Doodling

Doodle Find can be classified as a social “hidden object game” only at its most basic level; you’ll be shown a grid layout, filled with what appear to be hand-drawn doodles, and are asked to find a particular object, whether by its lonesome, or in multiples.
Doodle Find is the newest apps product from KlickTock which brought out Super Search 60 for the iPhone. The premise of Doodle Find is similar to Super Search 60, but with some differences.

It starts out with the most casual of gamers in mind, by at first offering a grid that is full of open spaces before filling them in as time elapses. The goal then is to find the most objects that you can within the game’s 90 second time limit.
You can compete against your friends - and the world - online via Facebook Connect. Each game takes only 90 seconds, so it's perfect for a spot of procrastination between tasks, or for when you have just two minutes to while away.
It is that wining combination of simplicity, creativity, entertainment and addictive “one-more-time” gameplay.
Ooh and it's FREE.
Currently Doodle Find is the number one game in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong & Macau.
And the really neat aspect is it was developed by a local Matthew Hall of Edenhope!

HELLingly

Hellingly Asylum in Sussex was one of the most advanced asylum designs ever constructed. It opened its doors in 1903 and then closed them permanently in 1994. Most of the psychiatric hospital is to be replaced by new housing.

Patients and staff all lived in red brick buildings of this gigantic asylum. Men and women lived in separate wings. It was also a place where women who had children out of wedlock were incarcerated. There were big windows to let in as much light as possible.

The decadent ballroom and theater, facing the stage, near the front right door, there was a hatch to creepy underground passageways.

For over 20 years, Hellingly has been dying, fading, and peeling, there is a lovely quality that makes you shudder about the ruination. Some explorers have reported hearing unexplained noises up and down the many corridors and the many padded-cell rooms.

Hellingly Asylum had its own morgue and body fridge. Besides having a farm, train, water-tower, clothing shop, boiler-room, chapel, dentist, there was also a Hellingly Hair Salon, which has been heavily vandalised, and there has been substantial fire damage too.

There is something utterly creepy about seeing a child’s wheelchair in the decaying mental hospital. Hellingly had a special building just for “mentally defective” children, back in a time when people were locked away in isolation. Other facility care therapeutics included shock treatments.

State of decay - 26 years of nature reclaiming Hellingly. Paint peeled, ceiling crumbled…


This info came from the WebUrbanist page.

If you want to stay updated with the progress of destruction and demolition, Hellingly Asylum has a Facebook page.

Morning light

Found this beautiful photo of Balmoral on Pixdaus.
Has to be one of the best things about winter approaching - the chance to capture views of misty mornings, and in sharp clear air.

Freedom beckons

Ughh, I've finally finished my OH assignment - many many hours, and 53 pages later, it's in the mail. Now the wait to see what my lecturer thinks of it, better get points just for time spent and length!
Time to enjoy a semester break before the next unit.

Before Microsoft there was the Mechanism

The world’s oldest computer predates Bill Gates by about 2,000 years.
In fact, the absolutely mind-boggling Antikythera Mechanism – a corroded clocklike object found among the ruins of a sunken ship – may prove that advanced scientific technology existed far earlier than was thought possible.


Scientists have discovered that this mysterious Greek invention predicted solar eclipses, organised the calendar in four-year cycles, and could be linked to renowned astrologer and engineer Archimedes.
Though no other such mechanisms have ever been found, experts believe that many more made around the same time in 100 B.C.E. once existed.
Another curious morsel from WebUrbanist

Eyjafjallajokull Volcano

The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull has been in the news - in all the news. It was done to death with all sorts of experts commenting on the phenomenon, and now has faded from public interest now the planes are back in the air.
However I wanted to post this photo (original source unknown) for the spectacular nature it shows - Eyjafjallajokull displaying its own weather system, generating dramatic electrical storms, vast cloud masses and generally wreaking havoc.

Not in the news

Library cut hits local history
"It is terrible to hear from former professor Wallace Kirsop, convener of the State Library of Victoria Users Group, that the federal government is withdrawing funding for the digitisation of newspapers. This will mean that the newspapers of Australia's country towns will not be digitised.
These papers are frequently the only sources of historical information for the past 200 years on such towns. They are valuable resources for family historians too, many of whom use the State Library.
Minister Peter Garrett should reinstate the funding for this most valuable cultural work immediately. I hope Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will intervene to stop this cultural vandalism.
Of course, Arts Minister Peter Batchelor could come up with the money for Victorian country newspapers. Perhaps he might inform your readers and the users of the State Library exactly what amount of money is spent on book and other acquisitions for the library. Wallace Kirsop, three State Library of Victoria staff and I could not find it.
It seems to be a pittance of about $2 million. By contrast, the University of Melbourne has a library acquisition budget of more than $20 million."
by Paul Knobel, convener, State Library of NSW Constant Users Group, Randwick, NSW
From The Age Letters 27.4.2010


No other details available at this stage, don’t know how or if this will affect the State Library’s “Digitising Victorian Newspapers Project” and our hopes for the Horsham Times/Wimmera Mail Times.

