Epic "Nemo" Tank and Sea Turtles @ Kelly Tarlton's

To kick off 2018, I've just spent a few hours cutting together a bunch of some of the clips I filmed while on vacation up in the North Island earlier this month, pairing the footage with a little taste of the music I recorded last year while in the midst of writing my thesis.



Originally, this was going to be just a video of the clips I'd filmed of an epic "Nemo" tank they had - complete with heaps of Clownfish, Blue Tangs, and Anemones - but to make the clips flow together, and to fit the soundtrack I'd found from my collection, I needed to include a few other clips I'd filmed as well

Hope you enjoy it!  It was fun putting this together with the Blender Sequencer - though it was really sluggish with the HD footage, meaning that I had to rerender it a few dozen times to get the timing of the fades down (though it's perhaps not such a great idea with a laptop on a hot day ;).

Over the coming months, I look forward to gradually releasing more of the 3+ hours of music I recorded/composed last year while writing my thesis (with the backing track here being just the first track of "Album 1" ;)  I'm still working through a plan and the mechanics for doing that, so stay tuned!

Bubu Day

NZ Native Fish - Videos

On a more positive note, here are some videos of some fish swimming around in an aquarium of NZ native fish. I'm quite pleased with how these turned out, considering I shot these by holding my phone up beside the tank. Some of the fish may not have been quite that pleased to have been followed/tracked around the way that they were though!


1) A silvery fish showing off its blue fins - I suspect it may have been trying to "scare" me off from tracking it like that


2) Watch out for the antics of the blue cod here - Every bit as athletic as Bubu, but perhaps even more so, and quite impressive for such a long fish like that


3) This milky-white specimen is quite interesting, as it has some of those "wise old fish" whiskers. It also looks quite a bit like an axolotl (check them out too, but be warned that they do look a bit icky; I saw some back in high school, as our biology teacher kept some as pets). Stick around till then end though, for some interesting shots with the snapper(s) just idling around in mid water. It's pretty full on!

RIP Bubu - One Year Anniversary

Lo and behold, a year has passed since the day when Bubu tragically left us.

It's still hard to believe that just a year ago, I had the pleasure of having this delightful little orange ball to keep me company, wriggling around and tirelessly playing out his idiosyncratically endearing antics throughout the day and long into the night. Oh, and getting to watch the sheer joy and enthusiasm with which the daily feeding ritual was received - it had to be at the right time too, or else, a mini fishy temper could sometimes break out!

Tung Choi Street - Goldfish Market (HK)

This evening, I stumbled across the following video of Tung Choi Street (in Mong Kok, Hong Kong), otherwise known as "Goldfish Street". It brings back quite a few memories from when I was there during my 2012 trip to Hong Kong, and captures a few of the sights I really wanted to take shots of (but couldn't really do, with all the no photography signs everywhere).



In fact, I'd say that this video actually makes it look a lot more impressive than what I saw at the time, with a lot more fish on display and in higher numbers.

Wow! Ostracods

On what could be best described as a bit of a bad day (*) - matched by the gloomy brooding rainclouds, it could be said that these little guys really "lit" up my day ;)

 Ostracods - via Colossal

What a cool effect!

Ostracods are the little spec-like shrimp thingies which collide with the big silver fish. Apparently when the big fish accidentally eats an ostracod, the ostracod produces a bioluminescent (i.e. glowing) chemical, which causes the predator to spit out its prey (resulting in that bright fireball effect) to avoid attracting attention to itself (i.e. note the transparent body).

Goodbye Bubu

Last night, my beloved goldfish passed away, having lived a relatively happy life (though marked by a number of traumatic incidents).

Here are a collection of some of my favourite photos of Bubu taken at different times during his life:

 Perhaps my favourite shot of all - August 2012

Another from August 2012

Trapped - August 2011

A typical pose - October 2010

The wallpaper on my Toshiba for many years - May-July 2010

RIP Bubu - 24 December 2009 - 18 January 2014 (23:40)

HKTrip13 - Day 1 - Ocean Park

This installment covers our visit to the Ocean Park theme park in Hong Kong. We only managed to spend an afternoon there (though at least there were no queues for most things - apart from the Cable Car and the Ocean Express to get back down the mountain). Nevertheless, it was a great place to visit. Personally, I particularly loved the Grand Aquarium, Goldfish corner, and the pandas.

Orange Fish

Today, I came across the following fish in one of the aquariums I visit from time to time:

Apologies for the image quality - it was an impromptu shot taken using my ultra-crappy phone's camera (which promptly died a few shots later, just when I had lined up another really nice shot of another new arrival in the tank).

EDIT: Apparently, this is a "Sea Perch"

August Recap

Wedged!

The first day of spring! Now, for a little fun tail (excuse the pun)...

Taken a few weeks back when migrating my fish over to his new replacement tank several months post major quakes (touchwood ;) ...

I'd barely been out of the room for 5 minutes and then come back find that the fish had managed to sneak behind the backdrop, wedging itself and looking glumly at me!

Peekabu