Sights from Australia: Melbourne

December 31, 2011 by Eric Richardson

19 Photos

Eric Richardson

After three days in Sydney, Kathy and I took a short flight down the coast to Melbourne. We spent a week there, visiting Kathy's sister Laura and letting her introduce us to the city. — Continue Reading...

Sights from Australia: Sydney

December 30, 2011 by Eric Richardson

13 Photos

Eric Richardson

Kathy and I returned yesterday from ten days in Australia, where we spent three days in Sydney and a week in Melbourne.

It was my second trip down under, but my first with a digital camera. Whereas last time around I returned with just a handful of stills from a point-and-shoot APS-C and a fair amount of poorly-taken video on miniDV, this time Kathy and I combined to take 718 photos. Of those, 161 got tagged as ones that she wanted. Many of those are now on her Facebook, but I thought I'd grab a few of my favorites to post here. — Continue Reading...

Reintroductions

December 12, 2011 by Eric Richardson

It's been a bit, hasn't it?

Various topics that I've neglected to mention here over the past year and a half: starting a newspaper, closing a newspaper, looking for a job, taking a job with a public radio station and moving twice (though only a few blocks each time).

And yet with all of that, it is actually a vacation that has me getting this blog back up and running. On Saturday, Kathy and I will board the world's largest airplane and head off on a 15-hour flight to Australia, where we'll spend a few days in Sydney and a week in Melbourne.

Back in 2000, when I did things like blog, I spent six weeks in Sydney. It only seems appropriate to bring the site back up to speed before I return.

I do anticipate taking more photos this time around. Back in 2000, most of the visuals I left with were crappy camcorder video. I think I've gotten a little better at taking a picture since then.

PBX-ing

December 23, 2010 by Eric Richardson

I spent most of the day today building out blogdowntown's phone system, in preparation for a new employee we're adding in January.

Back in 2007, I wrote about playing with Asterisk and adhearsion for some phone work I was doing at Cartifact. I left the company before we finished that rollout, so I'd never really had a chance to sink my teeth into a more complete system. — Continue Reading...

London - Day 1

July 04, 2010 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson [Flickr]

Looking across the Thames River at the London Eye, the Westminster Bridge and County Hall

Kathy and I flew from L.A. to London yesterday to spend a little over a week visiting her sister and parents (the former of whom is living here, the latter of whom flew in yesterday as well).

We got into Heathrow a little before noon, checked into the Kensington Hotel and then toured Westminster Abbey and the Parliament building in the afternoon.

I've spent the early morning getting some work done, taking advantage of our VoIP office phone setup to make a call back to Ed to chat about a pair of stories and finding that my Starbucks card works here in the UK and enables WIFI access. Handy.

Photos from day one are posted on Flickr as a set.