Tasmania: Gluten Free goodness, Spelunking and the Targa

The trip to Tasmania has come with some good surprises. Last night we stumbled across a floating fish and chip store in Huonville that was a haven of gluten free goodness. They did almost everything gluten free, there was so much choice I ended up having 2 dinners. Ness ordered me a hamburger and crumbed fish AND crumbed calimari all gluten free. There was even a selection of gluten free desserts. The food was fantastic, some of best Fish and Chips ever. 

Today we set out for some spelunking at the Hastings caves. There wasn't much warning with regards to how cold it was on the brochure. To start with it was actually a cold day (as compared to to the hottest day on record we had yesterday), the 9 degrees in the cave though was a bit of a different story. I think something more than shorts and a tshirt would have been a good start. Fortunately Zach had plenty of clothes so he was rugged up (beenie and all) ready for spelunking. The caves were great and the Gorillapod came through with some great cave shots, not to mention the Pentax's performance (unfortunately I'm still on GPRS so the photos will have to wait until I come back).

On the way home, we managed to join a (non competition) stage of the Targa and weaved our way home between some 911s and WRXs. The stage went past our B&B so I took the Pentax out for some more shots. Fortunately there were still quite a few cars behind us so I got a couple of nice photos.

Tonight we were down to the last of the recommended restuarants in town, the local pub. I was pretty suprised at the meal (to start with it was HUGE) and it was a really good steak as well. They had some pretty impressive desserts as well, but I'm still holding out for another slice of GF Cheesecake from the Huon House Boat Fish and chips store.

It's been a really good weekend away and the Watson's B&B in Huonville has been outstanding, I would recommend it to anyone wanting to stay just outside Hobart.

I think I'm going to end the night with some Port and Cheesecake, while the others are playing cards.

A quick stop over in Hobart

I'm in Hobart today (actually more specifically just south in Huonville but for the purposes of the story Hobart is fine) and it's hot. Not hot by Brisbane standards but definitely hot. The other (slightly annoying) thing is the lack of internet coverage here, neither my 3 or Optus wireless cards get 3G reception so I'm relegated to GPRS, not the best standard for trying to traverse the internet let alone catch up on work things.

 

It’s Zach’s first plane trip and he did an fantastic job, only had a little complain mid flight and slept for the whole descent. So far (touch wood) he’s been very easy to travel with, aside from all the extra gear that has to come with us.

 

Still it's nice down here and will give me a change to try out the new camera a bit more on the weekend. I bought a GorillaPod tripod with me (to save lugging another big thing around with us, trust me the stokke bag is well and truly big enough), the gorillapod should be interesting to try out. There isn't a lot of light polution here so I might try for some star shots.

Poor Cygnett's taken so young

In hind sight speakers without grills wasn't the best idea. I did think though it would take a under a week for them to suffer. Turns out I was wrong.

A great long weekend

Just a short post before heading to bed (as the little one is asleep)

• Friday Night - Dinner out at Aqua Linea, very very tasty
• Saturday - A VERY hot trip to the markets, and then a great long lunch with Tom and Suse in the Air Con
• Sunday - A very wet ride to UQ and back, Game on at Southbank - FANTASTIC RETRO GAMING (best gaming thing I've every been to) !!! BBQ with my Family for dinner
• Monday - A day at home with the Hottest 100 and iTunes, rearranging Zach's room and the Study getting rid of some clutter. Great walk by the river followed by a dinner of takeaway under the sunset.

Pity that work is tomorrow :(

The Hottest 100 CD (the whole list)

Australia Day is over again for another and here is my list of songs for my CD compilation for this year.

(#101) - Jackson Jackson - All Alone

#99 - Muph & Plutonic - Don't Worry About Nothin'

#96 - Dizzee Rascal - Flex (Dave Spoon Reflex)

#91 - Lisa Mitchell - Nepolitan Dreams

#90 - Lily Allen - Guess Who Batman? (Aka F**ck You)
#89 - Kanye West - Love Lockdown

#86 - Muph & Plutonic - Beautiful Ugly

#78 - The Ting Tings - Shut Up and Let Me Go

#76 - Yves Klein Blue - Polka

#73 - The Killers - Spaceman

#68 - Empire of the Sun - We are the People

#67 - Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

#60 - Flight of the Conchords - The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room

