Now look here. I've driven a lotta forklift in my day and I ain't never seen nothing like this... I had to think long and hard about this for a moment. Isn't the objective of launching stuff, to actually get it to the pad or something? Maybe the guy was in a rush and thought to save time, just try and manually set it off. Lord knows, but hat's off to this, one of the finest I have ever seen. BTW It may sound hard to believe... A forklift driver makes more key decisions in one hour of operation than a pilot. Obviously in this case, the operators judgement was perhaps a little impaired. There's just no knowing what half these guys have been upto the night before. You know what these forkie guys are like, lol.

Something I half stumbled upon today was this twisted free flight simulator called Flightgear for the PC. You download it from it's site, because it has been made by nerds free of charge for you to use. It is superb thing. MS recently paid off 5000 staff from their long serving flight games and it's no wonder... Nothing to do with recession, these nerds has beat them at their own game, lol. I found playing the free game, almost as good as, if not better than the ridiculously overpriced MS ones. I said god dam this is hawt.

These antenna arrays could be seen from the top of Townsville. That's a lotta bandwidth plunked here and the whole of the town and surrounds nibble away at it all day and all night keeping Telstra happy, and the consumers wired. Fair's fair, we all have to live afterall. I'm qualified to rig this type of setup, but i've never really done it for a living. Sometimes when you roll with the apple, anything can happen ;)

Toady was burnin' up real quick in the heat and couldn't find the energy to get to the fridge for a cool Budweiser. After a nice moment of manually administered irrigation, he seemed ait.

So like, went out to check on the mailbox and saw this big toad just plunked on top of the box. This guy was totally roasting and basically asleep. For a while I thought it was dead, we dropped several pint glasses of water on top of him, and i'm sure it made toady happy, hoorraay!!

Townsville in PS2 mode...

This clip I made a while back, is basically what Townsville would have been like during WWII, pretty close...

http://www.youtube.com/user/federalnoise#p/u/1/JT0cmP7HIAs

Strangest thing, this afternoon, threw on the jeans and this sweet pattern had been stitched onto the back. Never seen it before, but i'm not complaining.

Right, this is a spycopter... £150 or so will get you this. It has built in camera with live transmitter that feeds a live image back to your PC. My intentions were to fly it using a netbook as the display and it certainly does work - this image quality is actually pretty good for a live feed and also includes audio, of course all you will likely hear is the "engine", but certainly this is a bitchin' device. You could use it for aerial surveys of buildings for example or just plain good old fun. When you price this compared to a real chopper and factor in the costs and safety concerns, it's a hell good cheapo thrill. It can run upto 2500 meters from the transmitter and give a clean live image back. You can literally fly it from the camera when you get all the crap setup proper and are comfortable with it. **Note, this is not novice heli, the learning curve is almost like a real heli i guess, basically it's nails, persevere though**

It's gonna sound silly, but something I miss from back home, is my heli's. RC Helis that is ;)
Don't underertimate these things, you can pull some badass moves once you got the controls sussed. This heli is a micro-blades, it's near indestructable, and hell cheap. Some ppl have even slapped little cameras onto them, but for that type of thing, i'd use the real heli, spycopter!

Jumped on the bike today, seen a snickle snake, pretty big 'un.


A dam is close by where this was taken. It hasn't rained at all in the two months I've been here, without irrigation, everything would pretty much cook in the sun & die.



Turtle Power! Sometimes in this area, it is literally crawling with turtles, today I saw one, oh well.

Federalnoise2009dnbmix128k by user3358318

Federalnoise2009dnbmix128k by user3358318

Ait yall. Actually made this mix in the UK in around Aug but been listening to it quite a bit here in Aus, maybe yall dig it who knows. It's kinda heavy stuff, DNB, not my usual fortay, but i'll try anything, the only thing that's constant in life is change.

One of the most common and trusted car brands in Aus is called the Holden. Here's a fine example of a well kept one. The owners must have worked pretty damn hard to keep it running so well. Note the complicated air-con system on such an early model. Technology eh?!


