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Blah blah blah

On December 5th 2003, I went on vacation. To take advantage of some interesting juxtapositions, I visited New Zealand and Australia. More precisely, I spent two weeks driving around the north island of New Zealand, one week walking in Tasmania, ten days riding the (light) rails in Sydney, and one night hanging out in Singapore. What are these juxtapositions I speak of? Well, for the first few days I drove around with my cousin Trista and her husband Joel in New Zealand. They had been teaching on the south island for about a year, and were touring the north island before heading home to Canada. On the 18th of December, I attended an opening day showing of The Return of the King, in Wellington, at the Embassy theatre. The theatre is a restored art deco, has the largest screen in the southern hemisphere, hosted the world premiere showings of The Lord of the Rings, and is considered the "spiritual home" of the (movie) trilogy. In Sydney, I met and spent quite a bit of time with my cousin Shelly. In late September she had taken off with her friend Mike on a backpacking vacation to south-east Asia, and as planned had arrived in Sydney in November.

So anyway... you're not here to read my babbling, you're here to see my pictures! Well, you've got some choices. I was somewhat surprised at the end of the trip to discover that I'd returned with five hundred and ninety four pictures. You've got a lot of RAM, a high speed connection and a couple of hours to kill, right? I know some of you do, but many of you don't, so I've tried to be accomodating in setting things up.

The good stuff

For the well endowed among you, there is a thumbnail page, which consists of one large table of "thumbnail" images, which link directly to my full size digital originals. The table also has the date and location of all of the pictures, and a description of most. The page will take a while to load, but if your cache settings are right you will only have to do it once, and then you can quickly scan through the thumbnails to find whatever interests you. For the "technologically challenged", the more "traditional" approach is available: a linked series of pages, each containing a reduced version of one image. These pages also contain date and location information, and usually a description.

There is also the question of how much time and effort you're willing to put into this exercise... I know that some of you live busy lives, and can't afford to wade through 594 pictures. With that in mind, I've done some of the work for you, and come up with three smaller sets for you to go through. They are each accessible as thumbnail pages or linked series. The first and largest is a fairly complete tour [thumbnails] - [series]. I removed the most repetitive parts, pictures that didn't turn out well, and some things that just didn't seem as interesting the second time around. That left 207 pictures. The second set is a more focused tour [thumbnails] - [series]. I tried to stick to the highlights of each place I went, and culled out some remaining lower quality images. That left 85 pictures. The third and smallest set is the trip at a glance [thumbnails] - [series]. For this I pared things down to the bare bones. Slightly out of focus? Gone! Of little general interest? Gone! Less than ideal framing or angle? Gone! Been there, done that? Gone! That left 53 pictures, which should be few enough for anybody.

But wait, there's more! To further enhance your viewing pleasure, I've gone beyond simply presenting the pictures in a convenient and flexible way - I've also added context!

So if you want to get a little more of the big picture, you can explore my trip in a few different ways. To start with I've assembled an itinerary of my trip, detailing where I went and when. I'm also working on an even more detailed prose version, which I like to call the story of my trip - it's only for those who actually are here to read my babbling. Most of the links in these two pages will drop you into the appropriate spot in the linked series of all 594 pictures, so you can click ahead for a while to see more. To get back, well, your browser has a button for just that purpose.

For those of you who prefer spatial orientation to narrative structure, I've made geographically based sets of pictures, all accessible as thumbnail pages or linked series. Finally for the cartographically inclined, I've put together some clickable maps that you can explore. The links you'll find will eventually drop you into the appropriate spot in the linked series of all 594 pictures.