Photography I Created
- Up has been seamless and worked (AUD->MXN) all the time at point of sale and ATM.
- My Australian-issued American Express has not worked (AUD->MXN) at point of sometimes.
- The Wise card has worked (MXN->MXN) at point of sale all but once, and I’m betting that was something at the gas station, as the card worked inside the gas station but not at the attendant’s EFTPOS machine on the forecourt.
- I transferred Mexican pesos from Wise to a Mexican bank account on a Sunday evening Mexico time and by the time I’d woken up I had received confirmation it had worked and the recipient had received the funds.
- I transferred Mexican pesos from Qantas Business Money to buy a car on Friday morning at 11am Los Cabos time and it’s just gone 1pm Monday morning and the money still hasn’t arrived to the recipient’s account.
- AirWallex support is operational 9-5 Monday to Friday Melbourne time. Even inside that time the phone number isn’t answered, and neither is the San Francisco office’s phone number answered. At this stage I am assuming the Airwallex and Qantas Business Money support team is a concrete block in the corner of the office.
- After doing business in a different country for a week I could not recommend against Qantas and Airwallex more. Do not use them if you want transfers to happen swiftly and wish to have support when things go wrong. I’ve had previous issues with the Qantas Travel Money built into the Qantas Frequent Flyer card, I don’t think anyone at Qantas has actually ever used these products abroad, so neither should you.
- After three days silence a Qantas Business Money staff member told me that they needed to check for fraud and safety which would be fine if this was communicated, but also they promised the transaction would take place as banks opened today and it has not.
- If you are happy with making withdrawals and payments at the going rate at the time, I recommend using Up.
- If you want to buy foreign currency and spend it abroad, use Wise.
- I’ve also had success swiping my ANZ Frequent Flyer Blank Visa card but I have only carried that as a backup.
- I haven’t tested all the Australian bank credit cards, I understand many of them are fine.
- There’s a difference between good tacos and just tacos, good tacos are more likely to be in less-fancy buildings without flashy signage.
- Processing your Mexican temporary residency is much harder than they make it sound.
- Really should have learned more Spanish before getting on the plane.
- Even a nice Hilton hotel is still, in the end, just a hotel.
- It’s amazing how terrible a car can be to still be listed for sale here. I looked at a car for 60,000 pesos (just under $5,000AUD) and I think someone was murdered in it but it wasn’t cleaned.
- Horses, livestock, dogs and other animals all just roam free here. Must be tough for fencers to not be needed.
- Lawns don’t exist here unless you’re in a fancy place. It’d be hard to move here if your identity was built on how good your lawn is.
- Very few Australians are here or have visited here. Many people are surprised to hear we travelled so far.
- Should’ve stopped for a night or two in Los Angeles. 26 hours door to door was a lot for two toddlers.
- Always buy bottled water.
- Oysters taste different here. Bad different.
- I had to drive on the other side of the road for the first time in three years in the presence of a Mexican man whose car I was test driving. He must have spent the whole time wondering why a person who drove this bad wanted to buy a car.
- Money transfers internationally are never as quick as you’d imagine, especially over a weekend.
- There’s little consistency between different offices of Mexican authorities. There’s very much a local spirit in the decisions they make.
- We love it here.
- It’s quite hot.
- Buy a good pram and travel cot, they’re worth their weight in gold.
- Pack light, you don’t need all that stuff.
- There are no Ubers, Didis, Lyfts or taxis in Todos Santos.
- Had a Lock Screen widget to help me make purchasing decisions quickly and easily considering I still don’t really know how much 1,250 pesos is in personal terms.
- If they couldn’t do Lock Screen then at least do a widget.
- Once I opened the app, it gave me a few nuanced currency conversions. I wanted to be able to quickly get my head around AUD, MXN and USD numbers quickly.
- The main camera on iPhones today is a 26mm equivalent, and the iPhone is where I fell in love with making photography
- With an R5 I can punch in with a 1.6x crop, which is a 38mm equivalent, so I can still get a tighter shot and although it’s cropping the 44.8 megapixels from the sensor, there’s still plenty to spare.
- My photo kit had gotten too big, particularly if we’re travelling.
- downplay the parent company ByteDance
- downplay the China association
- downplay AI
- TikTok is a global company
- The TikTok app doesn’t even operate in China
- TikTok is highly localised in its experience and operations, which means … insert country here … has a lot of independence in the day-to-day operations of the platform
Before we get too excited about fusion energy, space travel and flying cars, it’s important to remember that this is how Australia Post wants me to find a lost package, with details from a Windows 2000 screenshot and calling a national hotline.
