Two Swims & Dog Submission

I am on a roll this week having had a swim this morning for the second time this week.  The water temperatures are still ok. I am more likely to not swim because of the wind and also the depth. Today I startled a ray which was covered in sand and sleeping so I did not easily spy it. We would have both wet ourselves if we weren't already.  I have not had any reply on my "get dogs on a leash during the day" idea.  The council sent me a "have your say email" with a feedback button at the bottom, so I asked them if there was any progress.  I get the feeling they are not keen. The submission number is P1817650. It took me ages to find it, so now I am going to tag it in the title linw above.

Red Hot

J & J

Mowing Day

 We have an afternoon drinks session on the go for tomorrow so I have spent two hours this morning edging and mowing and I threw in some weed poisoning as well. Jill got us over to her house for drinks about two weeks ago and we are returning the favour.  I have turned on the robot to clean up inside while I was cleaning up outside. I have also unloaded yesterdays ray video featured below. I went back in the afternoon for a beach clean. This time I found a dog leash as well as underwear, wooden spikes and many butts and bottle tops.

Clouds were rolling from the West

But City clear in the east

Rubbish Haul

Sunny Window

 I managed to get one swim in last week and have a video here.  The sand mounds that are formed on the bay floor are mini volcanoes but there is some critter under there maybe waiting for night time. I read that worms can form mounds but I think some of these are too big.  Today the breeze dropped and the Sun shone just for the right amount of time to let me get down to the shore to do the swim and get back again. I have another video from today with some good shots of the rays. The tide was a bit low so when you do get to a ray you are right in its face. There were three today all fiddlers, just fiddling on the bottom.

                                                                          last weeks video

Gold!

Being written in 2010, this is a recent version of Australia's gold history.  Gold was first discovered in Victoria at Clunes and it just so happens we are heading there later this month for the book festival.  Gold rush fever began in July 1851 and kept going for 50 years. We took metal detectors out to gold country once, about 45 yar ago but they were heavier then and could not penetrate very far.  It was more like just something to do on a Saturday and we were more interested in having lunch. So much for our gold fever.  

Shot Olives

 I got into the olive tree for an hour or so. It was a bit colder today and some drizzle aound but I think these olives need more Sun to ripen them up. Those that are a decent size that is.  I decided the tree might work better if the tiny olives were removed.  So I used my fingers to try to comb them off the branch. That works for the smaller ones but they are all manner of inbetween sizes and all of them non-viable. Also there is often a good one among the bunch which I want to leave behind to ripen.  Maybe a small hand rake might be a better comb. There was one branch that was laden with mis-fired olives and there were hundreds of them on it.  I picked a few good ones and so far have the pathetic total of 16 olives. 

There are hundreds of olives here note the size difference of the real thing

WMA vs MP3

 We got onto the bikes again this morning even though it was blustery and coolish.  The stop at the coffee van is a warm up although we were sweaty by the time we got there.  We have a few road trips coming up, not to mention the constant drives to Melbourne. The bane at the moment is the music on this new phone. Previously the windows phone worked flawlessly with the WMA files. However since I moved to Android and got a cheapy VLC player that plays WMA only, the car audio never seems to cooperate. So I spent some hours today converting WMA song files to MP3. Then found the proper Samsung Music App and got it going on the phone. Hooray the songs are playing OK.  I have not tried it via the car pickup as yet.  And I also see in the notes that the Samsung Music Player will play WMA files. Now they tell me.  Mind you I have an entire libray back here of WMAs taken directly off the CDs.  For now there are 339 songs on my phone but could add another 1000 taken from my CDs and another 1000 taken from my old records.  You could almost drive around Australia without repeating a song. Now I need one of those portable speakers to pair with the phone.

palm tree bike path

coffee central

Sunset Slice

Roberts Slide Archive 1960

 I have received the original Roberts slide archive still in their slotted carousel housings, all 10 of them, which potentially add up to 1300 slides. However not all the slots are full but there are other containers full of slides, as well as envelopes full of slides.  There was a big project some years back to get this lot digitised and my copy of that archive is dated from 1960 and there are around 1000 digitised slides in it.  The originals are similarly dated from 1960 but it seems not all of them were digitised. EG the first one I plucked from an envelope, has a slide of me aged 2 taken in 1957, before the start of the archive. So I will be taking a thorough inventory to make sure all these slides have been converted to digital. I am not sure where my digital slide converter ended up. I think maybe Tim got it to do his old slides. 

The old hold it up to the Light Trick (edited below)