Recent (Apple) Purchases

No, I haven't gone and bought an iPad. They do look good though...

Just picked up a copy of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and one of the wired (USB) Apple keyboards with a full number pad. I'm using the keyboard now and it is awesome. Very minimal yet almost impossibly sturdy. Snow Leopard will be installed on the MacBook when I get the chance. I'm going to do a full (format the disk) install so it could take a while to get everything up and running again.

A positive story about ISPs and Telcos

Recently we upgraded our Internet connection to TPG ADSL 2+. This was an effortless transaction with TPG providing good progress feedback and the required modem/router settings.

Our house has always had a very noisy telephone line (to the point of making it difficult to hear the other person in a conversation) so the ADSL connection had issues from the start. Connections would drop out after a few minutes and take multiple retries to re-connect (and then drop out anyway). The best connection we had would have been less than an hour in duration. Having inspected some of the internal telephone wiring in the house I wasn't convinced the problem was with the Telstra side of the wiring (Telstra provide our home telephone line).

At this point I was spending a fair amount of time away with work and didn't get a chance to look at the issue any further. TPG telephoned us (without me contacting them) and said that they had noticed the connection dropping out and suggested a few configuration changes. They also speed limited the connection in an attempt to increase uptime. Needless to say I was very impressed (I knew at this stage TPG were not at fault).

After talking to TPG I lodged a line quality complaint with Telstra. This was a bit of a gamble on my part as if the problem was on our side Telstra would charge a $405 callout fee and I would have to get an Austel electrician to look at the house (costing hundreds more). Telstra came out two days early (I was staggered at this) and fixed the fault in the line at the street a few houses down. The technician was very polite and everything was sorted in an hour or two. We now had a crystal clear phone line!

A quick email to TPG and a modem reboot removed the speed limit on the line and the ADSL hasn't dropped out since! Given the horror stories that circulate on the Internet regarding Internet service providers and telo-communications companies I thought it would be good to share a positive story.

Black-faced Woodswallow

IMG_4753, originally uploaded by gjhmac.

Black-faced Woodswallow (Artamus cinereus, Dampier, WA, Australia).

This is one of the first photographs I took with my "new" Sigma 170-500mm 5-6.3 APO DG lens. Needless to say I am very happy.

Beach Stone-curlew at Dampier

IMG_5000, originally uploaded by gjhmac.

Beach Stone-curlew (Esacus neglectus, Dampier, WA, Australia). Now I have seen both the Bush and Beach Stone-curlews at Dampier - another lifer!

I have turned on the image verification security feature for the comments on this blog as I seem to be getting a fair amount of spam posts. At least someone is reading my blog I guess...

Brown Falcon at Miaree Pool

IMG_4933, originally uploaded by gjhmac.

Brown Falcon (Falco berigora, Miaree Pool, WA, Australia). Another lifer for me!

Rocks near Miaree Pool, WA, Australia.

IMG_4614, originally uploaded by gjhmac.

Rocks near Miaree Pool, WA, Australia. There was a reasonably large rain front coming through too, hence the cloudy sky.

Birding targets for 2010

For 2009 my target was to increase my life list to 200+. It is currently sitting on 202 and will remain there unless something unusual appears locally...

For 2010 I am aiming to pass 250 - this should prove quite a challenge! A few of the target species are below:

• Common Pheasant and Indian Peafowl - going to have to take a day trip to Rottnest Island for these. Should also be able to pick up Rock Parrot and a wader or two hopefully as well.
• Noisy Scrub-bird/Western Bristlebird/Western Whipbird (a.k.a. the Big Three) - we are planning two trips to Cheynes Beach in 2010 so hopefully I can see these birds.
• White-browed Babbler (the first of many "inland from the metropolitan area" birds I want to see.
• Stubble Quail/Little Button-quail/Painted Button-quail - so far all quail apart from the Brown variety have eluded me.
• Cuckoos (generally). I have seen a few but should be seeing a lot more...
• Miscellaneous honeyeaters.

Please note that by targets I mean that I want to see and photograph these birds, not shoot them...

