Art Department

This is the lovely art department, my work colleagues. Jo, Hazel and James. Hazel and James are both Londoners, and Hazel is about to head home as she misses the drizzle and warm beer. Or something like that. James hates drizzle and warm beer, and so is staying put. Or something like that.

Cool Plumbing

 

Here's some quirky plumbing from Milsons Point, where I often swim. If maintenance was easier, I'd love to see trailing plants cascading from the planters.

Murder and Bashing

Excerpt from The Australian:

A TEENAGE boy charged with the murder of a 30-year-old chef cried when he faced Sydney Children's Court in front of his family this morning.

The emotional youth was one of two 16-year-olds arrested yesterday over the murder of Daniel Owen, who died outside his Marrickville home in June.

Owen's body was found in the driveway of a home on Illawarra Road with head injuries shortly after midnight on Sunday June 15.

Shortly beforehand Ms Gay, 26, was struck in the head from behind in Steel Park, Marrickville, by two male youths who demanded her handbag.

Ms Gay, who plays nurse Gabrielle Jaeger in the Seven Network hospital drama All Saints, suffered minor injuries, including swelling and bruising to her head.

Police also dealt with the assault and robbery of a 20-year-old man a short distance away on Illawarra Road on the same night.

Link.

These extremely disturbing events occured in close proximity to my home - the Ms Gay bashing being a few houses away. John and I were home as well, but didn't hear a thing. The first we knew was when the police doorknocked.

My little bit of Marrickvile is sort of out of the way of any entertainment, pubs and the station so is generally pretty quiet; which makes serious crime here even harder to comprehend.

8 Central Avenue

This is where I'll be working in 2010. Pacific Magazines and Channel Seven will relocate to Australian Technology Park in Eveleigh. I can't wait as my travel time to work will be halved, and more reliable as I won't have to catch two trains. This is the start of a twelve storey building.

A Dog With Wings

Sam is a recalcitrant dog.
She likes to jump on to the roof and bark her lungs out at the passing world.
Sometimes I want to do the same, but I'm not as comfortable with heights as she. This is a semi regular sight alonh Illawarra Road. Repeated attempts by Bill, her owner, to block her access to the roof has obviously failed. She is friendly but out of control.

Ello Nina

Nino has left the building and El Nina seems to have settled in. Sydney has had drought for the past eight years, and it may be breaking. These are some pics from about 10am last Sunday - the front of my house. I live on a flood plain, but this is purely stormwater not escaping; not a river breaking it's banks.. I'd hate to know the outcome if the river floods and we get an extreme downpour. The house is about a metre above the road, but the shop next door is not.

After 15 minutes, the water dissipated.

Experimental "Rain Gardens" up the road had been installed to filter rainwater, and may have had an influence on the flash flood, but I doubt it. The drains below the rain gardens were overwhelmed (The Rain Gardens are meant to be a reticulation basin for plants to filter excess stromwater). I hope the gardens weren't the cause, as I support them. But if they are behind this, they need tweaking.

Photoshop Archaeology

I've just been playing with two old images taken from Hill Street in 1936, and doing very raw manipulations of parallax distortion. I'll eventually do a "proper" composite, but for now it is best that everyone has a sense of the two images as being separate - and being merged.