For the wealthy.

Olive might find this surprising since she can just grab a coconut from her property and give it a whack with a knife for a drink, but here the fancy packaging and the magic word "organic" will work wonders for easing money out of cards (the type who would buy tend not to be cash buyers)
Myself I'm usually limited to the $0.99 orange concentrate that mixes up 2 litres, to be honest I find it usually tastes better than the fancier orange juices which I think tend to be bitter pith heavy.

Worn out.

The seam split on my favourite old salt shaker, I suppose I have to move on.

Mini Chocolate Hills of Ingham.

The bumps on the nature strip in the middle of town reminded me of the Chocolate Hills of Bohol.

Not what many countries think.

Jewel(led) Thongs would be something you wear on your feet, smokers find them useful for butting out the cigarettes they they put in that big ashtray called the ground.

Front end rattle.

Cubby has a bit of a rattle when travelling on a rough surface, I'm hoping replacing the sway bar links (one shown here in the centre of pic) will silence it for a while.
I've ordered a pair, hopefully I can find the energy to fit them.

Don't use this for a mouthwash.

My mouth has been a bit sore since having that tooth pulled, possibly from a bit of infection, thinking something stronger than the recommended salty water may clean things up I stupidly thought I'd try a bit of budget priced disinfectant despite dire warnings from Olive. Sadly my Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin gene kicked in when I noted no skull and crossbones labelling.
A big mistake, the taste is horrid, really really bad, if you value anything in life don't try this, despite the frugal cost it isn't worth the effort unless you're on a diet that restricts you eating for hours, absolutely everything you eat after trying this has a ghastly taste.
A possible positive though is I think I have a slight reduction in pain.

A flower at dawn.

A year today since Grace left us.

Olympus SZ-16 sensor cleaning.

I noticed a spot typical of a speck on the sensor of my wonderful and not expensive SZ-16 when I made a woeful attempt to capture some birds yesterday when visiting Grace.

A pixel sized crop.
When I got home I carefully cleaned the lens, not easy with old eyes so I used a loupe to see, but the spot was still there afterwards, so with an unusual spurt of energy I decided to see if I could clean the sensor.
This is a reason for buying a camera with a removable lens, perhaps even the best reason but the convenience of a fixed lens camera is wonderful. I've had this happen before with a Panasonic so it's not brand specific.

 Marked in yellow are the screws to remove the rear cover, you only need a very small phillips head screwdriver.

The rear cover has a ribbon cable plugged into the little fiddly socket marked in yellow, lift its clip up to loosen it, be wary it's also quite an awkward one to refit, young eyes would definitely help.
Circled in white is a much larger clip that must loosen to remove the screen, it's much easier to manage than the little one.

I'm a bit ahead of myself here but circled in yellow is where three screws have to be undone so the plate that mounts the screen can be removed.
Circled in red are the screws that when removed allow access to the sensor. The whole black assembly has to be carefully juggled so it hinges out a bit along the line of the three ribbon cables shown to it's right here.

Shocking photo but I'm not going to pull the camera apart again just to get a better one. The sensor is circled in yellow, I used a loupe and saw a speck on it. then I took the safer option of blasting some air from a rocket blower on it, checked with loupe and it then appeared clean, so I whacked it all back together and went outside to do a test shot. naturally the sky knew it was important to me so the blue we're so used to had suddenly become clouded over, bugger. But the test shots looked clear.
Hope this helps someone but only try it if you're prepared to write the camera off if the worst happens.

Healing quickly.

A bloody ruin the other day.

Today quite well behaved, perhaps the benefit of being a fairly good boy but their first rule of NO SMOKING was fairly easy to follow.
Golly it's not easy to take a piccie of your mouth by yourself, quite a few out of focus horrors resulted.

Dry.

Log Creek on Sunday, only rubbish to be seen, not water. In three months it may well be over the bridge but  for now there won't even be crocodiles here.

Good fortune today.

