Can you help identify this moth?

This well camouflaged fellow was pretending to be a leaf on the Hovea, it was very pretty...

... and rather BIG

Another Adventurer

I've been watching Matthew Watton's blog updated daily as he is paddling around the cost of Tasmania. Apart from some sore wrists and a bit of a vomie one night he's really doing rather well.

Good luck Matt!!!

In other news we don't have an internet connection at home so you'll just have to wait until the technicians come to fix the cable before I can post the picks of Annalise swimming and the massive ferry ride + aquarium + train ride day we had on Sunday.

Do blonds av more phun

Perhaps, but they also have itchy heads

Did I tell you I was about to take 22 weeks parental leave?

Yeah, I'm going to be a stay at home dad looking after Adrian every day and Annalise two days a week. Alex will be going back to work whilst I take 22 weeks from March 6 through until the beginning of Aug.
I will blog, less, but I may not read you as much as my 15 min morning coffee stop when I read you all could be hectic.

Do gay men have a problem with staying cool?

I only ask because I keep getting visits from people search for information about "hot gay boys" and boys in singlets. It must be a common problem. Do they need the singlets to cool down? The poor dears. I suggest a nice cool G&T and a good lie down in the shade.

Sucked 10km up into a thunder storm, -50° and still alive

Todays SMH reports that A paraglider pilot was sucked up into a storm and is alive to tell teh story. This is one hell of a story.

Ever been mooned by a planetary nebula?

Goatse, "that's no moon". Today the Astronomy Picture of the Day posted what has to be the biggest moon ever. For scale, from one end to the other it is about 1/4 the distance between the sun and the nearest stars Alpha Centauri

Ever wondered what it would be like to be eaten by a giant squid?

Well, wonder no more. Research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2006.0236) and reported in both New Scientist Online and Nature is this fantastic vid of a giant squid (Taningia danae) attacking a camera.
Scientist previously thought they were slow drifters because their mussels contained bubbles of ammonia, thought to help with buoyancy and were all flabby and, well, fat.
They look terrfying.

A post post

I did a post about a year ago that I think was one of my best.

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nobody commented on it.


So I'm drawing attention to it here so you can all go and read it and tell me how wonderfully eclectic and clever I am or possibly just ask me who Eric Banner is.

Sea Kayaker almost certainly dead

Andrew McAuley is almost certainly dead. He set out in a sea kayak paddling from Tasmania, Australia to the Milford region of New Zealand. He almost made it. Two days ago, after a garbled radio message was received, possibly from Andrew, a search was Initiated. His boat has been found. Andrew is missing. After some early failures of his communications equipment he paddled almost all the way - probably to within sight of New Zealand's higher coastal peaks. The boat is missing a modification that provided protection at night and helped stabilise it in the case of a capsize leading to speculation that it, and he have been washed from the craft. After a month paddling he was probably exhausted. It takes a fair bit of effort and coordination to right a fully loaded upturned sea kayak. You have to get in whilst it is upside down then do an Eskimo roll. If he was out of the cockpit, if he was tired and possibly confused, perhaps injured, perhaps partially conscious with a lung full of seawater, if he had lost his paddle and couldn't assemble one of the spares.
These are all the questions his distraught wife will be asking herself, probably for the rest of her life.
Reading the Andrew McAuley website is absolutely gut wrenching.
My sympathies go out for the McAuley family.

Congratulations are in order

Good work Keiran - your boys can swim your boys can swim!!!

Spoilt for choice