Serious filtering catch up done: check.
Man, how do I even get so behind? I have no clue, but it happens. I've made as much of an attempt to catch up as I can now, so apologies if there was anything happening with you that I should have been aware of. Also apologies to everyone who has now received randomly late comments or none at all. I have been been in and out and extremely sporadic and random with them. I can't see me managing anything past that now, sorry!
I think I did enough of a catch-up of my own happenings the other day, and seriously, these days I can't seem to find much to note in here anyway, so it's all a bit silly! I have been enjoying working on my daily photos with my girls though, despite this afternoon's outing of doom wherein LF made it all a bit of a drag. He was probably hungry, not having had any food for a couple of hours, and kept pushing arguments with his sisters. *sigh* Kids! Who'd have 'em? ;-P
Still, managed some interesting photos in the end, and he's even in the one I chose for the day.
These 'koru' sculpture swirls seem to be bike rests, although it might just be a scupture? I liked them, anyway, and thought they needed a photo.
This is downtown Auckland, with the Skytower in the centre, as seen from up in the Waitakere Ranges. I would have used this for my 'from a distance' shot except that N1D used something very similar and I didn't want to use the same thing.
Maori sculpture (like a totem) outside the Arataki Centre. In Victorian times, they removed all the penises (it seriously should be penii, shouldn't it?) from this kind of thing, and it's only in recent years where they all have them again. My whole childhood featured penisless Maori carvings! I had no idea they'd been removed either, until they started putting them back, as it were.
This bird was sitting under the tree behind the koru sculpture above, and although we didn't get too close, it didn't seem intent on moving. I'm not sure what kind it is, but it's not a native, I don't think.
I love playing about with sun and framing and getting interesting shapes in pictures, so this was just one of several I took through flax in the direction of the setting sun - well, not quite setting, but generally heading for the horizon.
And this final one is looking up into a ponga fern from below. We have billions of these in NZ, and the koru is a Maori representation of the furled up parts of such ferns before they come open fully. If you've ever seen an Air NZ plane, the koru is on the tail. Maybe it will even be on our flag one day instead of the Southern Cross, although I am kind of partial to that too, as are many Kiwis.
Speaking of the Southern Cross, I did go on a class trip with LF to the Auckland Stardome the other week. We saw 'The Cardboard Rocket' in there, which took us on a journey through the solar system, and also got a look at that night's stars over Auckland, which featured several planets (Mars, Saturn and Venus at least) as well as pointing out many of our 'local' constellations and how they move through the night sky. Awesome! I love all that astrology and astronomy stuff.
The visit included a classroom session wherein the man taking us (who was proud to say he went to LF's primary school 'hundreds of years ago'!) told us all about the four rocky midgets, the four gas giants and the five dwarf planets in our solar system (Pluto is no longer classified as a proper planet!!! It's a dwarf and a 'plutoid' along with Haumea, Makemake and Eris (all named after Gods, but Hawaiian, Rapanui - Easter Island - and I'm not sure what for Eris {and yes, I do keep typing ERIC!!!} instead of the Roman Gods for the others). The last dwarf, btw, is called Seres and it is in the asteroid belt between Jupiter & Mars. Fascinating. Plus, the demo of having the kids line up as the planets (well 9 of them, as he included Pluto), and then getting them to stand a metre for every million kilometres (or similar) apart between the planets was cool. Of course he had to stop them going that far by Jupiter as they'd have been halfway across the carpark outside by Pluto!
Oh, also, posted fic yesterday: The third in my H50 Revelations series. Still working on the fourth.
Back to work tomorrow, but at least it's a short week - I'm off for another four-day weekend then.
And that's about all I have for now ! Revenge is on! Gotta go!
I think I did enough of a catch-up of my own happenings the other day, and seriously, these days I can't seem to find much to note in here anyway, so it's all a bit silly! I have been enjoying working on my daily photos with my girls though, despite this afternoon's outing of doom wherein LF made it all a bit of a drag. He was probably hungry, not having had any food for a couple of hours, and kept pushing arguments with his sisters. *sigh* Kids! Who'd have 'em? ;-P
Still, managed some interesting photos in the end, and he's even in the one I chose for the day.
These 'koru' sculpture swirls seem to be bike rests, although it might just be a scupture? I liked them, anyway, and thought they needed a photo.
This is downtown Auckland, with the Skytower in the centre, as seen from up in the Waitakere Ranges. I would have used this for my 'from a distance' shot except that N1D used something very similar and I didn't want to use the same thing.
Maori sculpture (like a totem) outside the Arataki Centre. In Victorian times, they removed all the penises (it seriously should be penii, shouldn't it?) from this kind of thing, and it's only in recent years where they all have them again. My whole childhood featured penisless Maori carvings! I had no idea they'd been removed either, until they started putting them back, as it were.
This bird was sitting under the tree behind the koru sculpture above, and although we didn't get too close, it didn't seem intent on moving. I'm not sure what kind it is, but it's not a native, I don't think.
I love playing about with sun and framing and getting interesting shapes in pictures, so this was just one of several I took through flax in the direction of the setting sun - well, not quite setting, but generally heading for the horizon.
And this final one is looking up into a ponga fern from below. We have billions of these in NZ, and the koru is a Maori representation of the furled up parts of such ferns before they come open fully. If you've ever seen an Air NZ plane, the koru is on the tail. Maybe it will even be on our flag one day instead of the Southern Cross, although I am kind of partial to that too, as are many Kiwis.
Speaking of the Southern Cross, I did go on a class trip with LF to the Auckland Stardome the other week. We saw 'The Cardboard Rocket' in there, which took us on a journey through the solar system, and also got a look at that night's stars over Auckland, which featured several planets (Mars, Saturn and Venus at least) as well as pointing out many of our 'local' constellations and how they move through the night sky. Awesome! I love all that astrology and astronomy stuff.
The visit included a classroom session wherein the man taking us (who was proud to say he went to LF's primary school 'hundreds of years ago'!) told us all about the four rocky midgets, the four gas giants and the five dwarf planets in our solar system (Pluto is no longer classified as a proper planet!!! It's a dwarf and a 'plutoid' along with Haumea, Makemake and Eris (all named after Gods, but Hawaiian, Rapanui - Easter Island - and I'm not sure what for Eris {and yes, I do keep typing ERIC!!!} instead of the Roman Gods for the others). The last dwarf, btw, is called Seres and it is in the asteroid belt between Jupiter & Mars. Fascinating. Plus, the demo of having the kids line up as the planets (well 9 of them, as he included Pluto), and then getting them to stand a metre for every million kilometres (or similar) apart between the planets was cool. Of course he had to stop them going that far by Jupiter as they'd have been halfway across the carpark outside by Pluto!
Oh, also, posted fic yesterday: The third in my H50 Revelations series. Still working on the fourth.
Back to work tomorrow, but at least it's a short week - I'm off for another four-day weekend then.
And that's about all I have for now ! Revenge is on! Gotta go!