Archive for April, 2008

The Sky is Calling Me. Do I answer?

Monday, April 7th, 2008

A few weeks ago I was watching Episode 78 of Mahalo Daily. In this episode Veronica Belmont was explaining the steps to get a Private Pilot’s License. As a starting point, at most airfields they offer an ‘air experience’ for under $100. In this experience you are taken up with an instructor for about 30 mins and given the controls of a light aircraft, usually a Cessna C150 2 seater trainer.

This episode peaked my interest.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had an interest in flying, to the point where when I was in high school I had the aim to study the subjects required to attend the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) to become an Air Force Fighter pilot.

That dream died a very quick death. But I had never lost the interest to possible attain my pilot’s license.

After watching this episode I went and booked a Trial Introductory flight at Warnervale Airfield.

Now what an experience that was.!

Meeting Leo Laporte at Sydney Airport

Sunday, April 6th, 2008


This month has started with a high when I was lucky enough to meet Leo Laporte at Sydney Airport on Tuesday during a stopover on his way to Tasmania.

Leo was on his way to Tasmania as part of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Adventure tour with a bunch of world class photographers and as a spur of the moment thing posted a note on pownce about a meetup for fans at Sydney Airport.

Now Leo didn’t think that anyone would show up. After some confusion about the location of the Starbucks, a group of us finally located Leo, sitting in front of the Velocity bar in Terminal 3.

It was fantastic finally meeting a person whom I’ve followed on TV and online for so long and he is such a nice guy in person.

There was approx 15 people there and Leo was quite surprised that we all showed up and was more than willing to have his picture taken with all of us.

I have to tell you that this was one of those moments in a person’s life where I’ll never forget and cant believe that I had the chance to meet him. In addition I also met a number of fellow Australian TWiT fans (I thought that I was the only one) and I hope to have further interactions with more Aussie TWiT’s.

Thanks Leo and fellow TWiT’s !

To view all my pics from that day, visit http://photos.jezlabs.com/

Have I become addicted to Twitter?

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

The latest thing to hit the Internet is Twitter. Everyone out in the blog and podosphere are saying that Twitter is the latest craze for people to stay connected.

Posts to Twitter or ‘Tweets’ as they are more commonly called are short messages that tell your followers what you are doing.

I was a little late to the Twitter game and at the moment I dont have many people following me but right now I am moving towards agreeing that this could be the next thing on the Internet.

Now, am I addicted? Well I’m not sure. At the time of this post Twitter is currently doing some maintenance and services are unavailable. I keep trying to access the site to see if Twitter is back online.

Perhaps it’s because I have no other place on the Internet to visit at the moment or have I started to slip into the addictive nature of Twitter.

Now if I can get more people to follow me I could take over the world.

Perhaps not :-)

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I Took the “Alex Albrecht challenge”

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Inspired by Alex Albrecht in Diggnation episode 133 I decided to join Jenny Craig and take a chance in changing my life around and loose some weight.

Now Diggnation is one of my favourite shows and when Alex was talking about the couple of months that he spent on the Jenny Craig diet it started to peak my interest.

Now, I must stress that although Alex never actually gave a challenge, this is what I’ve come to call it.

During this episode Alex was telling Kevin how he had started on Jenny Craig and had lost 20 pounds in a matter of months. I thought ‘interesting, I wonder if I could do it’.

It took me about a month of thinking about it that I decided to do it. I’ve now been on the diet for almost 7 weeks and in that time I’ve lost about 6kg.

I started this journey as a portly 103.5kg and after 6 weeks I’m currently at 97.5kg and still going strong.

If I had to sum up my experience so far in two words, it would be: “It Works”. Your given a weekly meal plan and at first I thought it was a lot of food and I wouldn’t get through it all, however I’m starting to get the hang of it all and it’s become rather easy.

Emotionally I’m finding that I’ve become more alert, have increased amounts of energy which has motivated me to start to exercise more and the self esteem benefit of watching the clothes sizes start to fall.

Looks like before long I’ll have to start to purchase a new wardrobe. Doesn’t bother me that much, perhaps I can change my look to something a little bit more ‘trendy’. I should really just stick with my own individual style.

So I encourage anyone out there that would like to loose a few kilos to take the Alex Albrecht challenge and see the difference.

I wish I had creative talent.

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion that I wish I had creative talent.

That statement sounds really sad but I look at all the sites out on the Internet and the places that people have created for themselves and I think to myself “I wish I could do something like that”. I suppose most people have those thoughts so nothing is new there.

If I had to go into specifics I think it would break down to the following.

1) To take ideas that are in my head and produce something that is remotely similar to what I had first thought of.
2) Have the ability to do graphic and web design.
3) Be a better photographer. I’m currently studying a photography course and I can understand all the technical concepts, I just feel that I’m not quite there just yet creatively, but I think that will improve with time.

Those are probably the basic areas where I feel I wish I had a more creative eye.
I’ll keep working on it though.