Russell Wolf is talking on the radio at the moment about caning of school students. He spoke of his own experience of being caned not that many years ago and how he ran in panic from the headmaster’s office on the second occasion. Good on you Rusty, I am in full support.

What struck me (ha ha) is that he had the Director of the Independent Schools Association of WA on-air and she said it is still legal to use the cane in schools in WA even now, that there are still two independent schools that use it, but she refused to name them! She also didn’t know whether any school child has been caned recently.

What a cop out. Not my responsibility. I vass only following orders, mein Fuhrer.

Then Russell read out listener SMS comments. Most were sympathetic but several, obviously from blokes, were “Get over it” — you must be a wuss, what’s wrong with you, a bit of cane never hurt anyone, a leather belt hurts more, you got off lightly.

I got the cane at high school too, didn’t I, Dr Norm Hoffman? I can’t remember specifically why, something about poor homework. Heinous crime!  I don’t say it affected me, but the fact that I remember every detail of the day, time, place, class, and you, Dr Norm Hoffman, doing it, must mean something. You rose very high in Education and academic life, but you lashed me with a cane for poor homework. I hope you’re enjoying your retirement. I have a photo of you in 2007. Watch this space.

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I have spent all afternoon working on a slide show of the Venice images I mentioned. Selecting a theme, arranging the image order, selecting music, extracting CD tracks as mp3s, editing the music to ensure it fits and has no gaps …

Wow. WOW! The result knocks my socks off. I sat there spell bound, even though I’ve seen all the individual images. I can’t claim all the credit: Antonio Vivaldi plays a part, as do the software writers who make the slide show software. But this has turned out to be something special, one of my best ever efforts. It’s burning a BluRay at the moment. There will not be a Standard Def DVD – it requires hi-def.

This is the first pass. I’ve done a simple opening title but more can be done yet, and closing captions, so another day’s work yet. Also, this is just the still images. I’ve also got high def video I can put into the same show. More to come.

Why do I feel so cold? I usually am not bothered by winter, and even now I’m still wearing my shorts, but this winter seems unusually cold. It’s only June, too – July and August still to come. Wiwin, you would not like this, believe me.

A few days ago I was talking about using the RAW files from a camera to get better images. There’s another way, too, HDR. It stands for High Dynamic Range. It’s the technique of taking at least three successive shots, one on normal (average) exposure, one under exposed and one over exposed.

The three shots are aligned in software and the computer adjusts the processing to lift the dark parts and pull back the too bright parts to give a better exposure balance, ie the three shots are combined into one.

When done well, the results can be superb. Here’s a good example: not my photo!

It can look a bit artificial, but I think that one is OK.

I hadn’t realised until a few days ago, but my camera can do it in camera! It’s a menu item, but here’s an example:

Here the difference is subtle, but see how the sky is more natural and the deep shadow is lifted? Nice. Now that I know about it, I’ll use it more, I think.

Two problems though: it takes time – you have to wait about 15 seconds for the camera to do its processing before it’s ready for the next shot; and you can only do it in jpeg mode, no RAW capture. That means you have to trust the camera to do it right, because you haven’t got a RAW file for later. Anyway …

It  actually used to be done in film days too! When you had a slide, particularly slide film, that was too contrasty, if you were really keen you could re-photograph the slide using a slide copier with b/w negative film. You developed the neg film to a low density then sandwiched the slide with the neg in perfect register to get a lower contrast print.

You can imagine the skill and time and effort this took! But sometimes, it was the only way to salvage a really important slide. Hallelujah for digital. Now it takes seconds, with better results.