'Splatterpunk'

I’ve just finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s “Best served cold”. It seems to have polarised reactions – some enjoyed it, others disliked it, and I have to say I enjoyed reading it from the plot level at least, as a different sword-and-sorcery adventure. It wasn’t your normal, predictable quest novel. The realistic unpredictability meant that it was almost impossible to determine what would eventually happen, and kept you turning the pages.

Springtime in Styria. And that means war.
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. Armies march, heads roll and cities burn, while behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.
War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die
Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...
Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

Recovering from her horrendously massive injuries and mourning her murdered brother Benna, mercenary Monza Murcatto, vows vengeance on Orso and his six inner circle accomplices. Employing her own motley crew of soldiers and murderers, she crisscrosses the country to get her revenge, but it's neither simple nor satisfying; each target requires fresh strategy, and each death has unexpected effects, and inevitably, the death toll increases exponentially.
It is a bloody and relentless epic of vengeance and obsession with one cold-blooded killing following another, in the mounting wanton carnage. Here the battles are vivid and visceral, the action brutal, some-one labeled it reminiscent of Fritz Leiber - “a kind of splatterpunk sword 'n sorcery”

The pace is headlong as the narrative twists and turns - the betrayals, reversals, and plot twists keep you guessing, working against your expectations. His characters do likewise. They are an ensemble of gritty, anti-heroes, each with a history of betrayal and a moral ambiguity.

Joe Abercrombie writes dark, adult fantasy, and has the will and the cruelty to actually maim and kill off his characters. "Best served cold" is the new standalone novel set in Styria the blood-drenched world of the "First Law Trilogy" (which I haven’t read).

Curious items at FJs

Part of the fascination with old abandoned buildings is seeing what was left behind, coming across the weird and wonderful, and trying to ascertain what use objects and equipment were put to.
The Fletcher Jones building was no exception. It has a number of items in storage/limbo, including this weather-vane. Interestingly the lower part of the stem is black-painted wood, not metal.


Unsure what these “boxes” were until I went down to the FJ Clearance Centre to see that each is the centre section of the free-standing display racks. I was unable to get any closer as they are surrounded by pink fluro paint indicating the presence of asbestos.


One of the pallet loads of electrical equipment in the Cutting Room.

These fans and light fittings have been removed from the Machine & Cutting rooms. There had been plans to have the Mill Market stalls operate from the Machine Room, so lots of fittings and ducting were taken out in preparation.

More light fittings, half-dismantled air-condition ducting & a water tank

The water tank is one of the rain collection devices (includes wheelie bins, sawdust piles) scattered through the site. As was evident on the drizzly day I was there, the roof is leaking to a variety of levels. Some of the flashing/gutters in the saw-tooth ridges are almost rusted out, in other sections, water is finding its way through the partially dismantled ducting. Pools of rain-water are lie on the board floors, drip down into the FJ shop, and leave stains and blistering paint on the walls.

The imprints of rain drops dripping into a pile of sawdust, it is following the outline of the ducting above.

The trapdoor in the Machine Room floor leading down into a shelved storage area. How, why? - escapes me.

This doorway leads into the further room, but the ceiling is only about 4,8”-5’ high - in line with the bottom of that brown partition – again I’m at a loss to work it out. Or did FJs employ 'Umpa Lumpas'?

This was taken through a dark doorway 90 degrees and a few feet away from the previous photo. It is a utilites space, but looking back towards that trapdoor area, so not basement level, maybe a result of the initial quarry area that the sub-floor is now on different levels




Signs 1. The main FJ sign (behind the tree, the full sign says Fletcher Jones & Staff. 2. The FJ roundel has been an advertising feature since the 1930s, there was one on a pillar of the concrete anchor fence and the Lava Street elevation of the sewing room, and a central tower built between the canteen and the cutting room (the location of Fletcher Jones’ office). The tower & signage above the first floor level has been removed. 3. An FJ slogan in the Pressing/Dry cleaning area “Quality above all”, and it was - FJ were famous for their mens suits and box-pleated skirts. 4. Maybe it was “No walkway” when the equipment filled the Machine Room, now it hangs above an empty space. 5. “Any person or persons riding on stacker hoist will be instantly dismissed” no three strikes and you’re out in those days. 6. The sign above a chute hole from the Machine Room to the floor below.

So endeth my visit to the Fletcher Jones site, it was an eye-opener. Again thanks to the Mill Market people for giving up their time to guide me round.