I got to see the dentist again today after a longer wait than is usual for the system, apparently due to a whoopsie somewhere. The dentist threatened to scale my teeth, whatever that is it sounded horrible so I mentioned the agony  my wisdom tooth had given for too long.
He ummed and ahhed for a bit until I mentioned pulling it, then jumped at the chance since he was doubtful any repair job would be worth the effort.
After 30 minutes of strain and perspiring from them (dentist and trainee) and litres of tears from me they managed to get it out neatly in one piece, a job very well done which has impressed me.
No more toothpick for a while, and hopefully very little pain now.
The downside is they still plan on scaling them on my next visit, pity as I'd be happier if they just pulled or patched.

Finish of the walk.

Nearly there and they still look good after nearly 2 hours. It was even a long way for me to drive.

And a big wave for the camera, the nippers at the front were even honest enough to give it a thumbs down.
Some delicious looking refreshments were supplied but I would have felt too two-faced to partake, having only walked one of the km, and even then dropping off the back of the pack into disqualification territory.
I hope some of the money raised will help the intended, or at least more than the bare minimum scraps that professional charities often manage.

A walk for the poor of Philippines.

At least I'm only half mad, I felt obliged to pay some money to be involved but the crippling pace at the start finished me off, I wasn't even able to stick with it to my planned exit point at home 1000 metres from the start.
These poor devils are going all the way to Trebonne, ouch.

Brighter at night.

The LEDs become useful at night, pity this photo was ruined  by a distracting teapot.
A little brighter than a usual night due to the soccer across the road running their very costly lamps.

A bit happening in town today.

A tennis promotion aimed at the young is also happening today. There seemed a fair turnout though I sense those who were already proficient were arriving.

Later I saw a lad barely taller than his racquet giving this speed serve thing a blast, I think he had a serve to rival Roscoe Tanner.
For me I have no interest in tennis, I put a lot of that down to Jimmy Connors and the brashness that followed. Since my arms no longer operate properly there's no chance of me grabbing a racquet any more, even my golfing days ended some time ago, but unlike tennis I enjoy watching golf.
 

The advertising flyer never mentioned Philippines.

Olivia will like this, lets hope she can be here for next years event.

Time for refurbishment.

I noticed on my night light house number (the same as our new PM) I had three LEDs that due to corrosion had gone into dark mode, I planned on just replacing the bad ones but naturally after doing the first one everything failed, so I pressed the spare set into service.
Of course the reason for that conundrum was an unrelated poor connection in the battery box, probably due to sensing Jimmy was doing a job and it'd frustrate him.

Since I did a fancier job than planned I decided to give it some new paint, of course my beliefs prevent me from doing too pretty a job, that's for other people to do.

Put the new LEDs into the holes and the job is done.
The grass is as dry as any time I've ever seen it, I think we may be heading for a few drier than average years just like it was when we moved here a decade ago. A bit of time without flooding even has a nice sound to it.

Sorted resistors.

Being alone again my tinkering has expanded a bit, to help a bit I've sorted my electronic bits a bit.
A dozen years ago I spent a day sorting my resistors much like this, but Grace thinking they were all the same tipped them all back into a bucket, I just shrugged my shoulders, life's too short to worry about little things like that but it did slow my experimenting down a lot.

A lot of things in life are like this.

Shaving brush on the left is fancy, an impressive size with real badger hair, polished handle, and cost a fair bit. The one on the right arrived a few days ago, small using ordinary pig bristle with a plain wooden handle, only cost a couple of dollars from here.
The cheap one is also nicer to use, much of life is like this and it's one of life's lessons that paying more doesn't always mean better.
I'm now shaving again after many years of avoiding the chore, but doing it using old fashioned cream and a shaving brush is much nicer than the painful efforts I put in when I was younger. Despite the fancy looks I don't think anything in a spray can is worth the bother.

Kind or cruel?

I was feeling sorry for the house geckos, since Grace died I've had the kitchen in darkness at night, but since the light attracts the bugs they rely on the poor things may have had lean pickings for a while, though they still hang about the window hoping for a morsel.
Anyway I put a low power lamp near the window to give the geckos a hand, later I'll work on a fancier setup. Since geckos, like spiders and snakes don't do me any harm I'm happy to have them here, the bonus is they all prey on things that do harm me.

For those who wonder what's happening in the life of Olivia and Jim, we've hopefully done all the work involved in obtaining a visa, now all we have to do is wait, at least we've been good at waiting.