Out to sea......

Images enlarge when clicked.

The other day when at the lighthouse I noticed two large ships heading south.
One was closer inshore than the other so I used the little Panasonic Lumix, at about middle zoom setting, and snapped the following shot to see if I could make out the word on the hull..............

So it was a container ship belonging to the Italia Marritima freight line.


Then I ramped it up to maximum optical zoom to see what the other ship was.......

A bulk ore carrier....empty.

Grainy shots but no worse than those from a multi-million dollar satellite at 22,000 miles and made with a camera that I can carry in my shirt pocket!

Storm Clouds

Looking like a scene from a Stephen Spielberg movie, this storm approached Yamba last evening and slipped south of us as it headed out to sea.
About an hour earlier we had experienced our first hailstorm since arriving in Yamba over a year ago and we thought that we were in for more from this monster.

The sun was setting and gave the huge cloud an edging of light, as if a giant hand had painted a white line down the side.

Clicking on the image will open the full-size version in a new window.

The Big Seven-Zero!

Ahh well, it had to happen, I s'pose.

Back at the beginning of the month I turned 70 - and was presented with a surprise birthday party in one of our favourite restaurants here in paradise.

I thought that I was having a quiet dinner with my wife, sister and a good friend but no.....upon walking through the door I was not only greeted by the entire restaurant singing "Happy Birthday" but there was a table full of family members and friends.

My daughter had flown up from Canberra, my son and his partner, plus new grandson, had driven down from Brisbane and other friends that we have made over the past 18 months were also present.

What a wonderful and completely unexpected surprise it was!

Here are some photos:-

A great night.

The Road Trips - Yamba to Canberra via the Inland route & Return via the Coast.

From Yamba to Canberra took two days - broken overnight at Coonabarabran. That was about seven hours from Yamba, via the Pacific Highway to Grafton, Armidale Road & Waterfall Way to Armidale, the New England Highway to Tamworth and then the Oxley Highway to Coonabarabran.

The next day saw us drive to Canberra via the Newell Highway to Dubbo & the Mitchell Highway to Wellington and Molong.
From Molong we took the minor roads down through Canowindra to Cowra and thence the Lachlan Valley Way via Boorowa to the Hume Highway south of Yass, then the Barton Highway to Canberra.
That was another seven hours.

The change in the environment is amazing: we left the greenery of the coastal fringe, with its sugar cane and dairy farms, climbed through sub-tropical rain forest to the New England Plateau, then to the open expanses, wheat and sheep of the Central Western Plains.

The return journey was via the "normal" route: Federal Highway to Goulburn, Hume Highway to Sydney and then the Pacific Highway to Yamba.
Video highlights were recorded, edited and uploaded to You Tube. Here are the links and I suggest that, as they are in 1080HD, it would be best to play direct from YT and not through this blog:-

Below are several photos - most of which are included in the videos.
They will enlarge when clicked.

This map - an extract from Google Maps - shows the route we followed from Yamba to Coonabarabran - the extent of the first day's drive.
The Armidale Road, from Grafton to the junction of Waterfall Way, a few kms past Ebor, was the "worst", but only because it was twisty between Nymboida and the top of the range. The surface was fine.
The major highways - Waterfall Way, the New England, the Oxley, the Mitchell and the Newell - were excellent and allowed for fast, safe driving, with sparse traffic. Even the semi's were separated by several kms.

The above shot was taken when we stopped for morning tea and a "behind the bushes" comfort stop!
Somewhere between Nymboida and Ebor.

The reserve at Ebor Falls (above) has picnic facilities, including water on tap and toilets.

It's just a very short walk from the parking area to the Top (or Upper) Falls and then a short walk down an unpaved walking track to the Lower (or Bottom) Falls.
These must be quite spectacular when there has been good rainfall.

The Mathew Flinders Motor Inn at Coonabarabran was very comfortable and has a very nice on-site restaurant.
This made for a comfortable, relaxed evening after a long drive: we were able to unpack the car, have a rest, have a shower and then stroll across to the restaurant for dinner and a few glasses of wine. Most enjoyable....and the staff are lovely.

Decor straight from the 1970s but clean, neat and tidy.
It would be a crying shame if the management/owners ever decided to "modernise". This is heritage stuff and should be kept - Mission Brown, Burnt Orange and all!

The above map shows the route on Day 2, from Coonabarabran down through Dubbo, Wellington, Molong, Cowra and then to Canberra.

Cameron Park, in Wellington, provided a convenient and shady spot to have morning tea.
The temperature on this morning was up in the high 20s so it was nice to sit in the shade in this peaceful spot.
That's the main road in the background.

On the Saturday night in Canberra we had dinner at the Vikings Club, Chisholm, and the last time I saw the sun setting over the Brindabella Mountain range was in May 2014....nearly 18 month's ago.
So I had to snap this shot with my phone.

Finally, my gorgeous grand-daughter Matilda, just turned nine years old earlier this month.
She's grown up a bit since her fifth birthday!