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Speaking of RAW, I spent several hours last night going through all my Venice shots from 2008. Out of about 300, I’ve selected and processed about 57 for use in a slide show. You should see me in action! Crop, boost contrast, sharpen, change gamma, boost saturation, rotate, perspective correct, lift brightness, pick out a small part to use, noise reduce …

Voila –

In each case, original on left, processed on right. Hard to see in these small images, but the second last pair – crop vertical shot out of horizontal shot – picture from no picture. Still need to rotate it a little more, actually, and some I need to crop even harder but …

As I said, I got 57 keepers, through all  those processes, out of nearly 300. The more I did, the faster I got. My fingers were flying. Bit of a buzz, actually. There’s that word again.

My point is, I worked on the jpegs. I’ve still got the RAWs in their unchanged form as well. I never had to worry about making a mistake and over-writing the original, because the RAW files are still there in a separate folder. Hmmm, better do another backup, though.

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Item on the ABC News site this morning: Australia’s big four banks are among the most profitable in the world. Normally, I would be pretty cynical about news like that, but it comes only days after Moodys downgraded the credit ratings of 15 of the world’s top banks very heavily, some to near junk bond status.

Alongside that, I don’t see bank profit as such a great thing, but Australia is yet again managing its way past all the world financial turmoil.

Another quote from yesterday – Australia is virtually unaffected by the current world financial storm. That makes three in a row – the Asian financial meltdown in the mid 1990s; the “Tech Wreck” or dotcom disaster of 99/2000; and the GFC of 2008. And now this world financial disaster makes it four.

As they say, to avoid one could be considered luck, to avoid two could be considered arsey, to avoid three, we must be doing something right and to avoid the fourth, current crisis, maybe we know what we’re doing. Yet Mr Juan Manuel Barroso, President of the European Bank or whatever he is, got mad and said, “We didn’t come here to be lectured on how to manage our financial affairs.”  OK, mate, you just go on doing what you’re doing.

There’s going to be a war in Europe, I say. People are scared and they don’t like being told to take the medicine by Germany and France, or Britain, for that matter. It’s just waiting for the spark. Syria shoots down a Turkish jet. Turkey says it is going to retaliate. Saudi Arabia is bankrolling the Syrian opposition fighters. Iran is building nuclear weapons and ICBMs. 

Frightening. If you want to do something, do it now.

As I said, let’s not miss a day. Might get hit by an asteroid!

I made a donation to BlogBooker yesterday http://www.blogbooker.com/blogger.php This is a website that makes it possible to translate your blog (this site) into a PDF document, both for archiving/backup reasons but also because one day, our descendants will be able to read it if they want to. (Thanks Ian.)

The “donation” is so that the hi res images from the blog go through to the PDF document. It’s only E10 (10 Euros – I tried to find the symbol in Character Map, but it’s not there in this font – that’s shocking) = $13.50.

When you donate, the site asks if you want to list your blog. I left the field empty. It all went through and I thought that was that.

I was surprised next day to get a personally addressed email from them, just signed BlogBooker, asking if I want to list my blog. I replied explaining that, no, at the moment it’s a bit personal, full of grief about my dog etc etc. Those who know about it know where to find it, etc. Maybe later.

I got a very nice reply, “Sorry to hear about your dog, let us know if you decide later and we’ll list your blog etc etc.” Well, that was a surprise. Germany, I think.

Not to miss a day —  did you know we had a near miss?

It only came to light yesterday but an asteroid passed us by a day or two ago. The thing is, it was 1Km in diameter. If it had hit Earth, it would have been a mass extinction event, as they call it. That size is enough to wipe us out.  In fact, the nearest it came was 14x the Earth – Moon distance. That’s a good miss, no problem.

What makes me mention it is that it was only picked up on 10 June on its way in because it was a dark-material asteroid, not very bright and it didn’t show up in telescopes.

Ten days’ warning! If it had hit us, bye bye.

The point is: do it now. If you want to do something, go somewhere, connect with someone, do it now. There may be no tomorrow. Where do you think all those craters on moons and planets and this planet came from? Hits.

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That’s why, when I found another good price for that Sigma 120-400mm APO lens I missed last week, I put in a new order today. Different company, still Aussie based but imported stock.