Such a Century Gothic welcome
How is Jetstar the only Australian airline fully utilising the Apple Wallet API with flight and gate updates and heaps of info inside the ticket info page?
Nine years ago I had an internet-enabled egg tray. I feel like technology has not really advanced past this milestone.
The invention of jaywalking by Clive Thompson.
Me doing my job on Bruny Island on Thursday from two different points of view
back in my safe place: “going somewhere”
A week in Tasmania
The first point of order was to check out the land we’ve just bought!
From there it was straight into work.
First in New Norfolk …
Then in Freycinet …
I really do love this state.
Back to work again on kunanyi, formerly known as Mount Wellington.
From Mount Wellington we move to Bruny Island for Katrina and Oscar’s elopement and it’s also my 41st birthday.
The Arch, at Bruny Island
And on arrival to our Airbnb, a 200 year old church, we found a very rare white Bennett’s Wallaby. On the mainland they’d be snapped up by predators, but on Bruny Island a small population of the genetically unique macropod survives and as a result, Bruny Island is the only place on earth you’ll spot one.
AI loves a good beach deer: “brown deer on white sand beach during daytime photo”
Imma start sending this to everyone I ever meet so they know how to rate me when the social credit system from Black Mirror finally comes into play.
Ted Gioia:
“Mr. Zuckerberg’s ideal Metaverse is just a panopticon—those infamous prisons where every inmate can be scrutinized simultaneously.”
The couple I married today at Freycinet’s Honeymoon Bay married in secret (after booking me four years and a pandemic ago) so I tried my hand at double-exposures and blurry photos.
Today milestones:
11yrs ago Rhi and Jarryd became official. 10yrs ago Rhi found me on Instagram. 9 yrs ago I quit 4BC, went full time as a celebrant, and got on Nine’s Today Show as the “celebrant that only does cool weddings” 🤮 Today I married Jarryd & Rhi at sunrise in the Byron Bay rainstorm before flying to Hobart.
Travel hack for New Zealand is to fly out of Queenstown Airport because they have a special check in counter for frequent flyers.
If you’re thinkin' of being my burger it don’t matter if you’re black or white
Glacier to Ground pop-up waterfall
The Mātukituki River valley
ZQN bound
How am I supposed to drive five hours on an Ice Break
Re: Bird app
Breaking: news.
You take a six week break in Mexico and your phone gets real judgemental
It’s not often you get Coolangatta and Surfers Paradise in the same photo. But that’s what happens when I’m back in Australia :)
Having my first experience of Live Activities on the latest iOS software. The app that is “live” is Flighty, and I really like this. The only negative is that 4G/3G/wifi is terrible here.
To chool for school
I think about this email that Steve Jobs wrote to himself a lot
Touché Google Translate
Rancho Pescadero, the new old kid on the block, just re-opened. Keen as mustard to start making weddings there!
❤️ El Pescadero, Baja California Sur
Britt & I toured around this new resort, Rancho Pescadero, last week to talk about making weddings there. Those oceanview rooms are actually built into dunes & the cactus were geotagged then replanted back into the same exact locations. Only $3k a night on the beach there!
This is Noah Sushi in Pescadero. The best sushi I have ever tasted, and I’ve had good sushi, even in Japan. It’s on a dirt road, with no signage, and no fancy tables inside. People come from hundreds of kilometres around to enjoy it.
Baja is wild.
Street names in Baja are wild, in that they barely exist. To prove my residence/address I need to show an electrical bill. So this street a few blocks from our house is hilariously named.
It’s named after a gardener who still lives in that street, and drinks multiple litres of alcohol a day. His nick name is “Litre” or in Spanish “Litro”. So a gringo who loves him had a street sign made, attached to the pole at the start of the street, now everyone calls it Litro Street.
Siri, one of the foremost artificial Intelligences, thinks I should call in to the Airbnb to check out. Thanks mate.
There you go ya filthy tech-news-lovin animals.
Gosh it irritates me when ‘down south’ writes the national news stories as if no-one from ‘up north’ reads it // @crikey_news @emmaels
Fish tacos, margaritas, a mariachi band, all on the beach. A perfect night on the Sea of Cortez.