Grey-crowned Babbler

Bird number 202 on my life list is the Grey-crowned Babbler. I found a group of about 4 of them creating a ruckus amongst the trees on the edge of the Maitland River at Miaree Pool (near Karratha, WA, Australia). The name is descriptive on all counts.

It is worth noting that I have taken a bird off my list. The more I talk to other birders the more I realise that the Mute Swans at Northam aren't really a free, breeding population anymore. Perhaps at some stage in the future they may be (again) but given that they are introduced I'm not too fussed.

BAWA Twitchathon 2009

The BirdsWA Twitchathon was held over the 12-13 December 2009.

I was a member of The Big Twits - other members were Martin Cake, John Graff and Alan Collins (all seriously good birders). I have learned a lot from these guys.

The event was a great experience - I added 12 species to my life list including (but not limited to):

• Little Penguin (swimming in the ocean, not at Penguin Island);
• Jacky Winter (Dryandra Forrest);
• Nankeen Night Heron (at Herdsman Lake).

We finished 3rd with 139 species in the 24 hour race. First place had 149 species, second place had 143 species.

New gadget/early Christmas present

I recently picked up my own Christmas present - a 3rd Generation 8GB iPod Touch. So far I have been very impressed. Current apps that I like are:

• BirdSight AU (pretty good, could do with some extra features like lumping/splitting);
• Convert Units (does the job well);
• Holy Bible;
• Mactracker (very good for a computer collector);
• TouchCalc;
• Sudoku (great apart from the fact that it tells you when you have placed a number incorrectly, which makes the game much easier than a paper version);
• To Do (basic To Do list manager);
• File lite (superb application that allows files to be stored on the iPod Touch and viewed).

All of the above are free (apart from BirdSight AU).

I also purchased a Belkin leather case and screen protector for it.

Bird #187

Bird number 187 on my life list is the Black-tailed Native-hen.

I saw a single bird at the Peninsula Ornamental Gardens in Maylands after a tipoff from the Birds WA sightings page. On two consecutive days I located the bird within 5 metres of the same spot. It seems to prefer foraging along the scrub/lawn edge where it can quickly duck for cover if disturbed.

Thanks to Peter Clifton for finding it!

More model train photos

Peco N gauge Shell/BP Petrol Tanker.



Graham Farish N gauge Class 47 (number 47635).

Mac mini Server

I think this is a really cool idea - a Mac mini with dual HDDs (no optical drive) and a copy of Snow Leopard Server. If only they had 2.5" HDDs bigger than 500GB.

I also think Apple should have dropped a few of the USB2.0 ports and added a second gigabit ethernet port (although that would have required a motherboard change, the second HDD just requires the internal adapter and case to be modified).

Still - very cool. If I only had the spare cash...

The Burrup again...

I really like this photo - I took it while on the Painted Finch and Rock Art "expedition" I mentioned earlier.

Formatting drives in 2.5 inch external enclosures

I have a somewhat generic BlueEye O2 USB2.0/FW400 2.5" external drive enclosure. I was recently trying to format some older laptop drives (2.5" PATA) and discovered that the "erase" and "partition" options in Disk Utility (Mac OS X 10.5.5 version) always fail when I was connecting using USB but work fine when connecting using FireWire. The error message is along the lines of I/O error or something. I'm sure glad my MacBook has FireWire...

I wonder whether this is a limitation of the BlueEye chipset or the Disk Utility software. I really should upgrade 10.5.5 to 10.5.8 too...

Oh my!

It's October already?

Nothing much happening besides work really...

Burrup Peninsula, Dampier, Western Australia

Took this photo when I went looking for Aboriginal rock art and Painted Finches.  Didn't find any Painted Finches but saw and photographed some impressive rock art.

Sigh...

From my office window I can see a pair of Australian Wood Ducks with a duckling in tow. They have been roaming around the park across the road for the past few days. What a nice life...

Updated (again) Planes to Karratha

• Fokker 100 (Alliance Airlines);
• Boeing 737-400;
• British Aerospace 146;
• Boeing 717-200;
• Embraer E-Jets E-190 (Virgin Blue).

The Embraer E-Jets E-190 is the latest addition to the list...

