REverberations

I'm most excited to announce that Phoebe will have a little brother or sister come mid-August!!

We've just returned from the 12-week scan with an all-clear verdict, and as such can now stop biting tongues and being secretive. How exciting and amazing! The little wriggler was tossing and turning in mummy's tummy, arms and legs flailing - a family trait Phoebe has certainly carried out to the outside world with her.

Depending on how you measure it, we're either looking at the first or second week of August as the due date, although nature of course will decide that for us. Booked in for care at the small Camden hospital and birth at the larger Campbelltown hospital - hopefully in the Birth Centre again which we felt very comfortable with last time.

This is a great moment for us as a family, because just like many more people than you would be aware of, we have had two miscarriages before making it this far. Society doesn't have a place in polite conversation for such things, but all we really wanted was to talk to other people who had experienced the same and understand that it's all ok. I feel strongly that we should be mentioning it so that people know two babies didn't make it to the world, and such that others who experience the same thing can know they are not alone.

Current thinking is that we may not find out the gender this time around (last time we knew, but nobody else did), although such plans are subject to change at our next scan when we can find out!

Here's a belated Christmas post with some updates on our life.
Phoebe had a great time on Christmas day, exploring Santa's presents, and those from her parents, grandparents, and other great friends. Having our family together for the day was great - Phoebe really loves being around people she knows.
Favourite presents vary from day to day, but between boxes of Duplo, wooden train set, a play house, and piles of In the Night Garden books and a talking doll, there's plenty of entertainment.

The sale of our land has gone through - pics shortly - and as such we are now planning how to move on there and start building as soon as possible. Our current rental property being only five minutes away has turned out to be basically the only positive of it - the previous tenants' seven puppies appear to have left a legacy of an impressively robust flea population. These things are sent to challenge us.

Since we now own the land and are planning to get into temporary accommodation there quickly, we've decided not to do much unpacking here (hence the boxes in the picture). Exactly what form this accommodation will take is still up for discussion, but we may yet become trailer trash :)

Lots of recent pics up in the usual location.

So our little girl is two today. Wow.

Recent progress means that she is now largely sleeping through the night, perhaps with just a wake for a drink or nappy change. What a difference from the Phoebe of old!

She has also largely opted to toilet train herself in the last two weeks, such that for the last few days she only wears nappies at night time or when going out. Around the house she's happy to wander off and find the potty and look after herself!

Her speech is amazing, understanding so much that we say, stringing long sentences together, and comprehending more and more complex topics daily. A real little knowledge sponge, and so much more than either of us expected from a two year old.

Right now the cute little thing is in front of me playing with her new kitchen - birthday present from Liz and I. All the little girls we know seem to have managed to get these for their second birthdays but in defense of our originality we bought this one months ago!

We're celebrating with family today and friends on Saturday at the zoo, all of which I'm sure she'll love.

We love you so much little Phoebe, and look forward to watching you continue to grow over the years.

And now some far better news (although it's hard to be as excited as we should be with our rental hassles going on at the same time).

We have bought 5 empty acres of land to build a house on!

In all our time looking at houses around Picton, none of them ever grabbed us as a perfect place to live in. All involved some fairly major compromises. But one thing that not even one of them had was a decent basic set of sustainability features. This is very important to us to save energy and reduce our environmental impact, and is something we both feel passionately about.

So, we started considering building our own house. The government helps out suggesting this too through the current stimulus measures of halving stamp duty (which we probably won't qualify for), and the fact that you only pay your stamp duty on land value when building, not the total cost of land and house built on top.

We really like the acre we are currently living on and if anything want more so that we can have horses and other animals grazing, a small orchard, other fruit and veg, etc., but around Picton there really are no acre or larger lots left. More might be coming, but nobody knows when and we want to be live in this house as a young family asap!

So we broadened our search to Thirlmere and Razorback, both places where larger lots are still available. We found a great 12.5 bushland acres on Razorback and spent months investigating it only to find out that due to legal complications it was unclear whether anyone had rights to build on it. Legal minefield, dropped that one like a hot potato.