These free eggs, came on the condition that you simply purchased the coop and some chickens to lay them. I love simplicity like that, so basically for around $400+ you can get yourself some free eggs, don't worry, they'll never need fed on nothin'...


This exemplary plant species could be found for what is want of another word, the B & Q. In Aus, if you are scum, you are a Bogan. In many Bogans houses, I'm guessing they decorate the windowsills with this strain on plant, no? Hmmm.

This was pretty much the aftermath of an intense flood we had at work, at the time I was working for CEVA Logistics in the UK. You can find out more about CEVA and some of their merits on the following links.
http://eagle-global-logistics.pissedconsumer.com/
http://www.complaint.tv/cevalogistics_egl_eaglegl_ceva_logistics_typical_rip_off-2000.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/ceva-logistics-c260302.html

Ahh, remember this well... We were busy on the receiving desk as usual and I got called outside to help some of the yard guys out... Walked outside the warehouse and this is exactly what I saw... A 7ton forklift had been left completely un-attended with the handbrake off, god knows, but either the machine jumped into gear or the operator jumped off!! but this could have turned out bad, just lucky the drain got a bit twisted and nothing more...


The good old mobile crane :) Quite often these were called into the yard to assist with heavy lifs or complicated lifting operations. Sometimes it was something as basic as slinging a container, or maybe awkward, like moving expensive machinery or pipework spoolpieces etc.


I like a laugh!! Took this snap one day as I saw two of the office guys raking around in the skip... I asked them what the hell they were doing, as I thought they had lost their minds, but it seemed that some important shipping related documentation had been accidentally thrown in the bin... Oh dear...

We had a man who worked with us who was the longest serving in the entire crew. Paul Kennedy was a master at tying in awkward loads into containment units and always did an absolutly pro. job at making sure everything was complete and correct. I can only assume he got so good through years of experience, many of which he worked offshore prior to getting into the logistics game. Good guy, crazy, but in a good way :) Ashinface.


One thing every rig goes through a lot of is parts like this. It would not be uncommon to see 3 or more crane hooks to go through our hands every day when things were getting busy offshore. Anything from a needle to an anchor!

After the flood at CEVA, everyone was just standing around. Literally, the whole operation came to a standstill. I remember sitting in the car for around 2 hours before deciding to just head home. Later I found out that only a skeleton crew stayed that day, perhaps two people. There was nothing we could do, I know when I'm beat...


When the rain started pouring one afternoon, I took this photo from the canteen. At the time, I seriously didn't think we were going to be completely flooded, but this was REALLY heavy rain, it just wouldn't stop.


Our beauftiful yard became a river in no time. Although this doesn't look deep, the rain was totally hammering at the time and walking through this wouldn't have been clever.


It was almost surreal, the rain got faster and harder. When I looked down the side of this window, it was getting pretty deep.


This went on for a few hours, and before you knew it, we were in trouble... Our drains just simply couldn't cope with this kind of weather. It was starting to become inevitable that the weather was going to have it's way this day.

I basically taped some of the flooding. At one stage, I became seriously worried that people's vehicles were going to be trapped or damadged with the water. Obviously, I advised evacuation as an immediate solution given the circumstances. I remember getting home and calling the work, but the phones were down due to the water. The worrying thing about the whole situation, is that there were parts of the building filling up with water quickly and no one seemed to know if the electricity had been isolated!! I wasn't going to hang around in a foot of water to be the first to find out!! Bail out bro.

The road from Brisbane to Townsville 1800KM... It's a looooong walk...


No, really, it's a looooong walk...


Did I mention, you really ought to seek other transport than foot...


Just glad I wasn't walking... It would be very loooooong...


One thing, remeber and take water... If you brake down, you will be miles from anywhere... The heat could easily kill you if you aren't prepared...

Spent a night in Rockhampton on the way, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockhampton_City,_Queensland pretty nice view in the morning from the balcony... What you don't see in this pic, was an angry wasps nest on the top right hand side, but thankfully they never bothered me :)


The room was quite decent for $40 a night, thanks to my sister who footed the bill... I wasn't going to stop overnight, but after pulling in at a petrol station and about an hour on the phone, I was getting more mentally exhausted than physically... It's amazing how tiring talk can make you, but all in all, it was probably right to rest for a night.