A bit of an update

It has been a while since I have blogged anything so here is a bit of an update:

• Work has been insane (both in terms of difficulty and work load) recently, so much for the downturn (I guess that is a good thing for me);
• Went on my second pelagic bird watching trip (both have been off Hillarys in Western Australia), added two new birds to my life list but felt quite seasick...
• The model trains have been going well - starting to clean up sections of ugly wiring, fix dodgy sections of track etc.  Adding bits and pieces to the collection (most of it second hand).  Starting to work on the scenery a bit too.

Yellow-nosed Albatross (Diomedea (Thalassarche) chlororhynchos, race bassi).

SBS Ashes Coverage

I have been really enjoying the SBS Ashes coverage (although I have been only watching the first few hours of each day).  The three Australian hosts have been entertaining and the Sky commentators in Wales have been excellent.

The only unusual aspect of the SBS coverage has been the advertisement breaks.  Each one starts with a glimpse of one ad followed by a completely different ad played in full.  Has anyone else noticed this?  Is the first ad a mistake?  Or is it a new subliminal advertising scheme because enough of the first ad is shown for you to know what it is?

You've got to love the Newton community...

Check this link out - the Apple Newton fights on!

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/06/impending-newton-y2k10-apocalypse-narrowly-averted.ars

I really need to get my Newton 2100 out and apply the patch - I now have my PowerMac 7500 set up as a dock for the Newton(s).

Late afternoon at the Zig-Zag

Kalamunda, WA, Australia.

Awesome birding at Flynn Road

I spent Saturday morning bird-watching with the BAWA crew at Flynn Road (The Lakes).  I added seven birds to my life list, taking the total to 184.  Here are the new additions:

• Elegant Parrot (Neophema elegans);
• Dusky Woodswallow (Artamus cyanopterus);
• Yellow-plumed Honeyeater (Lichenostomus ornatus);
• Crested (Western) Shrike-tit (Falcunculus leucogaster);
• Restless Flycatcher (Myiagra inquieta);
• Varied Sittella (Daphoenositta chrysoptera);
• Hooded Robin (Melanodryas cucullata).

It rained on and off for most of the morning but it was definitely worth it.  While we could only locate a female Hooded Robin, close examination of the photographs confirmed it's identity.  This means I have now seen all five robins that frequent the south-west of Australia.  The Crested Shrike-tit and the Restless Flycatcher were seen in close proximity near the spot we stopped for morning tea.  With the assistance of Steve I located a group of Varied Sittellas working the bark of a tree over and got some very good views (and some photos that, while not brilliant, confirm the identity).

Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo

Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo (Chalcites basalis, Karratha, WA, Australia).

New to the list

Over the last week or so I have added three new birds to my life-list:

• Rufous Treecreeper (Climacteris rufa) - seen on the Wungong/Bungendore BirdsWA walk - thanks to those who found it;
• Western Thornbill (Acanthiza inornata) - I have seen these before but I can now reliably identify them thanks to John Graff;
• Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo (Chalcites basalis) - I found a single bird on the beach at Karratha - it was either exhausted or hiding from birds of prey as it was content to let me approach quite close.

This take the life list to 177 - my aim is to pass 200 by the end of the year.

Track layout complete (for the time being)

After many hours of tinkering the track layout of my N-gauge model railway is complete.  The new sections aren't powered yet but a few hours with the soldering iron should sort that out.  I have also taken the opportunity to add some extra lighting.

The layout features:

• 11 turn outs (or points) - all are Peco electrofrog;
• 7 sidings (of varying lengths, 5 can be isolated to park locomotives);
• 3 tunnel mouths (1 double width, 2 single);
• 2 station platforms (may be more to come);
• 3 "loop" paths.

Package from Hattons

This is the package from Hattons. The order was placed on 01/05/2009, it was packed in the UK on 07/05/2009 and it arrived in Perth (Australia) on 12/05/2009. Everything was intact and exactly as I ordered. This was a test order to see how things went - I will be ordering some more significant stuff from them sometime soon.

Rain!

Finally, some rain. And not just a light shower...

Class 50

Class 50 (50004) Graham Farish (N gauge).