Jemma & Frank - Ski Trip - The trip down

Frank & Jemma having the father - daughter adventure.
Saturday Fly BNE-CBR
Henry met us at Canberra airport.  We are staying at his house.
James & son Andrew and daughter Charlotte joined us late Saturday.
Sunday
In 2 cars, drove to Jindabine via Cooma.
FT hired Apre boots $14 in Cooma.  Bought a short extension lead and 6 way power board because I figured everyone will want to charge their dodads and I bed there will only be one power point.
Continued up to perisher.  reassuring Henry that because we are 4WD we don't actually need to fit our chains.  (in compliance with the illuminated signs).

Jemma got fitted for a snow board and initially I hired skis. Then I discovered that there were no group lessons available for Jemma.  I booked afternoon private lessons $150.  I then changed to Snow Boarding so I could amortise the lesson cost.  You can have up to 6 people in a private lesson.

We flew Virgin.  I had bought zoo class tickets and bid on an upgrade to business class and got it.  The astute lady at the check in told us that the tickets gave us entry to the club lounge.  So we figured we had better enjoy breakfast.  Jemma included a hot chocolate in that

Charlie, Melissa and kids had been staying with Henry.  We met up with them for pizza etc.

The ski part of the holiday was James, Andrew, Charlotte, Henry, myself & Jemma.  This snippet of the family tree shows the relationships.

Jemma Canberra 3 - Sunday

Jemma spoke up on Saturday and said that she would like to see the AIS. Originally I had been a bit negative about the AIS and so it had been left off our agenda.

Sunday we arose at Henry's place and packed.  We took all our bags with us so as to have maximum flexibility wrt getting to the airport.

Pauls 50th

Sunday was a busy day.  Jemma and I flew back from Canberra.  Collected at the airport by Marcus and Chris in the Vito.  Interestingly filled with tarps and poles for Marcus to use as 'splendor'.  Home 4 is as I recall.  Chris kindly took Lucy for a walk.  I think Megan was out somewhere.  Around 5:30 we all drove into town to 'Strike Bowling Bar' in the Wintergarden.

We paid $25 for entry.  This gives you bowling, laser skirmish, karaoke.  Paul paid for food. 

Paul and Fill belted out a few tunes in Italian.  Louis (our French exchange student) seems very good at bowling.  Chris and I managed a game of snooker finishing just in time to sing Happy Birthday to Paul at 9pm.

Megan announced on the way home that she thought that she had not gotten value for her $25 because she had only gotten one game of bowling and a laser skirmish.  Personally I think it was because she had not belted out a few verses in the karaoke.  

PDF printing problems

I have a problem printing a PFD on our OKI MC362 colour laser printer.
This printer shows up twice on my PC (two drivers?)- OKI MC362(PCL) and OKI-MC362-8ED66C
The problem is the same on both.

The solution was to use  PDFCreator.  See below

This picture is a photo of a page printed from a PDF.  You can see the background of text and images is twice as dark as the background of the drawing canvas.
The document was created in word and saved as a PDF and then printed.

Here we see a photo of the laptop screen. No evidence of the background problem.











Solution
PDFCreator

1
From word print to PDFCreator.
2. In PDFCreator selet the drop down box and choose PNG graphiv.
3. Somewhere there is a resolution setting.  Bump it up to 600dpi.
4. Click save and save the PNG.
5. On my computer it opened automatically in windows photo viewer.
6. Choose print & Choose a PDF printer such as PDFCreator.  This time select "Default Profile"
Save the PDF.
7.  Note for me this resulted in an upside down picture.  So I went back and rotated it in windows photoviewer and tried again.  This time it works and prints correctly.

Non Solutions

2 Microsoft XPS Document Writer
Did not see a way to get either a PDF or a PNG

3 CutePDF
From word, print to CutePDF Writer
Not tried this time.  Don't think it

4 Microsoft Print to PDF
Nope.  Same problem

5 Open in Libre Office
File>Export as PDF  -> Same problem

Consider
Read into open office ?

Jemma Canberra 3 - Saturday

Bacon and Egg breakfast
National Gallery
Carillon
Mint
Arboretum
Telstra Tower
Dinner with David and Tina

National Gallery

Art is like.....
Coffee, Religion,  Sport, Politics & soup.
My way is the right way and if you don't like it....

