lifeasdaddy

100 years ago today - The American Fleet arrived in Sydney Harbour

The American Fleet comprised 16 battleships and various support ships of the U.S. Navy, and circumnavigated the globe during 1907, 1908 and 1909 as part of a goodwill trip and to demonstrate naval might at the instigation of President Teddy Roosevelt.  Because the ships' hulls were painted white, it later became known as the Great White Fleet.

Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin hoped it would enable him to enlist public support in the formation of our own navy, which begat the Royal Australian Navy in 1911.

My friend Mackenzie Gregory has written a great blog entry about the Great White Fleet here.

[Photograph above from State Records NSW on Flickr, used with kind permission.

Digital ID: 18526 a024 000014  See the State Records Authority of NSW's gallery of ephemera relating to this visit here. ]

The Zionists @ Gallipoli - Who knew?

Not me.  I just stumbled across this in the New York Times archive;  the fact that there was a Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli.  Part of the Royal Fusiliers.

This from wikipedia.

This from diggerhistory2.

ADDED 1:

I perused Les Carlyon's excellent and best selling popular history of Gallipoli and found a very brief mention of the Zion Mule Corps on pages 246 - 247. (Paperback edition)

ADDED 2: 

Eminent military historian Brett Holman has mentioned in the comments section below that Rachel J. K. Grace has a now-inactive blog about theJewish Legion of WWI here;

and that her 2006 M.A. Thesis at the Florida State  University  The Obligation of Service: The Jewish Chronicle and the Formation of the Jewish Legion During World War I is available at Google Cache here.

Getty Images' Moodstream: pictures, video and music as you like it.

I was interested to see what some of the world's best photographers caught from the Olympics opening ceremony last night, and day One of competition today so I stopped by at Getty Images to check on their stable's pics.  And I discovered something new and interesting.

They've set up this thing called Moodstream which provides an automated slideshow of photographs, video clips set to music mined from their enormous back catalogue and you can use sliders to choose the stuff displayed according to your mood.  Or the mood you want to create.  There's slidebars to adjust for Happy/Sad, Calm/Lively, Humorous/Serious, Nostalgic/Contemporary, Warm/Cool.

There's a button to select any one of the scenes shown to your own preset mood board - and of course, all images and video area vailable for instant purchase under rights managed provision.

Coolness factor is off the chart.

And the Olympics?  Well, for the latest stuff check out the Getty Images Sports blog here.  And the Getty Images Editorial Sports Events Feed here.

And the Getty Images standard Sports page here.

ADDED:

And from The Big Picture blog, the best of the best of pics about the Opening Ceremony.  Plenty of symmetry.  Perhaps the most charming is the last pic in the series, not even taken near the stadium.

Is this the best artificial arm we can make?

Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, has invented a new prosthetic arm.

The U.S. Government asked him to do it due to the number of amputations experienced by troops.

See the video here - after talking about the amazing arm, keep watching for his take on acceptance of new technology.

[ tip from ARFBM ]

Then and Now: On the wallaby track & The Grannies

On the wallaby track, originally uploaded by Powerhouse Museum Collection.

This photograph is one of my favourites from the Powerhouse Museum's Tyrrell photographic collection which is viewable not only at the Musuem's website, but also on flickr. (follow the links above).

Here we see some swaggies "On the wallaby track" which means there were itinerants searching for work as they walked from place to place on Australia's country tracks. The pic is probably taken in the 1890's and is from the studio of Charles Kerry.

A swaggie was considered an honest worker, and often worked in excahnge for meals from the farmhouse or cookhouse. A swaggie should not be confused with a sundowner, which was a man who turned up at a farm around sundown when work ceases asking for a meal, but who would leave before sunup the next day and therefore could not be asked to make good on the meal with some work on the property.

As I was driving along this afternoon I saw these five ladies walking along, each with backpacks, walking staffs and drink bottles.

Modern day swaggies?

They kindly consented to having their photograph taken - and I told them they could see it on this blog by this afternoon. If one of them would care to contact me and give me their names I shall more accurately caption the 2008 photograph. At the time, it didn't seem right to ask each of them to spell out their names for me.

