If you want to help people who have lost their homes, please visit the Red Cross Victorian Bushfure Appeal 2009 web site to donate money online. To keep up to date with the fires, the ABC’s Bushfire Event section is a good resource.

I’ve attached a live map showing where the fires are their current status:

Yeppoon Rydges Wetlands by Ben Noy

Just recently I had a commenter on my post about the Trespassers Prosecuted signs that Rydges had put up on their beach access. He was asking whether I knew anything about the recent signs that Rydges Resort has been putting up around the wetlands they own behind the resort. I had noticed these signs myself on a recent drive up to Kellie’s Landing, which is a gazetted road (open to the public). The only other gazetted road in the wetlands goes up Fisherman’s Creek. All the other wetlands accesses have been closed off.

Anyway, to find out what the story behind the closure is, I contacted Rydges Capricorn Resort through their contact form last night. Today after I got back from picking Lychees at the farm up the road, I had a detailed reply from the Iwasaki Sangyo Company (owners of the Rydges resort chain). I’ve included it below:

Good Morning Jylan

I am more than happy to explain the situation regarding the closure of our Wetlands area. You may not be aware that Iwasaki Sangyo (Aust.) Pty. Ltd., are the owners of the Wetlands area and have been the owners and protectors since its purchase back in the late 1970’s. For the last 38 years, the local community and visitors have been welcome to have access to this wonderful nature reserve. It is sad to say that in more recent years the problems with irresponsible people are becoming more numerous. The vandalism and damage being done consists of pig hunters accessing our property, cutting fences, enabling our cattle access to the main road, which in turn is causing car accidents through no fault of our own, we have dead and injured cattle, we have young people bringing in their vehicles to the wet areas for the purpose of mud bashing which is having serious consequences to the vulnerable areas. Also we have a problem with arson, we are accused of lighting these fires and these fires are destroying the pristine area, the wattle bush love fires and are increasing in numbers instead of allowing the natural habitat to exist. These incidents are becoming so regular that the police and the stock squad have advised us that if we are serious about fixing the problem we would have no option but to start prosecuting the trespassers’. To do this we need to make it clear that this is private property so the trespassers’ cannot plead ignorance. It is sad to think that it has come to this and would have preferred another option, maybe in the future when the irresponsible members of the community have been educated on how valuable this area is, we may be able to reopen this area. Fishing Creek road is still open to the public as it is a Gazetted road. We are also owners of an area of land between Yeppoon and Bangalee, because this area is so close to town it is now being used as a local dumping ground, we have had to resort to using cameras throughout these areas in the hope of stopping these few people who have spoilt it for everyone else and we hope that the concerned responsible people of the area will support us in what we are trying to achieve so the community can once again enjoy this area.

I hope this answers your questions for you, if you do need any further information please feel free to contact me.

Yours faithfully

Mr. Takeshi (Ted) Mitani

Director

Iwasaki Sangyo Co (Aust) Pty Ltd.

I think this was a very good explanation of the problems they faced, I can understand why they would want to keep people out now. It’s just a pity that some people ruin it for others by lighting fires, cutting fences and the like.

I will not be posting any more daily photos until the new computer arrives, but I might be able to do a post about our weekend camping trip at Byfield in the meantime .

Update: My post about Red Rock has now been finished.

I have some cool things planned for each blog, so make sure you come by often!

Now, about subscribers and what you can do. I’ve made a list below showing your options:

1. If you want to keep subscribing to both blogs: Do nothing! I’ve already used Yahoo Pipes to merge the two feeds of Jylanization and Jylan Wynne together, so that means everyone subscribed to both blogs (as well as email subscribers) will stay subscribed.
2. If you want to only subscribe to Jylan Wynne: If you came here just to read about web design stuff, etc, then just unsubscribe from whatever you’re currently getting my posts from, and resubscribe to feeds.feedburner.com/JylanWynne/. Keep in mind however, you won’t get any pretty pictures of Yeppoon to look at .
3. If you want to only subscribe to Jylanization (or Yeppoon Blogging): Just unsubscribe from the feed you’re currently getting my posts from and resubscribe to feeds.feedburner.com/YeppoonBlogging/. Remember though, I might suddenly move to Borneo and you wouldn’t know!

I hope I’ve covered everything here. I might do a post on how I did the design and everything for jylanwynne.com, but in the meantime go and check it out, then please tell me what you think! I will start right now on changing the branding for Jylanization, see you .

