I took this photograph in Boorowa in mid-western NSW, Australia. I was intrigued to see a sign pointing to Internet Access. I wondered how old it was.

Anyway, I think this photograph needs a new story. How would you use this photograph? It is yours to use. The high resolution original is here.

These photographs were taken at Boat Quay, Singapore. Years back it was a busy port with small boats and sampans lining the shores, busy with crews loading and unloading their cargoes. These days it is a tourist mecca with restaurants, bars and pubs. One can eat and drink outside, under the stars, by the Singapore River. It is busy of an evening and relatively quiet by day.

During my first job in Singapore the programmers, designers and I would occasionally set up camp in a quiet coffee shop by the river and work there, swapping files via a local wireless network set up by our Macs. Our office was a kilometre or so away in Chinatown.

Shao Ping and I did not go to Boat Quay all that often. We would take our visitors there for dinner or a drink. There are a few bars that are the haunts of expatriates that work in the CBD. I never felt that comfortable in those venues. I felt that there was an air or pretension in those places.

I took these two photographs with a Sony DSC-70 digital camera. I sat the camera on a stone fence and left the shutter open for a few seconds.

Created a tip sheet for Photoshop Elements ~ version 3 admittedly but still useful for later incarnations of the software. I am running a workshop for Year 6 students from a neighbouring primary school on Monday. They have been collaborating on a project with our Year 7 students. They would like to repair and modify some photographs, hence the workshop. You may find the tip sheet useful. It is a pdf file ~ about 1.3mb. I created it using Comic Life and ‘printed it to pdf’.

Last Sunday I paid a quick visit to Bulli Beach. It was a sunny morning and I was able to take a few photographs of the rocky shelf.

This post was sent to the following accounts via email simultaneously: Wordpress, Flickr, Twitter and Posterous.

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted by email from Watershed (posterous)

Addendum: The post and gallery above was more of an experiment than anything else. I set up seven digital photographs. Each was 650 pixels wide. I emailed them to my Posterous account as attachments and by using a dedicated Posterous email address I was able to simultaneously create this blog post, an elegant blog post in Posterous with a slide show, a gallery in Flickr as well as a Twitter alert. All with a single email.

The only problem that took place was that the seven photographs were each resized to a width of 500 pixels for the blog post in Wordpress. I have a narrow custom template and as a result it was thrown out a little. I manually resized each image to a width of 400 pixels. Normally I would not upload the seven images to a blog post as above so this is not really an issue for me. This feature in Posterous is not even a day old as yet and I am sure it will improve. Posterous continues to amaze.

This afternoon about 1.00PM the skies opened up and we experienced a hail storm. They are not that unusual in our region. The storm passed and there was a lull. Then there were a few claps of thunder and a second hail storm began. This was quite an intense storm.

Sootie went outside to investigate despite his initial fright with the thunder claps. He took cover under the barbecue but when the storm was finishing he decided it was all too much and raced back inside. Shao Ping and I took a few photographs and some movies on the Casio digital camera. I took a screen shot of the weather radar. The storm came up from the south.

How did I create this post and the gallery? The digital photographs in the gallery were taken with a Nikon D70 and a Casio digital camera. The video was taken with the Casio digital camera as well. I resized the digital photographs to a width of 650 pixels using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I auto corrected the colour and levels of each image. Finally each was saved using the Save for web… option in Elements. This option gives the user a great deal of control over the quality and file size of the image. I created the gallery using the Create Web Photo Gallery… command in Photoshop Elements. I converted one of the supplied templates to one that matches my web site. A little clunky but it works.

The combined file size of the two original video files was 67mb. I opened each in Quicktime Pro, added one to the other via a copy/paste and saved the combined file using the Broadband Medium setting. The size of the output file is 2.1mb.

The screen shot of the weather radar was named and saved using Sharpshooter. The image above is a collage of four of the gallery images. I created a blank Photoshop Elements file with dimensions of 400 x 266 pixels. Resized four of the gallery images to 200 x 133 pixels and dragged each onto the blank photoshop file canvas. Then saved it using the Save for web… command. I uploaded the files to my host using Cyberduck. The blog post was created using Wordpress. All of this was done on an Apple MacBook Pro 15″.

Back in 2001 my wife Shao Ping and I went for a walk from our flat in Chua Chu Kang to the Uttamayanmuni Buddhist Temple. It is located in Chua Chu Kang at the end of Hong San Terrace. I took a number of photographs of the temple.

There is a patch of bare ground near the temple. I sometimes wonder what was located on this ground. It is surrounded by HDB blocks, the temple and a condominium. The yellow spot on the map marks the location.

Go to Google Map

Curoiusly enough the two statues depicted in the photograph above were located on the eastern side of this bare patch of ground. Perhaps they were once situated at the entrance to another structure. Are they still there? This photograph was taken in 2001. It has been seven years. Can anyone shed any light on this at all?

Earlier this week I sorted through the photographs I had taken during my recent trip to Singapore. Ten new galleries were set up and I have just uploaded each.

