We started the day by walking down to Salamanca Markets which were only a few blocks from where we were staying.
Was bigger than I expected and had lots of locally made goods and some fresh produce (even though it’s the wrong time of year for most of it).
I loved all the wood products that come from an area that is heavily involved in the timber industry. Some really amazing things, some of which were quite reasonably priced. There were also a few of artists / photographers there showing off some really nice work.
We didn’t really buy much at the markets. Just some fruit leather and a wooden apple, but would have wandered around for an hour in the drizzle.
We then walked back to the car which we’d left at the hotel and headed off to Bruny Island.

We drove south to Kettering to catch the car ferry across to Bruny Island. It was a bit windy and choppy out on the water and Jen wasn’t too comfortable with the rocking, but it only took 15min so wasn’t too bad.
Bruny Island was a bit odd. I think mainly because we were there at the wrong time of year. Most of the places we’d picked out to go and visit were closed, however we still had a nice drive around. We climbed up a lookout near the narrow stretch of the island. There was a strong wind an we had to hold on going up the stairs. We did managed to get some photos from up there though and after some more driving we found a few other photo opportunities. I imagine it would have been more exciting over summer.

We decided to grab something to eat so we called in to the local cheese makers at Bruny Island Cheese Co. Apparently they’d recently switched from goats to cows for the cheese which was a shame, but we had a nice tasting platter and cup of coffee before we headed back to the ferry.
Since we didn’t spend as much time on Bruny Island as we expected, we thought we’d fit in another adventure, so we headed back through Hobart and on towards Port Arthur.

The drive took us a bit longer than we’d expected, but there was some great scenery on the way.
We decided to stop at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and saw feeding time and also saw a baby with it’s mum. It was very cute. The park had other animals as well and we checked out the Kangaroos who were very placid and didn’t mind us patting them at all.
We were trying to get to Port Arthur before dark though and it was getting on, so we didn’t stay as long as we’d have liked and didn’t get to see all the animals.
We got back in the car and headed on to Port Arthur.

When we arrived, we went inside to buy tickets. The cashier was rather rude and ignored the half dozen people waiting to be served while she had a conversation with a colleague. When we did finally get served, I was told that we couldn’t go in because they close at sunset (about 20min away). I then asked if there was anything we could do at Port Arthur to which she replied there wasn’t and we should come back tomorrow, even though she’d just sold tickets to the people in front of me.
I was rather pissed off at this stage as it had been a long drive down and I couldn’t believe what she had just said. I was ready to drive off but Jen went back in and was able to buy tickets to the ghost tour (apparently me asking if there was anything we could do somehow didn’t include ghost tours??).
This ticket also meant we could go in and walk around ourselves in the bit of daylight left (again, what was wrong with us just doing this??). Anyway, we went on the ghost tour and didn’t see any ghosts. We did however get to see a small portion of Port Arthur for cheaper than the normal tickets (because we didn’t stay for dinner).
After the tour we started the long drive back to Hobart. We were pretty peckish though so stopped to grab some dinner at the Fox and Hounds. It was about 7:50 when we walked in. The place was empty and we were told the kitchen was just about to close. They did say we could still get a few of the items on the menu though, so we quickly shared a seafood platter and headed back to the car.

The drive home was a bit scary. We narrowly missed a possum and wombat on the dark windy roads.
We eventually made it back to the hotel and had a good nights sleep.

For my 30th, Jen took me to Tasmania for a 4 day weekend.
We started off by heading down on Friday morning and arrived in Hobart about 10am.
We went and picked up our hire car which was a Nissan Tida from Budget.
I have to say it wasn’t the greatest car. It was knocked around a bit and felt fairly flimsy. In hindsight we should have gone for the next option up.
Anyway, we hopped in the car and started driving. We stopped by the hotel to see if we could do an early check-in but they weren’t interested so we went on an adventure.

We didn’t really know where we were heading, but we started driving south east of Hobart and came across the Taroona Shot Tower. We went in and had a bite to eat then checked out the tower itself. We were pretty keen to climb to the top to check out the view, but as soon as we entered, we realised we weren’t going to be doing that.

It is 58 metres tall, and it can be climbed. There are 318 steps

The problem was that these 318 steps looked like they were fairly original wood and didn’t feel very solid (I’m sure they were actually fine).

From there we headed further South East to Geeveston and then to the Tahune AirWalk.
On our way we pulled over into a picnic area that had a 10min walk we could do through the most gorgeous, moss-covered forest I’ve ever seen. Really reminded me of a scene out of Lord Of The Rings.

Then we continued on to the AirWalk. It was a bit windy and wet but absolutely beautiful. Jen was a bit disturbed by the amount of movement in the structure, but managed to make it all the way along.

Once we reached the end of it, we decided to do the Swinging Bridge walk which took us across two rivers by means of swinging bridges.
We then made our way back to the car and started the drive back to Hobart and our hotel.

We stopped off at the Apple Museum and picked up a few bits and pieces while we were there.

We stayed at St. Ives which was really much nicer than we expected for the price. It was a self serviced apartment style and we felt pretty comfortable.

I spent last weekend at our property in Bungonia with friends and family. Thought I’d post a few pics.

I’m running the MarsDroid ROM on an HTC Magic from Three in Australia.
I saw that a new version of Google Maps came out (4.1.0) that I wanted to try, but I couldn’t update via the market.
This is what I did to get it running:

geoff@desktop:~/android-sdk/tools$ ./adb root
geoff@desktop:~/android-sdk/tools$ ./adb remount
geoff@desktop:~/android-sdk/tools$ ./adb shell ls /system/app/ | grep map
maps3.4.0-brut3-MT.apk
geoff@desktop:~/android-sdk/tools$ ./adb shell rm /system/app/maps3.4.0-brut3-MT.apk
geoff@desktop:~/android-sdk/tools$ ./adb uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps

From there I was able to install successfully from the Market.
The version that shipped with MarsDroid has navigation outside the US, but since I don’t really use it, I wasn’t too fussed.

I’ve just added a new script to my pages from tynt.com.

Our patent pending Tynt Insight technology tracks what’s being copied off your site and automatically adds a link back to your content with every paste.

Read more: http://www.tynt.com/#ixzz0by1i2hgN

Apparently it works with images too. Free sign-up and fairly painless to add a line to the wordpress template.