Just some stuff I want to share with you
Archive for March 16, 2009
Picture gallery nightmare…
Mar 16th
It’s official now: I hate this picture gallery!
Today I found out why you now and then get errors when clicking on the pictures in the blog entries: the gallery does not have the right sized image available. So how does this work? Well I use Gallery2. This picture gallery software allows me to import the pictures I took with my camera. During the import, it creates the small images you see in the blog entries. Gallery2 allows you to have several sizes of the same picture online. This allows me to show bigger or smaller versions of the picture depending on what I want to do. These so called resized pictures are created when you access them for the first time. But not when you do so via the blog software (wordpress)… Hence, why you get errors when the picture has not been accessed through Gallery2.
So for now I have changed some settings in the blog software. When you click on a small picture, it will show the best match and will not generate an error anymore. However, the best match could be the original picture. And these are quite big, so can take a lot of time to download.
If you want to scroll through my pictures, you better go directly to Gallery2 and browse through the pictures there. You can do so by clicking here. This will allow you to select the smallest version of the pictures and as a nice side effect, you will trigger the creation of these smaller pictures when browsing them.
These are only temporary solutions until I have figured out how to move on with the pictures.
Last day in town
Mar 16th
Well Monday 16 March is my last full day in Brisbane. Tuesday afternoon I will be picked up to go to Toowoomba where the air safari starts. Today started by doing the laundry; this took the bigger part of the morning and since you can’t go for a long time (others were waiting for the washer, so I had to make sure to get my stuff out as soon as the machine stopped spinning) I was stuck to the hotel. After this very exciting start of the day, I walked to the South Bank again. I enjoyed some time hanging around over there before pottering back to the City. Last time to have a Grande Latte at my favorite Starbucks Coffee on the corner of Queen and Creek street. It’s been a very relaxed and hot day today.
So how was Brisbane? It’s a great place to just relax or hang out. I think it’s a nice place to live and work. But for the tourist, there’s just not enough to stay here for more than let’s say three days. After that you want to go further away from town and see what’s in the area.
So far for now. I will not have access to the Internet on Tuesday and it’s unclear for the days after that. So this may be the last post for a few days. But don’t worry: you will not miss a thing as I will share everything with you as soon as I get back online.
Monday 16 March 2009
Cuddle a koala
Mar 16th
Last night during dinner with Clare, he mentioned that there was a boat going up or down the river bringing you to a place where there are animals… This morning I powered up my laptop and found the website of Mirimar Cruises.
The Mirimar has a daily cruise from Brisbane (just across the river from my hotel) to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Since I am in the land of the Koala and Kangaroo, I just had to get on board of course. The cruise takes about 1.5 hours to get from Brisbane to Lone Pine. Every now and then there is some information from the captain about the history, houses, nature or culture along the river. And that’s done with a great sense of Australian humor. It’s a hot day today and there are a lot of speedboats on the river.
After this very enjoyable cruise, we ended up at Lone Pine. Lone Pine was founded 1927 to save the Koala. In that time the Koala was hunted for its fur and as a result they were disappearing. The sanctuary started breeding Koalas and has a lot of them today. And there is more to see then Koalas; kangaroos, wombats, reptiles, dingos, birds and more.
The kangaroos have their own reserve. You can walk along them, touch them and feed them. Here’s an impression (by the way: the one in red is not a kangaroo…):
As I explained already, this sanctuary was founded to save the koala. So here you will find everything for the whole lifespan of a koala. It starts with the young ones:
Some background information here: a koala sleeps about 18 hours per day. The rest of the time is used to eat leaves of the eucalyptus tree. You will hardly find a koala drinking. All the water he needs is extracted from the eucalyptus leaves which contain 50% water. Oh and by the way: the koala is not a bear!
Here at Lone Pine, you can cuddle a koala. In Australia you are not allowed to touch Koalas since it causes stress to them. However, since most of the Koalas in Lone Pine have been in touch with humans as of the day they were born, you can cuddle a Koala here. And the staff will make sure that each individual Koala will only be in touch with humans for a limited amount of time per day or week.
Then after all those years of hard work and labor, they end up in the elderly home. Here they can relax and enjoy the last years of their life, spending a whole of time doing what they do best: sleeping and eating.
Both on the boat and in the park, there was a group of students creating nice drawings of each other and interesting things in the park. Homework?
After visiting the sanctuary, it was time to get back to the boat for the trip back to Brisbane City. It was a lovely day out. Weather was very good (sunny and 30 degrees).
Sunday 15 March 2009