They did a bit of chiacking about getting their pic taken to compare to the swaggies, and suggested I should title the pic as The Grannies!

Periodic table of the elements - now out on video!

One of my minor interests is practiacal or applied chemistry.  One of the fundamentals of chemistry is the periodic table. 

The crew at theUniversity of Nottingham have put together videos about the table and are working their way through making a video about every single element.  It includes stuff like physical samples and simple experiments.  And some of the scientists are real characters.

Education comes alive.  Check out the sample video here.

[ tip from Alfred Thompson ]

If you're interested in a bit more about the elements, I suggest you read John Emsley's great book.  If you live near me, I can loan it to you.

The 25 most modern libraries in the world.

and why.  I don't know if the list is definitive, but there's certainly a glimpse here of what some of the best libraries look like now, and how others can improve for the next few years or so.

The other day I was chatting with Paula Bray and Seb Chan of the Powerhouse Musuem, and was fascinated to hear about some of the ideas which will become reality soon to take more of the museum's collection online in ways which give it a much deeper contextualisation and meaning, along with some hot ideas for making it all very relevant to us.

The patriot in me was pleased to see the National Library of Australia made the list.

[ tip from Kottke ]

Sydney then and now: The Esplanade, Balmoral Beach

Here's a shot of the first tram in operation to Balmoral, taken on 29/05/1922 :

State Records NSW Digital ID:  17420_a014_a0140001164.jpg  "First tram in operation to Balmoral (NSW)"  [ Photograph used with permission of State Records Authority of New South Wales ]

The photograph also appears on Flickr here.

I'm not certain yet if the street was called The Esplanade, as it is today.  We see the tram tracks running adjacent to the beach side reserve, with the tracks approximately where the angle car parking is currently located.  There is no Esplanade beachfront footpath on the waterside of the reserve, and there appears to be no ocean wall. The footpath (and possibly the ocean wall) were opened in 1927. Due to the absence of vehicular traffic, the children could safely stand in the middle of the street for this notable event.

and Now:

My thanks to the management of Beaches Restaurant, 51 The Esplanade, Balmoral for permitting me to take this photograph this morning from the building's first floor balcony.

The Powerhouse Museum's electronic Swatchbook.

For one reason and another this week I've been spending a good deal of time checking out the Powerhouse Museum's website.

The website has got lots of features and cool things on it.  So many in fact that they are all fighting for space or real estate on the site.  It is very easy to navigate, but sometimes difficult to remember exactly where you saw that thing the day before that you wanted to come back to but didn't bother bookmarking.

I may mention a few of the cool things and a few oddball items in the collection over the next few days, but today, just check out the Electronic Swatchbook. 

"Through this site we are providing access to this rich resource for future generations of designers"

.

"Swatches or small samples of fabric have been collected and compiled in the form of swatchbooks for at least 300 years. The Powerhouse Museum has several volumes containing thousands of bright, unfaded samples of fashionable fabric designs, braids and laces ranging from the 1830s to the 1920s.

The patterns on this site are in the public domain in Australia."

This screen shot hardly does justice to it:

  Included in this screenshot are swatches from the 1840s to the 1920s.

As well as being able to download and email swatches, you are also encouraged to use a submission window to help describe the swatches:

" We are adding the ability to search by colour, pattern, mood and other facts. Your submissions will be added to our search database."

The Powerhouse Museum is big into soliciting information from the public which adds to the knowledge they have about items in their massive collection.  I'll also give some examples of this in the next few days.

.

Sydney then and now: Martin Place

Martin Place, Sydney.

Then:

State Records NSW Digital ID: 17420_a014_a0140001110   "Construction of tram tracks at Martin Place, Sydney" (Photograph used with permission of the State Records Authority of New South Wales)

The photograph is undated, but the Holden motor car in the centre foreground of the photograph suggest that it was in the late 1940's to early 1950's.  General Post Office (GPO) Sydney is the substantial building in the right foreground. The air compressor in the right foreground looks like the same model used to construct the wharf at Bennelong Point in 1950.  However there were tram tracks along George Street in this position well before the 1940s, so this is probably a major track repair.

The Cenotaph can be seen in the centre of Martin Place, in the middle distance behend the tree.

and Now: