The above is the result of nearly two days’ work! What an effort it takes to cut, edit, add music, render to web video (.mp4, several times allowing for mistakes), wait an hour for it to upload, learn how to embed it here and finally see the result. This is too hard. All this for 56 seconds worth.

Anyway, it’s in Full HD so if you want to see that, click on the HD symbol bottom right. Cheers.

BTW: this was shot on a stills camera, the Sony RX10. Superb HD video. Love it. AND — it was edited in Proshow Producer, a slide show program, not a dedicated video editing program. Another stills oriented application being used for video. How things are changing.

XK Jag

I continue to be amazed at how words turn up. Yesterday I was talking to someone who used to work and live in China. We were talking about their heavy drinking and he mentioned their favourite drink called baijiu, like rice vodka.

From The Guardian this morning: “Sorghum from these [NSW] plains is in high demand in China. It’s used to produce a popular traditional white liquor called baijiu.”

I’ve never heard this word before, yet it turns up twice in two days.

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I also learnt that if you want to change the colour of a car, there’s no need to get it repainted, just get it “wrapped”. It’s a PVC based film that’s applied over the original paint and as long as the paint’s in good condition, it’s as good as a respray. It’s mainly used for advertising and signwriting on cars, vans and buses but it’s also good for a full “paint” job, and cheaper.

But when I looked it up this morning, I found that it only lasts 3-5 years. If you leave it longer, it’s hard to get off and will pull the original paint with it. It also looks as if the range of colours is limited.

I’m interested because if I buy a Mercedes, I don’t want a silver one, which most of them are. I’d like to be able to change the colour. However, I don’t think this would be the way after all.

The person who told me this has a 4-5 year old second hand Jaguar XK in his garage. See above.

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He has a serious auto-immune disease which means he’s a permanent semi-invalid and he’s decided to use his remaining time (he’s 54) and money to do what he wants. He wanted a dream car? He bought it. Yeaaaahhh.

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This vile government continues its attack on Bill Shorten and unions, while completely ignoring that its own people and Liberal Party branch organisations have consorted with known Mafia criminals in Australia! They have accepted donations from these people and a former Immigration minister in the Howard government approved a visa for a known Mafia figure.

These Mafia tentacles even extend to Perth Liberal circles. What utter hypocrisy for Liberal/Conservative voters to be criticising the ALP.

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A news report a few days ago reported the tragic deaths of some NZ children due to carbon monoxide poisoning from a car exhaust. I was struck by the names:  Pio Scarlet Jetejura Raukete;  Teuruaa Junior George;  and Telyzshaun Gordon Ricardo Nelder Kruz George.

Wow. It makes Charles Philip Arthur George (Windsor — Prince Charles) seem tame by comparison.

No, not literally. But I feel as if I was hit by a succession of blows from lunchtime on.

• I received an email from a “friend” which was a stupid American redneck “joke”, but with Bill Shorten’s name inserted in a highly derogatory way. I guess after all this time he still hasn’t realised that I’m a committed Labor person. I don’t think he’s up to the job of lecturing me about stupid. I was upset. I’ve drafted a reply, but … if I send it, relations will be strained. Damn. I’m upset. I’ve never sent anything comparable to him.
• I went to MacDonalds for lunch (and left without buying because my favourite wrap is discontinued), and was very slowly easing out of the parking area onto the side street. One car went slowly past me and stopped, so I eased forward. The traffic slowly moved so I went forward at well below walking pace. Next thing – BLAAAARRRRRRRP! A woman driver on my right who had just arrived didn’t think I should be allowed out so she leant on her horn. I could see it was a woman. Bloody hell!!!
• I went on to Hungry Jacks and turned into the parking lane in front of all the fast food shops. There was a big delivery truck parked in the lane blocking cars coming toward me. I was slowly easing past them but another woman driver (yes) in a 4WD decided she would pull out and come past the truck, leaving me with nowhere to go. I waited for her to reverse but she wasn’t going to, coming towards me on my side of the road, forcing me to reverse, which was difficult as there was a queue of cars behind me. I had no choice, she was going through and too bad about me. Bloody hell!!!

All these in quick succession left me feeling shell shocked. Bloody inconsiderate damned people.