Discouraged after all our effort at that point, we briefly considered just buying where we are now as "good enough", but in the end we wanted to change so much, and it was sold before we had a chance to.

I had never really stopped looking online - mainly using the excellent but mostly unknown Google Real Estate. One day I found new advertisements for a new subdivision we had visited months ago, but ruled out due to the excessive prices they were asking at the time. But now the prices were far more reasonable, so off I went for a drive.

Two cleared, flat, ex-farmland 5-acre lots remained for sale and I was there to look at one with a dam - I did, but was underwhelmed with the position and views so just for interest walked up to the adjoining one sans dam on my way back to the car. I turned around, took in the sweeping panoramic views, and immediately thought it a very real possibility.

The next 24 hours is a blur. Liz returned from work and I took her there the next morning. She was still unsure but in comparision to what we had seen more recently, it has far better views, was better located, and cheaper. I said "so, what about if I was to make an offer?" Brave Liz, after just seeing it, took a punt and said yes on the basis that it was not binding, just a verbal discussion between parties.

I rang the real estate office and that afternoon, 24 hours after I first saw it, 8 or so after Liz had, our first offer was accepted!

It turns out that the developer is extremely keen to say the least to offload these last two lots of land and move on to his next project, so he jumped at the chance, even at our low offer price. Two days ago the contracts were exchanged and we paid our 10%, and today the "Sold!" stickers go up!

What a huge step we've taken, and now the huge process of building what will hopefully be our lifetime family home begins.

More details of course to come.

First, the bad news. The house we have been renting for a year in Picton has been sold underneath us. Although they had brought people occasionally through it, it was never actually on the market.

We were given 14 days notice to be out. In that time, we were expected to find a new rental property in the current tight rental market, apply with references, wait until other tenants had left, pack up everything we own, and move it from one house to another. Never mind jobs or a super-active toddler!

That 14 days notice period expired yesterday, and we're still here. Despite me attempting to negotiate the owners were not interested, so I had to file a complaint with the tribunal just to buy some time to find another place.

We had decided a little while ago that we were really wanted to build our own place. This is an amazing house, but not really to our tastes. So we couldn't complain about it being sold but were perplexed that we weren't even contacted for a counter-offer - the first we knew of the sale was the property manager ringing to organise a pest and building inspection for the purchasers!

It's been two weeks of stress, packing, rental inspections and heartache, but we have finally secured a new rental property on Razorback, a little closer to Sydney. We have also secured one other more expensive one near Tahmoor and are waiting to inspect and apply for a far cheaper one in Picton next week.

Maybe we're atypical renters in this part of the world, or perhaps it's the 14-year-olds typically working in Property Management, but we are completely over being treated like scum wasting their time as we try to secure somewhere to actually live.

We'll move somewhere in the first week of December, probably the day before we go and defend our tribunal claim that 14 days was insufficient. They could have just given us the customary 30 days and that would have lined up nicely. Instead, they relied on a tiny contract clause to treat us in an inhumane manner.

So a big sarcastic thankyou to the majority of solicitors, property managers, and landlords we've dealt with over the last two weeks.

Warning - due to extreme lack of time (further posts on this topic to follow eventually), a generic cut-and-paste blog post is to be found below!



Hi,

I am growing a moustache this year for Movember. I have decided to put down my razor for one month (November) and help raise awareness and funds for men’s health – specifically prostate cancer and depression in men.

What many people don’t appreciate is that close to 3,000 men die of prostate cancer each year in Australia and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime - many of whom don’t seek help. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved and I am hoping that you will support me.

To sponsor my Mo, you can either:

• Click this link and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account
• Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 74440 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.

Movember is now in its sixth year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCFA) and beyondblue: the national depression initiative. Check out further details at: http://au.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

If you are interested in following the progress of my Mo, click here. Also, http://au.movember.com has heaps of useful
information.

