Two undocumented querystring parameters in the Google Doc API may help :
pageview - setting this to 1 will maintain the fixed width view you see whist creating the document after publishing (defaults to 100% width)
hgd : set to 1 to exclude google footer
Found a handy tool for any fellow frustrated apartment seekers in Sydney; Open For Inspection from realestate.com.au. You can quickly see all the inspections aggregated by date for a suburb/city/state, and apply any filters such as price. It would be handy if you could actually see the results on a map, or retrieve it through RSS.. but maybe those features are coming as the product is still Beta. The only way I managed to duplicate this functionality previously, was to search on domain.com.au for all Sydney suburbs, then filter by inpsection time for next 7 days, then sort those by inspection time. Apart from being frustratingly slow, this tended to be error prone as places without any inspection date/time set default to today or some undeterminable point in the future. It is also very easy to access this open for inspection page from a PDA, up till now i've been hacking around with my own google doc spreadsheet which screenscrapes data from domain/realestate.com.au, filters then sorts it, allowing me to quickly get at easy whilst mobile.
In the UK I used the all powerful globrix which already has already been running these features for sometime, great to see the Aussie sites building them too.
Here's the fun i've got lined up for today. If only the agents would actually turn up for the inspection now (2 didn't yesterday).
A random sign on the way to Vegas caught my eye as we were racing along the Interstate 15. Not to far from Barstow.
Spent a couple of days in the Sequoia National Park, south of the Yosemite. The tree pictured here is called "General Sherman", and believed to be between 2300 - 2700 years old. The tree is truly enormous, holding the title for largest in the world. Although somewhat of a mission to get to it, well worth the effort. The national park is stunning at this time of year (end of feb) and free from armies of motorhomes/campers, so had many trails to ourselves.
More pictures here. Now, off to Vegas..
A totally unexpected find; halfway along the coast between San Francisco and LA near a town called San Simeon, came across a plum of Elephant Seals in the wild. Lots of grunting snorting and wallowing around, I felt right at home.
Here’s my first effort with DeepZoom (it’ll prompt you to install Silverlight if you don’t already have this).
Here is the same image set using HDView from Microsoft Research.
Next on the shopping list is the GigaPan Epic 100 and a Tokina 11-16mm UltraWide Lens.
Started running home from work some evenings. Today i did it (6.8 miles) in 48 minutes. I’m a machine!
See the route [gmapspedometer.com]
I sit on this platform every morning waiting for District Line trains, and this is the frustrating view of ones on the Picadilly line flying by without stopping. Perhaps time to join the STOP campaign?
Was supposed to be going to the Fulham football match against Blackburn Rovers today but it has been cancelled to to a frozen pitch. They only realised this 90 minutes before the match was about to start. Infact i had walked all the way to the tube, been shivering on a platform for 20 mins before i found out.
Recently traded in my Nikkon D80 for the new D90 model. So far i’m really liking it; i was sceptical of the new HD video feature, but am finding i use it more and more. Having an HD video camera (720p) which you can attach different lenses to is a great bonus. Celebrated the new camera by buying a Sigma Macro 105mm F2.8 lens. Here’s a picture of some snow, and the sphere of Drammen
Maybe i’ll enter this year’s Tropfest, the theme is a spring..?
Time for a go on wii fit.
Anyone would think i'm dead, the last post was on 1st May 2008. It is now 5th December 2008 and i've finally gotten round to typing something.
So what have i been up to?
June
July - December. Had a few long weekend trips which include Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome. These have been interspersed with long periods of work and head colds.
7 weeks to go till the wedding, with one or two things still to organise. We are doing the ceremony outside so there are a ton of things that can and will go wrong. Rains is pretty much guaranteed, snow? It is in Norway after all.
Enjoying life back in London for now though, we've got an apartment in what i originally thought was stuffy district of Chiswick, but turns out is quite upbeat. Do still long for the sun and surf of Sydney, but being closer to family and old friends again is fantastic. London itself has changed too, seems cleaner and more of a buzz compared to 6 years ago. More continental even. Listening to all the new/old radio stations, I even found myself enjoying any answers last weekend!
Spring here now, bluebells a-plenty.. This one was taken in my parents garden recently
I love fonejacker, hilarious. Just finished reading Persuasion, the art of influencing people. Great book, watch out!
Hopefully next week will be less hectic.
A walk through the woods at Newlands Corner.
Feels like spring is just about starting, another month and there'll be green everywhere.
A walk through the woods at Newlands Corner.
Feels like spring is just about starting, another month and there'll be green everywhere.
Have been updating my CV recently and decided to avoid installing MS Office and give Google Docs a whirl, in particular the word processing app. It is about 50% there i'd say (compared to Microsoft Word). Hardly surprising given Word is mature product that has been around for ages. Some features still missing
Can't pasted in images, i.e . you can't Ctrl-C copy, Ctrl-V PASTE an image into a document, or proportionally resize the image so it retains its aspect ratio.
Editing tables is tricky too, and undo seems only to work half the time.
Mind you for basic stuff, like composing a CV, Google docs works for me and has spared me a 900mb install on my laptop, and I love the collaboration features - streets ahead of MS Office.
So, here's the (notquite finished) product.
Lots of sunshine, white sandy beaches, palm trees and crystal clear sea water. Only 3 hours drive from Sydney too, we stayed in a beach hut beside GreenFields beach which was like something you'd see on a postcard.
Back to reality now, and it's less than a month till we're back in London, seems unbelievable, still so so much to organise. Can't believe I arrived in Sydney with a single backpack. I've got my Australian passport at long last now though, the final hurdle so can always escape back down here if needs be.
Been listening to Jack Johnson's new album Sleep Through The Static, I never really like his previous work, but this one has really grown on me.
Have also been sumbling around the web, love the fact the stumbleupon have added a image/video/wikipedia category to their excellent browser plug-in. If you haven't set it up already should do so, will transform your web browsing experience.
I've always cooked scrambled eggs by just whisking them, stirring with a fork in a cup, putting in a pinch of salt, then cooking rapidly in a saucepan for a few minutes. Usually served with some chopped up muchrooms fried too much. However, things are changing from now on, I came across this recipe for scrambled eggs courtesy of Gordon Ramsay, and was blown away. I think the secret is to not put the seasoning (salt + pepper) in too early. Cooking the flathead mushrooms upsidedown and tomatoes like he did really worked well too, shall be trying that one again for sure. It don't really take any longer to prepare but tasted so much more flavoursome.
So, London here we come. Ingunn and I are packing our bags and heading back to the land of light humour and warm beer on the 20th March. Stopping off in Malaysia for 5 days then arriving Tuesday 25th. Trying to sell 5 1/2 years worth of accumulated junk in the preceeeding weeks has been tiresome and I just want to get there now. So far we've sold the setee, bed, matress, outdoor furniture, bin, shoe rack, computer chair + desk, monitor, speakers, and probabaly fish tank. By the end of this weekend we'll have a futon + couple of bean bags and that is pretty much it! Oh, and a car.
Why leave Sydney after nearly 6 years? Lots of reasons, but the most important thing is that we aren't leaving for good, the Plan is to come back down in a year or two and buy a place as close to the beach as we can afford and live the life. See how it goes, i'm definitely excited about London now though, especially with summer just around the corner 
Here are some pics from my trip to the WhitSunday's in January, off to Jervis Bay in a couple of weeks so will try getting some more underwater pics there. Sydney coastal waters have been churned up of late so have been doing more surfingf than snorkelling/diving. Mind you, the surfing hasn't been all that great either.
