character saturday: buddies

You know how when you're a kid, you can walk up to some other kid in the playground and just ask if they want to be best friends, and then you are best friends for the next... however long you're at the playground... and then you leave and never see them again.

I mean, not me... I don't think I ever did that, that sounds like torture... but it's a thing that people say and that people allegedly do. And I'm going somewhere with this, I promise, it's been a weird week, so bare with me.

As you get older, finding new friends at all is hard, and finding a "best friend" is... basically impossible. Thankfully, I can credit DnD for bringing me a whole new crop of friends in my fourth decade, without whom I may have lost all of my remaining marbles over the last year and a half.

Most notably amongst these is the aforementioned (in previous posts), Fluffy. Essentially as soon as I met him I was like "he's my kind of people", a thought which has been proved true time and time again.

And he follows in some excellent footsteps... Ludo (but without the crippling narcissism), Lownee (but without the Ludo handicap), J (but without the leaving the country and never coming back) and Owlgirl (but without the not getting to see her that much).

It's been a thought in the back of my head for a while that for whatever value the term "best friend" has, he's essentially tagged with all the appropriate designations. Which makes me happy.

Which brings me around to the DnD Character Colouring Book image for this week.

The other day Fluffy mentioned that he was trying to make himself in Hero Forge and that it was difficult... which I will always take as a challenge... turns out the versions of him we both made weren't that dissimilar (same hair, same basic colour scheme). Of course, then I needed to DnD-ify him... because he's basically a halfling... or at least lives in the same part of my brain.

And when the subject of my DnD equivalent came up, he said he always thought of me as a dragonborn... I suspect not least of all because the first character of mine he ever met was my big silver dragonborn, Zzilar.

That led me to look at the different dragon types and their personalities... and then I discovered this about brass dragons...

They loved to talk, to the exclusion of most else. They loved to engage friends and foes alike in hours of long-winded conversation.

And this blog isn't subtitled "garrulous" for no reason. So it had to be a brass dragonborn. I mean... if it was a full dragon, then no, because fuck their love for warm climates/deserts for their lairs... but I can cope with the dragonborn version.

Obviously, they're also wearing real world clothes because we weren't actually making playable characters... plus we never had a conversation about classes... but I'd suggest sorcerer for me, cleric for him. And I thought they needed culturally appropriate pseudonyms this afternoon when I was finishing off the image... and while these might not stick, they do amuse me.

They may or may not show up as NPCs in something at some point... because, you know... waste not want not.

Moving on...

I gave the Halfling Tomato Soup another crack this week... not following the recipe quite so strictly... and it worked out really well. That is now my go-to tomato soup recipe until the end of time.

It was Tuesday where the wheels feel off my week/life/universe.

So there had been outbreak rumblings on Monday, then Tuesday it was announced we were going back into lockdown for a week, and then Wednesday morning I just happened to look at the list of places where people had been... only to discover that Burnside Village was on the list. On Sunday. Between about 1-2pm... and, friends, is exactly when our Valiant Hero (ie me) went to the Village on Sunday to visit the bakery and get a pie.

Fuck, fuck, fuckkity fucking balling cocks.

So.... after wandering around the house for a bit and swearing, then having breakfast and making a couple of phone calls, I got in the car and set off on A Grand Adventure.

Thankfully folks had advised me to very much avoid the testing centre in the parklands, given that there were upwards of 8 hour waiting times. So instead I decided to head to the airport, since I'd been told that it was "pretty empty"... granted that was a couple of days before and not when everyone and their donkey were going to get tested.

Let me shortcut a lot of the description of my day with an image...

Yes... five and a half hours of sitting in my car... driving once every so often, turning the car off, watching the cars on the other side of the road move towards the finish line, seeing pretty much all of the delivery/transport companies and their warehouses and needing to pee from about the 2pm make onwards. Also, I managed to get wedged between the same two four-wheel drives for the entire journey (obviously), which made seeing much in front or behind myself impossible for chunks of the time.

And then at the end, a solid 30 seconds for the actual test where the very nice lady shoved a stick up my nose and also swabbed my tongue.

The feeling of actually being able to drive at a speed faster than a crawl once I left was, frankly, exhilarating.