Hmmm, my quite expensive Skagen watch has stopped. I assume the battery has died, but it’s only just over a year old and batteries should last longer than that in my experience, so it’s a bit disappointing. However, I’ve been noticing condensation on the inside of the glass, which is definitely not good. I haven’t been wearing it on my 100m deep sea dives (;-) . The only thing is, I don’t take it off when I wash my hands so it gets a little bit wet then. That shouldn’t bother a modern watch. I’m not sure how long the warranty is – I’d better check before opening it up.

Meanwhile, I’ll use one of my eight or so other watches. I have watches going back 30 years and many (all!) of them are quite nice. None of them was very expensive – this one at about $349 was my most extravagant. I like a nice watch and I’m always on the lookout.

PS: huh, it failed around 5pm yesterday, but now it’s 08:15am and it’s started working again. I hope it’s not an intermittent fault. They’re the hardest to nail.

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The car saga continues. I’m quite specific about what I want now. First choice a CL500, this one –

Second choice an SL500:

Third choice a CLK500 or CLK350:

The top first choice, the blue CL500 is on the Gold Coast, 2003 model, $39K, 118,000Km, a 5.5L AMG with supercharger. Everything’s right about it, but I worry it’s been thrashed. Why? Supercharger on a high performance 5.5L V8! And 2003 is a bit old. Probably worrying about nothing.

The next choice, the SL500 is outstanding but it’s done 145,000Km and is priced at $48,880 which is way above what I want to pay. Really nice car, though. It’s a convertible, but a hard top so my security worries don’t apply.

Finally, I thought the CLK was going to be a good compromise, but I’ve gone off them. The styling doesn’t grab me the way the other two do.

To make a deal I’d have to go to either Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane and I’m not sure I’ve got the stamina to do it these days. Very tired all the time. Lots of daytime sleeping. Diabetes? My blood sugar is quite well controlled – avg. 10. Leukemia? How would I know? Could be. Obesity? Definitely could be, and I’m having some success in reducing my weight. I’ve dropped around 8Kg from a year ago, but to do it I’m practically starving myself and I can’t seem to get any lower. Damn! It’s a vicious circle – I need more exercise, but I’m too tired to exercise.

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My position on same sex marriage? I don’t really care, it’s none of my business what other people do. That’s the point: it’s their business, no-one else’s! So kids might be affected by having two parents of the same sex? Kids are adaptable, and the effects would be far worse if the hetero parents were the bogan neanderthals we see so often who don’t know how to raise kids anyway. I cringe at some of the abuse parents shout at their kids in shopping centres. Poor kids. No wonder they grow up with development problems, and they’ve been raised in a hetero household.

Herr Abetz says it’s the thin edge of the wedge and will lead to brothers marrying sisters and utter rubbish like that. Shut up, Herr Obersturmfuhrer Abetz. It’s none of your business!

Barnaby “Bugger off” Joyce says we’ll be looked down on by our Asian neighbours. Barney, they don’t care about a trivial thing like that! You think they take any notice of silly Australian news things like that? Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, we can take the high moral ground very easily when it comes to capital punishment and corruption. I don’t think we have anything to worry about in that regard. So Barnaby, shut the f..k up and bugger off. Mind your own business.

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When the ABC Q&A furore arose, I thought the ABC had just made a mistake by including that guy in the audience without knowing he was going to speak up and ask that question. It was a simple mistake, I thought, and they shouldn’t be crapped on.

But I realised that it wasn’t a simple mistake. The producers asked him to be in the audience and they supplied him with the question! It wasn’t spontaneous – the producers told the Muslim guy what to say and ask. That’s completely different and I think the ABC deserves a lot of the criticism it’s received. That was wrong.

But the government’s response has been way over the line. It’s obvious that they are taking the opportunity to try to damage the ABC, as they always do. It’s good to see the polling that shows that the ABC is held in high regard and the government are seen as in the wrong. Good.

It is so disheartening that the government attacks the ABC simply on the basis that they don’t like the criticism and aggressive interviewing they receive, but they utterly, completely ignore the vast output of the ABC on radio and TV that is top quality and adds so much to life in this country. Abbott and company neither know nor care about The Science Show and similar programs that are so rich in information. Yet all the budget cuts are damaging these small programs and the ABC’s news coverage. I condemn this awful government.

Look at that! It’s just a fraction (1/16th, part of a 4×4 folded A1 sized) print in a railways magazine I bought yesterday. It’s an enormously detailed map of London’s railways, including the Underground, and even showing obsolete decommissioned lines. Each of those single orange lines above is actually a pair of rails, so if the drawing were even bigger, the detail would be even more fantastic. Whoever did this drawing, it’s a masterpiece. I wish I could show more but the page is enormous. I love it.