Thank you

You really need two cameras - one for the spur-of-the-moment always with you captures like I mentioned in Part 1, and one for when you have decided that whatever you are doing justifies having a better camera with you. For me that's often time with my family, visiting new places, and sometimes old places that I want to view in a different light.

For this second camera, you have already made the decision that photos will be taken, so I don't see that you want to skimp on the sort of camera you choose to lug with you just to save a bit of size. Your $200 point-and-shoot camera is no huge improvement over decent phone cameras these days, and you still have to make the active decision to pick it up and take it with you. If that's all your budget extends to, then save until you can afford $600 or so for a basic DSLR, and keep shooting with your phone camera in the meantime.

Here's the the three main reasons why your second camera should be a Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera:

• Larger sensor size - The biggest problem with phone and point-and-shoot cameras is that the part of it which captures the image is physically too small to gather enough light to enable you to avoid using a flash. Smaller sensors are "noisier" than bigger ones, which means you get little speckles everywhere, especially in low light photos. NOTE: Do not confuse sensor size with megapixels! Megapixels (MP) mean practically nothing for the sort of photos most people want to take and print. My main camera is 6MP on a big sensor, which is infinitely superior to 10MP on a tiny sensor like most point-and-shoots have these days. I have no intention of upgrading in the near future, until I can get an even bigger sensor with a higher number of pixels.


• Interchangeable Lenses - DSLRs separate the bit of camera that captures the image (the "sensor") from the glass in front of that sensor (the "lens") into two separately purchasable and interchangeable pieces. In your bag of photographic tricks, you really want to have a "fast" or "wide-aperture" lens. What this does is two main things - allows you to capture even more light at dark times, which is especially important to allow you to avoid using your flash, and at all times allows you to have your subject only in focus, with the background a nice blur. Humans like this in photos because it's the same way we see the world through our eyes.
  These types of lenses don't exist for point-and-shoot or phone cameras.


• Fast auto-focus - The best photos are of things that happen very quickly, captured forever visually rather than as a passing moment in time in your memory. The auto-focus systems on DSLR cameras are second to none, meaning that the camera doesn't get in the way of you capturing what you want while it "hunts" around looking for the object in the frame to focus on. This is hugely important with photos of children!

By the time you have pressed the button on your point-and-shoot camera, waited for it to focus, startled the subject with your flash, then seen it displayed on the screen at the back, I have 5 or even 10 good natural-light, in-focus images to choose between later stored on my memory card.

Laws of physics dictate a few things here too - you want to be capturing as much light as possible, so to do this you need a lens that lets lot of light in (which is what a wide aperture means) and a big sensor to store as much of that light as possible at any given time.

Upcoming technology like "micro four-thirds" seeks to provide a camera with interchangeable lenses and a sensor size bigger than point-and-shoot cameras but still physically smaller than DSLRs, however current incarnations lack fast auto-focus, and their sensor sizes are still significantly smaller than even low-end DSLRs.
To me these compromises don't make sense given that I've already decided to take my second camera along - I just think about what one or two lenses I might need in any given situation, put one on my camera and the other in my pocket or bag and off I go.

I've deliberately left my specific equipment until the end - unfortunately camera brands are largely not compatible with each other so you do have to choose a brand up front when getting into DSLRs. In all honesty you are best with either Canon or Nikon as they have the largest range of lenses available, and have the biggest userbase to swap lenses with and learn from. At the low end of the market they are no more than $100 more expensive than any other brand and this is a very small price to pay for their years of experience.
I chose Nikon for no good reason over Canon other than I have a pro photographer friend who also uses Nikon who gave me a few pointers to get started. Unless you do too, choose either, it doesn't matter in the long run.

I have a Nikon D40, their most inexpensive DSLR camera. The fast lens I use mostly is the 35mm f/1.8. Combined, these two were under $1000. Go and get something like this (today probably a D3000 and the same lens in Nikon, or a Canon with their 50mm f/1.8) and start taking better pictures! Nothing else is required other than practice to take your pictures from average to well above average.

