Cool slideshow feature: Tasmania

I have just discovered a cool feature of Google Photos (Picasa) and that is the ability to create slideshows of your albums to embed in a web page or blog post. This differs from the permanent slideshow that I have in my toolbar to the right as I can only display one album at a time here, it's small and you can't view captions. With the Google Photos Slideshow I can choose the size and create a new slideshow every time I post a new album. You can view captions by clicking on the speech bubble. (If you can't see speech bubble and other controls just hover your mouse over the slideshow.)

Of course you can always go and run the full size slideshow yourself by clicking on the 'My photo gallery' link to the right but a cool new toy is a cool new toy and it just begs to be played with. So here is the first of what could be many embedded albums: Honeymoon in Tasmania.

To the moon and back

Wow! What a trip! I LOVE TASMANIA!!! We had a fantastic time and it's a beautiful place. I recommend it to anyone, particularly those people who live in Australia and have little excuse for not having been, but also to those who may be planning a trip Ozwards and may not have considered including Tassie in their itinerary.

I have uploaded our photographs to Picasa and I'm in the process of adding comments to each one. I may summarise them in a post some day but to expedite getting it out there I will leave it at that for now, rather than giving you a lengthy travel journal straight up. I will be continuing to add comments and probably a few more maps, especially for those of you who may be thinking of going and are keen on doing some walking whilst there.

There is so much that we didn't get to see or do, surprising considering the size of the place. I can't understand how people can "do" the whole place in three or four weeks; they really wouldn't be doing it justice. We stayed on the Tasman Peninsular for seven days and that was nowhere near enough just for that one little section. It's definitely on our list of places for a second visit.

Thank you so much to all of the friends who helped make this trip possible. Thanks to Lucie, Scott, James, Melissa, Jillian, Jimbo, Mark, Mindi, Guy, Libbette, Jon, Megan, Pete and Daneale.

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lindseybuckle/HoneymoonInTasmania

The first travel hiccup

We haven't even left yet and already things aren't exactly going according to plan.

We leave tomorrow and I'm in the midst of a packing frenzy. Why is it so hard to pack light? I really don't want to take much but at the same time I keep thinking that I want to look good whilst I'm away. Not that I will anyway as most of my warm winter clothes are donkeys old. So I really should just take the bare minimum and buy stuff when we're away, but I can't really afford to do that so it's tempting to take what I already have. But then what I already have isn't that great and I can't decide whether the brown jumper is better than the pink jumper. The brown jumper is smaller to pack but the pink jumper is so snuggly and warm and it's my favourite winter jumper so I think I'll take both. But I'll have to buy something when I get there anyway because neither of them are really that smart and I need something to wear when I go out. Am I going around in circles here?

And then of course I need t-shirts to wear under the jumpers because it's going to be REALLY cold. I think I've gone overboard with the t-shirts. So far I've packed three plus a thermal and that's not including the stuff I'm taking to wear in Dubai. I mean, no one is even going to see them. Or will they? See I really can't remember what winter in UK is like. I vaguely remember some of the clothes I wore to go out on various birthdays and, apart from the big winter overcoat, they really weren't that warm, snuggly and wintery at all. I think I'd freeze if I wore them now.

Anyway, amidst all this deliberation the first potential major hiccup has just occurred. On Monday I finally decided to transfer funds from my savings account over here to my UK bank account. I filled the form in online and then sat back waiting for the bank to call and confirm. Trouble is they said they'd get round to doing that within three working days. Last year when I did this they were so quick to get back to me that they took me by surprise. But it wasn't long before I realised that I'd given them my mobile number and I'd left my mobile at home. I quickly sent them an online message with my other phone numbers and the times they could contact me. I heard nothing so I logged on again the following day to check my messages. Nothing. On Wednesday I logged on and checked my messages. Again nothing. On Thursday, the third business day I checked again. Nothing. I thought I'd better wait until today to chase it up as I wasn't sure which time zone they were operating in. So today I logged in and lo and behold there was a message saying they'd tried to contact me and couldn't get through so they'd cancelled my request. AAAAAAAAaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh.

What I don't understand is that they tried to call yesterday. I had my phone at work with me yesterday and there was no sign of someone having tried to call so I'm not sure how many times they tried or what went wrong but there you have it.

I've submitted another request and in a panic called them up and warned them that they mightn't be able to contact me after today to confirm the transaction. Not knowing what went wrong with my mobile last time I've given them my home number to call. They said they'd contact me within the day, whatever that means. So now I'm house-ridden until they call, which is a real bummer as I'd been hoping to go for Christmas/birthday/goodbye drinks with some friends and colleagues this afternoon. Why they couldn't have just said to me, whilst I was already on the phone to them, "So, Ms Buckle, I understand you wish to transfer some money to the UK. Can you just confirm that amount to me please? Aha, yes, now you do understand there's a charge for this transaction, don't you?" I don't know. Probably some weird security reason but given that I called them and gave them a different number to the one I entered on my online form I don't really see what difference it makes whether I call them or they call me. So I'm very confused, house-bound, potentially skint whilst I'm in the UK and to top it all off I now can't see my cursor which is making typing this post a bit tricky. So I'm going to get back to the packing now and wait for the bank to call. Ho-hum.