#54 - Pnau - Baby

#52 - The Killers - Human

#49 - Mystery Jets - Young Love (feat. Laura Marling)

#46 - Lily Allen - The Fear

#42 - Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum

#39 - Ida Maria - I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked

#30 - Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

#29 - Josh Pyke - Make You Happy

#28 - Architecture In Helsinki - That Beep

#27 - Josh Pyke - Josh Pyke

#26 - Ladyhawke - Paris Is Burning

#23 - The Living End - White Noise

#19 - Flight Of The Conchords - Business Time

#17 - Dizzee Rascal - Dance Wiv Me (feat. Calvin Harris and Chrome)

#16 - Ben Folds - You Don't Know Me (feat. Regina Spektor)

#11 - Ladyhawke - My Delirium

#10 - Drapht - Jimmy Recard

#9 - The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name

#8 - The Presets - This Boy's In Love

#7 - Pez - The Festival Song(feat. 360 and Hailey Cramer)

#6 - The Presets - Talk Like That

#5 - MGMT - Kids

#4 - Empire of the Sun - Walking On A Dream

#3 - Kings of Leon - Use Somebody

#2 - MGMT - Electric Feel

#1 - Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

I think this year was the first that I really liked every song in the top 10 (to the point that I've already bought every song but one, quick to itunes)

Happy Australia Day (Hottest 100 Part 1)

So it's Australia Day and that means it's HOTTEST 100 time. That also means it's time to pick a shortlist and make your own (iTunes powered) Hottest 100 CD... The first 50 have passed and this is the shortlist so far.

(#101) - Jackson Jackson - All Alone

#99 - Muph & Plutonic - Don't Worry About Nothin'

#96 - Dizzee Rascal - Flex (Dave Spoon Reflex)

#91 - Lisa Mitchell - Nepolitan Dreams

#90 - Lily Allen - Guess Who Batman? (Aka F**ck You)
#89 - Kanye West - Love Lockdown

#86 - Muph & Plutonic - Beautiful Ugly

#78 - The Ting Tings - Shut Up and Let Me Go

#76 - Yves Klein Blue - Polka

#73 - The Killers - Spaceman

#68 - Empire of the Sun - We are the People

#67 - Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros

#60 - Flight of the Conchords - The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room

#54 - Pnau - Baby

#52 - The Killers - Human

#50 - Ash Grunwald - Breakout

My Glutenous top 10

iamhausfrau's gluten binge this week got me thinking, if I had to eat Gluten for a week what would be the first foods on my list. I realised that some of the things I miss the most are the convenience foods, all the good restaurants make delicious gluten free meals (like the lamb rump I had at Aqua Linea last night). So here goes

1. Bacon Double Cheese burger (McDonalds)/Whopper (Hungry Jacks) (I know it seems wrong but I actually miss being able to eat one of these.... especially when I'm hung over)
2. Krispy Kreams/Dreamy Donuts Donut (These came out after I was eating Gluten Free so I'm a Donut Virgin)
3. Cheese and Vegemite Scroll from a bakery
4. Dominoes/Pizza Hut Meat Lovers Pizza
5. Indian with NAAN bread
6. Milo Bars/Kit-Kats
7. Baskins Cookies and Cream Icecream
8. Nutri-Grain®
   
9. Tim-Tams
10. A Hoegaarden (let's face it, gluten free beer is not great)

Twitter is making me blog more!

It's a bit strange really but since I've started to use twitter a lot more it's actually compelling me to blog more rather than less. I think because I've captured the points of interest during the day I've got more queues to elaborate on at the end of the day. This post is here only because I'm waiting for my lunch and company to turn up and i'm trying not to internet shop from my phone (paypal is entirely too easy to access from my phone). Which brings up another good point. Not long ago I would have found it hard to imagine being able to shop effectively from my phone let alone the ease that I've got now (and that's even without an iphone), now however I'd be hard pressed to remember before I had this level of connectivity. Let's face it, I could have ordered my lunch from my phone while I was walking down had I not been dodging the rain.
How can you not love the intertubes.
(well that's probably just about enough lunch time ramblings for one day)

Feel the Ebay Love

Yesterday a few (4 to be exact) packages made it to our house, 1 for Zach, 1 for Ness and 2 for me. Both of the big ebay purchase had arrived at the same day. First off, I picked up a set of speakers for the TV, I decided to go for something powered so I didn't have to mess around with multizone on the Sony (which confuses my harmony no end) or add another amp to my already overcrowded media cabinet. After a bit of searching I decided on the Cygnett Unison i-X5 or the Wharfedale Pro 8.1. Fortunately I found the i-X5 on ebay for less that half price (more than $250 off RRP). When they arrived yesterday, I was amazed to see them sealed in the original box with all the original (and unopened) packaging.