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I went further with that Dick Smith complaint I wrote about yesterday. I copied it in edited form to the official Dick Smith web site.  After an age of filling in all my details (address, phone number, email address etc etc) I clicked SUBMIT (great word, that – submission).

Nothing happened, except the whirling circle. It went on and on, one minute, two minutes — eventually I simply switched away to another app, not cancelling, just letting it do its thing.

I came back 5 mins later to find my complaint in the text box garbled, corrupted. Did it go through? I have no idea.  Great Aussie service. Crap. I buy on-line now.

Today, 21 June, is the winter equinox, the shortest day of the year. Maybe tomorrow, but anyway.

I did a series of photos spaced exactly 2 mins apart from 4.46 to 5.46pm, 69 shots. No effort on my part – camera on tripod, intervalometer set for 2 mins, GO. The result is above.

I think this has been a complete waste of my time. Blogger is so bug ridden that I can see already there are major faults.

Yes, it is a disaster. This Google Blogger is so full of bugs that every post is a battle. The video above is 6.08MB in size. That’s 48.64Mbits. I have a roughly, 4Mb/s connection, so it should have uploaded in 12 seconds, yet it took nearly 10 minutes and it’s full of errors. Nearly every image I post takes 3, 4, 5 upload tries to get an undamaged example to post. It takes ages.

To keep uploading this is going to take me hours and will be a waste of time.  For comparison, I downloaded a 10.8MB video file from another source this morning and it took roughly 11.9secs! I was amazed and pleased.

So much for that experiment. It’s a bit interesting anyway.

Interesting day today.

As I drove to Karrinyup, I was stopped at the lights behind one of these:

That’s the rear view I saw. It oozes power and money. It’s much bigger than your piddly little CLKs.

On the seat beside me, I had two letters I’d just received: one from Kidney Health and the other from World Vision.

I was sorely tempted to get out and knock on the window of that Merc in front of me and ask if they’d take these letters and donate.  The price of that car, new, is $242,780.  Even a 4yo used one costs more than $150,000.

That kind of money given to World Vision would keep a hundred villages out of poverty for a decade, I would guess. Yet here, it’s a plaything, a status symbol, an executive’s reward, the payoff for a share deal or something. 

I’m sure they donate, but on the table beside me I’ve got a newspaper cutting: Too few participate in philanthropy.  Resource-rich West Australians “are not spreading [their] effort enough.” The average annual donation in WA is $303, 40% lower than the national average.

No point me saying any more.

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As I drove, I was having a little trouble holding the steering wheel. My right hand has become cracked and painful with little cuts. They’re not injuries, they are just severe dry skin opening up. As I went on and into the mall, pushing a trolley, I found it’s even oozing a little (there’s that word again). Yet it’s only the right hand. Why?

No smutty jokes please. I realised this morning that it’s the hand I’ve been using to rub Aveeno Skin Lotion into my legs, which are doing the same. The lotion seems to have only minimal effect in easing the itching, yet my hand is suffering. I wonder if the lotion is causing some of the problem with my legs!

I’ve switched to Australian Lanolin and Lemon Tea Tree creams instead. At $1.98 per tube, versus $8.95 or so for the Aveeno …

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Coincidences again. I was in BigW and heard an ad on the store radio: “Are you not tall enough to reach some of your cupboards …” or something.

At that very instant, an amazingly tall African woman strode past me. She must have been well over 2m tall and played basketball for the Nigerian Globetrotters, I’m sure. Coincidence again!

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Oh, you stupid Aussie shopkeepers. I was in Dick Smith and asking about Samsung Galaxy tablets because I’d just seen the Galaxy Note and it sparked an interest.

Yes, we stock them said the girl, and led me to a locked glass cabinet. There it was in a box, but she made no move to show me. Er, can I look? I said. She unlocked the cabinet, got the box out, opened it with some difficulty and let me look inside for about 1 second then closed it again. Er, am I allowed to get a better look? No, we aren’t supposed to open the box because once we do, we can’t sell it as new.