Spend any extra budget on more/better lenses, not more expensive cameras. Your DSLR will be worth nothing in a few years and you'll want a newer one, but your lenses will keep on working and may even outlast you. Just connect your old lenses to your new (same brand) camera and they will work happily together, whereas your point-and-shoot and the lens permanently attached to it will be worth nothing and useless when you upgrade.


A quick note on what is known as "focal length" - a lens has a millimeter (mm) number which represents how much of the picture your eyes would see the camera is "zoomed" into. 18mm is a reasonable width for "normal" pictures of buildings, rooms, etc., through to 200mm which is for enlarging things far away. Most lenses are "zoom" lenses which offer a choice of more than one of these focal lengths (eg. a range like 18-135mm), but not all. Specifically, the fast lenses I use (which are the ones I can afford!) are not zoom lenses, as they have only one focal length like 35mm or 50mm. These are also termed "prime" lenses.

I find 35mm a good useful focal length for the camera I use. 50mm is a bit more difficult to fit everything in that I want for many shots.

Purely for interest's sake (none of the following gear is really needed, and you don't actually need zoom lenses at all - that's what your feet are for!), I also have for other use:

• 18-55mm lens - this lens was practically free with the camera, so you get it for your $1000 total kit price too. It's light and remarkably good, and is the lens I use second-most often.


• 55-200mm lens - this is for visiting zoos and things where your subject is far away. It has image stabilisation for reducing shaky pictures that you often get when zoomed in a long way, and cost about $250 new.


• 18-135mm lens - This is a handy travel lens which Liz took overseas. It zooms further in than the 18-55mm but is quite a bit bigger and heavier and if you are picky, the images it captures aren't as good. Cost about $280 used.
  (If you have piles of money and don't mind the weight, get the $1000-ish 18-200mm instead, it's fantastic).


• 50mm f/1.8 lens - I got this fast lens before the 35mm f/1.8 was available and still use it for portrait shots where I have time to focus manually (It won't autofocus on the D40 or other low-end Nikon DSLRs like the D60, D3000, or D5000). It cost about $200 new and takes technically the best pictures of any of these lenses.


• External angle-adjustable flash - For the situations when you really really want to use flash, at least bounce it off the roof so you emulate natural light with one of these. Cost me $65 brand new. Note that I use this far less than I thought I might have - I just got better at increasing ambient light and use fast lenses.


• Remote control - Handy cheap little remote shutter button that's much easier to use when taking self portraits than running around setting the timer.

I've had a number of people recently mention that they are impressed with the photos I have online, and to be honest heaping more praise than I really deserve. I did do a 1U Photography course at high school which helped me understand the basics, but I'm certainly not professional. (If you are, then you will find the rest of these blog entries a vast simplification. Please feel free to suggest improvements I can make.)

With the rise of people being able to simply share photos online, it has become much easier to spot some basic mistakes that people keep making, and I thought I'd throw some simple advice out there so that you can hopefully take "good" photos too.

1. Always have a camera with you - This is a variation on the photographer's mantra "the best camera is the one you have with you". The idea is that the whole point of photography is to have photos of interesting subject matter, and you'll always be able to grab these photos if you have a phone camera of some sort. (You could also lug your bigger camera around with you, but this is far less likely to happen in practice).
   In reality today, this means get a decent phone with a 2 or 3 megapixel auto-focus camera. (If you have kids, get one that records video too.) This will produce acceptable images in daylight and crappy ones which still trigger the memories of the event at other times.


2. Think about your composition - If you're taking lots of photos (and you should be! Plan to throw lots of rubbish ones away), you won't have time to edit them all in Photoshop later (I don't even have this program). As you are about to press the shutter, think to yourself "could this be improved if I move the framing around a little? What about if my subject is off to one side, looking across the frame rather than straight at me, smiling? What about if I was a bit closer or further away?"
   Some people bang on about the rule of thirds and "power points" but all you need to know is that putting your subject away from the middle of the frame will make your photo more interesting than right in the middle like most people do.