Now I’ll be able to base my layout plan on real tracks, not just my imagination, or some magazine layout.

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time and I’ve seen so many examples of language lunacy lately that I think I need to speak up. There’s a list of things that are getting my goat (odd expression, isn’t it?). Here goes:

1. I listen to a lot of talkback radio and I’m driven mad (yeah, I’m round the twist) by people who can’t seem to help themselves saying, “Hi John (or George, or Fred…), how are you?” Everyone says “How are you?” For goodness sake, the announcer has said a hundred times already that he’s fine, but the next caller will still say, “How are you?” and the next, and the next.

Can’t people control what they say? Is it impossible for them to just say, “Hello Fred, in my opinion …” and stop wasting our time by requiring the announcer to tell us for the hundredth time that he’s well. Many times the callers won’t continue unless the announcer responds. They wait in silence until prompted to speak. Why must they wait? The announcer has already greeted them, they know they’re on-air, but they need to be prompted to continue. Crazy.

2. Need I say it? Iconic. It is the world’s fastest spreading cliche word. It’s a world wide epidemic. For goodness sake, an icon is a physical object. You can’t call an idea or concept iconic – they have no physical reality. You can’t say it’s “an iconic concept”. I even saw some video editing software called iconic.

It’s got so bad that i’ve started counting the number of instances of seeing ‘iconic” per day. I’ve even just read an article in an up market newspaper where iconic is used twice in the same paragraph. STOP!

3. Y’know, it’s pretty bad, y’know, where people, y’know, aren’t even y’know, aware that they’re saying, y’know, yknow?

This has also become a worldwide pestilence, but nowhere as bad as in Australia and nowhere as bad here as in sport. Listen to a sportsman speaking next time on the radio or TV and count the number of times he says “y’know”. It’s reached the stage where it’s no longer two separate words, or words run together, it’s now “yknow” with the y almost vestigial.

I listen a lot to the BBC in the early hours and even they are using these words, y’know and iconic now. It’s hopeless.

4. Phenomena. One phenomenon, two or more phenomena. Yet phenomena, the plural word, is used as the singular even by people I’d thought were good speakers. And politicians. You can’t say “This is a new phenomena.” I can’t and won’t, anyway. I know how to speak.

More to come.

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I watched the first episode of The Bletchley Girls on ABC1 last night. Actually, this is the third time through, but it’s a bit better than the average TV series these days. I’ve also just finished reading the novel Enigma, by Robert Harris. It’s based on the same place, Bletchley Park, during WW2.

It reminded me that I watched the movie The Imitation Game a couple of weeks ago too. It’s based on the book of the same name (by a Cambridge academic whose name I’ve forgotten), the biography of Alan Turing.

If you want to see the movie, I strongly recommend that you see it first before reading the book. The movie is a Hollywood hyped up travesty of the book. It’s a joke. The book is hard going at times (well, most of the time, actually), but very, very rewarding, very well written and full of detail. I was never tempted to abandon it. The movie is a single TV episode by comparison.

Then last week I watched The Theory of Everything, the movie of Stephen Hawking’s life. It’s based on the book Travelling to Infinity by his former wife Jane Hawking.

Once again, although I agree the acting was terrific, the movie was a cartoon compared to the book. It’s not inaccurate but it glosses over 75% of the book’s contents. Not even close. If you want to read the book, see the movie first and gain so much more when you read the book.

Originally I had a picture of our wonderful PM in his almost naked mode, wearing his mini swimmers, but it ws so offensive that I couldn’t bear to look at it. This is better.

The Honourable Lord Sir Anthony Rabbott VD CV AC DC MGB MGTC VC and 43 bars (of Moonee Ponds) is currently totally out of step on at least three fronts.

1. He and his henchmen, his partners in crime, are spending at least $80m of our money on a royal commission into “union corruption”. This is nothing more than an attempt to generate terrible headlines for unions and the ALP.

Union corruption? There is not a week goes by without news of corruption, fraud, financial mismanagement, embezzlement, insider trading, theft – name anything you like – in Australian management and business. Business is notorious for corruption, heavy handed tactics, exploitation of workers, price fixing and collusion, once again, anything you can think of.

