There's Life in the Old Girl Yet!

Another Part of the reason for our trip to the South West is that it is Rosemary's Birthday this weekend. We were having fun seeing who could jump furthest down the steep, sandy bank into the sea! 

Globe

We walked into Freo the other Sunday and bought the shoes and then went to Disk Smiff to get some Geek supplies. Declan bought this lamp and holder for something out of a Ladybird book that i had when i was about six! We had to stop and get some liquid refreshment to fortifiy ouselves for the trip home... That presented us with this fantastic photo opertunity! 

Brainz

Had a great weekend when we headed down to Margret River to see the Australian Chamber Orchestra perform at the Vasse Felix winery. It was a fantastic concert as it was great to be in a much more intimate enviroment with the Orchestra. They had as the soloist Joseph Tawadros and his brother James. Joe plays the Oud, which is a sort of Egyptian Lute. He was also wearing the pointiest shoes I have seen since the Lenningrad Cowyboys! It was followed by a fantastic meal with a different wine for each course. Certainly a very unique and special outing which hopefully might be repeated next year! I suspect that it was massively underwritten by Janet Homes á Court as I cannot see that the ticket price would have come even close to paying the costs - I must congratualate her on supporting the ACO though, they really are an Australian Icon!

Geek Clock Lurches into Life!

Took this picture the other evening. The Clock that I have been building out of the carccas of a CD-ROM drive actually does something now! The old optical assembly has a tri-coloured LED replacing the laser and the old door eject motor has been relocated to the top to look interesting. I have just installed an H-drive to control the linear drive for the assembly. I have an unused display from a Nokia phone to provide time telling backup as my method of encoding the time seemed a bit too complicated to Rose & Kate... It also has temperature and pressure monitoring facilities! I have no idea how I am going to calibrate the pressure... 

New Shoes!

We are off down South on Saturday for an exciting Concert with the ACO and to look slightly less geeky i bought some new shoes! Rose was not quite so sure about them. I asked the girl in the shop if they has some really pointey ones but this seemed to be the best that they could do... 

yelloW fooT

 

Doing our bit for Global Warming....

While we at my parents last Saturday the power failed when a huge branch fell off a tree and damaged the power lines at the top of the road. Dad remembered that he had a small generator and we pulled it out and got it going. As a quick test he plugged in a small heater to check the loading on the generator. The poor old engine wasn't too impressed! We were able to warm up a bit in the garden but it is probably NOT the most efficient way of doing it though! The boys found it all highly amusing. Luckily the electricity came on before the generator was really required... 

Reclining Woman

This is Declan's masterpiece that was at the Art Exhibition. The boys have a lovely Art Teacher called Mrs Hughes who gets some excellent work from the children. This is probably not the best picture of her I shall try again with better light another day... 

...like a Fish needs a Bicycle

There is some lovely art around Fremantle, maybe not as much as some places in France, but certainly more than Perth. At the moment there is even more! The boys school, East Fremantle Primary School, is having an Art exhibition as a fundraiser. It is actually very good and very well done and well worth a visit as there are quite a few pictures by some well known artists at very reasonable prices!