I mean, I will say that things might have gone quicker if a) there were more than four staff doing tests and/or b) they had reorganised the carpark so that said staff were doing their testing side by side rather than in two columns and/or c) they had people doing the actual testing and then other people bagging things up and doing whatever seemed to be taking all the time between tests.

Having said that, however, my hat is off to not only the folk doing the testing, but the folk working at various points on the line (even the traffic control folk on the roundabout who I muttered about more than once), and everyone else who provided the 17,000+ tests that happened on Wednesday (up from our average of about 7000-8000 the week before... which has gone up to about 23,000 the last couple of days).

Long story long... my first test came back negative, but I now need to have two more tests done... one on Monday and one the following Tuesday. And I need to stay in my house for two weeks.

So... 

Fuck.

I mean, it's not the most problematic of things... this week, we all had to be in the house anyway because Lockdown. It just made today super weird.

Well... also possibly Thursday and Friday... because, honestly, I wasn't feeling in the online DnD mood... and I definitely wasn't feeling in the mood to play my halfling bard at all.

So no DnD this week.

Thankfully Ma offered to do my shopping for me, since I can't do it myself... so she brought things down and dropped them off yesterday morning... which felt weird anyway, because Friday shopping, not Saturday shopping. Even if I wasn't doing it myself.

And Mrs organised a parcel of brownies to be delivered which arrived on Friday also. Friday was also the day I got my test results back... so, all around, Friday was a "good" day.

Today was just... weird. And by weird, I mean, the same as the last several days. By which I also mean... nothing happened. Plus I've been swathed in all the blankets, because it's bloody cold and for the most part, why turn the heater on when it's just me.

One of the downsides to all of this is that this Thursday was supposed to be the day that the plumbers came out to look at the roof/leak. So now that's on hiatus for a couple weeks... and once again this weekend we're having all the weather. Woo. Or, you know, not.

Honestly, I should be fine... but, you know, if you could think good thoughts in my general direction, that'd also be appreciated.

Current mood:

the saga of the busted toilet

I didn't realise when Lego included a plumber in their Series 9 minifigures that it was a portent to a plumbing related disaster in my future...

Maybe the Fortune Teller should have been an additional clue... especially with her "Tower" card that often symbolises such things as chaos, hard times, sudden change and an uncomfortable experience.

And the fact that this weekend was a public holiday... if anything ever goes wrong with my plumbing, it always happens either over a weekend or right before a public holiday.

This time the issue was a blocked toilet. Which sounds pretty gross, and to be honest, wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't perhaps as horrible as it could have been. Sure there are few things in life that are quite as revolting as seeing your toilet slowly fill with murky brown water, other than perhaps when that water then overflows, but at least it was only water.

It all started on Sunday night when I discovered that the water level in the toilet was rising, then falling, then rising again. It was like magic... horrible, horrible magic. I spoke to my next door neighbour and my upstairs neighbours just to find out if anything they were doing was causing it, and discovered that the next door neighbours were having the same problem.

So I called the emergency number for my land agent. But because they are completely useless in all things, the number went to a voicemail that clearly nobody was checking.

Over the following 24 hours I left at least seven messages. Which they never returned... I called them at 9am on Tuesday.

Had it not been a public holiday it wouldn't have been quite so bad, they would have sent the regular plumber around and it would all have been finished 24 hours earlier. But because I couldn't get hold of them I decided to call out a plumber from Ken Hall Plumbing, who I have to say was fantastic.

But he couldn't get to any access point to clear the blockage, so after much effort and plunging with a gigantic plunger and digging up part of the side yard to try and find the outflow pipe, he conceded defeat. The two options were either to break my toilet to get to the blockage, hence causing the water that was in the toilet to go all over my bathroom floor, or wait until Tuesday and get hold of the plans to find the pipe.

Since I thought I was going to have to pay for it myself until I could recoup the money from the land agent (which didn't end up happening, the plumber spoke directly with the land agent and sent the account straight to them, which was brilliant, and yet another reason I would highly recommend Ken Hall Plumbing), I chose to leave the issue until Tuesday morning when I could get hold of the land agent.

And I had to do all of this while relaying the same information multiple times to my next door neighbours.

When I managed to get hold of the land agent there was no explanation about why the emergency number wasn't being monitored and no apology for that, which I fully expected since they've been ongoingly useless for some time now.