Balandra
I could imagine this hanging on a wall somewhere, I’m really proud of it. On the left there you’ve got what the Mexicans say is there best beach, nationwide.
Playa Balandra (Balandra Beach).
Fifty shades of blue
One of us, and I won’t say who, just fell off the bed and landed face first on the tiled floor
On the Sea of Cortez, near La Paz, today
I can handle my parents being disappointed in me, my wife, children and friends. All of your disappointments will come and go.
But man, letting Duolingo down, this cuts deep.
Notes for my gravestone
“This is not a verification status; it’s an Important Blue Internet Checkmark, which in 2022 is just as legit. Also the Important Blue Internet Checkmark may turn into a bunch of crabs at any time 🦀”
Day 30 in Mexico: Still haven’t joined a drug cartel. Fish tacos are amazing. Send coffee.
So apparently the Commonwealth marriage celebrants portal and database was hacked … just a program run by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s department …
Missed the eclipse, but caught sunrise this morning
We’re heading back to Hawaii in mid-January and it got me thinking about the last time I was there and I created a marriage ceremony across the bay from Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler house.
I’ll never know if Steve witnessed me in my element on Maui, but they’ve never officially said what I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing was about …
Anyway, this is just your regular reminder that I make epic marriage ceremonies from Ipswich to Iceland and everywhere between.
Apple Frames is the ultimate shortcut that most Apple computer users don't know about
Over seven years since Workflow first graced the Apple ecosystem - since then being acquired by Apple and renamed Shortcuts which makes it so easy to Google for information about - it’s still a little-known tool on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
My favourite shortcut - it’s the ultimate shortcut - created by the ultimate Shortcuts guy, Federico Viticci at Macstories, is Apple Frames. The shortcut has just been updated to its third version and is ever more powerful and works even better.
You feed the shortcut one or more screenshots you’ve taken on the device, and it inserts the screenshot into an Apple device frame, so the resultant image carries more context. Examples beneath of some quick single screenshots, and three iPhone screenshots shared together in one image.
“Chinese restaurant”
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye.
Wondering about Unsplash and why my recent work isn't resonating
I’ve been uploading to Unsplash for almost five years, and people always ask why I would submit my work to a website that gives it away mostly for free?
I consider Unsplash my photography mentor and university. Because ultimately, I believe, that good work resonates with people. Firstly it has to resonate with you, but secondly with someone else. It doesn’t have to be the most popular work in the history of work, but a successful artwork resonates with at least as many people as that created it, in my humble opinion.
I started uploading in early 2018.
So back to Unsplash, I’ve shared 505 photos that have been viewed over 152 million times, and downloaded and used over 800 thousand times, making me one of the “1000 most seen contributors ever” which is lovely.
A problem though is my recent work. Work that is arguably better, shot on better cameras, with better lenses, and better colour grading … because I’ve learned and gotten better with better gear.
Of my most viewed photos “of all time” only two photos from the last year are in my top 70 images. After 70 they start appearing a little, but inside the top 70, number 69 is a boring drone shot, and number 8 was an outlier. Luna had woken up early so the two of us wanted to go watch the sun rise, and we both took our cameras.
Obviously the longer a work has been available, the more views and downloads it can get. Secondly, as Unsplash is online longer, I’m assuming more photographers are uploading more work, so the pool gets larger, and the available views and downloads may lessen.
When or why would I leave Unsplash?
I used to think I’d leave Unsplash when I reached 1 million downloads. But I think the truer statement is that I’d stop giving my work away for free, when it resonated with enough people who wanted to pay for it.
How do I reach that number? How do I find those people? I have no idea. The only thing I know to do today is step one, to create, step two and three and four can’t even happen without step one.
Money is nice, but making work that resonates with people, work that makes you and I feel something. That’s like a little bit nicer.
I’ll leave you with my most popular piece, a photo from a backroad before sunrise in Queenstown, New Zealand, shot on my old original DJI Mavic Pro, with just enough light for it to be a sharp and in focus image.
Just a boy and his favourite seventy to two-hundred millimetres of glass photographed by another boy and his medium format film camera, Jack Fitz at Playa Los Cerritos at sunset.
John Ruskin in a letter to C. E. Norton, 4th Nov 1860:
“I find Penguins at present the only comfort in life. One feels everything in the world so sympathetically ridiculous, one can’t be angry when one looks at a Penguin.”