It's a very simple hookup, I'm letting the TV do all the audio switching and I'm simply taking the output from the headphone jack and plugging it into the Line in on the i-X5, that way the TV still controls the volume and audio selection.

From Sigma Zoom

I'm really impressed with the sound, even at high volumes very clear and tight. A little on the bass heavy side (as most of the reviews say) but that's quite good for most TV applications.

Onto the second toy for the day a new lens. The big thing that I'd missed coming to the Pentax from my Fuji Bridge camera was the Zoom. After not very much searching I stumbled across 28-200 Sigma Zoom on ebay. First impressions are very good. It gives me the lens convinence back (even with some macro capability) and the shots are still great.

From Sigma Zoom

Shot of the speakers at full zoom, taken from the same location as the shot above.

From Sigma Zoom

Macro shot of my Nokia 6110 Nav

I'm going to take the camera out with me today and take some shots in the afternoon, I'll post up some more then.

It's a New Chair!

Just before Zach was born we went shopping for a feeding chair and found a great one. The only problem has been that it's so comfortable that I've wanted one for me. I narrowly missed one on Ebay a few weeks ago and have been searching ever since.

I manage to find (and win) this matching white one, it's in really good condition and came with a great bonus when I went to pick it up. After a brief chat about the fact I was buying it to match a black one, he said he was selling it because it's pair was broken so gave me a set of matching cushions!

The new white one is just as comfortable as it's darker, more evil cousin... now all we have to do is decided how to recover the cushions :)

(My vote is red btw)

Annoyances with Gluten Free Bread

Knowing one of my fellow GF friends is now on a Gluten binge reminded me of some of the big annoyances with being Gluten Free. My biggest problem with Gluten Free bread is not the taste or the consistency, there are some really good ones around now. The IGA even has a potato loaf that toasts like 'real' bread. The thing that annoys me the most is the size! It seems that no sooner have you bought a loaf that you're at the end, this is also compounded by the fact that the slices are so much smaller as well... 2 slices of toast for breakfast isn't really much, but by the time you've had 2 slices for breakfast and 2 sandwiches (4 slices) your halfway through the loaf.... (or in this mornings case, the last half way through the loaf).

I'm not expecting it to change anytime soon but a normal sized loaf would be nice.

Zach and the new Camera

As you're all aware for various reasons  we now have a new camera. A Pentax K200D and I'm very happy with it. It's still very new so there is still a lot of playing to be done, but I tried taking some photos of Zach with it and I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Zach Portraits

This photo is by far my favourite out of all of them....

From Zach Portraits

Oh a little late as well but we also took it for a quick trial run up to Mount Cootha when we got the camera.

Pentax K200D

I've created a monster.

We'll we've got the new camera. But at this rate i'm going to have to buy my own!All this from 'We need a camera that makes that noise!'

Shopping for a new camera.

Last weekend Ness announced that she liked the sound that a Digital SLR made when she took a photo. As a result I've been having a bit of a look around for a new camera. For the last few years I've been using a Fuji SuperZoom, the S9500, for a while (2 in fact after I lost the first one). I've always picked one of these type over an SLR because I'm not a big fan of having to carry around a bag full of lenses. I like taking photos but I'm not very serious about so picking which DSLR to go for is a bit hard. I thought I'd try and stick with a budget similar to that of the S100fs, Fuji's replacement for the camera I use at the moment, for body and lenses.

So far I've been looking at the Pentax K200D, Sony A200, Nikon D60 , Olympus E-520 and the Canon 1000D.

It's a hard decision to make, I'm tending towards the Pentax K200D for a few of reasons. First of all there is the price, the body is on sale for about $569 which is almost $200 cheaper than 1000D. Another attraction is the performance in the reviews while not being top of the class it's certainly no slouch and considering the cost difference it's hard to ignore. It hasn't passed the sound test so all could change.

