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So as mentioned in my previous post, Wings Over Shellharbour is coming next week and I thought I would take a Roll About to test the gear I’m planning on using to document the day.For this test I thought I would go down to one of the ponds around where I live where there is excellent opportunities for Bird photography.In some ways I’m extremely lucky, I live in a nexus between creeping suburbia, established farm lands and wild bush that means that I can get around in my power chair and still capture some amazing bird life.Anyway here’s the video<figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://youtu.be/gJfYvaqQ9Zk"><div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gJfYvaqQ9Zk" style="position: absolute; width: 100%; height: 100%; top: 0; left: 0;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></div></figure>

Down to the pond

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Wings Over Shellharbour is coming!I have been/am/will always be an airplane fan (both the movie and the vehicle class). Being so close to the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://hars.org.au/">Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Museum</a> at Shellharbour Airport has kept a lid on my nerdery somewhat, but now that we're going to be seeing things like Australia's only flying De Havilland Vampire (a project that was worked on and completed at HARS), a plethora of War Birds (I do like me the sound of a Merlin Engine I do) and all the rest and I'm going to be there, power chair and all!Anyway with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://wingsovershellharbour.com.au/airshow/">Wings Over Shellharbour</a> (WOS) just around the corner I decided to go on a bit of a Roll About and test out the gear I’m going to be taking to the Air Show. More about that in another post<img class="image_resized" style="width:33.3%;" src="/uploads/PXL_20260503_035158712_cropped_14a20efc1e.jpg" alt="A middle aged man sits looking directly into the camera. He is holding another camera with a large lens" srcset="/uploads/thumbnail_PXL_20260503_035158712_cropped_14a20efc1e.jpg 195w,/uploads/small_PXL_20260503_035158712_cropped_14a20efc1e.jpg 500w,/uploads/medium_PXL_20260503_035158712_cropped_14a20efc1e.jpg 750w,/uploads/large_PXL_20260503_035158712_cropped_14a20efc1e.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw">I am actually getting excited for WOS. I haven’t been for a few years (last time I went it was called Wings Over the Illawarra) and I’m excited to see both the static and flying displays.I’m particularly anxious to try out the 100-400mm lens. The last time I went I had a 50-250mm and I managed to get shots like this<img class="image_resized" style="width:35.48%;" src="/uploads/IMG_4344_cropped_6db0c19d8e.jpg" alt="IMG_4344_cropped.jpg" srcset="/uploads/thumbnail_IMG_4344_cropped_6db0c19d8e.jpg 245w,/uploads/small_IMG_4344_cropped_6db0c19d8e.jpg 500w,/uploads/medium_IMG_4344_cropped_6db0c19d8e.jpg 750w,/uploads/large_IMG_4344_cropped_6db0c19d8e.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"><img class="image_resized" style="width:35.47%;" src="/uploads/IMG_4214_319e8d0060.jpg" alt="IMG_4214.jpg" srcset="/uploads/thumbnail_IMG_4214_319e8d0060.jpg 234w,/uploads/small_IMG_4214_319e8d0060.jpg 500w,/uploads/medium_IMG_4214_319e8d0060.jpg 750w,/uploads/large_IMG_4214_319e8d0060.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw">And yes I am going to try and get some Wheelchair Photography videos out of it, both just geeking out at the planes and such, but also what the experience was like as a person in a wheelchair both good and bad.

Wings Over Shellhabour 2026

Sometimes you just need to accept the fact that things are going to break.

A screenshot from Darktable. There is a grid of photos, however in several cases the images have been corrupted so only present as one or two colours. In two case the photos are actually skulls, indicating the file couldn't be read at all

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So I dual boot my computer.For my everday use, I use Linux (Ubuntu specifically) and for gaming and some video foo I use Windows 11. I’ve got a nice big 8TB drive and I thought it would be a good idea to format the drive using the windows NTFS format, that way both OS’s would be able to share the full space and so on and so on.Best laid plans and all that.Turns out then when you do this, it causes confusion and dismay and more importantly file corruption. Which I learned the hard way when I went to have a look at darktable and saw what you can see in the header image.Each skull and colour explosion in that image is a photo that’s been corrupted because switching between Windows 11s version of NTFS and the Linux one has introduced enough chaos to bugger things up.I’ve scanned the drive to within an inch of its life, and the hardware seems fine.Sigh.I have since bitten the bullet that and split the drive between NTFS and ext4, and more importantly I’ve moved the Photos to a shared drive.Write SpeedAnother lesson is double check the write speed of your SD Cards.Recently got out and took some photos down next to Lake Illawarra, on the way there though I realised that I’d forgotten the SD Card for my camera. No worries I thought, we’ll just duck into JB Hifi on the way and pick up a new one.I grabbed the card with the highest write speed, but it obviously wasn’t enough because when I tried to take some 4k video, it kept crashing. The video files were playable but there are a lot of dropped frames.So yeah lesson learnt. Always make sure you know what your minimum specs are so you don’t end up disappointed down the track.

When File Systems Fail

Time to start seeing how I stack up I guess

A brown butterfly or moth sits on a small white flower amongst the grass

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Pondering getting into photography competitions.So a couple of years back I entered a photo competition with this image<img class="image_resized" style="width:45.67%;" src="/uploads/IMG_7670_artful_636ce73f9b.jpg" alt="A bee feeds on the nectar of a flower" srcset="/uploads/thumbnail_IMG_7670_artful_636ce73f9b.jpg 245w,/uploads/small_IMG_7670_artful_636ce73f9b.jpg 500w,/uploads/medium_IMG_7670_artful_636ce73f9b.jpg 750w,/uploads/large_IMG_7670_artful_636ce73f9b.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw">I did pretty well, I got a honourable mention, but me being me, I decided to leave it at that for the moment.Now I’m looking at maybe getting a bit more serious about it.I’m also going to try and get out of my comfort zone a bit more and do more planned photoshoots. Set myself a goal and then work out how to do it and all that.So wish me luck I guess?

Photo Competitions Question Mark?

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Soooo, I may have accidentally rm'd something that I wasn't meant to and I've had to rebuild the instance hosting this blog.&nbsp;For some reason the photography section is throwing errors so that's something I need to fix.Oh and Tech and Disability got wiped so I have to build that again.Sigh.

NEWS