3. Vectors - and this is one that I did learn at school - look for interesting straight lines in your photos. Both solid lines like a gutter or a side of a building, and imagined lines like the line somebody's gaze is making. I find this is probably the single biggest factor that will make you move from "mediocre" to "good". Try it for a while each time you take a photo.


4. Don't use a flash - Really, flash photography just looks plain ugly compared to natural lighting - the subject is super-bright while everything else goes dark. There are a number of ways around using a flash, but the simplest and cheapest is just to think - turn on the lights in the room, get your subject to move so that they are bathed in whatever ambient light there is. Of course, better equipment can help too (see below).

All of that said, eventually your phone camera isn't going to cut it. You'll reach a point where you have a very interesting subject but poor technical image quality, and you want to improve the latter. Let me stress however that the former is more important to get correct first!

That's why I've made discussions about equipment a separate post, over at Part 2.

(It should be noted that I may in fact owe my father and both my grandfathers a debt of gratitude for some photographic skill as they all are/were fantastic at it. My brother now even makes some of his living from photography.)

Uploading the latest batch of photos has given me a chance as doting father to view Phoebe's recent rate of progress, which I thought I'd share here for those who may be interested.

Phoebe recently graduated from her first swimming class! I was there camera in hand to catch the first time she decided to let go of Liz and swim only assisted by her bubble. The next lesson she was approached to move up to the next class - making Liz's time in the (at times poorly heated) pool through all worth it.

Silly smiles are now available on demand, which is an amusing way to spend your time with her. Recent simultaneous sickness for her and Liz has meant more time than we'd like watching TV, but at least - like right now in fact - it's the amusing for young and old Shaun the Sheep that is most requested. In fact yesterday she managed to find a disc, turn on and open the DVD player, replace the existing disc and then ask for us to do the rest. Given the number of buttons on the home entertainment gear I'm very impressed. She did get the disc upside-down, but hey, that's just details.

Sentences at the moment are two nouns and a verb (eg. "Dadda eat cheese. Phoebe eat cheese too!") which is pretty good, and improving every day. She can pick shapes quite well, knowing stars, circles, squares, hearts, etc., which she has learned through being the second person in the house eyeing off my iPhone. There's lots of great baby entertaining apps available for it which helps out amusing a curious and easily-bored toddler. She picked up plurals with no help from us, although it highlights just how broken English is when she says "one sheep, two sheeps", but she's wrong.
Favourite things at the moment include swings and slides (which she can spot a mile away), swimming, walking, and learning new words which are quickly parroted back at us, such as "pine cones", yesterday.

Every day is a new adventure with our little girl, and she's not even two yet. Mind-blowing.

I'm absolutely overjoyed to have my girls back home again! They returned safely Friday morning (no thanks to Malaysian Airlines' website with wrong times on it, nor the airline in general with indifferent service and poor treatment). The trip was a great success, with them visiting friends and family in many parts of England. Photos to follow once I've seen them first :)

It's been a rather busy weekend since then, starting with me getting to know Phoebe again. I'm so happy that she seems much more attached to me now, perhaps absence makes even the young hearts grow fonder. It certainly has done for me, for both of them.

While they were away, I went shopping for land to build a house on. Where we are living now is a truly fantastic house, in a great position, but I'm glad we tried out the place before buying because, in ways we almost can't articulate, it's not really "us". It's too ostentatious, not energy or water efficient enough, has a tennis court that disagrees with my knees, and which is also part of the problem of the backyard. One acre is big enough to grow food and/or graze animals, but not really when a good deal of that is taken up with a tennis court.

So, we've all but decided that we want to build. I originally was on the lookout for land right in town at Picton, but have branched out across Razorback, which has the benefit of being closer to work, friends and family, and also being cheaper for the same size block. Not to mention that there are much larger blocks available, such as our current favourite that we're researching after I took Liz there and she concurred - 12.5 bushland acres close to a great little Primary School. Phoebe had a great time chasing animals and spotting ducks on the dam, so I'm sure she'll love it there too.

