Category Archives: Photos

Year In Review

General, Life, Photos

Alistair & Claire Lattimore Cutting Wedding Cake - 24 September 2005Another year is behind us, its been crazy and I can’t believe its gone already.

In August 2004, I moved to the Gold Coast for a new job; meanwhile, Claire was still under contract at Middle Ridge Primary School in Toowoomba. She completed her contract there and moved to the Gold Coast with me at the very end of 2004. Once we moved into our new apartment, and we began nesting:

In May, I moved my hosting from HostCentral to McGooHQ. In the last 8 months, the service has been near perfect. To my knowledge, the site hasn’t had any significant downtime and on the occasions when it was offline – it was out of hours for scheduled maintenance. If you’re looking for a fast, reasonably priced Australian owned and powered host – give them a look.

On September 24th, I married my high school sweetheart. It is no surprise that the preceding months were spent preparing for the wedding. It was a glorious day, Claire was breathtaking, literally. The whole day went smoothly with no problems at all, hats off to the staff and organisers at the Stamford Plaza, Brisbane. A big thank you to both mine and Claire’s parents, for without their help in lead up to the wedding – it would have never been quite as spectacular as I think it was.

August this year saw my first year with my employer slide by. Without question, the last 16 months have been an amazing roller coaster ride to remember. The first day I started, I was pointed to the source code for a site that takes between 600,000 – 800,000 hits per day and essentially told to knock myself out. At that stage, there wasn’t a development database or website – so it was all being done live! Since that time, our team has increased from 5 to 15 staff and procedures, standards and best practices are being implemented. Soon we’ll be on track to doing things The Right Way™ instead of The Wrong Way™. I have to give a big thank you to the blokes I work with, they’ve made this time fun and enjoyable in an otherwise fairly tough work environment.

On the whole, its been a fabulous year with a lot more high than low times. I can only hope that 2006 brings even more highs and less lows than we saw in 2005.

Quarter Of A Century

General, Photos

Claire Lattimore, Abstract Oil On Canvas - 30 December 2005Today, marked my 25th birthday – yippee! Claire always manages to find me practical (which I like) but awesome presents, this year was no exception:

  • A pair of oil paintings. This was particularly significant as Claire has wanted to start painting again. With that in mind I bought her a new set of oil paints and brushes for Christmas. To have the first painting off the bristles is fantastic and I think they look awesome.
  • A pair of nice felt tipped pens to go with my leather document wallet and visual diary.
  • The Blade Trilogy DVD set and an immortal classic – Top Gun.
  • A ticket for the Brisbane Story Bridge climb.

At work, I have the pleasure of working with an amazing bunch of people. We are all quite young, with energetic personalities and we love to have a bit of fun. In keeping with that mantra, the boys put their minds to work for some presents:

As a small celebration, we (some of my family and some of Claire’s) went out to dinner at Hogs Breath. As usual, the steak was fantastic and cooked to perfection. The Hogs Breath staff brought out a mudcake with a pair of sparklers and sang me Happy Birthday. I then attempted to demolish the mudcake, however after the big meal – I just couldn’t finish it!

The day has been great, thanks for everyone involved in making it memorable. See you this time next year.

John Butler Trio, Homeward Bound

General, Music, Photos

John Butler Trio: Live At The Brisbane River StageThe John Butler Trio are currently on their Homeward Bound National Oz Tour.

On Sunday, it was Brisbane’s privilege to host the band at the River Stage. For those that don’t know, the Brisbane River Stage is a semi-natural grassed amphitheatre backing onto the Brisbane River. It has space for about 12,000-15,000 people in a mixture of sitting and standing.

I have had the pleasure of hearing the John Butler Trio play twice now. My first encounter was in 2004 at the Toowoomba Empire Theatre, for his initial Sunrise Over Sea tour. The atmosphere that a theatrical theatre provided was surreal, it was electric. Claire and I left the concert in total awe; we would have bought another set of tickets and gone back in to hear it all over again.

My second encounter was at the River Stage. Since it’s a large outdoor area, I didn’t think the concert would have had quite as much impact – I was wrong. The sound was excellent and loud, very loud. The River Stage would have been at close to capacity I think, with 10-12,000 people there. Everyone was well behaved, which was great and for the most part everyone remained seated (where appropriate) so that everyone could get a great view of the concert.