Lismore streetscapes

I paid a regular visit to Lismore the other day to have my car (Honda Jazz) serviced at Ireland Honda for the last time under warranty. Hard to believe that the car is now three years old; boy, have those years flown by!

Anyway, whilst it was under the knife I took the opportunity to wander the commercial & retail central part of the town and captured a few shots..........

I think that the trees are either Moreton Bay Figs or another member of that species.
Lovely shade trees - not that they were needed for that during my visit as it was fairly cool and moist.

Many of the buildings in Lismore hark back to the early years of the 20th. century and most have a Heritage classification.
Above is the very imposing Masonic Temple.
This building became the HQ of the Northern Rivers movement in 2011, when two other lodges closed due to dwindling numbers.
The refurbished Masonic Temple in Lismore was officially opened in February of that year.

I'm unsure what this building is - I forgot to check the placard at the front. It looks as if it has a religious heritage and is presently used as a marketplace for bric-a-brac, old wares and so forth.
The rear of it can be seen in the photo above of the Masonic Temple.

The Uniting Church, Lismore.
Before the Uniting Church was formed by the merging of the Methodist and Presbyterian "branches" of Christian religion, this was the central Methodist church for the region.
A very imposing structure in red brick.

This is a wonderful building that was originally the "Australian Joint Stock Bank".
Like many banks of that era its design simply says "we are solid, strong and here for a very long time"!
It's quite large...extends back a fair bit behind the frontage seen above.

Another bank building......and alongside an equally sold frontage on Richmond Chambers (probably accountants or lawyers back in the day.
The Westpac Bank was originally (when this building was constructed) the first bank in the new colony of New South Wales and that was exactly the name of the bank - the Bank of New South Wales.
They changed their name to Westpac back in the late 1980s.
Looking at the above facade, you can see the image that was being projected - one of strength, massiveness, solidity, longevity - all of which is stating "Your money is safe with us".

This is the tower of the Telegraph Office - which then became the Post Office and which is now defunct, the PO having moved into newer, no doubt rented, premises in the 1980s.
The tree-trunk belongs to a Jacaranda.

Magellan Street.....lots of nice coffee shops, cafes and general retail stores.
Shady trees and traffic-calmers make it pedestrian-friendly.

Still in Magellan Street - the original shire council building.
I think that Terania Shire Council was absorbed back in the late 1970s. It no longer exists, anyway.
A nice pair of legs protruding from beneath the door of the Toyota Hi-lux. :)

The Audio Room....my favourite destination when in Lismore!
Nick specialises in equipment for playing records and also sells old (and new) vinyl LPs.
The graffiti isn't really graffiti and it's nice to see that it hasn't been sprayed with graffiti.

Any building with the word "Chambers" in its name was, more often than not, tenanted by professional people such as lawyers, accountants, doctors, dentists, real-estate agents etc.
Note the modern public phone box.

The final building in this short tour is this magnificent three-story brick structure which is home to the Lismore City Library.
What is was used for in its heyday, I have no idea. It has the look of an institution of some sort.

I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Nikon D3100 - put to the test today!

As mentioned in the previous post (last night), I had received the "new" second-hand camera but with daylight gone could do nothing more than take a quick shot under incandescent light and then read some details on the use and operation of the device.

But today, armed with an almost-cloudless sky and a strong nor-westerly, I ventured down to the harbour & marina and took about a dozen shots, with some samples shown below.

Click on the image for a larger version.

All photos were taken using the full Auto mode, where shutter-speed, aperture and focus is all controlled by the whizzgiggery inside the camera.
ISO setting was 100 and the image quality set at "JPEG Fine" and the size at "Large".

This is just so easy to use and I love being able to use the eyepiece to shoot and yet have the detailed info available on the rear screen.

Here are another few:-

That big structure is some sort of platformy thing which they take out into the river estuary and those tall posts are lowered down onto the bed and the platform is stabilised. I think it's something to do with the new sewerage line that is going under the river bed.

Here are the lighthouses and these photos compare more than favourably in colour and sharpness with similar shots I took in 2014 with the Panasonic Lumix.

A very nice camera and with a 14-megapixel resolution it is certainly able to meet my expectations and requirements for the foreseeable future.

And it is SO easy to use....or have I already mentioned that?! :)

New camera - Nikon D3100 - first photograph

A "quick & dirty", as the camera arrived today and I didn't get home until nearly dark so have spent an hour or so browsing the manual (PDF) and becoming familiar with the functions and information display (rear screen).

After inserting an SD card (SDHC 16Gb, which holds about 3000 images in "Fine, Large" JPG format or about half that in RAW format) I placed it in Auto mode, made sure the flash was off, aimed it at the far wall of the living room and pressed the shutter button.

Below is the result......no editing and the only light that of the lamp on the shelf unit. Click for larger size.

Tomorrow I'll try it out properly but so far, so very good. :)

I'm going to Mars in 2016

Here's my boarding pass......