The older I have gotten the less judgemental I have become when it comes to art.  No longer do I say things like this is "good" or that is "bad".

This is a close up of part of the "blue poles" painting.  Very controversial when PM Gough Whitlam bought it in 1973.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_11,_1952_(painting)

A lobster phone - I want one of these!

A very enjoyable morning for me anyway.  I would like to go back.

We also manged a morning tea in the cafe.





Carillon
It's a bell tower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Carillon
A beautiful sunny day.  I was exhausted from being a tourist at the National Gallary.  Lay down in the sun and had a power nap.  Great!

Mint
The mint is a place where they stamp out the coins.  It's amazingly popular with tourists.
Jemma paid $3 to push a button and stamp out a $1 coin.

Arboretum - Met with cousin Carolyn & daughter Sarah (19ish)& cousin Peter.  The Arboretum is a place where they grow plants and apparently have outdoor concerts where everyone freezes.  We did nothing other than sit in the cafeteria and chat over drinks until we were evicted.

 Telstra Tower
 After the Arboretum we drove the short distance to the Telstra tower.  The intent was to see Canberra while it was still light, then see the lights of Canberra as the sun set.  It was a cloudless sky and that does not make for really impressive sunsets.

Frank Henry & Jemma selfie on the Teksra tower.

Dinner with David and Tina
At Sammy's in civic.

 

 

Jemma's Canberra Trip - War Memorial 2

It's Bastille day and the Warmo is into this in a big way.  Huge banners out the front.  Inside a lectern and flags were set up.  Out side a sign directing invited guests to a function.

An interesting point to ponder.  Right down Anzac parade there are monuments to various wars and aspects of wars that Australia has fought in.  For example there is a monument to nurses, to the Vietnam war.  Right at the top of Anzac parade in prime position there is a monument to Greece & Turkey.  Complete with flags flying.  Yet no monument to key allies such as the UK & USA.  

The Greek monument reminds me of the Greek economy.  It looks like it is falling apart.  Maybe that is intentional.

Jemma's Canberra Trip - War memorial

Today Jemma, Henry and myself visited the war memorial.  We looked at the newly refurbished WW1 display. Then we watched a dramatic presentation about "women in war".  This was a one person play where the main character was a nurse talking about what it was like to be a in WW2.  It ended with her dying on the ship home.

We looked for some Von Stieglitz names on the WW1 romm of honor.
We looked them up on this site
https://www.awm.gov.au/
That gave us the battalion and from there we could find the names on te roll.

This is the tomb of the unknown soldier.  Inside the room there are 4 large pictures.  One of a soldier, one of an airman, one of a navy officer and one of a nurse.  The 4 pillars represent each of these roles.  The 4 pillars in different shapes.  The air one is in the shape of a wing.  The nurse one is glass like the nurse memorial on Anzac parade.

Here we see Jemma looking at the "Eternal Flame"  This flame is gas powered and runs continuously to remind us of those who have died in war.

We walked down Anzac parade and looked at various memorials.

Overview of all the memorials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Parade,_Canberra

Air force memorial.

Vietnam memorial.

From http://www.vietvet.org/aussimem.htm

Inspiration finds soaring expression in the 'roof' of the memorial space. Seven metres above the podium floor, suspended from the internal walls of the three stelae is a ring made from 24 sawn black granite segments, each supported by three suspending cables. Sealed within one of the segments (it is marked with a simple cross) is a scroll, upon which have been inscribed the names of the dead.
The whole array forms a beautiful cat's cradle of wires, granite segments and transparent but substantial shifting patterns of light and shadow. In this, the designers felt that the ring's "seemingly disembodied earthliness" would recall "the sacrifices made by the individuals who fought and died;" and yet, in its inspirational form, would effect a transcendence of the past, a denial of simple mortality.

Jemma & Frank - Ski Trip - Wednesday AM

The last day skiing.  Due to our 5 1/2 hr nightmare yesterday we have decided to take the ski tube.  Mind you they had their own 3hr delays.

Packed everything and checked out.  Drove to the ski tube terminal at Bullocks Flat.

Henry driving.

Queenslander!

On the ski tube
James et al are in the distance

Jemma

Black Rock 2