No need to take my word for it. Look at what’s been happening in Coles and Woolworths with their pressure on suppliers designed to force the weaker ones to knuckle under or go out of business. Look at the news with regard to the large company John Holland in Perth. Allegedly, they have simply stopped paying their subcontractors. It’s so bad that one of them committed suicide last week! This is one of the companies we are supposed to trust, to have the interests of the workers at heart. Oh yeah?

In today’s news, the CEO and the CFO of a large pharmaceutical company knowingly cooked the books to disguise the financial trouble their firm is in. The ACCC has prosecuted. Good on ’em.

So – union corruption Tony? How about a royal commission into big business, eh? Oh, we had one of those, the Costigan royal commission in the 1980s, and it backfired spectacularly. So let’s do it again, eh? HYPOCRITE.

2. Our esteemed “Climate change is crap” PM is way out of step with his own committees. The Climate Change Authority has just released a report saying that Australia has to set a goal to reduce our emissions by around 30% by 2025 http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jul/02/australia-must-cut-carbon-emissions-by-30-by-2025-says-climate-change-authority. The commission is headed by Bernie Fraser, former head of treasury and a hugely respected bloke.

In the same week the Australian Defence Force says climate change is second only to terrorism as a threat to Australia.

But our Tones doesn’t like low emission industries or alternative energy schemes, he likes COAL. Nice, dirty, smoky, environment destroying, open cut coal mines. CO2 belching coal fired power stations, yeah. Manly things like that, that’s what Tones understands. He doesn’t get this science stuff. Too hard. Idiot.

3. He’s way out of step with the public on same sex marriage and even opposed to his own sister on it. But he’s dug his heels in and he ain’t budging, even though he likes  to wear those gay-boy budgie smugglers to show off his manly equipment. What a tool.

I could go on. There’s no end to this idiot’s lunacy. If you vote Liberal-National, you must be a fool.

It’s happened again. I keep writing about the “scanning errors” I encounter, mainly in IGA stores. Well here it is:

Two items, $1 added to each item. Most probably nine out of ten people would not notice the error, so that’s more profit for the store. I’m sick of it. I can almost never get through an IGA without being overcharged. Note: overcharged. These scanning errors are never undercharges. Funny that.

I protested to the checkout boy and he refunded me $2 but there was no apology. What to do? I have the evidence so I might write a letter to the manager, but it won’t have any effect. They don’t care. Sick of this. Coles are the only supermarket that I can trust.

Wundowie Primary School, as it is now, and virtually as it was when I was there in 1955-59.

In composing my book Croft History Vol. 3, I want to include pictures of our years at Werribee 1955-59, but I could only find two, and they weren’t very good. I thought there were no pics from that time.

But yesterday I rediscovered my CD ROM slide show from about 2004 called You Must Remember This. It has a chapter on Werribee and there are all the images I’d forgotten about, around 12 – 15 of them. But where are the original big files? I really do fear they are lost due to disk crashes. In the Trigg house I probably could have found them, but I can’t now. All my stuff went into a big blender and was spat out here, mixed to a paste.

The frustrating thing is that the CD ROM slide show is deliberately designed to prevent the user from copying the images. You can’t print them, or even do a Print Screen. This is to stop people stealing your images. So I’m stymied.

I have a couple of hard drives that I’m not sure if I’ve extracted everything from, but they’re IDE interface, so I’ve got to rig up the adapter. Standby.

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I continue to be addicted to If You Are The One, the Chinese TV dating show. The girls or women are just stunning! If you watch regularly you get to know them and I think I’m in love with several of them. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to choose just one, I’d want several.

However, I continue to be amazed at their rejection of what seem to me to be good guys. So many of the men walk away with all 24 women rejecting them, probably 4 out of 5 . Some are rejected for obvious reasons, but some guys seem really good to me, and they are turfed out. I don’t understand it. Women! Crazy.

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The new townhouses have this view right under their balconies.

The new townhouses across the street are almost finished now, after about a year’s work. But this means they are laying brick paving and the noise of the brick cutting saw is driving me nuts! All day, every day for the last two weeks, a cut about every ten seconds, non-stop. I’m sick of it! But there’s nothing can be done – the bricks have to be laid. I just have to grin and bear it. It must be finished by now, surely?

I’m very upset by the architecture of these townhouses, though. They are downright ugly, a blight on the landscape. One has its double roller door garages facing out onto the main street next to the Dome cafe. It looks awful. What can I do? Nothing. Don’t look at them. Ugh.

