I had to have a little rest after reading this article (and the comments). I wish I had an air-pump, I could really do with some pod time right now.

I headed straight from work to Em and co's house Saturday night, expecting a few drinks and a reasonably early night. How wrong I was. The photo above leads to more... click on it. I wasn't the only one behind the shutter, the lovely Ms. Lashmar exhibited her talent also. Sean just plain exhibited.

SNES for freeeeee! Donkey Kong Country is good platform fun.

To shoot with it, I have to focus manually, guess the lighting and adjust the shutter speed and ISO to match. Then fire a test shot and check the exposure, make any adjustments and shoot again. Repeat until balanced.

On the plus side, the glass is fine, and while not crystal-clear, is of reasonable quality. 210mm on a DSLR is equivalent to 315mm on a film SLR, so it's pretty high powered.

I was thinking of ripping it apart to make a reverse-mount, but I think I'll hold on to it for the time being. Perhaps I'll try and fix the diaphragm, then if I break it more, I can use it for parts.

There was a rally for democracy in Ethiopia on Johnston Street today, I think it was outside an official building, perhaps the Ethiopian Embassy or something. The crowd was very brightly coloured and chanted demands for civil rights. It wasn't a huge crowd, but the police had diverted traffic around half of the four-lane road, and there were four policemen standing guard at the entrance to this building. The crowd seemed very determined and serious.

I took a few photos but the light was really working against me. It's bloody hot today, the sun was fairly high in the sky, and I was shooting towards it for the most part. Click on the photo above to see the best shots I managed.

You can watch a video of the attacks at The Age's website or Channel 7's website. Both are streaming Windows Media.

I just love that photo. It's on the front page of The Age today.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, this is of zero importance to you.

I haven't used the iPhoto support for NEFs yet, I don't really see the point. iPhoto can't edit RAW files anywhere near as well as the CameraRAW plugin for Photoshop can, and I already use Adobe Bridge to organize my shots. It performs a lot better than iPhoto, it's much faster and uses less memory. It also doesn't copy the files to its own database, like iPhoto does, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on your view. It's much more integrated with Photoshop than iPhoto is.

It's nice that I can get preview of the files in the Finder.

C-list is better than no-list, I guess. I'm in good company, other names on the C-list include Margaret Cho, the hilarious comedian, Donald Trump, who I didn't know blogged, Max Blumenthal, the LA journalist, C.K. Sample, blogger for the popular Unofficial Apple Weblog (Steve Jobs himself reads it), and Kitty Bukkake!

I'm like the Nicole Richie of blogging. My Technorati Ranking is still 87 thousand and something. Keep trying, I guess.

Here's a linkblog post from May this year, when I linked to the Blogebrity list. I wasn't on it at that stage.

I said Alaina would be a candy raver.
Alaina said I would be a guy wearing a pink polo shirt with my collar popped. You know the type.
Em, possibly a goth.
Matt would be Missy Elliot. Work it.
Fred would be Bjork.
Liz would be Moira Brenner, the author of "Modern Etiquette". Hyacinth Bucket can be seen placing that book on her shelf in the opening credits of Keeping Up Appearances.
James would be Tony Robbins.
Alaina reckons Campbell would be Enrique Iglesias, but I'm not so sure about that one, I think they've got a certain similarity to them. Maybe Campbell could be Phillip Ruddock.

If, in some crazy topsy-turvy world, we were inviting John Howard to such a party, he could come as Bill Hicks. I think Beazley could come as Groundmaster Willy, but Alaina isn't convinced.

Who do you think represents everything you're not?

And girls only want guys with great skills!

I probably fell over because I have the worst reflexes of all time.

Fortunately, my injuries didn't get pretty serious.

Not even serious enough to bother taking a photo real quick.

I didn't even manage any sweet jumps.