I’m reflecting on the recent Optus hack today as I wonder what to do with my phone number I’ve had for 20 odd years.
So much of modern society needs a phone number to work and to identify us.
New services register with a phone number and text message verification code, trusting that only you would have your phone number or SIM card.
When I turn off my Australian SIM card in Mexico iMessage warns me the clock has started.
It’s kind of ridiculous that something as fragile as a phone number is the backbone of identity.
I think do Dave Winer’s ten year old blog post proposing DNS as a form of ID, but I feel like that would exclude so many normies.
Funnily enough, in many parts of Mexico the police will take your number plate or drivers license back to the police station as that’s the closest the national identity systems don’t really exist here.
How are we supposed to verify who we are? Maybe a blue tick will help?
Just going on the record before November 2022 hits to say that I had a blue tick before it wasn’t cool.
That’s right, mum. I was verified before @tealou.
Is this mural on the toilet entry wall about menstruation?
The latest in dynamic bus signage technology
Someone just got a fire truck for their birthday or the truck celebrated its birthday. Either way, congrats!
Tequila shot $1USD
Thursday’s sunset
Good business sense tells me it’s time to sell all my beef, children, petrol, and non-essential oils, and buy more computers. Thanks for the revealing graphs, Nick Evershed at The Guardian
The moonrise over the Pacific Ocean was pretty cool tonight
It’s funny how the human brain likes little milestones and we call it “feeling real” … like just now how I put the finishing touches on a Wedding Officiant in Mexico page on my website, and enabled the Squarespace translation webpage feature.
Finally, it happened
I’m a sucker for 360 spherical images, but the places you can view them not-flattened are few. Lightroom online is one, so here’s the link for this one of El Pescadero at sunrise this morning: adobe.ly/3f55Fp3
Deporte bus
El Pescadero // home
Felt cute, might delete later
Hey, if you ever can’t get a hold of Jesus, lemme know, I’ll send you some Mexican Salvo, a sin remover.
My li’l mate, Luna, turns four today. She wants you all to know that she’s a big girl now.
I can’t help but feel that Mark Zuckerberg is a bit off Apple at the moment.
As someone who uses WhatsApp because he’s forced to, not because he wants to, it’s an ugly app and I only get more message spam from Telegram. Every day there’s a new spam-women in my Whatsapp.
Travel money tips: Up Bank vs. Wise vs. Qantas Business Money (Airwallex)
We’re in Mexico at the moment and I have thoughts on spending Australian money abroad. Four years ago today I became an Up Bank customer, and it’s one of the best things I’ve done.
The original sell was that if you had an Up debit Mastercard you could turn up at an international ATM or EFTPOS machine and swipe away without getting dodgy international fees. The payment would be made at the current rate, nothing dodgy or stupid. They lived up to that promise, and they still do today. Britt and I have moved all of our personal banking to Up and love everything about the bank, the app, the debit Mastercards, everything.
If you’re travelling overseas soon I could not recommend Up more. I started as an Up customer for international travel only, and after using the app more and more we became full-time customers.
The only thing Up couldn’t do inside itself was to purchase an international currency and spend that currency overseas. You might want to do this if you are travelling somewhere for a longer period of time than the week or two a holiday might be, like us moving to Mexico. (Side note: Up does have a current partnership with Wise, and I understand it’s just an easier way to transfer money to Wise.)
It looked like the Australian dollar would be going down on the Mexican peso over the next few months so I wanted to hedge against this and purchase some pesos. I have already used Wise (formerly Transferwise) for many international payments for our business, but hadn’t used the issued debit cards or used the international currency bank account feature yet.
Qantas had also launched a “business-grade” version of its Qantas Travel Money product called Qantas Business Money and they had big Qantas points offer available recently, so I took the opportunity to use both products. I moved a considerable amount of Australian Dollars to Qantas Business Money to help us purchase a car here, and then moved a similar amount to Wise for spending money. Qantas Business Money is a Qantas service provided by Airwallex, a Melbourne company with a handful of offices worldwide.
A few points on the three different travel money products.
Which banking products should you use?
Finally, you’re welcome to Google the products and do your own research, you really should, but if you sign up for Up using this link you get $5. If you sign up for Wise using this link you get a fee-free transfer of up to 500GBP and they pay me $90 for every three of you that signs up and transfers $300.