OK, girl, you’ve lost that sale! I didn’t say it, but that was that. I wandered off, still curious and another guy came over, very cursorily said, need some help? I said, er, I was wanting to look a the Galaxy Note but it seems I can’t. Sorry sir, and he walked off!!

Then, still wanting to look around (this is the new Karrinyup Dick Smith – first time for me) I started looking at a bargain box marked From $2.  It had lots of Verbatim DVD-R/DL in boxes of 4. Wow, are these $2 each? I started to load up.

But not one of them had a price marked. What does from $2 mean? I looked around for help but no employees were to be seen, except that useless guy and he was busy. Just then a loud beep alarm went off in the shop. I stood there for a minute or two, trying to get help, getting frustrated by this annoying alarm, but it went on and on. No-one was cancelling it.

After a while I threw the disc box down and walked out. Yet another no-sale. Probably won’t go back either. I will look on-line instead. It’s hopeless.

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Poor Minnie. As I was going out this morning I thought, uh oh, did you fart, Minnie? She usually never does, it’s not a problem, but I could smell it.

An hour ago I could still smell it and went looking. Oh dear, she has pooed in the spare bedroom and passage. No problem, it’s bare concrete, easily cleaned up.

Dogs NEVER poo in their own nest. It hasn’t happened since she was a puppy. But now I realise —-  last night in that cold, wet, winter evening, about 9:30pm she wanted to go out. I tried to get her to go out the front door if she must, but no way. I got so mad I shouted at her. Eventually she turned and went back to her bed inside.

After I went to bed at 10pm or so, I heard her moving around in the passage and called to her to join me in the bedroom, but as always, she wouldn’t. Now I know why she wanted to go outside and why she was moving in the passage. She couldn’t hold on any longer.

Holy Dawg, I don’t deserve this dog. I am mortified. Serve me right.

 Apple (the computer company) has been fined more than $2.5 million for making misleading claims about 4G compatibility of the iPad 4 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-21/apple-fined-over-ipad-4g-claim/4083874

They knew it was wrong: the iPad 4G function/connection does not and cannot work in Australia, but they went ahead and publicised it anyway. They knew they were doing wrong, they just didn’t care.

They also get their iPad, iPhones and other Apple products made at Foxconn in Shenzen, China, where working conditions are so horrible (eg employees must stand, are not allowed to sit on stools while working) that workers are committing suicide from the stress.

I have one Apple product (iPod Touch, bought 2 years ago) but I refuse to buy any other Apple product.

In the same item, internet firm (ISP) TPG Australia has also been fined $2 million for continuing, over a long period, to push a low priced deal which they could not provide to lure customers. Despite legal warnings, they knowingly continued to make false advertising claims, misleading customers into signing up for more expensive plans.

So we’ve reached this stage: companies will defy the law if they think they can get away with it.

A certain big newspaper proprietor has allegedly been caught out allegedly perjuring himself in the Leveson Inquiry in London. On oath, he has allegedly made claims about phone calls to the British PM of the time which the PM’s office has denied took place and can prove it. It has also been shown that this ex Aussie pushed Tony Blair to take a stronger role along with George W. Bush in the Iraq war. (The Guardian – I urge you to support this paper.)

A newspaper owner, pressing for greater war efforts! Men were laying down their lives in Iraq, but the ex Aussie wanted more aggression! More men to die, because he thought so. Unelected, not in any government, not even a Brit, but inserting himself into British political decision making!

He has yesterday, made a bid to gain even greater control of media in Australia. Having 70% of newspapers was not enough! He’ll win, too. And Gina Rinehart is not buying into Fairfax just to make money – she is doing it so that the papers will push her anti-government, anti-resource tax, anti-carbon dioxide emission tax views. She’ll win too. That amount of wealth, $30 billion is unstoppable. This is frightening.

