Today I spent most of my development time trying to fix a problem in my code.  Normally bugs are relatively easy to fix once you put your mind to it, but today was different.  No matter what I tried I could not fix this particular bug, and in fact by the time it was time to leave for the restaurant I think I may have taken a few steps back.  I now think that the code is in a worse state than it was this morning.  I hate it when trying to fix things actually makes them worse.  I hope that I’ll be able to get things sorted out tomorrow, but it’s looking a bit bleak that I’ll get this app released before the new year.

On a positive note though, tonight was eating out night.  Next up on the schedule was Indonesian.  This was supposed to be last week’s food, but we ended up at a place that was more Malaysian than Indonesian, so since this week was supposed to be Malaysian, we swapped them around and this week became Indonesian.  We did research and asked around and there were many suggestions.  Last week we couldn’t figure out the difference between the regional varieties so we went with a restaurant that was in the middle.  This week we wanted to find a restaurant that was specifically Indonesian.  We were going to go to a place called Jimbaran in Randwick, but at the last moment we decided to rather go to Kingsford because there was a greater amount of Indonesian restaurants down Anzac Parade.  We figured that we’d have more choice and if we didn’t like the look of one place we could always move on to the next.

As it turns out the place we ended up going to, Ratu Sari, was very close to the bus stop.  We walked a little further to Ayam Goreng 99, which has some great reviews, but it was closed for the festive season and that kind of answered that and we went back to Ratu Sari.  I won’t go into it much because there’ll be a blog post specifically about that in the next few days, but let’s just say that the food there was awesome.  We’re very happy we chose that place.  In a way it’s a pity that there are so many restaurants around, because as nice as Ratu Sari was, it may be a long time before we get back there.  With the food blog we have a 27 or something week roster of different cuisines, which means that it’s going to take at least 27 weeks before Indonesian comes around again, and when it does I’d rather try another restaurant than waste blog eating time on somewhere that we’ve already been.  But that doesn’t stop us from going there again on a non-blog night!

Next week is pub food night.  There’s a pub next door, but what I really want is to go to the Austrian Schnitzelhaus in Gladesville.  Do you think that qualifies as pub food?  They do a schnitzel at the pub next door.  The schnitzelhaus serves beer.  I think that qualifies it as pub food!  What do you think?  Schnitzelhaus, or a good burger, pie, bangers & mash or steak sambo at the pub?

Either way I doubt it will happen on our usual Wednesday evening.  Wednesday is a common night for all the boozers to booze it up and smoke up a mushroom cloud of tobacco (and other) smoke, usually ended by some tosser pulling out the plants, or knocking over a sign in the garden of our building next door.  And I think it may be difficult to get to the Austrian Schitzelhaus by public transport on a weekday evening.  Well, ok, not getting there so much, but getting back.  I’ll have a look and see.

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Fortunately these days there isn’t much to do on the photo site, so I can dedicate some time to other things that are more important.  Or at least I should be.

We’ve been following Scott Pape’s Barefoot Blueprint, and learning about investing money in the stock market in a safe(r) way.  I’m eager to get started but don’t really know the first thing about how to trade yet, so I’m holding off.  I set up an account with E*TRADE, but I have to say that it scares the shit out of me!  It’s like trying to operate a jumbo jet, and I don’t have the first clue where to start!  Soon Padewan, soon…

In other news I finally installed a demo copy of Lightroom to see how it compares with Aperture.  I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with Aperture for some time now.  Aperture is supposed to be the premier software for photography professionals, and at one stage it was a near-perfect piece of software, but these days it’s buggy and slow (and I mean REALLY) slow.  It’s so un-Apple like.  I’ve been sticking with it for a good while, but it’s finally got to the point where I can’t take it much longer and I’m starting to look for alternatives.  I’ve had a little play around with Lightroom and I must say it does look good.  I tried the original beta of Lightroom and was not at all impressed, but it seems to have grown up a bit.  On Thursday I’ll take it for a drive when I do blog posts and see how it goes.

