Not as happy with this shot - but it is nice to pay respects to one's neighbours!

More shots from the Bangalow garden, post rain shower. Go to urbanstone smugmug gallery for more.

Movies

Two separate nights, two different movies.

Friday night; helping out the youth group at West Epping by acting as a chauffeur to the Drive-In's! Haven't been there in about 20 years? Anyway, Jodie Foster in Flightplan was a slight let down. A good idea with plenty of twists - it seems like a rehash of things like fightclub, The Sixth Sense etc... Has she lost her daughter? kidnappers? terrorists? does her daughter really exist? Is Jodie Foster insane? An excellent first half of the movie posed lots of questions - but unfortunately the second half chose one option and did it poorly. For this Jodie Foster fan, it was not her best performance - although admittedly it had limited scope as an hysterical mother on a jumbo jet.

3 stars. (NB interesting to note the dig at Arab profiling by Americans when the tension was up)

Saturday Night; Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Typical dark and fun Burton. Done with musical flair (a nod to Ray Charles) and a sort of Grimm Brothers Fairytale feel - German Aristicrats with murder most foul and true love across social classes. Funny, great music and visually appealing. If I had any qualms, it was that it was too short - perhaps resolved too neatly. But fun none the less.

3.75 stars

I've finally made the jump across to digital photography. With a couple of weddings coming up this summer the cost of film development is just getting too much. So I've taken the leap and, in my newfound holiday status, have begun to play...

Some software problems (other than no photoshop as yet) - but I'm still working my way around this new dimension of photography

Who knew Shelob lived in my backyard?

Ramon and The Professor

Happy 18th Ramon!

I'm in the last 43 hours or so of semester. Classes have finished, so now it's just the countdown to handing in those last few remaining, annoy-the-crap-out-of-me assignments. My eyes have turned permanently into computer glazed icons, and my mind in subconsciously footnoting every waking moment for futher refence(1). I think my mind has twisted in upon itself a little more than usual, but the light at the end of the tunnel in nigh - and has taken the form of Tex Perkins (Q1. Tex Perkins as a typology of apocalyptic hope, discuss with reference to the significance of his "Dark Horses" album to Revelation. Credit will be deducted for over use of graatuitous Nick Cave lyrics).

Friday night, Tex, Don and Charlie at the Metro.

1. Johnson, A.B. "Late night self-referential post after Ronnie Johns Show", 2005, p.1.