Last night I posted some new random sketches to Flickr as well as to my Redbubble and Zazzle shops.  It’s very motivating, having tiny shops, and making tiny sketches into t-shirts and mugs!

The Kitty Pile is available as a stupidly expensive tie, because if one ever sells I’ll laugh my arse off.  Metaphorically speaking.

I’ve also promised Rashas to attempt to find an affordable way to make The Map of WIN into a quilt cover, which may or may not involve me sewing.

When I was feeling spendthrifty – that is, after a few drinks on my birthday – I picked up a (relatively) cheap Nikon D5000 camera body which is destined to become an off-hand body (and possibly lighter body for birding) when I inherit velvetbutter‘s old D300.  It’s no good for my prime lenses (which have expanded to include a 35mm, a 50mm and an 85mm ) because it won’t autofocus them, but it’s a lovely lightweight body for my beloved 70-300mm birding lens, annihilating my old D70 when it comes to noise, metering, focus and indeed just about everything.  (Incidentally, the D70 body will shortly become a dedicated IR camera, because unlike the newer cameras it actually allows enough light at the IR end of the spectrum through.)

Ahem. Enough geeking it up; there are a lot of new photos on my Flickr from the last few weeks:

And finally, I learned to solder and made a light dalek from a cup and some fairy light bulbs I found at Target. When I press the button, it creates a diffuse soft glow which will in theory provide a gentle, non-directional light sources for the times when I’m photographing people in the dark at parties.   It may or may not be pretty crap at this – I’m yet to have an opportunity to try it out – but it sure was fun to make!

I was just sorting a few files out in Aperture and came across this photo I took out on the deck in Margaret River when I was staying with velvetbutter in December.  It’s taken with my 70mm-300mm lens and a cheap infra-red filter I picked up for a few dollars from Deal Extreme.  IR photography is great fun – there shall be more!

This year, none of my half-drafted text posts have yet come to anything, but I’ll have you know that they’re sitting there in the dusty attic of a hard drive, waiting to be unleashed.

In the meantime, I’ve posted some more birdwatching photos to Flickr, including the Welcome Swallows pictured above.  Wings are exciting; I’m having fun times (and sometimes frustrating times) learning to photograph wings.

My excuse for not having written anything of substance – one of my excuses, anyway – is that I’m buried not only under unpleasant work (Large Accounting Firm has jumped the shark, it really has) but under an avalanche of side projects.

Some of the side projects include doing a triathlon, getting my diving certification, building a barrel garden, harvesting the local laneway/vergeside fruit, looking for a new job, soaking up as much of the summer cricket as possible, and two secret things.  One secret thing is is about tentacles, the other is about maps.

Somehow I think spending time at the beach needs to be on the projects list, but isn’t. It strikes me that this is a terrible oversight.