It is however in a bushfire-prone area, but I have new-found confidence that we'll be able to design to cope (and plan to get out) in that worst-case scenario, after yesterday putting out a fire in a neighbour's backyard. They were burning off something or other, and the high winds carried some ashes across into their garden. Nobody home, nor anyone in the house between them and us, so I went in, called the fireies for backup and found that their garden hose just reached long enough to drench the area. If I hadn't have had the day off work, and Liz wasn't home either, then the outcome could have been much worse. Fireies arrived just in time to say "nice work mate, that'll do it" and left a calling card for the owner to get in touch with them.

Burning-off is crazy at the best of times, but with gale-force winds predicted, and so much dryness around, it's pure idiocy. Luckily Liz had the car packed and Phoebe ready to go for a worst-case scenario. Which we both hope to never see.

Unfortunately that car almost remains packed, with one of my grandmothers suffering a heart-attack up in Nambucca. I'm on the train to work now but might be off for a quick drive up the coast later today or this week, depending on how that progresses. She's stable but heavily impacted last I heard.

So a very eventful weekend, let's see what this week has in store.

Liz and Phoebe are currently in the UK with Liz's mum Margaret, traveling to a memorial service for Margaret's brother who was lost at sea 30 years ago. Having traveled so far they have of course elected to wrap the trip in a month or so re-exploration of the Kingdom.
They've just spent a week in London and have literally just collected a car, off to meet up with Margaret's other brother Peter. I know this because due to the magic of Skype, Dad and I have just had a great video call with Liz, Phoebe and Margaret who purchased a hash brown or two to use McDonalds wifi in Orpington! McDonalds is branching out, not content with being the world's most convenient and locatable chain of public toilets, they now offer free wifi under the same banner!

Anyway, from what I saw on the video, and the great photos Liz has been taking (thanks to Skype's screen sharing), Phoebe is bigger, cleverer and generally having a great time back with her spiritual ancestors in the UK (and some squirrels, ducks and pigeons too). Unfortunately there's still sleep issues and now without me to take over in the middle of the night it's harder on Liz, but they all appear to be having fun.

Of course, I miss them terribly, and while the video is absolutely fantastic it just brings it all to the fore again, and I wish that my girls were back by my side. Yes, I think even in some convoluted way I miss the broken sleep, just because she is my little bubba. She always seems a little confused but generally very happy to see me on the screen once Liz and I get the chat going, and this time with Grandpa too!

We're all feeling rather ill with cold-like symptoms (Liz is quick to point out they are not flu-like, and having dealt with suspected swine flue cases in quarrantine at her work I guess she'd know).
This has brought a return to the horrible nights of no Phoebe sleep, although worse because she screams for her mum who herself needs about a week of sleep.
We're mostly through this, having had Phoebe sleep through from 7:30 until 4am today, which is a huge improvement so we aren't complaining (much). Unfortunately we've missed a few occasions due to not wanting to go anywhere to spread our nasties around - sorry those we had to cancel with.
There are recent pictures added, with more coming soon (especially now that my new Macbook has a built in SD card slot, and I'm having a great deal of fun with the new 35mm 1.8 Nikkor lens ! ).

Naked DSL, for those who are not aware, is an impressive-sounding piece of technology that promises to free you of expensive phone bills.

In summary, since you can now run Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) phones which actually route your phone calls over the internet rather than the phone system, the next logical thing to look at is why have a "normal" phone at all? However, today you need a phone line to run your DSL connection over.

So, you pay say $30 to Telstra to give you a phone line, then $30-60 to your DSL provider for bandwidth, and then run free phone calls over the top of that.

See that $30 number at the start? It's paying for a phone line with the ability to make phone calls, which you now no longer need.

Enter Naked DSL. It's just a raw phone line no longer capable of making phone calls, it is naked in the sense that all it can do is host a DSL session. Cost savings abound.