I also needed to make about half a dozen phone calls to them to find out what was going on. Is it so hard for them to pick up the phone and say "the plumber says he'll be there around 11:30" or "we just called the plumber and he's still working on the problem, but he'll give you a call once he's finished" or "the plumber is on site, here's his number if you need to contact him"?

But no, what I got instead was a bunch of unclear responses (I spoke to three different people there, only one of whom was potentially helpful, but he didn't really know what was going on), and even when I asked them to call me once they knew something, I still had to call them again just before I left work.

Fortunately they gave me the plumber's number, so that's now saved in my phone just in case there is a situation like this in future, I'll just call the guy directly.

On the up side, because they did end up having to smash the toilet (an event I'm glad I wasn't here for), I now have a shiny new toilet... the downside was because they only installed it late yesterday afternoon I couldn't use it for 24 hours... so when I got home last night it was mostly installed, but the seat wasn't on and one of the pipes wasn't installed, partially, I think to stop me from using it before I was supposed to. But they came back this morning and finished it all off, so that's good. I think it's also smaller then the old one (or at least the lid is smaller, but I think the whole thing is).

What was slightly less fun was coming home last night and spending about 45 minutes cleaning the bathroom... while the plumbers had cleaned up as best they could, I pretty much pulled everything out of the bathroom and scrubbed the floors (and parts of the walls).

Whenever anything like that happens though, it always stresses me out a whole lot. Partly because I know having to deal with my land agent and plumber is always an exercise in aggravation. But more so this time because I couldn't get hold of the land agent and the issue was also affecting my neighbour so I had to interpret information for them and the fact that it wasn't like having no hot water or a problem that could easily be worked around... you need a functioning toilet, it's just a given.

I don't think my stress levels were helped by the fact that I didn't eat on Monday beyond breakfast... for obvious reasons.

But it was a vicious cycle... I was stressed, so I didn't want to eat, but not eating made me feel a little sick, which also added to my stress levels. And I didn't sleep terribly well either on Sunday night, which didn't help. So come Tuesday morning I was feeling pretty rubbish. Then because I knew I didn't have a working toilet for another 24 hours, I skipped dinner last night too. Not that skipping a couple of meals would kill me... but I feel like it's thrown my system out of whack a little.

I'm just thankful that I live in North Adelaide which is full of shops and restaurants and a service station and a cinema, all of which have bathrooms I could utilise if I absolutely needed to. If I lived out in suburbia, I don't know what the hell I would have done.

Current Mood:

2013

Welcome to 2013, the International Year of Water Cooperation and the International Year of Quinoa.

Is there a New Years equivalent of the Christmas's Grinch/Scrooge? If there is, I think I'm it. I mean I stayed up until after midnight last night, but I didn't really care, I was just going through to motions.

And today definitely has that whiff of "the last day before the end of school holidays" about it.

I'm hoping this isn't going to generally set the tone for the rest of the year (although, honestly, does anything that happens on New Years Day ever inform the rest of the year?).

Anyway, thanks to re-reading old New Years blog posts a couple of days ago, I definitely made an effort as soon as I got up on New Years Eve to get everything organised. In fact by around 7am I'd changed my bedding, washed up, tidied up, took out the trash (actually took it out just as the garbage truck was pulling out to my house... timing!), took down the old calendars and was trying to cool the house down as much as possible.

And once I'd finished my final Photo-A-Day post and had a shower, I decided to reward myself by laying on the bed and watching a movie. Which sounds incredibly lazy, except that I've spent far too much time sitting up for long periods of time over this Christmas break and my back/leg is letting me know that that's not a good plan.

The first movie was followed by lunch (what I really love about a bagel is that it pretty much tastes the same on the day it's made as it does three or four days later), and then another movie.

But then I wanted to finish off my final post for 2012, so more sitting... and it actually took longer than I thought it would, especially since I was only really cutting images... but I think everything during this Christmas break has taken longer than I expect it to. I know, you just can't believe how thrilling my life is, right? Me either!

I'd picked out Brave, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and The Amazing Spider Man as my three movies to lead me into the New Year, so I cooked dinner (possibly the best steak I've ever cooked... so very tender and perfectly cooked) while watching Brave and ate the berry and apple cider jelly I made (I think this is the first time in a while that I've made one of those "flavour your own jelly" jellies... I remember now why I liked them so much, although the fruit helped.

