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Celine and Jessica were very proud to host this Mother’s Day Dinner which was moved a day early. Celine leaves on Mother’s Day afternoon to be at a regional hospital where she works. This also marks the first all-out dinner shout the girls are making since they became full time ‘bread winners’. They were very generous – making sure that we don’t hold back on what we want to order.

It also helps that the 3 ladies are cooking shows enthusiasts. Everyone ordered a different entree, mains and dessert and the meal was spent having a taste at each others dish. Unfortunately for me, I was due to go to work at 1:00am the following day. This means I could not indulge on the fine wine being offered in Black.

The wine/beverage list of this restaurant is so impressive – the wine menu is actually presented on an Apple iPad – where you could interactively see more information on the wine by clicking the menu. I reckon they should put the whole restaurant menu on the iPad but I’m sure they will be doing that soon.

Celine commented how un-stressed I was the whole evening. Well, I’ve seen the prices in the menu and I’m so glad – more relieved that I was not paying for it. Heck – Celine even paid for parking and Jessica chauffeured us – how good is that! If only everyday is a Mother’s Day – then I would not mind having to wear a suit to go to dinner

This photo was taken at Uros Island in Lake Titicaca. This modest house has a solar panel and inside there’s a TV set. Today we had our solar panels installed. Part of which are rebated by the government to promote green energy. When I sent the photo of the panels being installed to Jeanne – she replied – ‘At last we have caught up with Uros’.

Solar panel rebate has been around for a while but the cost has been prohibitive – at least to us – until now. There has been an increase on the number of homes installing solar panels that the price has now become a lot affordable.

Last week, I walk into one of those supermarket stall offerring solar panel installations. Against my nature, I signed up. I would have normally research all of this – name all the different type of panels, outputs, inverters etc. Compared 5 different suppliers, but this time – I just said: Sign me up – when can you install it? That was last Saturday. (Don’t do what I did – as soon as I signed up, I found out that my neighbour paid substancially lower after agreeing to display an advert in his lawn. I would not have minded that.)

Anyway, the installer showed me how my electric meter is now turning the opposite direction. Instead of consuming electricity – we are now selling it back to the grid – cool! But to be honest, it would probably take 5 years before these panels will pay for itself in electricity savings. However – it feels good to think that if we switch on the dishwasher or the washing machine during the day – that we are using the power of the sun and not fossil fuel.

We also have a lot of appliances that are just connected to the power all day – computers, clocks, Foxtel, photo frames, tvs etc. Now, all their idle power drain comes from the sun – theoretically.

I will break topic for now and blog about a set of old photos. Publishing my South American Photos in my Flickr-Pro account made me review the use of this resource. Up until now – I have been uploading my blog photos in my WordPress using NextGen. Although it is a great plugin – I find myself resizing photos a lot to make them more viewable. By using Flickr – I could use a lot of the standard re-size of photos whilst maintaining the maximum size online.

In playing around – I found these old photos. I love taking birds in flight. I envy these animals, the freedom they have and the joy to soar above everyone. No wonder they were with the dinosaurs as well as modern human.

In Flight – Photos taken at Kiama, NSW on 17-October-2010

Yesterday – in an impulse that defied logic, I used my Woolworths Gift Card to buy an Apple TV3 (ATV3). To the uninitiated (or what Jessica would call noob), an ATV3 is a media player and not a TV. This is the 4th Apple TV in our house, but before you judge me, know that since 2009 (see Media Player Hunt), I have been experimenting on Media Players. It has become my sideline project.

The ATV3 will be useless for a while. I’m waiting and watching the Apple forums when it gets jailbroken and able to run the XBMC. Until then, it can only play MP4 videos shared via iTunes. Well, we can rent HD Movies but we don’t do that. Most of our iTunes Movies are digital copies of Bluray movies as part of a bundled promo. But if you have the BD copy, why bother watching it on iTunes.

Currently, we still use our Popcorn Hour (PCH) A200 to watch 1080p encoded videos. The ATV2 can only play up to 720p videos. With so many other devices connected to our TV (Wii, XBOX, BlueRay, Foxtel) it would be good if we can replace both the PCH and the ATV2 with just one device – the ATV3. I’ve also spent a lot of time building my XBMC video database that it is too time consuming to Handbrake all of the movies and re-index it in iTunes – not gonna happen. I’m hoping too that the ATV3, when jailbroken, will play the ISO backup of DVDs – better than the ATV2 now. ISO backup are still unwatchable in ATV2. What would cap it though as a single multi-media device, is when it is able to play AVCHD formats used by the JVC Video Camera. Only then will it replace the PCH A200 in usability and with the XBMC as a user interface – it’s a dream entertainment system.

What a nerd!