I processed the images using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I resized each to a width of 650 pixels as well as adjusting the light and colour in some instances. Finally I used the Create Web Photo Gallery command in Photoshop Elements to create the web galleries. I had taken one of the gallery templates supplied with Elements and modified it to fit in with my existing web site. All of the links are taken care of and I simply drop the folder that is created on to my server. I also add some text to the index.html file for each gallery.

Click on one of ten thumbnails below or any of the links listed beneath the image to view the gallery.

The galleries created are as follows:

St Joseph’s Institution (Primary) Workshop
Nanyang Technological University Workshops
Mac Meetup
Tiong Bahru
Kranji
Queenstown
NTU Campus
Tai Pei Eating House
Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve
Various points around Singapore 

Sungei Buloh Wetlands, Singapore. Malaysia in the distance.

The other day my good friend Siva tweeted that since I felt liberated after renaming my blog I should post a few items about my life in Singapore. Well, this is my first post in that series. I have lifted much of the text for this post from a page created about this event. Just noticed that I typed in the wrong date! It was January 3rd and not January 1st, 2003.

As many of you have figured out my wife Shao Ping and I spent a number of years in Singapore. During that time one of the things I was partially involved in was the creation of a CD-ROM about mangroves and the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve in Singapore. That was how I met Siva. He was one of our subject matter experts. Incidentally, Siva was blogging before most of us were born. All his and his students’ blogs can be found here.  Siva and I have been the best of friends ever since we met.

I went to Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve on the 3rd January, 2003. It was late in the afternoon and the weather was closing in somewhat. It was a good thing to go however. I was taking time off work from the eLearning job. I had worked over Christmas and the New Year and life was closing in. I needed a break otherwise I felt I would surely break.

Sungei Buloh is a great place to go in order to unwind. Especially on week days if you can make it. You can recharge your batteries, so to speak. It would be neat to work there, I think. I have formed good friendships at Buloh.

Have you ever seen the rain?

Anyway, during that afternoon the heavens opened up and I watched the downpour from the boardwalk. It was actually quite cool, at least for Singapore. I took a lot of photographs. The rain fell down and the mud lazily danced as each drop met its maker. The greys painted the world in Sungei Buloh that afternoon.

Thank God I was there to witness it. Infinitely better than slaving away in an office where working 60 or more hours a week was considered admirable and critically essential for a pay rise or promotion. I was there for another three more months after that. I then relaxed for about three months. Did a few odd consultations and was lecturing part time at the NIE. Spent a few weeks in Australia. That was a long time ~ 3 months. Recharged my life. I then moved on to the CED at NTU. That was a good move. I will be back at NTU later this week. I cannot keep away.

Several weeks back, after driving home from my sister’s home in Cowra, my wife and I decided to stop at Mount Keira and take some photographs of the storm clouds out to sea. As we stood there taking in the view a storm blew in from the north. It was just before sunset and a specatcular rainbow formed. It was one of those rainbows that was clearly defined and quite bright. Managed to capture a couple of photographs before the rain reached the lookout. That is the Pacific Ocean in the distance. The city of Wollongong is also visible.

More photographs of Mount Keira over at the “Adventurers’ Club”:

Mount Keira Gallery
Mount Keira Adventure

How did I create this post? I took the photograph with a Nikon D70 and uploaded the image to the MacBook using a USB2.0 card reader. I backed up the original image and opened the duplicate in Adobe Photoshop Elements.  I used the Clone Stamp Tool to remove some imperfections in the image. My camera needs a clean. I adjusted the levels [Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels...] to bring out more colour, particularly in the sea. I resized the image to a width of 400 pixels and a dpi of 72dpi for display in this blog. I saved it as a jpeg using the Save for web… option in Elements. I then uploaded that saved image to my host using CyberDuck. Of course the blog post was created using Wordpress.

Shao Ping, Lucia and I drove across to the Nan Tien Temple this afternoon. Shao Ping will be conducting some Mandarin lessons at the temple commencing July. We checked out the projection facilities.

We then took Lucia for a tour around the temple. We have been there many times. It is the largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere. I have photographed the temple before and the images are included in this gallery. The weather was brilliant today. Deep blue sky airbrushed with wondrous cirrus clouds.

How did I create this post? The photographs were taken with a Nikon D-70, uploaded to the MacBook with USB 2.0 card reader and processed with Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. I resized each image to a width of 400 pixels and a resolution of 72dpi. I adjusted the levels for some of the images to highlight the light and shade. Sometimes digital images seem a little ‘flat’ and playing with the levels can alleviate that lack of ‘depth’. These processes are debscribed in a guide, step by step. Available in pdf format. Download the images referred to in the guide from this page.

Sunset, Tioman Island, Malaysia, 2001.

Watershed ~ a critical point that marks a division or a change of course; a turning point; a period of time that marks a turning point in a course of action.

Well, I think that we are in the midst of a turning point or a change of course in terms of education so I have decided to give my blog a new name ~ Watershed.

I have been pondering this name change for a while.

The term watershed has been a part of my vocabulary since I read The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler about 30 years ago. In this seminal tome Koestler gives an account of mankind’s changing view of the universe and cosmology. He applied the term watershed to that period of the scientific revolution when Kepler and Galileo forever changed our view of the universe.

