Was out at Heide Museum in Heidelberg for the new year. The cows were kind of cool, even if the weather was not.

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Heh, it has been a scorching few days and I have enough time with my computer now to bang out a quick post before it gets too hot to stay upstairs in the study.

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Managed to catch a glimpse of the fireworks while at a friend’s place for new year’s eve. Maybe I feel jaded and I can’t recall the last time I was excited about year end celebrations. Maybe life is in transition for me. Heh, have clients for the new year, so things are moving forward, albeit a bit slowly.

I’m just needing to live by two words at the moment, patience and perseverance. You sort of need one for the other to work together to pull it off. I need to be a little more focused in prioritising stuff for the new year. Always fun revisiting what I wrote for the years gone by, and 2011 was a little melancholic. I just want to make things right for 2012 and hopefully keep things good.

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Heh, I think we have plans for travel and other stuff. Nothing concrete at the moment. Like I said, focus on priorities. Time to do some proper planning and stick to it.

Lots of different tomatoes at the Borough Market in London. It’s supposed to be the first day of summer so a picture to represent as much, even if the weather isn’t quite cooperating at the moment.

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Just fixed up a quick photo gallery for my first wedding shoot online. Heh, had to resort to using Adobe Flash for getting it to work as I wanted something quick that looked good. I’ve probably mentioned my website a few times now but haven’t actually linked to it, so you can visit it here.

It took a while to put it together, but it’s up and running. I’m slowly adding stuff to it as I go along, and as much as I like tweaking stuff in the design and functionality, ultimately it’s the content that counts. So just looking for photo opportunities down the road.

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Things to look forward to in December…

CPA results, cherry picking, Christmas lunch. Life as per normal maybe? I’ve had many new ideas on things to do, but they mainly involve spending money. Stuff like a tiny, low powered HTPC for the living room, plus a centre speaker for better dialogue, and maybe hooking up my speakers at the back since I’ve sort of inherited an extra pair. These things appeal to my inner geek, but maybe they seem a little inconsequential now.

Heh, just need to live by this quote I read earlier this afternoon. It rings true these days.

The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything they have.

My first diptych, which is pretty much multiple photos in a single frame. I have been experimenting with the idea of framing a set of photos to give them more context and make it more interesting. This was from a couple of weeks ago when Vyanne was making noodles for lunch.

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Heh, got the site back up after a week where it was over its bandwidth quota. The resources that this site requires should be pretty minimal, so it probably went over when I was using it to host a website I was doing as a side project.

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Just recapping what’s been happening. Got through the two CPA exams fine I think. Probably spent less time on it this time around, but specifically targeting how the exam papers work, you figure out what’s the best way to approach it. Had better time management for these papers, so I generally finished both to my satisfaction, so we’ll see what the results are in December. I’m definitely hoping to pass and believe I’ve done enough to merit slightly better grades this time.

At least studying for the exams focused my attentions a little, and I don’t feel so scatterbrained now, trying to juggle between different things. It’s now a time to focus on setting up plans and prioritising the things that need to be done.

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Straight after the exam, had a quick lunch and without having the time to even settle down, went out to do a photoshoot of my friends. We covered Brighton beach, the park outside my old apartment and bits of Melbourne Uni. Heh, struggled with the sun a bit and my camera settings, but overall the photos turned out much better than I expected. Made a slideshow and got very good feedback on it.

cindy + wilson from H Mak on Vimeo.

Previously made crappy slideshows with Lightroom but that wasn’t really designed to produce something with a wow factor so I downloaded Windows Movie Maker and gave that a twirl. It was fairly quick and intuitive, even if it crashed a few times on me it did the job well for me.

I’m slowly building up the type of products I can offer potential clients in the future so this is a start.

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Haven’t had much time the last few days, since today’s Melbourne Cup day and there’s been lots of socialising, my mind’s been wandering all over the place. There’s lots to do and I should be unitasking, getting one thing done at a time. There’s the business card I need to design, the website I need to setup, and with a few extra photos for my portfolio, I’ll just focus on that for this upcoming week. There’s the wedding I promised to shoot that’s coming up next Friday and that’s going to be an eye opener for me.

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I am thinking of applying for work of any sort related to my university degrees, just to get some cash flow in. Heh, life seems to start at being 30, and maybe I should have been less passive so many years ago. I have been trying to set life to what I thought was the norm, and it always felt like fitting a round peg in a square hole. At least now I’m either making the hole round or carving out a square peg. I don’t want to live by social convention any more as there’s no such thing as a standard way of life. You make it as you see how you should so life goes on.