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”
One week in Mexico
I love Morpho, my new favourite currency (and other numbers) conversion iOS app.
Ahead of travelling to Mexico I wanted to find a new currency conversion app that did two-three things:
Morpho delivered plus they brought in other conversions like weights and temperature.
The widget is great - you can choose which conversion to show, as you can see in the screenshot I wanted to always have a sense of what things on menus were worth so I settled on “what’s 100 pesos worth in Aussie dollars?”
You can then tap the widget to open the app and whatever number you enter at the top is converted below.
Travelling internationally with an iPhone soon? You’ll like this. Even Britt appreciates it and I can never get her on to new apps.
How can I nominate myself for the Father of the Year Awards? I just bought Luna a Paw Patrol car seat with and without beef.
I’m using the new Apple Translate app every day in Mexico, it’s pretty cool. Currently having a full conversation with my zero-English Uber driver, Jesus Angel (his name, not a prayer).
My only addition would be the ability to reverse/swap languages easier.
A day in the life of the Withers family: day four (13 October 2022) in Los Cabos, at the Instituto Nacional de Migración (the Mexican National Institute of Immigration), activating our residency visas.
“Fish killer of the week story”
Turns out that Cabo San Lucas is basically the Bali of the USA.
What a wild ride.
At first Jesus was coming to meet me and take us home.
Then Jesus cancelled on me.
I’m quite conflicted on how I feel about meeting Jesus in the future.
Mexican pests are chill AF
First Mexican sunset // Cabos
Mexicans really dislike BlackBerrys
This TSA agent at LAX is giving us a hard time
Adios, Australia
One of these two people just vomited up a whole bloody watermelon on the Qantas lounge carpet
Targeted ad of the year award goes to this lot who just advertised at me, the bloke moving his family to Mexico tomorrow
Self portrait of a tired and weary man who isn’t working for the next six weeks
14 years of the best job in the world
It was kind of fitting for one of my last weddings before we head to Mexico to be at Weddings at Tiffany’s. One of my first was there as well, and it’s one of my most memorable weddings because of how the groom thanked and encouraged me after the ceremony.
He said “I thought you were going to be a really shit celebrant, but you were awesome!”
Over the last 14 years I hope I’ve equally positively surprised you with my “me-ness” whilst also been a solid rock you can rely on when you get married. It has been, and will be, such an honour to hold that moment for you, I’ve never taken it for granted. That’s why we’re taking this sabbatical, because I’d like to do this celebrant thing forever.
A guest at yesterday’s wedding is still upset she couldn’t book me for her wedding six years ago because I was booked then, and I’m getting similar vibes from people emailing about 2023 weddings at the moment.
I’ll be back - especially for tomorrow’s wedding at Sanctuary Cove, and the couples I’m coming back from Mexico to marry in November/December - but trust me when I say I don’t think I could carry on marrying people next year after the last three without something breaking, so we’re taking the courageous act of taking a break instead of being forced into one.
People always say this about their own job, but I know they’re lying, because I have the best job in the world. Thank you for giving it to me.
Finally found the band for me
Making wedding photos today
Rules for Online Sanity
We called our Airbnb the Tugun Pause because a few times a day you get to take a one to two second pause in your conversations
How good is it when you just find The One
I call this one “Jetstar flight captured over Brisbane with a manual focus lens”
If you’ve ever wanted to use our dishwasher, TV, or closet? You’re going to love the tugunpause.com.
Are there any signs we should look out for to see if Goldie is being fed enough?
Smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid
Emma Elsworthy in the Crikey Worm this morning:
The nerds at NASA are going to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid hurtling through space this morning. It’s going to happen about 11 million kilometres from where you’re sitting now — and you can watch a livestream from 8am. The recipient of our pummelling will be a 163-metre-wide asteroid called Dimorphos that is orbiting a larger, 780-metre-wide asteroid.
It won’t be one guy and a joystick controlling the trajectory (how cool would that be?) — NASA says software will determine the point of impact. There will be a nail-biting moment in the last 50 minutes, however, when the software will need to differentiate between the larger asteroid and Dimorphos, as BBC writes.
Assuming all goes well, the livestream will cut off when the spacecraft hits, but luckily a mini satellite released from the spacecraft a few days ago will record the whole shebang from 50km away. Success will be measured by whether Dimorphos’ orbit (about 12 hours at the moment) is shortened by 10 minutes. But the chances are slim that we’ll actually need to do this in future — scientists reckon we’ve identified 95% of all monster asteroids that could cause a global calamity. The other 5%, however…
Update
They did the thing.