Dusk, Albion Park, NSW. 2006.

This afternoon my colleague, Wayne, and I were chatting in the car on the way home. Wayne mentioned that he had read that if we look far enough into the universe we should eventually be able to see the back of our head as the universe folds back on itself, apparently. I mentioned I would like to be around if instantenous interstellar travel was ever invented. A few of the places I would like to visit are depicted below.

The Andromeda Galaxy. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

The Horsehead Nebula and Flame. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

The Great Nebula In Orion. Photography by DJMcGrady. Some rights reserved.

Of course, things would look a little different given that the light visible in these photographs may have taken hundreds or thousands of light years to reach Earth.

Thinking about the universe reminded me of the relative insignifcance of the planet Earth. Then the thought crossed my mind that its most civilised inhabitants are quite strange. The human race has missed the point. If we were truly an intelligent species would we be working five or more days a week for most of our lives? Would an intelligent species establish a society that is directly contributing to the demise of its planet via climate degradation? Would an intelligent species war with itself?

Global Warming. Mind Map prepared by Learning Fundamentals.

Then, thinking about global warming, mass extinctions of plant and animal species, peak oil, melting ice-caps and so on I wonder what will the current generation of students inherit after we shake off our mortal coils? Some of the more recent predictions regarding the health of this planet are rather dire. The planet is not in good shape.

How long will the human race be around for? Will we ever reach the stars? Will the human race see out the next 1000 years? The next 100 years?

Just one of those afternoons…

Tags: Photography

Can my friends in the United States please confirm the following for me ~ Are backyard clotheslines really banned in some states or cities? Is it simply a local council edict or recommendation? I was amused to read about this in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.

I wonder if there are similar regulations in some of the newer gated communities and elitist suburbs of Australia? Anyone know? When I lived in an apartment here in Australia residents were not allowed to hang out washing on their balcony as it would make the building look ugly. I was on the top floor so I could get away with it. Only visitors could see that I was breaking the strata rules of the estate [The body corporate of this estate annoyed me. One year I collected as many proxy votes as I possibly could from absent landlords. At the annual general meeting I voted myself in as President and Treasurer of the estate's body corporate organisation and simply voted against a number of the more contentious and costly proposals. The busy-body clique that used to 'run the show' were not amused.]

In the article, Getting pegged for letting it all hang out,  Ian Munro, reporting from Connecticut, writes how it is illegal to have a clothesline in one’s backyard in some parts of the United States. Attempts to have clotheslines legalised have failed as some residents are fearful that property values will drop.

Mr Munro writes that “Electric clothes dryers represent about 6 per cent of domestic power consumption, according to official estimates, and while the world searches for responses to global warming, Mrs Vocke points to her backyard, wind and solar power.” This brought home to me the usefulness and intrinsic value of the old backyard clothesline.

A quick bit of research revealed that clotheslines are clearly not illegal across all of the USA. This colourful site, Mrs Clothesline ~ A Celebration of Clothesline Culture, features a gallery of clotheslines with titles such as Shadow Line, Pretty in Pink and Midnight Love.

Clotheslines are a feature of the backyard here in Australia. Some of you may be familiar with the Hills rotary clothes hoist, invented right here in Australia. We used to hang from these as kids while a friend or sibling spun you around at high speed. It was a great way to demonstrate centrifugal force and also gravity for the smaller children. Are you reading this Dan? [Centrifugal force is not a real force apparently. I learnt something new today.]

Our rotary clothesline, sans clothes, with a kookaburra on the lookout.

Well, the anti-clotheslines brigade in other parts of the world would need to get used to the backyards of Australia if they ever moved here and I wonder how they would cope with the clotheslines of Singapore and Hong Kong? The clothing poles that project from beneath the kitchen windows or laundry areas of the high rise residential buildings cannot be missed.

Laundry drying, Singapore.
Photograph by OtoPhoto. Some rights reserved.

HDB flats with clotheslines, Singapore.
Photograph by ton2fig. Some rights reserved.

HDB block, Singapore. Some rights reserved.

The clotheslines in Singapore helped to break up the lines or form of the buildings and always added colour to the environment. Quite often they were the first indication of a change in the weather as the first hints of a breeze caused the sheets to flutter to and fro. It was always fascinating to watch nearly all of them disappear from view as the rain clouds approached.

I am not too sure what is the point of this blog post. Shao Ping and I hang out and collect the washing together. We also rush out to save it when a storm blows in. Do you have any interesting or colourful clothesline images from around the world?

During the last couple of trips to Singapore I have managed to photograph a few places I had visited while I lived in Singapore and as a result a few before & after opportunities have presented themselves. Singapore is constantly changing, constantly.

Sometimes the past is preserved. At other times the past disappears.  Let me share three simple examples.

1. The corner of Club Street and Ann Siang Road

Before

Visit site: The Pasir Ris Mercury

After

Visit gallery.

2. Kampong Glam

Before

Visit gallery.

After

Visit gallery.

3. Sultan Gate ~ Abandoned property

Before

Visit gallery.

After

Visit gallery.