The next big thing is to decide what sort of lens to get. I'd really like to get a lens similar to what I'm used to but the cost seems a bit prohibitive at the moment. $1200 for a lens when the camera is only 569 seems a little wrong. I like the zoom I have now but I might have to go for something a bit more conservative. So many decisions....

Out for a walk in pram 2.0

We've discovered that watching the Ferries in by is quite fun so we've swapped out to the seat option of the pram so we can see a bit more. Still getting a few smiles so far

A day with the little one.

On Wednesday I took Zach for the day (or at least part of it). We managed a walk down to the shops to meet my dad for lunch (turning into a real boys day out). He was a little angel on the walk and slept most of the way. Unfortunately he was hungry by the time lunch rolled around and not being the biggest fan of the bottle we struggled through lunch but ultimately I left a bit early with the Fuss pot. To his credit though he was an angel on the trip home as well. It was nice to have him to my self for a little bit. Although he does make it hard to get anything else done.
Continuing his angel baby run this week we went to moonlight cinema with Mandy and Tom. We got there a little late because Zach woke up for his feed just as we were going to leave but from then on he was all you could ask from him. Slept through the whole movie and barely made a sound when he woke up. Then slept the whole way home. To top it off the Movie (a french comedy) was pretty funny. I think we might have to try a few more moonlight cinema runs.

Another Movie for the Collection

Over the holidays we started trying to get through our movie collection. Having the little one around means that getting the movies is pretty hard, and even hard if you're there to pause if someone needs some attention. We got through Wall-E (on BluRay) on Xmas day and since then we've been working the Harry Potter Series (on HD-DVD). We've watched the first 4 and have the Order of the Phoenix to go.  I think it's the most movies we've watched in a long time

We have another one to add to the collection today, Earth (on BluRay). Ness entered me in a competition a few weeks ago and to our surprise the spoils turned up today!

Welcome Sahara Lilli

Congratulations to Amelia and Steve who welcomed their little girl Sahara Lilli yesterday. So I'm now an Uncle as well as being a new Dad!

From The New Cousins

Zach's new pram setup

We tried the other seat in the Stokke this morning with Zach. He seems to like sitting a bit more upright. It's was only a quick run down to salon for breakfast but so far successful.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year....

Hoping everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful start to 2009.

There are so many things to post about it's hard to know where to start... I've started this blog post about a dozen times over the last week and a half and never got any further than the first paragraph.

This year was the first year (in as long as I can remember) that I didn't sing on Christmas day, I sang at the 'Eve carols service but with the lack of sleep from getting up to Zach I missed my wake up for the morning service.... oops.

I must admit, thought, it was nice not to have to travel anywhere on Xmas day. Being Zach's first Christmas we had the whole day at our house.

From Christmas and Boxing Day 2008

Ness's parents were up and staying with us, and Ben stayed as well to make sure he didn't miss out on any present opening time. Being only 2 months old Zach wasn't very interested in the whole present thing, although he wasn't sad about all of the people paying him attention 24/7.

From Christmas and Boxing Day 2008

My Parents dropped in for Morning tea so they could also see Zach for Christmas day and give him some more presents. Again he was just happy for the attention.

From Christmas and Boxing Day 2008

We order a Bouche de Noel from Bonjour for morning tea and it was just outstanding. Possibly the most delicious Gluten free cake in the world. The only downside to it was, it was well and truly all gone by boxing day.

The rest of the day was very much spent eating/drinking and sleeping only punctuated by some time with one of my (many awesome) presents, Guitar Hero.

From Christmas and Boxing Day 2008

From Christmas and Boxing Day 2008

One of the other things that I'd managed to miss blogging in the weeks leading up to Xmas was the fact we got new Kitchen appliances. With the almost all of the budget for our kitchen make over going to the Air conditioning repair/upgrade, we made a bit of room to get just the appliances changed (our hot plate still being broken). We swapped our ceramic hot plate for an Induction unit and it really is amazing how fast it can change temperature. We also changed the oven to a Pyrolitic oven so I don't have to clean it again. The oven had a work over for Xmas lunch and turned out a great turkey. The Air Conditioning has also been a huge hit over the holidays keeping the place more like an igloo than the hot box it's been outside. (Amazingly though I have turned it off this morning, really fresh air... who needs it!?)

That's about enough for one post....