Andrew came with me this time, it was his first John Butler experience and he was thoroughly impressed with the talent on display. This first thing that hits you is the array of unique sounds he manages to draw from his guitars, superb. Once the first song or two are over, you then get to appreciate just how hard he is playing when he starts ramping up into some of the faster songs – wow. As the concert progresses, the other band members are taking more and more of a role, until at times they are the sole focus of the music and John is backing them.

Even though we were outside with a huge audience, John still drew you in. At one point, he unplugged the leads from his guitar, walked to centre stage and played Peaches & Cream into a single microphone. He asked the audience to try and remain quiet and it was, as before, brilliant. There was another instance where John was backing the drummer and he is literally urging the drummer to go harder and faster. That was a display of absolute percussion talent – I think everyone was lifting their jaws, the roar of the crowd when it finished certainly backed that.

The three photos were taken by Andrew on my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile:

There are songs on the Sunrise Over Sea album where John’s guitaring has you in awe, however as impressive as it is, it isn’t a scratch on what he delivers on stage. John has an absolute gift for the guitar, which is hard to explain unless heard live. If you ever get the chance to see him live at a town near you, I would whole heartedly recommend you purchase the best tickets you can get your hands on and enjoy the ride – pure brilliance.

RaceNutz Driving Simulation

Photos, Wedding

RaceNutz Hyper Driving Simulation, Gold CoastOnce we had finished eating ourselves into oblivion, we moved onto the afternoon activity – a car racing simulation. We could have gone to an arcade to play all sorts of different games but there was something kind of novel, about attempting to race around The Mountain in a V8 Supercar sporting a competitive time!

We had booked in for a 2pm session, which was not really limited in time. Once we got inside, the initial half hour to an hour was a bit of a mess. The simulators weren’t configured for us to just sit down and race, so we had some teething problems getting started. After the initial bump though, it was all engines go.

It took us a little while to get used to driving them, they are designed to handle like a real race car – so doing silly things in them just lands you into a wall. The owner spent considerable time explaining that it isn’t an arcade game to us and any inference or level comparison to a PC type game was frowned upon. While we all appreciated the complexity of his product, I think we all got a bit of a rise out of that – given we all work in IT or are at the very least, very computer literate. That said, the product itself is sold to various drivers in the V8 Supercar series, which is a testament to its seriousness. The tires take a period of time to warm up, you need to pay strict attention to gears, speed and breaking markers or things go pear shaped very quickly. The weight transfer of the car plays a huge role, so do the various surfaces of the track (ie: bitumen, ripple strips, dry and wet surfaces).

The owner was very accommodating, he opened on a Saturday and then allowed us to drink and drive! Overall, the experience was a bunch of fun. I don’t think an average person would get a kick out of it, the learning curve for driving fast is well above that of an average arcade style simulator. However, for his target clientele – it is spot on the money I think.

Ashmore Seafood & Steak

Photos, Wedding

Ashmore Seafood & Steak - A Window Display of SteaksAfter racing go karts all morning, we were hungry and definitely parched – enter Ashmore Seafood & Steak. I had heard from two different people that the food was good and the servings plentiful, so it seemed like an excellent place to pull up a stump and relax for an hour or two.

I had never been to Ashmore Seafood & Steak to dine, I’ve only ever driven past, so I had no idea what to expect. When we arrived, the venue itself was huge – much larger than I had pictured from the road (shot taken outside from doors). When we arrived, the service was prompt and we were seated immediately.

After a few minutes of chatting and getting the first beer down, we all ordered. The food came out in reasonable time, considering there were a bunch of us. What none of us could have expected though, was the size of the meals – they were massive! Most of us ordered some sort of steak and they had to have been knocking on 500gm in weight, maybe more. Andrew placed his spanned hand over the top of his steak and it was bigger in every direction, if that helps to give you an idea of the size. The steaks were nice, though the meat could have been a little more tender; however I think I’m a little spoilt in that department.

We ate, drank beer, chatted and then rolled out to the cars. Below are a bunch of group shots taken by Brendan:

Next stop, RaceNutz!