This is exactly the same shot, taken at the same instant, but this time I used the RAW file from the camera and made adjustments in Photoshop. It looks a little flat in this form, actually, but you get the point. RAW is good. RAW saves information for later fixing. Use it if your camera is capable of it. If you care about good photos for the future.

See that bare tree in front of the shed, btw? In about 7 weeks’ time, it will be a mass of white. It’s an almond tree and it bursts into flower about a week into August every year. Very nice. I’ll post a comparison photo, and if possible (weather permitting), do a time-lapse movie of it.

It will also be humming with bees, come for the flowers. I felt very bad about a news item yesterday. You may know that bees are dying out all over the world from the Varroa virus – extremely dangerous because we depend on bees for pollination.

Except in Australia. This country, so far, is free of the virus. Phew. We may be the last island with disease free bees and that has huge implications for the future.

But someone in Newcastle in NSW got into a farm and sprayed insecticide over about 150 beehives, killing millions of bees. It caused about $150,000 worth of loss, but more importantly, it wiped out an entire colony of bees. The beekeeper said it will take him at least two years to recover, and the bees used to move to Mildura during the almond blossom season in August. They can’t do that now, so we don’t know what the effect will bee (sic).

Sick is right. What kind of person would do this? It’s not the first time. Someone in Qld has been doing something similar to vege crops, spraying entire crops with pesticide or some poison. These aren’t normal humans; they’re not animals either, they are sub-human.

This madman must be found and stopped. They don’t know who did it yet, but I think he should be put into a room of bees and left to his fate. This is almost worse than murder.

Minnie slept inside last night and even now (11:30am) is inside in the warm. Quite unusual.

What a cold, rotten winter afternoon. It seems colder and wetter and harsher than I remember in previous winters.

Minnie has been inside all afternoon since the thunder at about 1pm. She seems happy, as shown in the shot above, dozing, snoring, noticing every move I make, but happy. I gave her the bone she expects at 5pm and this time, I let her eat it inside (very unusual) without moving. She chewed it all up and seemed happy. I gave her a small meatball as well.

But 20 minutes ago, just when I was thinking of providing her 6.30pm dinner, while the wind is blowing and the rain is drizzling and the cold is clamping, she went to the door and wanted to go out. Maybe she wanted a poo, but she hasn’t come back. I saw her poo earlier. It’s better, of course, if she eats less, just like me!

I tried to keep her in, but she wants to be outside, no matter how cold, no matter how bleak. I give her her wish, but it hurts me. She hasn’t come back into this warm room. I hope she’s OK.

7:15pm – aah, not so bad. I went out of the room then came back and there she was, lying on the cold concrete outside the back door in the rain. I opened the door and she came in and accepted her dinner. I will try to keep her inside for the night, but she’ll almost certainly insist on going out again soon. She does it by going to the door, panting, grunting and looking back at me: “Let me out.” I can’t insist.

I read an American (he’s in Wisconsin) photography blog every day and the author put up a quite personal item a few days ago about houses, mortgages, credit and living in the USA. I found it fascinating and started to respond by email, then had second thoughts when I realised I wasn’t really talking about the same topics.

But I think it’s worth posting what I wrote:

I’m in Oz and many Australians use the term “the Lucky Country” here in a self-congratulatory way, but it was actually coined (by Donald Horne) as irony, meaning things just fell in our laps. It’s not all luck, but this dry, dessicated, mineral rich, harsh country treats us well, provided we treat it well. For most of us here, it is pretty easy to do well.

I’m 65 and retired now, and I have been since I took a voluntary redundancy payout from my job as an electronics technician at age 52. Yes, I have not had to work since late 1999, and I’ve lived well: it’s been easy. Why? Because I had a secure, fairly well paid job* (electronics technician*). I bought my first house in 1982 with a fairly small saved deposit, sold it after renovating it for three years and bought my present house later in 1986 in a sort of distressed sale but in a top area.  “Worst house in the best street.” Boy, it paid off.

