This Hong Kong street-scene snapped while rolling along up the soho escalator looks like a crazy UX drop down menu design

The Cricketers Arms, Foveaux St, Surry Hills, Sydney

My daily walk into town through some sydney history…yes we do have some history.

The Sydney Hospital is the oldest hospital in Australia, dating back to 1788, and at its current location since 1811. Rum was the currency of the colony and Governor Macquarie gave a rum monopoly to three locals if they built him a splendid hospital in return.

Nurse training in Australia began on site in 1868 when Florence Nightingale sent out Lucy Osburn and five other English sisters. The brick and sandstone Gothic Revival Nightingale Wing of 1869 off the central courtyard, with its colourful fountain, was built to the plans of Florence Nightingale to house the first nursing school.

wikipedia entry

Westminster abbey College garden …u can’t get much more English than that.

College Garden occupies a site that has been under continuous cultivation for more than 900 years. It was here that the Abbey’s first Infirmary garden was established in the eleventh century.

A slow-moving tram, through a comically low-tech tunnel of antiquated 80′s era rope lights, lasers and car dealership ilk inflatables — narrated only by a psychotic stream of random words. Something that might have been interesting at the 1964 World’s Fair, or a quarter-operated Chuck E. Cheese, but would bore even the most provincial child today. The exit is a cavalcade of disappointed tourists looking for their money back. It is marketed as a Sightseeing Tunnel, but at ¥40 – the cost of a decent meal [comparable to ¥4 for a subway anywhere in the city]- it should be made clear there is no information, history or value-added to the trip, unless epilepsy is your idea of tourism.

Woke up to this view! Thought it was a great sunrise, then perhaps fog…then i saw footprints…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/23/2693643.htm

The Pearl tends to polarise opinion; most people either love it or hate it. In all fairness giant pink balls tend to generate a response… well  some kind of response either way!

I have to admit despite its gaudiness…I love it!

Back in June 2004 I setup a little makeshift observatory on Mount Steele in Moore Park to observe a very rare event, a Transit of Venus in front of the sun, an event that links directly back to the Captain Cook’s journey to the southern seas and by lucky chance ended up discovering Australia.

Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena and currently occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, so this transit connects to observations also made from Tahiti 1769 on the first voyage of Captain Cook, at a location still known as “Point Venus”.

My advanced equipment setup on Moore Park hill, a telescope, white plastic plate and park bench:

And there she is!

And after a bit of ‘post production’, processing….

Transits can currently occur only in June or December. These dates are slowly becoming later in the year; before 1631, transits occurred in May and November. Transits usually occur in pairs, on nearly the same date eight years apart. This is because the length of eight Earth years is almost the same as 13 years on Venus, so every eight years the planets are in roughly the same relative positions. This approximate conjunction usually results in a pair of transits.

The next transit occurs in 2012 June 5–6, Visible in its entirety from Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, the Pacific and eastern Asia, with the beginning of the transit visible from North America. The next is not then until 2117 December 10–11..so don’t miss 2012 !!!!

Bristol June 6 2012… Got a brief glimpse before the queens diamond jubilee clouds moved in…notice the bunting on the balcony

the virtual mobile sunrise view from Bristol (technology has moved on during the intervening 8 years)

and simultaneously at virtual sunset in Sydney.