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Canola field near York, WA © PJ Croft 2015

I took that shot in 2004 using the big Fuji 6x7SW film camera. I bought that camera second hand in Singapore and sold it on to a friend for what I paid for it – $1200. I don’t think he’s ever used it. He’s never shown or talked about any results. I saw one for sale second hand in a pro photo shop last week and they still want $800. Lovely camera, but you can do quality just as high with digital now. The days of film are over for me. I’ve still got my Contax G1 and G2 film cameras and I’ll sell them one day. I never use them, but I can adapt their Zeiss lenses to my digital bodies now. Ideal, well, sort of.

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I was looking in the second hand cabinet at this pro camera shop, Camera Electronic Services, and a guy asked if he could help. I said, “Gee, I wish you’d make the price labels visible, turn them right side up so I can see them.”

“Oh it’s hard”, he said, “We show people all the time and it’s too hard to keep the labels organised.”

What??!! It’s too much hard work to turn price labels uppermost so customers can see them? This is not the first time I’ve encountered that attitude in this shop and the effect is, if I can’t see the price, I move on. If I could see the prices, maybe I might buy something. This guy was an idiot. He loses potential sales by being too lazy. That’s the Aussie attitude on full display.

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I mentioned crooked horizons in supposedly pro images on the web. Here’s the latest:

The top one hits me in the eye. The lower one is corrected by 1.6 deg. It’s from the Microsoft Bing search page. How can this photo be released with such a glaring discrepancy? Another one:

Lovely shot, but why is it released as in the top image with such a tilted water horizon? I’ve rotated it in the second image. No photo of mine is ever published with a tilted horizon. And another one:

Another lovely shot, but the horizon is tilted in the top one. Amazing. I have more examples, but enough for now.

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Orders are coming in for my Croft Family History: The Bruce Rock Years book. Orders from cousins, of course. Apparently it has met with enthusiasm and they want their own copies. I’ve had seven copies printed so far, and I was still finding small errors, even in the last few! It is so hard to ensure that everything – spelling, dates, typos, duplicate photos etc. – is right. The last one printed is the reference copy now.

I’ve made progress on the next two books – Volume 3 of the Croft History, and My History: The Story of Me, Peter Croft.

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This is good fun. But I’m spending a lot of time looking at cars, Mercedes cars, on the web.

Contenders are, the CL500

CL class

For: absolute top luxury, top technology (ie self levelling air suspension, great styling). But against: very complex, very expensive to fix, a risk being more than ten years old.

Then there’s the CLK350 or CLK500, a more recent version of the CL class but more Kompact, hence CLK:

CLK class

Then the CLS350 or CLS500, a 4 door sedan version:

CLS class

Finally the SL350 or SL500, sports cars:

SL class. This one’s an SL500. It’s a convertible, shown here with top up.

SL500 top down.

All these are ten years old or more, and priced between $35,000 and $50,000. Mercedes owners seem to keep their cars in immaculate condition, as you can see.

I’m torn between wanting a 2 door coupe and the 4 door sedan. My mate says a 2 door coupe has long doors which are hard to open when up against other cars in a car park. Too hard for me to get in and out, he says. Aha, I say, I’ve got an ACROD sticker and I can park in the wide bays. Actually, I won’t unless I really need to. I think a coupe will be OK for me.

The CLK is a less mechanically complex version of the CL, and generally younger and cheaper. If I’m sensible, that’s what I should buy. But an SL – wow! I didn’t think I wanted a convertible due to security reasons with a soft top. But this is a hard top convertible, so that’s not a worry. Water leaks can be a problem, though, and they’re hard to fix, I believe. Plus the boot space is restricted due to the roof folding down into the boot. Hmmm.

All these models have advantages and disadvantages, making it very hard to decide, but one thing is clear to me – the styling! It’s timeless and magnificent. No other car excites me like these. The styling is all important to me. I don’t like the current styling trends of other cars. I’m considering others, like a VW Passat or a Volvo, but they just don’t have the prestige that a Merc has and they’re the same price. No, it’s got to be a Merc for me. This will be the last car I buy, I think. Gotta get it right. No rush.

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I’ve been writing this between 3.30am and now, 5am. My sleep is hopeless these days. Last night, Tuesday night, I slept right through to 0645am, a very rare thing for me. But tonight I slept from 1230am to 0230am but woke with terrible leg nerve itching and couldn’t get back to sleep, so here I am, wide awake. I sleep during the day to catch up, but that throws things out again. Problem.