I cleared my mortgage in 11 years by paying a bit more each month than I had to (ie by paying 26 fortnightly payments rather than 12 monthly ones), plus making extra payments very occasionally. I’ve seen its value increase x11 fold since 1986! 

When I was made redundant in 1999, I had zero debt, because I was always careful not to go into deep debt. My payout plus my savings saw me through to age 65 and now I get the Age Pension which will see me through to my grave. It’s not quite enough to live on with my beer tastes, but my father lived on it. It can be done. I have other money to supplement it, but the pension is good.

Australia is nowhere near as wealthy as America, as you know, but it’s easy to do OK here, especially now. I have some US friends of (a bit younger age) but they are not doing nearly as well, and I don’t quite understand why. I think it’s because they never got a solid qualification in some vocation, instead, working at a variety of less skilled jobs.

Especially at this time of massive global wealth disruption, Australia is cruising. We never had a recession in 2008/9. Our housing market didn’t crash. Unemployment is less than 6% and falling. We had GDP growth of about 3.5% last year and my state, Western Australia, is booming. Unemployment is less than 3.5%, growth is about 6% and employers are in despair at being unable to get workers – in fact labour shortages are stopping our growth.

Yes, it’s not all good: cost of living is high, accommodation is scarce, youth crime is bad, drugs are just as much a problem as anywhere else, etc etc. But generally, we are doing OK.

Sorry to crow, but we have universal top quality free health care (by an income levy, of course), excellent pharmaceutical benefits (my prescriptions cost $5.80 each), and no-one need fear falling ill or being out of work for a prolonged period. The dole doesn’t stop (provided you play by the rules, keep looking for work and take jobs when they’re offered.) If you’re sick or disabled, you’ll be OK. You will get the care you need. We generally don’t have beggars on the streets, unlike America.

We have reasonable tax rates (tax-free threshold is $18,200, then 19% for each dollar over that to $37,000 etc etc.) The average wage is about $1400 pw (approx. $70,000pa). The housing loan interest rate is 6.8% and falling. Banks have money to lend and there’s no such thing as, what’s it called, “lock up and leave”? — mailing the keys back to the bank and losing your equity if you can’t keep your payments up? If you have to sell up, which can happen, you don’t lose your equity.

We don’t allow guns, nor do we worship them. You can own guns, but you have to jump through hoops and prove to the police that you have a good reason to own one. No-one can carry a gun except the police and armoured car guards.  We don’t need bank guards.

We also don’t kill people. We banned capital punishment decades ago and we don’t kill people just because we don’t like them or their government, or because we want revenge.

We don’t attack other countries. We don’t feel we have the right to invade other countries.  Yes, we’re in Afghanistan and were in Iraq and Vietnam and Korea with the US, but that’s because we were supporting America. Other countries don’t hate Australia as they do America, except for our association with America.

And shock, horror, voting is compulsory in Australia. You don’t have to actually vote – no-one sees whether you do or not, but you do have to attend the polling booth and be counted off or cop a $20 fine, that’s all. It’s not hard.

*All I had to do was get  a good qualification (by putting in the hours at tech college and getting my Diploma)  when I was young, and do my job well. I was lucky to be bright and have generally good health, but the rest fell into place. A few years ago I could call myself a millionaire in assets and savings (in fact, I even have a share of a luxury villa in Bali), but I’m just an ordinary tech! It wasn’t that hard.

So with all America’s wealth, all America’s population, all America’s skills, talent, resources, why is life so tough in America for so many people? Australia is not as wealthy, but the wealth we have is spread so much more evenly. Yes, there are poor people here, but nowhere near as dirt poor as in the USA, that hugely wealthy country. I don’t understand America.