Archive for the 'General' Category

Christmas Greetings to all of my readers.

I trust you are having – or have had – a wonderful day.

We had a very quiet Christmas. Our daughter is home at present; we are always pleased to spend time with her because of the busy demands of her work. We had a delightful Christmas lunch after attending a lovely church service celebrating the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ. I hope I am not being too biased in saying it was a lovely service. Our minister is currently on holidays and it was left to me to lead the service. There were plenty of complimentary comments afterwards, so I must have done something right. As a part of the service I shared the poem I published here yesterday.

We also entertained my mother-in-law for the day, as well as an elderly friend of hers. Jack has no family living nearby and we usually invite him as well. We didn’t overindulge as far as food is concerned. During a sleepy afternoon we watched several movies, something we don’t do often enough.

The weather here in South Australia was just perfect. The temperature hovered around 28C (82F) all day. It was a sunny, bright, cloudless day with a gentle breeze. It doesn’t get much better than that.

WARNING: slight tangent ahead.

Yes readers, a slight tangent ahead. This post is not much about writing, though I guess you could say it is about reading – or not being able to read.

There was a slight accident on Adelaide’s O-Bahn rapid transit bus way yesterday. Two Irish tourists had just arrived in their hired motor home in our state capital city. They decided to follow a local bus. Either they were very inattentive, or couldn’t read the prominent signs. The bus was entering the O-Bahn track which is designed only for buses to travel at high speed. These buses are on a guided track and do not have to be steered. They often travel up to 110kph between stops. On leaving the track they can then travel on normal roads (but then need to be steered).

The motor home travelled for about 2 kilometres before being clipped by a bus travelling in the opposite direction. No-one was hurt in the incident. The Irish driver has been charged with being drunk while driving Allegedly he had a blood alcohol reading of 0.154, three times the legal limit here in South Australia.

I can’t remember what is written on the signs at the entrance of the bus way, but they are large, clear, explicit and unmistakable.

Not to everyone it seems.

Link:

• The O-Bahn Busway – Adelaide’s rapid transit system, including photos.

Have you visited our Photo Gallery recently?

This morning the gallery passed the 800,000 views mark.

Why don’t you go and have a look?

My wife, son and I have posted over 1230 photos in a wide range of categories – birds, animals, scenery (Australia and overseas), flowers, travel and culture, architecture – go and have a look. There’s something for most people. The gallery is growing fast as we are adding new shots almost daily.

Most of the photos are mine but both my wife and son have contributed many too.

When we went to visit our son in Sydney recently we took about 3000 slides with us. These slides were taken over about 40 years. He now has the huge task of scanning all of those photos on to his computer. He actually offered to do this for us. What a wonderful son. Eventually many of them will also find their way into the gallery, so come back often.

Links:

• The Hampel Photo Gallery
• Top 10 most viewed photos in the Hampel Photo Gallery

Ama Dablam, Nepal

I am currently visiting my son and daughter-in-law in Sydney. My son is the computer expert in the family – he keeps this and my other blogs running smoothly (and you thought I did all that?)

He also helps to maintain our computers. While here in Sydney we’ve been able to use his super fast broadband connection. He has also set up a new 200Gb external hard drive for my computer and my wife’s computer (Yes we take our laptops travelling with us). Our laptops were in serious trouble of running out of disk space with all the photos we take, especially on trips like this one. You can read all about our holiday on my travel blog or my birding blog.

I have also been having neck and back problems always looking down at the monitor on my laptop. So the other day we went and bought a Samsung SyncMaster 205BW 20 inch wide screen monitor. WOW! What a difference that makes. Especially to my photos. And it is so much easier to read.

Bottom line: this is the first item I’ve bought with the proceeds of my blogging.

And I like it.

Thanks Sim’ for setting it all up for me.

To see a review of this monitor, together with a photo, click here.