Wednesday March 15, 2006 10:10 am Ballina NSW

A. Morning Musings

10:10 am Yesterday we had a full day at Brisbane (Lone Pine Sanctuary) and Surfer's Paradise. The wombats were active at Lone Pine (a first for us) and the koalas were great. We never get tired of watching them. I was surprised to see that they also had a morning feed for the Rainbow Lorikeets. Phyllis noticed a couple of Scaly-backed Lorikeets among the Rainbows. She has a sharp eye.

We stopped at Surfer's Paradise on the way back. We noticed a small shy bird among the trees beside the beach and I managed, after some difficulty, to get a photo of it (or at least the part of the tree where we thought it was). This morning I looked at the photo. At first I couldn't see the bird for the trees, but as I zoomed in I could make it out. At full magnification we were able to make a positive identification of a Brown Honeyeater. This is number #119 on our Australian lifer list.

Today is a "recovery" day as we take it easy. Phyllis and I had an early cuppaccino at the Shelly Beach cafe overlooking the ocean. A great way to begin the day.

I have had a first serious look at the pictures I took yesterday and was disappointed at some of the lorikeet images - the camera was focussing on the background rather than the birds. I can think of two different ways to overcome this. One: focus on something else that is the same distance away by holding the shutter down half-way and then moving the camera to take the photo of the birds, or two: learn to use a manual focus.

My Photoshop Elements software displayed a message suggesting that it was time to backup my files. Now to see if I can do this as an add-on to my previous backup. 10:30 am

Chores: pay rent

Technology: delete unwanted images, back up photos

Literature: Continue reading "The Tattooed Girl".

C. Actual

10:30 am Now to begin backing up my images using Photoshop Elements. Done. This took an additional 4 disks. A check of these 4 disks indicated that it contained all of the images that had been modified or edited (i.e a caption or tag added) as well as all the images taken since the first backup on March 2. 11:40 am

4:00 PM Read chapter 5 of "The President of Good & Evil".

D. Reflection