The Empire State Building, all dressed up for the Labor Day long weekend -- how patriotic!!

Well, Kristi is on her way to Australia and hopefully getting some sleep on the plane. For those of you going to catch up with her, make sure she has a good time, but not too good ... It'd be good if she actually came back to New York!!

Ok ... Let's try it this way!! This is the view from where K and I had dinner tonight ... Not bad huh??!

Just thought I'd try the blog from my new toy ... Trying to see what works and what doesn't from the safari version on the iPhone. So far it's pretty good, although there are a few things that I keep thinking could have been done a little better -- including the difficulties I've had with flash. All in all though, no real complaints -- the keyboard is awesome, and it's pretty good at guessing what my crappy typing is supposed to say!!

Now, if I could just work out how to add a photo from the phone it'd be great!!

More research required I guess!!

Hey all!

Just a quick one to say hi ... Kristi and I have been busy, me with work (the new role means more to learn and to look after) and Kristi with sorting out her study stuff and looking for work. (The next semester of study arrived last week, and there seems to be a lot of books on the table and the floor!!?)

We also have some visitors here at the moment ... Alan's visiting from Sydney, after having spent a few weeks working in LA and San Fran, and Patrick & Danae are here for a visit as well, but staying with another friend of theirs. It's good to have some old Sydney faces around!!

Will post some pics when we get a minute!

The Adventures of Cuke, Obi-wan Cannoli and Ham Solo ... for the original (and some more stuff) click here.

Sitting here at the laptop with the Live Earth concert on the tele (click the logo to the right) ... Great awareness raiser ... question is what happens from here!



Click here for some suggestion on what you can do to help out ... and/or read the below.



10 Things you can do to help out ...

Courtesy of Conservation International
Do your part to ensure a healthy planet by incorporating these ten simple actions into your everyday life.

1) Replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Look closely at labels when buying light bulbs. Those marked as CFLs last 10 times longer and use 66 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs while delivering the same light levels. As a result, CFLs accrue net savings between $30 and $45 over their lifetimes, depending on your cost of electricity, the wattage size of the CFL, and the lamp's lifespan (manufacturers make CFLs that last 6,000, 8,000, or 10,000 hours). The return on investment is 15 times higher than leaving your money in a bank account or the average return on Dows-Jones stock investments. CFLs also reduce the release of greenhouse gas emissions and are safer because they burn at a lower temperature (160° F or less) than incandescent and halogen lights, which can burn at temperatures up to 500° F.

2) Turn down the thermostat just three degrees in the winter and up three degrees in the summer. You can prevent the emission of nearly 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

3) Inflate your car tires. When walking or biking isn't feasible, you can do something to better protect the Earth while driving. Take a step in the right direction by inflating your car tires. Pumping them up can improve your gas mileage by about 3.3 percent -- a savings of about 7 cents per gallon. It's the right thing to do for your wallet and the right thing to do for the Earth.

4) Turn down the hot water heater. Set your water heater to 130° F. While you're at it, turn down your house thermostat during the winter to 55° F when you go to bed or leave home. These simple actions can have enormous positive consequences, preventing the emission of more than 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide over the course of the year, while cutting your energy bill by more than 10 percent. And that's just from you! Get your friends on board, and the benefits will multiply.

5) Choose your seafood wisely. We can't afford to wait until 2008. The world's seafood will be entirely depleted by 2048, according to an early November report in the journal Science. That means the moment to shape up is now. By buying and eating certain types of seafood, you can discourage harmful fishing practices and avoid the more depleted or threatened species. Take a look at Seafood Choices Alliance or Seafood Watch to make smart choices.

6) Purchase EnergyStar-labeled appliances. EnergyStar products are among the top 25 percent most efficient and can provide a 30 percent return or better through lower utility bills.

7) Wash and rinse in cold water. If everyone in the United States alone switched to cold water with their washing machines, we could save about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide each year -- and more than $3 billion in energy costs, collectively. And what's more? Cold water cleans your laundry just as well as hot water.

8) Buy locally produced meats and produce. Sounds like a good idea, but you don't know where to start? Just type in your zip code on Local Harvest's website to see a list of farms and farmers' markets close to home, as well as nearby restaurants committed to supporting their neighbors. Buying locally produced food cuts out the middlemen and the vast amounts of energy required to get your products onto store shelves. Most produce in U.S. supermarkets travels an average 1,500 miles before it is sold!

9) Drink more water from reusable glassware. It's great for your bank account, your health, and your planet. The average American consumed more than 400 beverage bottles and cans in 2006, leaving behind wasted glass, plastic, steel, and aluminum. That adds up to excessive amounts of fossil fuels and hydropower for mining, processing, refining, shaping, shipping, storing, refrigerating, and disposing of those materials. Of course, changing your drinking habits both at home and at work is applicable to just about every other habit, as well. You've heard it before and you'll hear it again: Reduce, reuse, and recycle.

10) Walk, bike, and carpool. In the United States, the car represents one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. However, you don't have to give up your car for a healthier planet, just expand your transportation options. You can significantly reduce your emissions by commuting to work. Try combining trips to minimize emissions, which are greatest at the beginning of a journey before the engine has reached optimum temperature and efficiency. When purchasing your next car, make it a fuel-efficient one. Hybrid cars can get twice the fuel efficiency of the average new car, cut greenhouse gas emissions by half or more, and reduce urban air pollutants. Carpooling saves energy, cuts on additional pollution, and allows you to take a turn as a passenger instead of driving everyday. Car-sharing (not pooling) is available in numerous U.S. cities. Car-sharing enables you to rent a car just when you need it. Each car-share vehicle displaces four to eight privately held cars, requiring less parking area and creating less road congestion. If you live within an hour's bicycle ride to the office (~10 miles), consider biking to work one or more days a week.

I just re-installed Snap Shots, which has been upgraded and now enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, including condensed excerpts of Wikipedia articles and IMDb profiles, instant playing of videos, display of stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots brings the information needed right to the readers, without them having to leave the site, while other times Snap Shots enables users to "look ahead," before deciding if they want to follow a link or not, saving them time and effort and increasing their ability to focus on the content that matters most to them.

However, should you decide this is not for you, just click "Disable" in the upper right corner of the Snap Shots bubble and opt-out.

Ok ... so short post here, but lot's of action on the blog tonight!!!

1. Have finally found out where Chris got that funky label's listing from and worked out how to put it on my site!
2. Have got the Picasa slide show going (see top right), which I think is kinda cool!!
3. Have added a number of new pics to Picasa from Toronto, Algonquin and London (thanks Kristi for getting some of the Chicago and Niagra photos on there and keeping us sort of up to date?!)
4. In recognition of her hard work and dedication (see no. 3 above) have renamed the blog to include my better half!!

I also wanted to make special mention of 2 pics, for the benefit of Chris mainly.

This one ... where I especially like the fact that they've gone to the effort of trade marking the obviously key marketing tag line "Toast the Difference"!

From Toronto - May...

And this piece of very cool mosaic ... found on a wall near the Borough markets last week.

From London Town

Oh, and Mum and Dad ... we've also added some pics from our catch up with Patrick, Michelle, Marieve and Oliver here.

Well there has to be some perks to compensate Darius' working hours... we spent last weekend in Chicago and we're currently in Toronto while Darius hangs out in the local office for a couple of weeks.

I've updated some photos from Chicago and Niagara Falls in the photo album...

I've even included a couple of photos from the Niki in the Garden exhibition... some mosaic inspiration for Donna...