I think the funk set in sometime during ALVH once I'd gone back to lay on my bed. I'm not even sure why specifically (although the thought of going back to work on Wednesday was at least part of it)... but I just didn't feel very NYE'sy...

Not when the 9pm fireworks went off, not during any of the times when the wind carried the thumping bass from the NYE concert up the hill to North Adelaide (I would have sworn a number of times that it was coming from a house on my street rather than down by the Torrens) and not during the seemingly never ending fireworks pops, bangs and booms at midnight.

And not all of the fireworks were the official ones... there were at least two unofficial sets of fireworks that went off both before, during and after the main ones.

It doesn't matter how well I do the math, I always get the times for watching movies on NYE wrong... or else I end up stopping the movies at various points, or taking longer between movies or something, because it wasn't that far off midnight when I started Spider Man. I probably shouldn't have started it, but it was better than throwing in the towel with less than half an hour to go. Plus I really wanted to see it again.

I finally threw in the towel at about 1:15, as I still had an hour's worth of the movie to finish, so instead I finished watching it first thing this morning.

So, yeah... perhaps a slightly more grumpy NYE post than previously... but it is what it is...

Current Mood:

not one of the best weeks

This hasn't been an especially good week for me so far...

I cracked a tooth late last week which turned into full on toothache by Monday night and I slept really badly... fortunately I was able to get in and see the dentist on Tuesday afternoon and while I'm now missing the tooth in question, I feel a hell of a lot better.

I did have a little bit of a quiet cry while sitting in the dentist chair. I have no idea what the hell that was about, but fortunately the dentist was busy typing things into the computer while the anaesthetic was kicking in and the dental assistant had wandered off somewhere.

Yeah... weird...

I also finally made an appointment to see a chiropractor about my back... which should have been on Friday, but I got a call this afternoon saying that they needed to reschedule until next week.

Add to that the fact that one member of our team appears to have turned into a black hole and is managing to suck all the energy out of the room while theoretically concentrating on their work. No idea what that's about but I really wish they'd return to normal.

All of that kind of contributed to my not keeping up with my Photo A Day photos... which isn't really surprising, given that I wasn't that busy on Monday and the word was "busy"... then Tuesday I had a fairly crap day and that was "the best part of my day"... seriously, Tuesday didn't HAVE a best part!

Anyway, I've whinged now...

Current Mood:

midweek news

I got some good news today... well, technically last night...

My contract has been extended (yet again) until December. This is good because, you know, money and things to do in the daytime. The level of frustration I experience on any given day is still the downside...

As is the lack of an actual permanent job...

But, you know... money and the things it can buy. Plus I do enjoy the people I work with most of the time.

Current Mood:

random tuesday thoughts with sydney photos

It's just over ten days before I'm doing the quickest interstate trip yet... twenty six and a half hours... but it's Sydney... so it's totally worth it.

Oddly, I'm finding this "be less wrathful" thing far too easy... I mean, I notice the times that I would have been really irritated about something, but for some reason I'm just not feeling it the same way any more.

I haven't "tutted" at anybody in public for well over a week, which has to be something of a record I think.

I am highly grumpy about my progress or lack of same at the gym. Yes, I'm not cutting crap out of my diet completely, but I don't really want to live like that anyway... healthy, yes... complete denial of things I enjoy, no.

But that's not even it... it's more that every time I try and push myself or ramp things up or whatever, I can feel my knees threatening to "go out" on me. And it's not even at the time, it's at strange, random times throughout the day. For example, of late I've been setting the treadmill at a higher incline... and now suddenly my left knee is tweaking every now and again.

What! The! Actual! Fuck!

Or is this my body telling me to just throw in the towel and eat cake?

I FINALLY got the parcel of Lego minifigs from Hong Kong yesterday after it had to be sent a second time because I just hadn't received it. But because of the way that eBay split up the order originally, one of them was missing. By that stage though I think both the seller and I were pretty much over it, and I messaged him to say he could either resend or refund, he chose to refund. Which I really don't blame him for.

And then I went and lost the spare pair of Lego handcuffs that came with the motorcycle cop figure... I know they were on my bed, but then I forgot about them, and now I can't find them. I'm guessing they stayed on the bed all evening and then got flicked off either when I went to bed or when I got up in the morning.