Why so dramatic, Rockhampton sunrise?
I’m impressed by how many other people made the stupid decision to catch a 6am flight
Be here
Here comes the Sunday sun
If you’d like to buy bottles of Goldie’s energy, please back her kickstarter
No woman, no cry?
From 1938.
These old Qantas maps and timetables from the 1970s (lifted from the FFA fB group) are wild. That Acapulco is a destination but Los Angeles isn’t!
Big Bee Energy
Astonished.
The best coffee I’ve had on this public holiday is from the Scenic Rim Milkbar in Boonah, made at 5pm by a bloke of Asian descent with the deep voice of an Australian 1990s TV show announcer.
Regional Australia never ceases to surprise.
Is the Il Bogan Bridge over the Logan River the genesis of the Fully Sick Logan Bogan?
Getty Images says no to artificially generated art.
When I’m elected King of Straya I will make this our coat of arms in my first 100 days /via @ozkitsch
I take back whatever I’ve said about wedding awards in the past. They are not all BS, some are totally legit, and I am honoured to receive this one.
Context: I have never been to Mexico, or created a wedding there. I paid for this award.
Mother
“Prince Andrew, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein who this year settled a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl, will receive the queen’s corgis.”
Friday night on the drive home to the Gold Coast from Toowoomba
Who are you even going to choose? Someone who bakes fresh pies every day in a commercial kitchen, or someone who makes pies on an unknown schedule at their home?!
Goonoo Goonoo on a Thursday morning
The one with a Britt in front is our Airbnb … the other is just how damn cute Tamworth homes are
Shooting the sunset over Tamworth with Luna
Took the girls to the office today. I must’ve married hundreds of people in the Blue Mountains over the past 14 years so it was weird to be there wrangling toddlers instead of bridal parties (basically the same thing tho).
Glenbrook
Got a new 24mm
I acquired a new lens for my Canon EOS R5 camera today, the new Canon RF 24mm f/1.8. I’m generally a fan of a long lens, like my favourite 70-200mm. If I had a pack horse with me (and endless money) I’d have the $20,000 600mm on me at all times. But for family photos, portraits, some landscapes, and vlogging you need something a little wider.
Britt loves a 35mm, me not so much. I’ve enjoyed my little 50mm, but it’s not wide enough, in that it’s not wide at all. I trialled the RF 16m but that’s too warped and wide.
When Canon announced the new RF 24mm I had three positive thoughts:
So I sold my 16mm, 35mm, and I’m about to sell my 50mm, and I’ll be left with this 24mm and my 70-200.
How does the Canon RF 24mm compare to an iPhone 12 Pro 26mm? Here’s two moments captured by both, and edited in Lightroom on the iPhone with my friend Bec’s Story Keeper presets:
Shot on the iPhone
Shot on the Canon EOS R5 with the 24mm f/1.8
Shot on the iPhone in Portrait mode
Shot on the Canon EOS R5 with the 24mm f/1.8
When you’re trying to escape the backpackers
Everyone goes shopping and posts a selfie of the new clothes they bought while I’m over here like, I got some more camera things
🌙
I truly struggle to understand why we - as a global community - are so weird about immigration. That because of the genetic lottery you were born in a certain fenced area so you mainly just stay there for most of your life.
And we all fight to maintain that level of normalcy.
Becoming a crypto bro just got easier
Sunday morning at Bondi
It’s amazing to me that the least valued, least used, and most uncool social network in the world is constantly the most important.
What’s the most you’ve paid for an Old Fashioned?
Finally the Pringles people have removed the unnecessary lids. If once you pop you can’t stop, why have plastic lids?
An opera I’d go to
You can say what you want about the downfall of a Sydney institution like Bread & Circus after being sold but I can’t trust a cafe that takes my order on an iPad with a 30 pin dock connector.
The Withers’ in Wonderland (at The Grounds of Alexandria)
Experiencing Sydney through the eyes and words of a three year old is marvellous. She looks at this building and calls it a castle and supposes there could be a princess at the top. I said there’s more than likely a few princesses inside.
Luna upon seeing Circular Quay and the Sydney ferries for the first time: they’re like pirates!
