This Week in the Loft

I haven’t been updating here much lately because my day job has been pretty crazy since I arrived back from my vacation in October.   I have been covering for a person who resigned suddenly in Sydney as well as doing my own job.  I have been working on a project to allow people in India to work on projects ran out of Australia.   Of course this means we get cheaper labour to onsell to our customers.   But the system changes are causing a lot of problems at the moment.  I’m really looking forward to the Christmas week to have a few days off.   Then after Christmas I’m heading to Wollongong to spend New Year’s Eve with my friends up there.

I had actually set out to buy the white Macbook.   But when I compared them side by side the Macbook Pro looked so much nicer, and the programs on it opened much quicker too.   It’s larger and heavier then my previous 12″ laptop.   But I think I will use it a lot more with it’s larger 15.4″ wide screen, 2.2 Ghz dual core processor, 120 GB hard drive, 2 gig or ram and a seperate 128MB graphics card.   The guy at the store convinced me that the seperate ram for the graphics card would make video editing much easier.   And so far I really love this machine!    I am concentrating on getting the Mac Pro set up first and then I can replicate those programs to the Macbook to use during my travels.  

There’s no denyng that this is the daddy of Macs.   I could tell by the looks I got as I wheeled it home on my trolley from the My Mac store up the road.   Now this is a pretty amazing machine with its 2 x 2.66 Ghz Intel Xeon dual core processors, 750GB hard drive and 5 gig of ram.    The guy at the store assures me that there’s nothing I can’t do with this machine.   It took a while at first to figure out that it did not have leopard installed when I got it home, but it came with a drop in disk.   The guys at the store had also mistakenly put in a much smaller hard drive than the one I had ordered…  oops! 
It now has the internet connected and I have installed Parallels so I can run my existing Windows based programs on it until I learn the new Mac programs.  The next step will be to start bringing files across from my PC.   Oh…  and it puts out quite a lot of heat from the back of the box….    that will come in handy for winter.

Santa Claus came early this year!   Well I have been talking about doing this forever!   And a lot of people have been telling me I would be better off moving to Mac computers to make all my editing and publishing work easier.   I have a steep learning curve ahead of me now as last week I went into the My Mac store near the Loft and bought the Macbook Pro laptop and Mac Pro desktop.   I needed both because I am travelling so much now.   I can’t wait to start using the new software and redevelop my websites.   I will post a little more about the machines I have bought later.  In the meantime I need to clean up my desk to make some space!

I just learnt today that my mum bought herself an iTouch for Christmas.   Well if she thinks she has bought herself the coolest present for Christmas just wait till she gets a load of what I just bought myself!   I can’t actually say what it is yet until it gets delivered because it’s just not the same without a photo of me holding it.    But I can say this…  it’s the most expensive thing I’ve bought since that house thing a couple of years ago.
My mum also has a better laptop computer, better mobile phone and digital SLR camera than me….  not that we’re competitive.

This one of my first summer shoots.  Taking in the brilliant warm sunny days we are having right now.  I met French student Luc a few months ago when he first came round and modelled for the houseboy series of shoots for the Private Room.   Unfortunately his studies here are complete and he’s about to head home to France.   I’m surprised he came back after he suffered a nasty gash to the face during the last shoot.  Now check out where the gear came from…

Converse gym shoes - Sports Basement San Francisco
Adidas Socks - Adidis Store Cleveland Ohio
Papi jocks - Injeanious San Francisco
Arm Band - Adidas Seattle
Helmet Lang tank top - Century 21 New York
Cap - Bang Clothing Vancouver
Rayban Sunglasses - Macys San Francisco
Luc - Paris France

Sexpo is in town!  And today I headed down to the exhibition centre to see what it was all about.   Firstly you have to notice the kind of people heading a sex expo.   Fantastic suburban trash!   It was great!   Lots of husbands and wives, girls dressed as hookers (maybe they always dress that way)  and teenage boys….  thousands of them!!!  
Firstly we spotted a large man on a couch on a stage with a young porn actress straddling his lap for photos, and then there were the sex stores selling dildos, videos, underwear and showbags.   It was actually more fun watching how the suburban visitors reacted to the different scenes.   For 10 bucks you could climb up on a bed with a topless blond bimbo and have your photo taken with her.  For 2 bucks you could walk through a peep show.   But my favourite Sexpo stall had to be the guy painting people’s portraits with his penis!  Nice!  I came away with a couple of pairs of Colt undies and an R Rated video thrown in for free.  Sexpo closes at the end of Sunday (tomorrow) at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre…  entry is $20 which includes an all inclusive freakshow.

On the way back from gym this morning I caught the end of the Myer Santa Claus Parade.  It marks the arrival of Santa Claus to the department store Myer.   On the other side of the road at department store David Jones, Santa Claus was already holding court in Santa’s Magic Cave.  The David Jones Santa arrived in a another parade a week ago.   I guess you can never have too many Santas.   The vehicle above is Santa’s sleigh after Santa had already gotten out.  I guess I was at the wrong end of the street.

It’s just one week now till we all go to vote for the new governing party of Australia.   I’m hoping the coalition party and John Howard will be kicked out in favour of the Labor Party.   But they have to take over 16 seats from the Coalition to make this possible…  which would be quite a huge feat.   So we should know in a little over a week who the next Prime Minister of Australia will be….   and our future for the next 3 years.

Movember is BIG this year!  Just today on my way to work I saw so many guys sporting nice big handlebar moustaches.   I am also taking part in Movember along with thousands of other Aussie guys to raise money for male depression and prostate cancer.   And all I need to do is grow a nice moustache throughout November.   It’s a good cause and a lot of fun too!   There’s not enough men in Melbourne sporting furry faces.   I plan on growing a nice big moustache from here to arsehole!   (I think I just stole my sister’s saying).   If you would like to help me raise money just click here:  http://www.movember.com/au/donate/?action=sponsorlink&rego=166556  and enter my registration number 166556.

 The money raised by Movember is donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative, which will use the funds to create awareness, fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and male depression.