You know how I was complaining about how dark it was in the morning on Saturday... well now that Daylight Savings is finished, I'd like to complain about the fact that it's 6:30 and the sun is pretty much down. This wouldn't happen if they finished Daylight Savings when it should be finished towards the beginning of March.

Sure, you lose a little time in the evenings, but its a gradual thing... whereas now the sun seems to start going down at about 6pm... and I don't like it so much, it really feels wrong.

Have I mentioned that a) I hate mosquitos and that b) my apartment seems to be being invaded by hordes of them at present and c) that even when it isn't I still get that itchy feeling that makes me think that something is crawling on my/in my hair even when it isn't.

I've decided I'm going to give Ma the Circa tickets for Easter, along with the Haighs egg I got her. And then the Rock The Ballet and Kim David Smith tickets will be for her birthday...

Now all I have to do is somehow get her to look through the Adelaide Cabaret Festival program without her seeing the Smith show... tricky, but not impossible... I'm possibly going to just remove the page entirely since there isn't anything on the other side we'd want to see.

You know how when you have a mad crush on someone who's possibly a little bit clueless (both generally, but also specifically that you have a crush on them, which is okay because they're straight and it would just make it awkward, especially because you see them all the time)... and you flirt ALL THE TIME without even knowing that that's what you're doing... and everything they do is sweet and at the same time has a slight sexual tone even when it really doesn't...

Yeah, that... this guy... for some time now.

Current Mood:

photo friday: reclaimed

For a "short week"... it's been a bloody long week!

My birthday was good... although it almost didn't really feel like a birthday in the midst of all the Fringe stuff. And clearly I'm approaching 40, because all my presents this year were Lego related.

Okay, that's not completely true, Ma also paid for my ticket to La Soirée last night, and my hotel room for my trip to Sydney in April... but there were the Lego notebooks I mentioned (which I bought for myself), and another of the minifig display cases, and the Naboo Starfighter mini model.

Dinner at Enzo's on Port Road turned out to be really nice... the food was great, the service was excellent... the only downside was that they stuck us in a smaller side room rather than the large main room, so it was a little noisy. And the place was HEAVING.... I don't quite know why, whether people had dropped the kids off at the Entertainment Centre for whatever random crap was going on and had gone to dinner... but it was full of people.

I did enjoy the food though... so much so that when I noticed that my supermarket actually stocks a range of Enzo's "At Home" products... so I had their Lasagne for dinner tonight. And it was probably one of the better pre-made lasagnes I've ever had.

I also finally followed up about the Lego minifigs I bought from eBay a month ago that have never arrived (I even checked with the Post Office to make sure it wasn't sitting on a shelf waiting for me). And I got a message from the seller asking if I wanted a refund or for him to resend, so I'm getting him to resend them to me at work.

Current Mood:

photo friday: bright green with dot points

Things that happened in my world and in my head at present...

• For the first time in a long while I've posted something every day since Monday, which I'm kind of impressed with.


• The pay rise that I was told about a couple of weeks ago finally found it's way into my bank account... and it equates to an extra $5.14 an hour, which is good.


• The "buying expensive tickets now while I have money" thing continues... I bought two tickets for the Cirque Du Soleil show, Ovo, which is coming at the end of the year. Front row (on the side, but still) tickets. Expensive, but worth it I think, especially since we've never been to a Cirque show before.


• I found the watch that I couldn't get from Swatch in Melbourne on eBay tonight... there was the option to "Buy it now", but I took the cheaper option of seeing if I can win it in the normal way... It's about $30 cheaper that way (well, if nobody else bids on it).


• We ate (well, I say ate... a large number we chewed a bit and then spat into tissues) some of those gross Jelly Belly BeanBoozled jelly beans at work this afternoon... they truly are revolting, and I felt a little bit nauseous for the remainder of the afternoon. Urgh!


• Today was also one of the rare days when it was actually a perfect temperature at work... by which I mean it was nice and cold. I do love coming out of work on a hot afternoon with cold fingers!


• The Adelaide Fringe begins properly as from tonight... and in the next week I'm off to eight shows on five different days. And about the same the following week. Nothing says "Fringe Time" like me leaving the house that many nights a week.


• Tonight's Fringe Parade could not be different from last year... tonight it's stinking hot (it's still about 36°C and the sun is going down), last year the parade was cancelled due to rain.