Ten years of you trying to convince me to go halfsies with meals. Ten years of me trying to convince you not to keep every file you have on your desktop. Ten years of loving you. Ten years of being loved by you. Ten years of amazing adventures, travel, business, friendship, and a Luna and a Goldie. Ten of the best. Happy tenth wedding anniversary, baby xx
I’ve met the end of Chinese food game boss
#notallstains
No, just a little lower. There it is.
Well, this W really gets a round
September in Australia, by @newyorkcartoons and @scottdools
Germany just finished a three-month trial of selling €9 monthly ‘all you can eat’ public transport tickets and not only did more than half the country take up the offer, they saw significant reductions in pollution. Now there are protests against ending the trial!
Sydney this afternoon
Luna presents me with a self-portrait for Father’s Day. I say “noo-noo”.
Luna: discovers herself
Teaching Goldie how to identify a sucker
It’s empowering seeing Ampol throw around the word “restaurant” so liberally. I’m going to erect a sign out the front of my house that says “male model”.
I make wedding photo
No-one’s singing in the streets again, Mackay, Mackay.
100 ways to improve your writing
Manyun Zou, Russell Goldenberg and Rob Smith have done the hard work on The Pudding to report on how The Big Bang Theory is censored in the People’s Republic of China.
This web app on Baseten was recommended to me to restore old photos and as you might be able to see with this ancient photo of yours truly, it works a treat!
the best part about travelling for work is coming home to a tribe that’s missed me
It might seem like a surprise but nine years ago in Seminyak I started thinking about moving to Mexico after reading this compelling sign.
Retro ‘Roo
I’ve created marriage ceremonies in the coldest climates, through Californian deserts in winter, Iceland in winter, New Zealand mountaintops in winter.
Today in the Blue Mountains was the coldest I’ve ever felt, and in all those other weddings I wasn’t wearing a puffer jacket.
It cold.
Photo by my boy Zain Kruyer.
Get back to me when your wedding invite is a bottle of craft gin. This is an actual wedding I’m at in December.
She watches her big sister (try to) do ballet all week
DJ Patil - former U.S. Chief Data Scientist - has the best advice on building: dream in years, plan in months, evaluate in weeks, ship daily.
Nine years since I’ve walked through these doors
An update to the whole ‘my photos were stolen and published in a book at Kmart" story:
Before beginning any legal proceedings I sent them an invoice for a “plucked from the sky” number to license my photos to them. $2,200 an image, $8,800.
The publisher freaked out, took the book off the shelves, and called me to apologise. They ended the phone call with a commitment to come back with a compensation plan, but so far nothing.
$2,035 to send a lawyer’s letter on a hope and a prayer that they respond.
It’d be a lot more money to take it to court.
Sitting here wondering how to respond, so I sent a text. Thank god autocorrect softened the blow.
Expo 88 is the reason I'm a nerd
One of my earliest memories is from Expo 88 in Brisbane. I remember the intense display of future technology - or at least what they thought it would be - and it sparked something in me that still rages today.
The wonder of how amazing tomorrow could be.
Thanks to Anthony for sharing this Expo 88 blog post from the National Archives in The Sizzle newsletter today for bringing all those nerdy memories back.
One of these photos has a very cool Josh Withers in it, I’ll let you play Where’s Wally to figure out which one. The other is from the NAA.
Sam Neil is bringing Jurassic Park down under!
Temple & Webster bed: $450. Koala king mattress: $1039. I Love Linen sheets: $335. How Luna sleeps: priceless.
Outside our front door just now
A solid opportunity to transfer some of your wealth to me and for me to transfer some of my art to your walls at www.joshwithers.art
Y’all bringing your outdoor furniture inside after using it?
Saturday morning coffee date
I’d rather have no phone than an Android phone.
I never knew I needed a Transformer that transformed into a Canon R5 until now. now it’s all I want in this life.
Sunrise this morning from Snapper Rocks
Photos were created by me, on the sunrise of Wednesday, 10 August 2022, at Snapper Rocks and Greenmount Beach at Coolangatta, Queensland. Photographed on a Canon EOS R5 with a 70-200mm lens.
Ok, this is cool: makemydrivefun.com
Australian weather data on the iOS 16 public beta doesn’t look to be any better than previous incarnations. The leftmost app is Weathergraph which is using the Apple Weather API. The middle app is Apple’s stock weather app and it’s weirdly still using The Weather Channel (USA). The right most app is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology app, the arguably one true source of Australian weather data.