For info....go here to NASA's site:- www.nasa.gov

Cloud formation - Yamba, July 2015

I was working in the radio station in the little lighthouse and came out to see a cloud formation some way out to sea.
It looked so odd, with the perfectly even underside, that I took this photo.

One thing about living on the coast is the beauty created by the weather.

Digitising LPs and Cassettes

All the images will enlarge when clicked.

 

People of my age were raised on recorded music that was available in two mediums (or 'media', if you are pedantic!): vinyl records and the later cassette tapes.

When CDs came into vogue (circa 1983 here in Australia) the three formats ran side-by side for some years until first vinyl records (45s and LPs) were phased out then, much more recently, the cassette tape disappeared.

So the population gradually changed over to CDs, building up a new library but in the meantime the LPs were rarely played and ended up gathering dust in the corner of the living room and the stereo-system made way for a new system that featured a CD player in place of the turn-table.

Roll the clock forward to the 21st. century and the evolution of computer technology and we now have a situation where those old recordings - vinyl and cassettes - can be played, recorded, converted into digital format and more than 2000 individual songs stored in such a way that they can be carried in a shirt pocket in the form of an eight-gigabyte USB stick.

Over the past few months I've been doing exactly that for people who have dusty LPs and cassettes that have not been played for years.

Those people are now able to listen once again to the favourite music from their younger years and can do so in the home, in the car, when travelling on public transport or when out-and-about cycling, walking, hiking, climbing mountains or jumping off cliffs!

Many folk have asked me how this process is carried out, so I thought I'd give a thumbnail description as follows below.

Firstly, it's necessary to play the record (or cassette) and record the tracks whilst it is playing.

One minute of playing time equates to exactly one minute of recording time; there is no shortcut.

So the record is popped onto the turntable (or the cassette into a special USB-output cassette player).

I prefer to use a Dual 1229 turntable from the 1970s, which had a very good reputation for quality output and accurate speed and mine is fitted with the type of Shure cartridge and stylus recommended by the manufacturer back in the day.

I use the Dual if I am planning on doing something else whilst the record is playing because I can walk away and leave it, knowing that it will shut off (and the recording software on the computer will do likewise) when the record has finished playing.

The output of the turntable is connected to that little black box in the corner......

This device takes the analog signal coming from the record and passes it in digital format to the software used on the computer via a USB outlet in the NAD and a corresponding port on the PC.

At the same time I also take a feed out of the NAD device to the stereo amplifier seen in the first photograph, in this case a lovely 1970s Pioneer SX-750 which has given me excellent service for the past decade.

I don't need to do this but sometimes I just play a record for the sake of listening to a record, so it's easy to have a permanent connection to the stereo system

If I don't have anything else to do whilst a record is being digitised and if I'm happy to pick up the arm when the record comes to the end, I may use the Pro-Ject Genie turntable seen below............

This is a manual unit, where the arm is picked up and placed on the record and then manually removed when the record comes to the end of the last track, and features the recommended Ortofon cartridge and stylus.

Irrespective of which turntable is used, once a side has been played and recorded the LP is flipped over and the same procedure gets underway for the second side.

This technique also applies to cassettes.

The software program (Vinyl Studio) displays details about the record/cassette, which are input by the user.

 

Once recording is finished the saved digital file is taken into another program (Audacity) for editing.

Many records have accumulated dust and scratches over the years which result in "pops and clicks" being evident in the playback.

With an editing suite it is surprising how many of these extraneous noises can be removed without otherwise affecting the quality of the recording.

The editing program displays the recording as a linear graph........

The start of the record is at the extreme left-hand side, the long "lumps" are the tracks (in this example there are six) and the short, narrow bits are the transitions between one track and the next on the record.

This example also shows that the record (Paul Mauriat's "Mauriat Magic") was in stereo - the top trace is the left channel and the bottom trace is the right channel.

If you look closely you may also see several spikes - single straight lines - which project from the tracks.

These are sharp noises most often due to damage and or dirt in the track and are usually capable of being removed.

I will run the recorded file through a filter, selectable in the software, to remove the noises above a certain level.

Once filtered I then break the recording into its separate tracks, naming each one exactly as they are named on the LP (or cassette), and save them as individual MP3 files.

Then the last step is ready to place in operation and that is burning a CD, for which yet another computer program (Sonic) is used..............

This allows the CD to be created as either a conventional audio CD or one which is played in a computer.

The edited files are taken into the program, a CD placed into the CD drive and ten minutes later out comes a modern recording of an LP last played 30 years ago.

If the owner prefers to have the files stored on a USB stick rather than burned to a CD then the final step is much faster as it then just becomes a simple matter of copying the files across to the stick - in essence, just another minute or so.

To digitise an LP (or cassette) from go to whoa can take around an hour, sometimes longer if there are more than six tracks per side (or more than 30 minutes per side for a cassette).

It's an interest that I enjoy doing; it's very rewarding seeing the smiles when people know that they can once again listen to their favourite recordings.

And it keeps me off the streets.