A different view of Sydney…a new company is putting together some interesting panoramas.

Click the link above for interactive content.

You can click on the “Aerial” links to move to other locations including Manly (3rd from right)

Check out the Melbourne one here as it has richer content…

We went round to Shelly beach for a snorkel… I love this beach, its right next to Manly but completely different. The snorkling is pretty good too, loads of fish life and living coral.

Just bought an u/w housing for my DSLR but it hasnt arrived yet…

I had an hour to kill before a job in Newtown, so I went for a wander around the back streets. There is new graf, stensils and other random tagging and different forms of expression going up all the time. In some places it seems to be a bit of a free for all…

It is a place that I always like to wander around as it is a melting pot of run down, densely packed houses and lanes full of creativity…

Some of its very well done, some of it is mindless, make up your own mind…

This is a random selection of things that caught my eye, all within about a 4 block area.

I came across this video while researching my next camera purchase.

It is shot entirely on a Canon 5D Mk11 DSLR and the location is above the Skywalker ranch in California. The ranch is right next to my future step father’s property called Lowecha which we visited at Christmas.

The filmer is a British guy called Philip Bloom who’s work I’ve been following. He is at the forefront of using DSLR’s for filming purposes and his videos shows how far the boundaries are being pushed right now. I particularly love the DOF that it is possible to get with these camera. The timelapse shots are very cool too.

“What I wanted to do with this piece was just to take in the majesty of the surrounding area. It truly is breathtaking and this video doesn’t anywhere near do it justice. It’s so epic, serene and peaceful up there. Truly wonderful.”

Philip Bloom’s site is here with loads of movies on it…I particularly liked this one about the people of San Francisco.

I’m still undecided on the 5D vs 7D comparison…basically I want both…

My friend Alexa is in Sydney for her birthday so we went out for dinner at Sydney Cafe on the top floor of The Customs House, one of my favourite spots in the city right by the harbour.

Circular Quay, Museum of Contemporary Art, some balcony gardening, cocktails in my new favourite bar, the best dinner in a long while, beach wandering, discovered a mysterious tunnel through the cliffs to Freshwater beach and some amazing news from Ma…been a good weekend.

This was in a Nitro Circus episode some time back, but I just found out that my old friend Colin was there shooting too.

I have no intention of ever wanting to be like this man, or buying Old Spice, but this is the first advert that made me laugh in a while…

Apparently it was all done in one take too.

I’ve been reading Bill Brysons “In a sunburned country” – its a well researched travel book full of quirky facts about this country, so here’s a couple of nuggets he discovered:

“Acclimatization was one of the most foolish and dangerous ideas ever to infect the thinking of nineteenth century men” Tim Low

In 1859, a man named Thomas Austin imported 24 wild rabbits in to Australia (a country that had not produced any creatures like a rabbit in its entire existence), and released them in to the bush on his land as sport. As we all know, rabbits are not shy when it comes to reproduction, and as a result today there are in excess of 300 million inhabiting much of the eastern part of Australia.

In the 1920′s, camels were brought in to Australia and used to build the railroad from Adelaide to Alice Springs, but were set free when the work was completed. Today over 100,000 camels roam the central and western deserts of the country, the only place in the world where the one humped dromedaries exist in the wild.

The lesson? Perhaps to leave a country as it is…? A lesson that has been continuously ignored ever since…

I got nailed by one of these innocent looking things while snorkling off Manly Point today.

It stung me across my back and hand by the time I had noticed the tentacle and swum out of the way.

The Portuguese Man o’ War or Blue Bottle is named for its air bladder, which looks similar to the triangular sails of the Portuguese ship (man-of-war: two or three masted lateen-rigged ship caravel), of the 15th and 16th centuries.

It is found in open ocean in all of the world’s warm water seas but most commonly in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific and Indian oceans. The tentacles have been known to reach 50 metres long although 10 metres is the average.

I’ve been stung by these a few times before, including in Brazil in 2006, and from diving had always been taught that urine was the best ways to deal with the sting (resulting in a slightly awkward moment on that occasion while my brother went off to do the honours in to a bottle for me to pour over the stung area…)

Ice is also considered a good treatment as it numbs the area but crucially does not actually stop the toxins effectiveness much.

So I was doing some research and found out that only in the last couple of years the consensus has changed completely:

The recommendation now is to use the hottest water possible on the affected area to render the toxins inactive.

Wish I had known that this afternoon…

Beautiful creatures, bitch of a sting…