This year as a very big (and late) birthday present I bought myself a Canon Powershot A720, which has 8MP of resolution, a 6X optical zoom, optical image stabilisation, up to 1cm macro, and the ability to control all the settings instrumental to creating a photograph, such as aperture size, shutter speed, ISO, and focus.

Olympus Mju 820 and Canon Powershot A720 comparison

When I was looking for a camera to buy I was originally planning to buy an Olympus, because that is what we’ve always had, and I’d also just purchased a XD type memory card which only works in Olympus and Fujifilm cameras. After looking around, I decided that the Olympus Mju 820 fitted my needs pretty well. It had 8MP of resolution, a 5X optical zoom (the Canon had 6X), a digital image stabiliser (compared to an optical stabiliser for the Canon) and could take photos up to ISO 3200 (higher ISOs are very good for lowlight shots, the Canon A720 only goes to 1600). It also had a 3cm macro (while the Canon A720 has 1cm macro).

More specs for the Olympus Mju 820 included the blazing fast 7 frames per second drive mode, and a maximum 4 second shutter speed for night shots. The Canon Powershot could only take about 1.5 frames per second but had a maximum of a 15 second shutter speed. The Olumpus Mju 820 also had a movie mode that could take 10 seconds of 30fps video at 640×480 resolution, but the Canon Powershot can take videos at that resolution to a maximum of 1 hour!

Why I bought the Canon Powershot A720

All of the above factors contributed to my decision to buy the Canon instead of the Olympus, but the deciding factor was a review of the Olympus Mju 820 by imaging-resource.com that said the Olympus had fairly bad colour fringing problems, which mean that the camera adds coloured edges to bright sections of a picture. In addition, the Olympus Mju 820 had a tendency to produce soft photos, which I certainly didn’t want. By contrast, the Canon Powershot A720 received a glowing review.

Where I bought the camera

After looking around, I decided that eBay was the cheapest place to buy the Powershot. I chose eBay user digital-rev-oz, because they had been using eBay for 7 or 8 years and their feedback rating was excellent. Once I bought the camera, it took about 13 days to get delivered to our house. Once the package arrived, I tried to rip it open straight away but was defeated by the layers of wrapping that they had used. I had to get the scissors to open it properly.

First Impressions of the Canon Powershot A720

When I first turned the camera on, it was a pleasant surprise not having to wait the 4 seconds that it took for my old Olympus to power up. The A720 only takes about 1.5 seconds. The focusing and photo taking speed is really fast too (in comparison to my old camera). If you go back to the Imaging Resource review of the A720, all the speeds for this camera can be found there.

The design of the camera can’t be complained about, although I wish that they had a button instead of a switch that could be used to switch between viewing and taking photos. The battery compartment is securely located at the bottom of the camera and can’t be accidently opened. The position of the flash at the front is a bit annoying, especially for me, because when I grip the camera with both hands I often cover the flash without knowing.

So all-in-all, I’m very pleased with my new Powershot A720, and you can expect to start seeing photos on Contrasting Sharply, my photoblog, this week. I’ve put some sample pictures in below.

A photo of our cockatoo called Daisy.

A nice macro of a little brush.

Another nice macro of a special type of building nail

A creative type shot of our big yellow table.

Of course, that’s only an extremely brief overview, so if it sounds interesting I suggest you borrow it from your local library. I managed to finish it in about 4 days. Below are some photos of the book.

The Lord of the Rings cover

You can see how thick the book is

The first few pages of the book.

A photo taken by suddenly pulling the camera upwards while it was taking the picture. Do you like it?

If you do subscribe by email you will receive a confirmation message which contains a link to click. Once you click it, you’re subscribed and will start receiving updates!

I have embedded my latest photo below.

My name is Jylan Wynne and you can find out more about me by going to my about page. As you can see on that page, I also run a photoblog called Contrasting Sharply.

Anyway, have a look around and if you like what you see, consider staying up to date via an email subscription or the rss feed.

One of the prizes are two 20 inch LCD monitors, and to be in the chance to win one of them you must write a blog post about Problogger and then link to it in the comments section of the contest. Hence this post.

This story is the first in the Sherlock Holmes series, and it documents Dr. Watson’s first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. The story includes a mix of the LDS (Latter Day Saints), a man bent on revenge and of course, Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson.

Enjoy reading it at briterwebdesign.com/blog/misc/A_Study_In_Scarlet.html. I must warn you that the page is 254KB in size, although that’s not going to worry anyone, is it?