Above: Widened road with roundabout at main road to Shute Harbour.
Above: Apartment complex with marina pilings and walkways just visible behind it. Marina area is now partially open to sea, so boats can enter.
Above: View more to east, showing marina area and apartment complexes.
Just published by Prentice Hall, Technical Editing in the 21st Century is the title of a new textbook I co-authored with Nicole Amare and Barry Nowlin. ISBN 978-0131196773. Available from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk (where the title and the description still include obsolete subtitles) and other sources.
This is one of the most exciting open source projects I've heard about.
From their website: "The OpenLuna Foundation seeks to return mankind to the lunar surface, first through robotic missions, followed by manned exploration, culminating in an eight person permanent outpost, and to do all of this in a way that it is accessible to everyone. Our research and technology will be open-source, we are privately funded, and one of our specific goals is to reach out to the community and educational systems to spread interest, enthusiasm, and involvement."
Yes, I joined, you bet. Makes me nostalgic for my NASA days, though of course that was government funding and got cut back. I'm an enthusiast for non-government projects and have been for many years.
Some pictures of the water left by today's hour or two of heavy rain: back of house, side of house, drainage ditch (normally empty). Three men in suits inspected the flooding near us; they now have very wet shoes. Must be city folks; locals would go barefoot, as I did. We hope the suits now believe residents' claims of drainage problems. And this wasn't really bad rain: heavy but not many hours, so far. No water into houses but some unoccupied places are very close to getting flooded. We're still okay.
On Monday two men from Townsville Blinds & Awnings installed new curved metal awnings on the front and the eastern side of our house. Already we have noticed an improvement in blocking of both sun and rain. This is the same company that installed our other blinds, awnings, and interior coverings for some windows and the patio door. We've been very happy with their products, their work, and their friendly, on-time service.
Eric took this photo early one morning (6-6:30 am) with his Kodak Z740 digital camera on full 10x zoom. These are just a few of the birds in the flock wading in the drainage ditch near our house.
After consulting the bird identification book, we've concluded the closest match is the Crested Whistling Duck, although these don't show the very small crest and are a bit darker than the one shown in the book (which could be at least partly due to the low light conditions).
Thanks to goodies from Eric's gadget box, I was able to rescue some files off a 500GB drive with a broken connector. (The drive was otherwise in good condition, as was the data on it.)
This photo was taken by Eric around 6AM on his walk around Carlyle Gardens. He saw lots of other wallabies, but this cluster (featuring a cat as well) was particularly striking. The quality of the photo isn't great, because it was taken with an iPhone (which doesn't handle low light levels nearly as well as our other cameras) and I had to lighten it quite a bit in GIMP to make the wallabies even slightly visible.
And then there was the little wallaby who wanted to read the newspaper, but was having difficulty getting the plastic wrap off...
On Wednesday the handyman came by to lay the bricks for the garden edge. What an improvement in the appearance! The garden itself still needs a lot of work, but we're getting there... slowly.
My new book Self-publishing with OpenOffice.org 3 Writer is now available in paperback from Lulu.com. Downloadable PDF is coming soon.
The online draft version of the book starts here. I will update the online version when I have time.
My new laptop computer just arrived! It's a mid-range Dell Studio XPS 13 with great specs.
Oh, cool! My spare mouse has red lights that match the red case of the new laptop.
I must say Vista looks very nice, with its swoopy blue/green background. Had a quick look at Word 2007; didn't take too long to find where most of the bits I use (on the rare occasions that I use Word) are hidden.
Dust from big storms in NSW and southern Qld was very noticeable as we took our 5PM walk, but it's not nearly as bad as we've seen in photos from southern areas.
Alternating between rewriting my book and editing Lyn's has its strange moments. If the sheep become examples in the computer book, that's why...
This afternoon I managed a slightly longer walk than usual. At one point an older woman overtook us. Eric said, "Walk faster, Jean!" and the other woman said, "Ignore him." :-) I'm going for distance, not speed.
You know it's time to quit when, while sewing a long straight seam in the side of a garment, you sew the armhole closed as well.