• It's also possibly the worst time of the year for my back to start playing up... but it has been this week. I went through the same thing a while back and it eventually sorted itself out. Annoying though, especially at this time of year when I end up sitting on a lot of fairly uncomfortable seating. It seems to be sorting itself out, but it's usually worse in the morning anyway.


• I also think that my attendance at the gym is probably going to suffer a bit during this Fringe season... mostly due to oversleeping. That's what happened this morning anyway.


• Tom Flanagan posted my review of his show Kaput to his Facebook. It always blows my mind a little bit when the people who do the show see my review... like with Macbeth and Le Gateau Chocolat last year. It shouldn't... I'm putting that stuff out there (and it appears that when you search for "kaput fringe", my blog is in the first couple of results)... but it still kinda does.


• Pretty much on a whim (and partly half way through this review on the new Penny Arcade venture, PA Report), I signed up to Steam and downloaded the new "game" Dear Esther on Tuesday night. And then two and a half hours of my life pretty much vanished. It's an incredibly odd experience, not really a game, more a piece of interactive art... but I really want to play it again just to see how the experience changes if you move through it differently.


• Speaking of Steam... if anyone can recommend some good (and free-ish) games in either the puzzle or RPG genre, please leave me a comment!

Current Mood:

my instagram tips

Since I got my iPhone 4S and it's camera that works all the time instead of the camera in my old phone that only worked when it felt like it, I've been taking a LOT of photos with it.

Like, a LOT.

So many in fact that I hardly even use my compact digital camera any more, just the iPhone and the SLR. Which led me to think about cameras and the iPhone and, ultimately, Instagram.

As I've mentioned before, I also been using Instagram a fair bit... it's turned into pretty much my default photo publishing account for social media... I'm more likely to send an Instagram photo to my Twitter feed than I am to just attach a photo straight to a tweet.

All of which led me, last Friday morning, to wish that Prakky would write "What's good/annoying about Instagram" posts like the Pet Peeves one she wrote about Twitter... then I realised... I could do that!

I mean I'm not somebody who gets millions of likes or thousands of comments... but like I said, I do use the app all the time.

So here we go...

Oh, and feel free to add your own proverbial two cents...

Yani's Tips for Using Instagram

1. Photograph all of the things

The first one is obvious, it relates to all kinda of photography, and it's pretty much my mantra.... take photos. Lots of photos, everywhere you go... even if you don't end up using them for anything, take them anyway. I do that all the time and currently I've got over 1000 photos on my iPhone (must cull that at some point).

I've never been sorry I took a photo, only that I didn't take more of something.

I try and look for different angles and viewpoints (up high, down low), although perhaps not as often as I should... but I'm always looking around me pretty much all the time and if I can stop and take a shot I do, or make a note to come back when the light is better.

There are other tips already out there for taking better photos, and better iPhone photos (including this rather handy tip from Instragram themselves).

The flip side of that is one of the things that bugs me (right after those over saturated, over sharpened images)... no matter how attractive you are (or think you are), don't let your whole Instagram roll be photos of you in front of a mirror with the same expression... or worse yet, no particular expression.

Lastly (and coincidentally a good way to combat Mirror Shot Syndrome) find one of the 30/60/365 day photo challenges and take part (or even make up your own). You'll have to think outside of the box at times to find something within your day that's going to fulfil the challenge, and it makes you post something every day.

• Fat Mum Slim
• Kat Skull
• The White Peach Blog
• 365 Photo Challenge

2. Where and what

Once I've taken the shot, filtered it (I do love me some Lo-fi, but I've been equally obsessed with Hefe and X-pro II in the past), I always add some kind of description and a hashtag and if I'm out and about (and can find where I am in the app) a location.

I always prefer to add a description... and other people's photos without them sometimes feel a little unfinished. You don't even need to tell me what I'm seeing, but how you feel about it... "worse beverage ever" or "I love the colours of this" or "it took forever to get him to sit still" (and I bet you have a mental image for each of those descriptions already).

Adding locations is great, particularly when you're travelling (both for your own benefit as well as everyone elses) or at a major event... but also because once you've tagged a photo as being in a particular location, you can check out that location to see who else has posted photos in the same place over time!