I went out to Bondi Junction yesterday to pick out a pressie for a friend’s child, and to get lunch.  We were not successful with the present yet, and we went to Japan City to get some sushi.  Unfortunately it seems that people have now found Japan City and the eating area was full.  We instead when to Sagunja at Tiffany Plaza and had some great sushi.  They do make good sushi there, and cheap too at $2.90 per plate regardless of what the item is.  They also have ramune (ラムネ) (Japanese lemonade) which is wonderful stuff!  Now that’s sushi, not the expensive crap they were serving at Sushi Roll in Hornsby the other day.

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I may have to stop posting on days that are just plain boring.

I want to post every day, but I really don’t have much to say so what’s the point, right?

Today was a development day, not that much development got done.  I chatted to my parents in the morning on Skype, and various other things took up time that I have no idea where it goes.  I tried doing some dev in the evening while watching TV, but it just doesn’t work.  I’ll try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow is photo site day, but since I don’t have that much to do on that I can spend a little time doing dev, and I’ll be going to Bondi Junction for lunch with Caro.

Ok, that’s all.

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Not really a heck of a lot to report today.

We got up and saw that it was sunny, so we decided to go and do a few suburbs for our Project Spiral.  Unfortunately by the time we had arrived at the first suburb there were dark clouds looming, we rushed through that suburb arriving at our designated finishing spot just before the rain started to pelt down.  Fortunately the spot was a bus shelter where we would wait for the next bus to take us back to the station.  Once on the train we went to the next two suburbs but it was raining there too so we decided to abort and try again next weekend.

Afterwards we ended up in Hornsby looking for something to eat.  You don’t really have much hope though in Hornsby at close to 5pm on a Sunday, the place just shuts down.

We saw a sign for a place called Sushi Roll and went in there, which turned out to be a mistake.  Unfortunately they didn’t really make the cut.  The sushi was not the freshest, they didn’t get our initial order right and quite frankly they’re really expensive.  In Bondi Junction you can get excellent quality sushi for $3 per plate.  Here it was $3 upwards, which a lot of them it seems being in the $4 – $5.50 range.  We had a little bit and left feeling a bit ripped off.

In the end we came back to Gordon and had some great pizza at Gordon Pizza Bar.

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Today we were supposed to go out and do our Project Spiral, but it was really dark and cloudy in the morning and we thought it would rain.  So we decided to switch days and instead go and scope out a place that we think would be good to watch the new years eve fireworks, and then carry on to Darling Harbour for their monthly firework show that we’ve never been to see as yet.

There’s a piece of national park in Mosman called Bradley’s Head.  If you’ve been on the harbour and have seen the mast of HMAS Sydney, well that’s where it is.  It offers sweeping views of the city and harbour, and looks directly on to the opera house and the harbour bridge.  I was a little concerned that it was a bit far away, but when you’re there it looks closer than it seems in photos.  When we go for new years eve I’ll take the longer lenses so that we can get closer photos.

There’s an entry fee of $20 to get in on the day (normally it’s free), and people are freaking out about that as previous years it has been free, but I reckon they’re just trying to control numbers, pay for security etc, from what I’ve heard, other places can get quite busy and rowdy as the alcohol is consumed in excess.  This will be an alcohol free venue, and restricted to only 5,000 people (last year when free there were apparently double that amount there).

Here’s a pic from the site.

After we left there we headed to Darling Harbour to watch their monthly fireworks show.  I took a few shots on the proper camera, which I’ll show during this coming week, but it was really just to enjoy the show and see how well the shots came out.  At new years eve we’ll do a time lapse and long exposures and some freehand shots too.  This is what we saw at Darling Harbour (from Caroline’s phone).

There was also a total lunar eclipse last night which we would have been able to see if we weren’t so tired that we had to go to bed!

See ya!

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