The room was decorated with paperclippings from old newspapers, pretty much WWII related stuff, but interesting all the same...


I'm sure there was something about how much you can make off of real estate in these clippings.


This was a stopgap in Gin Gin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Gin,_Queensland I grabbed a coffee here and met a nice girl who was just working away doing a normal job, everything looked so innocent until I went into this public toilets across the road... The toilets were very clean, but on the walls were recent messages from prostitutes advertising for business, hmmm /:

Back on the Bruce Highway to Townsville. Can't get over how happy I was not to be walking :)


One thing that was really lucky about hiring the car... It was BRAND NEW! Honestly, the clock had 1500KM on it!! Really good value. Cost $270 all in for 3 days with complete insurance. Really thought it was a good deal because it was holiday season... Even getting a car to hire was a job alone - most places all booked out. Thrifty was the hire company I got mine from.


Something that always helps on a journey like this, is to put petrol in your car... It's been this way for centuries, and it won't change. You'd pass a fuel point maybe every 50/100 KM. Getting plenty coffee in is always a good idea. Love coffee.


Something there is no shortage of, on the Bruce highway, is large trucks with steelwork onboard. Most of this stuff looked mining related, now there's a big surprise!


First thing I encountered on the road of out Brisbane was some bikers. These guys drove real good. Go Biker dudes!

Yeah, this is the beach... Actually, this is the fishing spot, the beach is real nice, but I don't go in for that stuff. I've bought a fishing reel, gonna try it off this spot somtime.


Well, something there is a lot of here is trains like miles long. These trains are packed with minerals or produce mostly. They really move mountains, literally.


At the top of Paluma, there was this idyllic spot, there is actually a natural flowing spring not seen in these pics, but collects into a natural swimming pool of considerable size. A few locals were swimming in it, deff. a chilled spot.


This is the underneath of a bridge in Paluma. The whole area was blasted and drilled by hand. During a recession hundreds of years ago, local men were allowed 6 weeks for a bob a week. If they had kids they got 10 weeks work, how nice.


This statue is in the village of Paluma, which is at the top of a mountain. Try as I did on WIKI and the net, I couldn't place no record of whom JAMES HENRY LINTON actually was, or what he was a pioneer of, but surely he must have been recognised by the locals for something, interesting.

OK. This is the Townsville Crocs. A really pro. local basketball team. We got tickets through a friend of my sister who she works with, and honestly I enjoyed this a lot. There was this guy, Williams no. 8, a black guy who had this game down to a T. In fact, at the end of the match, Williams won the deciding shot and that meant, every Croc supporter in the stadium got free burgers from Mcdonalds, how cute is that?! We drove to Miccy D's and managed to hustle 5 burgers. Man that guy is a legend. Go Willimas!!

If you ever go to a basketball game, make sure you get a good seat, it really is quite an experience :)


These shots can't really capture the electric of a live match, but it is awesome. There were a lot of dance tracks being played through the PA system and a lot of thought had been put into the execution of the breaks and advertising announcements.


This airship thing circled the entire arena. It was being remotely controlled and was releasing "bombs" containing sweets and kids toys. I thought it was kinda neat.


The black shirted players are the "Crocs." The best thing I felt about this game was that the players were there for the action, not the money... But make no bones, they probably were getting very well paid.


The Blue shirts were the team "Blaze" who represented the Goal Coast. They were good, but just marginally not good enough... It was a very close match at the end, it could have easily turned in their favour.

Check, pretty cool eh?

When the Aboriginals run out of weed to smoke, they tend to pick up crayons or bits of chalk and go and play with rocks, in fact just about anything close to hand, but overall, the effect is pretty and not a disturbance.


Look, some stoner, drew a turtle on a stone. It is quite satisfying seeing things like this, you can tell they get enjoyment from it too :)


The memorial stone from a Training exorcise that went wrong... I think the story went something about a black hawk that got caned during a training exorcise. As far as I know, some of these, if not most, were SAS trained....


These symbols mean a lot to military and civillians alike.