Monday, August 16, 2010

Happy Monday Morning To Y'all!

Ahhhh yes, rise and shine at 6 AM awoken by the chatter of wattle birds. Then the magpie start up, the blackbirds sing, and the parrots show up.

Happy, contented sigh...

KE-RASH! BOOM! BANG!

Suddenly the sound of chainsaws rip through the birdsong! The smell of burnt petrol and diesel fumes permeate the trees.

Needless to say, the birds disappear.

Why?






Cus at 730 AM this Monday morning, this monstrosity and it's obligatory noise and crew showed up behind the house:
happy monday



Must.

Flee.

To.

The.

Hills!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Baby Australian Possum!

And they are SOOOOO CUTE!

Please keep in mind they are in no way related to North American 'possums. Jus' saying'.

A friend of ours volunteers at the local fauna rescue centre and she routinely stops by with some baby critters she nurses back to help before they are released.

This little bugga was rescued from the pouch of it's dead mommy --roadkill, but the person stopped to check on the possum and found babies alive in the pouch and called the right folks.

Isn't s/he just the cutest?
baby Australian possum 2



There is a strict feeding schedule for the little bloke. Here's a vid of Cathy feeding the little fella.




And all together now: Awwwwwwwww, so cute!
baby Australian possum



And just in case you need some more cuteness today...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

In progress

This is part of a work in progress. I won't be doing anything on it today as I am still sick. Only 2nd day and I'm already sick and tired of being sick and tired!

I feel like I've been shot at and missed, but shit at and hit. Yes, I feel like crap. I am also finding the taste of strepsils (anti-bacterial throat lozenge) to get worse and worse. And pure echinacea extract? Nasty stuff!

Anyways, enough about me. Here's the work in progress.
in progress

Monday, August 09, 2010

Mother Earth's Curves

This is a render for ScienceBloke(z(2^8)+z(2^5))/z. Hope he likes it and it's nice to see him blogging again after his trip.

I still can't believe he'd never seen the ocean...

I think this render is quite "fetching", don't you?





And the large size...
horizon



Did anyone get the joke?

Or is no one tuned into the same frequency or amplitude as meself?

Please note: there are now four (4) (quattro) (네) (vier) (quatre) (四) (chetiri) (أربعة) (tessera) (dörd) (nne) (cara) jokes or bad puns in this post. Can you find them all?

Friday, August 06, 2010

Some things just...

... look better with critters!





Just click to embiggen, or have a squizz at the full size flickr one:
NPdragon01

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Almond Trees are BLOOMING!

And that means that our frigidly cold winter HAS to be coming to an end soon. I mean, DANG, but I am so tired of wearing pants.

Sigh.

Naturally when I saw the almond tree that's next to the pool blooming today, I just had to get the camera. The reason I grabbed the camera was to take some pictures for you. Of the almond blossoms, of course.

Here you are, and you're quite welcome.

almond blossoms 01


almond blossoms 02


almond blossoms 03


almond blossoms 04




The cat was clearly not amused...
The Cat is Not Amused
...at having a camera shoved in his face.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Playing with water in 3D *updated*

You can do a surprising amount of stuff with just the Terragen basic program. I was playing around with water settings this morning and was very pleased with what I came up with.

I'll be adding some critters to this with DAZ next.

Click to embiggen the image. It's scaled to fit a widescreen monitor if anyone wants to use it, no worries.








Obviously, it's hard to see the edge of the water cus the shore foam blends into the snow. So I then lifted the snow to higher elevations only --and made it thicker. You can really see the water now!





However, there is a HUGE scale problem! The water definitely does not match the scale of the mountains. Since I wanted to keep the water the way it is, I decided to do a eroding and excavating! I also thickened the snow again and brought it down below the water depth.

Presto! We now have a bunch of icebergs and the scale now matches the water.







Pretty cool, huh?

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

T'was a Dark and Stormy Day?

Suddenly, a shot rang out!

A maid screamed!

A door slammed!

Snoopy smiled whilst perched atop his doghouse with his trusty typewriter.

Charles Schulz cringed.

His ghost snickered.

And since most of you have absolutely no idea what I'm writing about... I shall now show you.

When you look upwards at a sky that appears thusly:
high winds aloft


and your first thought is "oh, so pretty" then you probably don't know this means to the non-city dwellin' folk, "Crap! Storm comin'!"

It wasn't long till the sun was blotted out by the rapidly approaching front...
sun through clouds



This winter storm caused lots of flooding around Adelaide, various roofs were not-roofs, and a tornado hit one of the outlying communities.

We don't get tornadoes down here in South Oz. My feeling is that it was a water spout that not only made landfall but continued on for a long time. Just my opinion, of course.

************************************************************************

Anyone remember Highlander?

struttin
I am the one!
The only one!
I am the God of kingdom come!
Now gimme the prize!
Just gimme the prize!


And now, just...
gimme da camera
Gimme the camera!



Do you remember when I was writing about yellow-tailed black cockatoos a few posts ago? I've got some pics of the Belair flock!

Yes indeedy, this'll prove that I've seen them!
yellow tailed black cockatoos01
I'm sure you can all tell that these aren't crows. Look at their wingtips and the head morphology. Yep, these are cockies alright. Trust me when I say (write) that they have a yellow tail and yellow wingtips.

Here's a much better picture of them.

This

pic

will

astound

you

with

it's

brilliance,

clarity,

and

whatever

other

crappy

adjective

I

care

to

use.



Are your seatbelts fastened?

Are your tray-tables in an upright, locked position?

Have you grabbed the flight attendants butt (male, female, doesn't matter)?

Check this pic out of a flock a yellow-tailed black cockatoos!




Ready?




yellow tailed black cockatoos blurry


Proof! Word, baby!