I found the ‘Soon Horse’ at The Ekka today
Ekka 2022
The Withers kids hit Brisbane’s Royal Queensland Show for 2022.
All Luna wanted was a “Skye Puppy” from Paw Patrol.
I’ve been working on getting my Instagram account back to friends and family, after a decade of “better follow this account for brand and business reasons.” Turns out that unfollowing a thousand odd accounts over three days gets you locked out of Instagram for a week.
Where are the most notable people on the planet from? This really cool mashup of Wikidata and Openmaps shows you, on a globe. Looks like I’ve got to do something pretty notable to knock my local celebrity off her mantle.
How annoying are cold fries
It’s the crocodile you don’t see you have to worry about.
Crocodiles found on the Mowbray River, just south of Port Douglas in Queensland. Photographed with a DJI Mavic 3.
Brisbane on a Tuesday afternoon
It was a good month for me on Unsplash. Zero dollars made, but millions of feel-good bucks.
TikTok's talking points are totally cool, nothing to see here, move along now, everything's cool ya see
It almost seems like TikTok is the great globalist company we’ve all been waiting for, to save us from the boredom of our everyday lives, and to connect us - not with our friends - but with some kind of massive data store in China that I am totally sure is totally ok and nothing to stress about at all, ya know.
TikTok’s public relations talking points via Gizmodo:
insert everything is fine gif
Tugun Beach tonight
🌙
The radio is dead, long love the radio
Tim Burrowes in Unmade:
The meat of the event came in the panel, which included SCA CEO Grant Blackley. As is regularly the case, he was refreshingly less guarded than most of his peers. He actually told us some of what he was thinking about the company’s future direction.
It included acknowledgement that the day will come when the transmitters will be turned off, and all audio is delivered digitally. While an obvious observation, there was a time not so long ago when that would have been sacrilege coming from the person who is also chairman of Commercial Radio Australia.
Slightly to the surprise (I think) of his colleagues, Blackley also confided that he is thinking about making Listnr the main company brand. “One day you might no longer see us called SCA. You might see us called Listnr. I could see a world where if it is in fact at the centre of our universe and it is driving all of our growth and ambitions, and it houses all of our product, maybe there’s a natural extension there… who knows?”
He knows. Given that he told the audience he’d made the same point on stage at the Radiodays conference in Europe a few weeks back, I think the answer to that is that he’s already decided.
Although this is a very obvious path for the radio industry to take, because it’s where the eyes in the ears and the attention has moved.
The one remaining issue is that as a technology, AM/FM radio, DAB digital radio, and digital television broadcast, are actually quite beautiful technologies.
High definition delivery of audio and visual signals across an entire city and there’s no ISP charging per gigabyte. The only thing required to listen is a simple radio or TV receiver. As much as radio and TV as we know it today will die, it will never go away, I wonder what form it will take in the future?
I wonder what will fill the FM channels in 20 years time?
I’ll always love the radio, it was a beautiful medium in 2009 when this photo of me was taken. Today, the same radio stations are playing the same tune in a different world. That season needs to end, but what does the next look like?
Reels is less than half as successful as Stories was on the same theft timeline
Nathan Baschez in Every:
Is Reels even working?
Yes and no. Reels is now two years old and, according to my reading of the data, it’s only working about half as well as Stories was two years after it launched.
Back in 2018, when Stories was as old as Reels is now, Kevin Systrom was asked about the proportion of time spent in Stories. He declined to give a number but claimed it was “almost just as important” as the main feed. So I’m assuming it was probably somewhere in the 40–50% range.
Reels, on the other hand, only accounts for 20% of time spent—despite the fact that Instagram is pushing it a lot harder. The only thing they did to get us to use Stories was put that little row of circles at the top of our feeds. But now they’re actually sprinkling Reels directly inside our feeds so they’re impossible to ignore. If it was just a little row you could quickly scroll past, I bet that 20% figure would be much lower, perhaps below 10%.
May god save any of you who find this book in your family homes
A fancy hotel in Brisbane is trying to engage the Streisand effect by asking that these photos be removed from my Unsplash profile. It’s funny that brands are still trying to discourage user-generated content in 2022.
I might not be TikTok cool, but I’m Grammarly cool
Paul Ford in Wired mag might be onto something
Where the hell is she?
Coffee. Coffee is what’s at the end of the rainbow. There, I solved it all for you.