Just think if everyone added The Garden of Unearthly Delights to their #GoUD photos this Fringe... how awesome would that be.

3. Hashtaggin it

Hashtags are good... hashtags are everybody's friend... I very often use the #adelaide and #streetart hashtags... or the #cloudporn and #foodporn hashtags... and I'm finding myself using the #lego and #minifigs hashtags more and more... #legoaddiction.

I also occasionally take a wander through hashtags that I've just used, just to see what's new.

One of the other things I discovered recently is that when you go back to an old photo and put a new hashtag on it, it shows up in that list of photos as though it was brand new (I will hold my hand up to accidentally spamming the #foodporn hashtag a few weeks ago).

However if I go to somebody else's photo and add a hashtag, it doesn't seem to include the photo in the list (it hasn't the couple of times I've tried it).

But while hashtags are everybody's friend... like a friend, you should never abuse the humble hashtag. I mean, cramming all the following tags into a single photo...

#instagram #iphonesia #iphoneography #igdaily #igoftheday #instagram_underdogs #instagood #igaddict #instahub #instamood #10likes #20likes #30likes #40likes #50likes #60likes

I don't mind some of these "meta" tags, like the #instragramYOURLOCATIONHERE idea, or #seeaustralia... but it's when it's all of them, all at once, all the time that bugs me.

And, really, if your photo has more than 40 likes (or more than 50 or more than 100 or whatever), does it really matter that it's included in the #10likes list?

4. Like what people you like like

Or, alternatively, like what people who like you like.

I like to check both the News and Following tabs in Instagram, to not only see who's liking my photos, but also what the people I follow are liking. It's led to me discovering a whole bunch of new and interesting (and often, barely clothed, which is nice) people to follow.

But even if I don't end up following them, I like to have a look at the people who like my stuff, maybe leave them a like if they have some good stuff.

And just because I'm a little strange, sometimes I don't want to like the same photo that one of my followers has liked, so I'll often go and look at their whole photo roll, see what else strikes my fancy.

Two things that bother me when I see them is people "begging" for likes (makes you look needy and insecure) and posting "follow for follow" type comments.

Oh, and another one. Never, ever like your own photos. I see a number of people doing that and I'm kinda baffled by it... why would you even bother?

The dot point edition

So, to sum up...

• Photograph all the things (other than just yourself in the mirror)
• Add a description
• Use relevant hashtags
• Add a location
• Check your locations/hashtags for other peoples shots
• Dont like your own photos, beg for likes or leave "follow for follow" comments

But that's just my two cents... what do you love about using Instagram, what bugs you and what are your top tips?

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wednesday photo dump

Melbourne, then Brisbane then Sydney...

There's a lot going on in my head at the moment... not much of which is good...

Which is kind of stupid, because there's good stuff coming... but just at the moment I'm...

Okay, I'm not going to go all the way into this, because I know I get bored with other people's blogs and things when they spend all of the time complaining, and if you don't want to bother, stop here and just enjoy the pictures...

Angry... I'm just angry. For no real reason. Well, no good, big, important reason. Lots of small, stupid, pointless reasons.

Right... just got to think positive things. My "pay rise" should show up in my pay tomorrow (even though I still have no idea how much it is), I have a haircut on Friday at Tink's place, first Fringe show on Saturday, a BIG bag of Lego minifigs on their way from Hong Kong, I had a lovely chat with the girl in the Crumpler store and a new option for another larger camera bag... and on top of that, new Chibi Mr Sloppys to find.

Oh, and I just bought front row seats to see Kim David Smith when he returns for the Cabaret Festival... expensive, "Premium" front row tickets... because after last time, there's no way I was going to miss out.

Fortunately it's the weekend after Ma's birthday, so I've told her to mark the evening in her diary but haven't told her (yet) what it is.

And speaking of which, it's my birthday in a month...

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pre australia day musing

On the eve of Australia Day... here's a collection of the places I've been around the country in the last twelve months. Which I actually find really, really amazing given that distinct lack of travelling for the first 30 years of my life.

I'm also slightly freaking out that this time next week I'll be packing my bag for Melbourne. And then less than two weeks after we get back, the Fringe starts! February is going to be massive!

