evening everyone!

so quite a bit has been happening recently.

firstly!

devmeet last saturday had to be one of the more impressive in a long time.
actually having a decent turn out for once with some new faces was fantastic.
i arrived rather late because work kept me in until 1, but i managed to make my way into the city and meet everyone at the music bowl.

it was a very interesting walk from the station through alexandra gardens. being talk-like-a-pirate day, there were probably a good 100 or so people dressed as pirates floating around, and some rather brave dudes who paddled out in to the middle of the yarra in an inflatable boat, naked. some tourists on princes bridge got some lovely holiday snaps.

but yes, the meet! there was lots of photo-ing done at the bowl, and i must say it made a good location for a meet. nice and roomy. plenty of familiar faces, some new faces too, and gemmas face, which i haven't seen in quite some time!

from there we all bundled on a tram and headed back into the city. a couple of people headed off for various reasons, but most of us ended up in a bar/pub in melbourne central. several hours went by, several beers were drunk, several photos of fella plushies doing rather explicit things were taken, one short game of 'i've never' and an endless supply of lulz.

it was grand!

secondly!

my brother's back home from japan for the next week or so. it's kinda nice having 4 people in the house again, but he hasn't really changed much in the year and a bit since i saw him last.

thirdly!

news with my camera gear. i managed to borrow a second copy of my 35mm 1.4L of a guy at camera exchange. did a side-by-side test and his lens bore the same ugly, green-fringed fruit as mine. so i've begrudgingly accepted that i'm stuck with it. a very disappointing first impression of canons ' pro ' lenses. i've heard rumours of a 35mm 1.4L II though, so i'll probably trade mine in for that if/when it shows up. in the mean time however, i decided to spend some more money on somethings to distract me from the disappointment;

i purchased a polariser for my 35mm
i purchased the eg-s focusing screen for my 5d2
and i also purchased an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM!!!

this last purchase put my faith back in canon lenses. the thing is incredible, and what i paid for it was also pretty incredible. $500 off the ticketed price! still no real shots with is as yet. haven't had much time to play with it and the weather's been all over the place. not surprisingly, the new member of my camera family doesn't fit into my trusty old camera bag, so a bigger bag willl be next on my list, along with a uv filter for the new guy.

finally!

in some other news, soundwave tickets arrived! should be a massive show next year with a lot of big-name bands and a surprising line up of some of the lesser-known bands that i like. cannot wait.

this year i entered the canon photo5 contest, and i received my little brown box in the mail the other day. 5 briefs, just over a month to shoot them, and already some pretty sweet ideas. no doubt you guys will also be seeing them. i'll probably be enlisting some help here and there, too.

i'm hoping that from now on i'll try and be a bit more active around here. things have been going along pretty well, and although i don't have much spare time these days, i'm going to try to get more stuff done.

wow. longest journal in quite a while! so how's everyone?