This much information you can find out anywhere else online, such as most Naked DSL provider's websites. This far I had read before deciding to save the mother-in-law some money and set her up with a connection through iiNet - itself a nightmare but the root cause goes deeper than that.

The core problem with Naked DSL in Australia is that Telstra techs don't understand it.

Four times now she has been disconnected by Telstra (NOT iiNet) who, when probing around in either the local junction box or the exchange for free lines to connect other customers, find hers, and perform their standard check of whether a line is available - look for a dial tone.

But, from the brief explanation above, you will probably summise that Naked DSL does not have a dialtone!.

So, techs disconnect her, connect some other now-happy customer insted, and move on. Our poor heroine in this story is left with no DSL connection, a DSL provider who correctly insists that they have done nothing, and, for kicks, no phone to even call and complain.

Once for this to happen is excessive - especially when iiNet insisted that the end-user had to change the modem, check all the cabling, find the non-existent MFD on site, etc. etc. This took a month and a half.

The second time I was furious, but it only took them a week to get her reconnected. Each time now it takes a few days, but to get through to them takes a long mobile phone call or two, and then a report from iiNet to Telstra, which they act on lazily, in their own time, despite it being their techs and outdated practices which caused the ungodly mess in the first place.

Despite the cost savings, I simply can't recommend Naked DSL today. I told this to a few friends who signed up anyway. Last I spoke to one of them, the exact same thing had just happened to him...

Well, sorta.

A year or so ago when the team I originally started with in 2001 was transferred to Parramatta office, I used the excuse to stay in town with a different team and also move to a Technical Lead role for the experience.
Now things have changed a little - the team in town got moved across the bridge along with everyone else from that office, and also we have moved out to Picton. The combined two hours each-way commute was bearable for the transition period, but something had to give.
Coupled with this the old team at Parramatta had some internal re-organisiation, and the Team Leader role became vacant. I was asked to step up, and as of Monday, that's what I'm doing.
So yes, I'm now a manager and have the Crackberry to prove it. I view it as a challenge, but figure I wouldn't have been asked if people thought I wasn't capable.
I haven't even had time to unpack my boxes, it's been go-go-go since I walked in the door, so there will be precious little rest time it seems.

As I type this I'm cruising along in the train to Parramatta (using the rare-as-hen's-teeth Cumberland line trains), and out the window I can see where I cycled yesterday. There's a "rail trail" from Liverpool to Parramatta which is pretty good, but could do with the signs being replaced so I don't waste 30 minutes next time following the wrong railway line. But I guess that's what GPS is for. Liverpool station is also a poorly-designed bottle neck for an "interchange" with a cycleway.

I'm still balancing the train times to arrive at the appropriate work-life balance - this took me a little while at North Sydney and some experimentation appears to still be required.

Trying to break the blogging drought, bear with me!

The rest of our driving trip (photos here) went really well - a few weeks driving north along the coast, getting as far as Harvey Bay, then a couple of days quick drive home inland. All the while Phoebe just loved all the new places we stayed, things to see, pretty much everything really except the beach (she loves pools, but not sand). Car went well - a packed station wagon returned 6.0 l/100km for the trip!

Phoebe's sleeping has really improved to the point where I'd call it 'normal' from what I hear other parents' experiences are - most nights sleeping fine from 6 or 7 through to 6-ish in the morning. Some times she wakes for a drink, but settles back quickly. We still envy the parents who tell us "wow, well our baby slept through from two weeks!". So happy it was that easy for them, but, well, life had something different planned for us.

Now she's a competent climber, runner, and parrot. Her talking is also getting more understandable, with her recent favourite word being "More!". This is still cute since it's usually more food - and remember how long she wasn't interested in that for? What a change!

Easter was fun for her - both as the Easter Bunny at home, and then for her first trip to the Easter Show, accompanied by the grandparents. (Grandpa took these photos).

We've recently weaned Phoebe too - quite late by modern Western standards it seems.