This bout of hot weather seems to be eating away at both my brain and my patience like acetone dissolving styrofoam. Normally I would suggest I wasn't sleeping well because of the heat, but it's not like I have trouble getting to sleep and I'm not waking up during the night. I just think that maybe the quality of the sleep I am having isn't so great.

Or maybe it's just that the world is full of petty annoyances...

Like the fact that my employment agency is making me fill out every single bit of paperwork again as though I was starting with them for the first time. So I spent about 45 minutes this morning filling my name in about a dozen times on various bits of paper. On a number of them I really just wanted to write "see the previous forms because nothing has actually changed".

And the fact that when it's hot like this I just don't want to be bothered tidying the house up, so it all feels a little blah.

Although the world is also full of things that are good...

Like the fact that the sixth series of the Lego Minifigs is finally available in Australia! I knew this because Ma brought me two figures yesterday, so today I figured I'd head over the Myer just to see if they had them in yet. Turns out they did and there was a woman standing at the counter with one of the staff going through and essentially feeling the packs looking for certain ones.

I could have hovered around waiting for her to go but instead I walked up said "can I join in?"... because I'm as tragic as hell. Fortunately there was a second box so I spent about 20 minutes of my lunch break going through and feeling up EVERY! SINGLE! PACK! in both of the boxes to try and find the ones I wanted from this series. And I think ever single staff member from the toy department wandered past while I was doing it and asked if I needed any assistance... and I was all "no, I'm good, just feeling up the merchandise".

It turned out to be a good plan because not only was Myer having a "buy 2 get 1 free" sale on everything in the toy department, but out of the six I bought, three of them were the ones that I specifically wanted (one was okay, the other two were duplicates). Of course, because I was nice and handed over a couple of the ones that the other woman was looking for (for her daughter... so she was after the girl/female figures), I still need to stand around and feel some more packs to try and find the others.

And even though the cool change doesn't come in until Saturday afternoon, I'm still going to enjoy having the day off tomorrow for Australia Day. Not that I really care about the actual day, but hopefully I can get the house a little cooler.

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photo friday: storm, calm, sydney

Some Sydney tones for Friday.

I feel as though I'm residing in the calm before the storm... or possibly the eye of the hurricane, I'm not completely sure which.

Parts of this week have been mind numbingly dull. Parts of this week have been teeth grindingly frustrating. And there's the potential for the rest of the year to go completely batshit crazy.

I know that February and March are already going to be crazed, what with trips and Fringe stuff and my birthday and whatnot... but there are "discussions" underway at work that would potential make the rest of the year completely insane.

The only solace is that the same "discussions" have been going on for a number of years with no forward momentum... so nothing may happen again this time. Or it could just be like a snowball rolling downhill in a cartoon, picking up speed and mass as it goes from all the other little projects laying around in its way.

Or I've just completely screwed the analogy/cliché pony.

Of course that's all dependent on all the particular stars aligning and me still being there past the end of May.

Thankfully I've just renewed my gym membership, so that's out of the way even if work does dry up. And it came with a lower price tag, two free movie tickets and a "sports pack". I have no idea what's in the pack, I couldn't be bothered trying to carry it around the supermarket along with everything else, so I'm picking it up on Monday morning. I would assume it's just general branded tat (in the British sense of the word) that they had left over from some other promotion... but we'll see.

I swear I don't just get hiccups any more... I get ear splitting sonic belching eruptions of death. Urgh.

Now lets see if really, really good barbeque sauce makes an effective meat marinade...

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photo friday: long neck and walker

At present I have a "Summer cold"... sniffly nose, stuffed up head, frog in my throat, dry lips... a little ulcer under my tongue that I keep catching... and one of the topics of conversation at work today concerned the fact that I'd be the first on the chopping block in event we needed to turn to cannibalism due to being trapped in the building due to a zombie apocalypse.

Welcome to my week.

Actually other than the cold and the tongue thing it hasn't been a bad week... the weather behaved itself, work was mostly low impact. And I managed to put all of my Christmas minutia/toy soldiers away.

I've also had mixed reactions to my proto-beard... which is really annoying me at the moment but mostly because I'm not feeling well... Rockchick seems to like it, Sugarmonkey surprisingly has no opinion and H-San keeps giving me a hard time. Not that I care... I'll keep it until I don't want to keep it anymore and then it'll go.

I'm also not sure why it takes so much effort to give away FREE THINGS!

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