herbert River Men's Shed boys, sadly because My should caused me much pain later in the day, my body isn't used to doing anything resembling work.

Here the first trailer is loaded, sensibly for me I found an excuse to pop back home and meet up again at the new place for unloading, thus avoiding loading the smaller stuff.

Maybe a sensible choice as Jake damaged his arm loading stuff, which was handy for me as the blood acted as a fly magnet, sparing me from their wrath.

President Dave up to mischief with an oil can.

A part of the mural with two local icons, the impressive and almost unknown Wallaman Falls and a cane train.

First trip with the XZ-10

The boys at The Shed have found a new home at the old Special School so they were busy making it secure today, they were also pretty good, barely any Three Stooges moments, so I was able to wander about and take pics with the new toy that I'm still learning how to drive, but it certainly appears to have the sharpness I was seeking.

 This I would call a school Muriel

 This may reflect the real state of our world now.