28 Mar 2009
For the last three days we taken a break from the country cottages for a slice of suburbia. Its proven hard to find anything in town, so we’re staying in this granny-flat kinda of place in the Adelaide suburb of St Georges. The place is a lot better than I make it sound.
Adelaide seems to have gone for the micro-suburb approach to town planning, so much so that the local maps dispense with naming most of streets and just try to name the majority of the suburbs, figuring that you can navigate by that alone. Given that you can heave a brick and comfortably hit at least a couple, they’re probably right.
We squander our time here with some shopping expeditions (stocking up on hiking gear for the next trip – a guy can spend a lot of cash here), hiking in the hills and regular visits to Ying Chow. If you’re a fan of Asian food and ever happen to find yourself in Adelaide, make this place your first priority. The décor is basic, the place is always packed, but the food is simply outstanding.
Another highlight are the strolls in the hills. I get into the habit of heading out late in the afternoon and I’m treated to some wonderful, crowd free hikes with superb views of the city, ocean and sun setting over the lot of it. So, if you’re taking notes on things-to-do-in-Adelaide, add Waterfall Gulley and Morialta Conservation Park to your list.
I round off the day with a frustrating battle with technology – I’m trying to figure out the best approach for putting our copious pics up on the web. The two main contenders are Flickr (brought to you by Yahoo) and Picasa (courtesy of Google).
Things have progresses here in recent years and a gentleman’s basic requirements for a photo web site are not what they used to be. Photo-montages, slide shows, friend lists and geo-mapping are the minimum standard a discerning photo-snapper has come to expect.
I’m initially attracted to the former by the simple one-click Flickr button in iPhoto (the Mac photo application). While Flickr offers most of my basic requirements its amazingly won’t let you sort pictures by the date they were taken. The forums are bursting with pissed-off posts from users begging for this feature, but apparently Yahoo have ignored the pleas for a couple of years now.
So, lesson learned - never doubt the power of the Google. If you’re a Mac user, read this page for the magic recipe for success.
Tomorrow we have to get up well before the crack of dawn to catch a flight to Perth.
