What a blast that Katoomba meet was! I had an awesome time, thanks to everyone who attened, and also to Nick and Ian for being the organising/attending admins; give them a hug when you see them, do eet!

Knowing I'd forget a million things if I packed in the morning, I prepared myself the night before ... which turned out to be a wise decision because although I was all tucked up in bed I could not get to sleep until 4:30am ... and I'd organised with my love, Juliette (=Julijaaa), to catch the hour-earlier train to have a nice breakfast in Leura before heading over to Katoomba.

Up at 7:50am, showered and dressed by 8:10, out the door with a heavy bag, a freshly charged battery and clean CF cards by 8:25 and on the bus at 8:34am. Getting off the train we discovered that it was very cold and very windy!

The Red Door is a wonderful little café in Katoomba's neighbouring town of Leura, and it actually does have a red door ... it was here that Juliette and I sheltered from the weather.

Shortly before ordering my phone buzzed to life and and suddenly I found myself talking to Nick (=gimmyfood), and a few instances later I suddenly found him (with his sister for a sidekick) sitting next to us. After breakfast we all trundled south to see if the valley was still there and hadn't run away on us, and discovering everything to be normal we mooched around for a while, before discovering that we were a little on the late side of time. In the car, and next stop: Katoomba!

When we arrived outside the station they were all huddled together, much like penguins, and there were quite a few familiar faces I hadn't seen in a while (Ian (~osirisunnefer) and Jess (~afraid-to-fly) among others). After catching up we all tramped to the other side of the station to deposit our gear in Nick's car, because to walk all the way down the hill on Katoomba Street laden with all of our worldly possessions is akin to torture.

As we'd eaten earlier, Juliette and I browsed some antique stores while the others made friends with some food, and during this time a little gust of sleet had thrown itself at us. As un-epic as this sounds, it was wildly exciting to most of us city-folk, because we hardly ever see snow ... I'd only ever seen sleet once, several years ago in Lithgow whilst on the Zig Zag Railway ...

Tired of waiting for people to stuff their mouths with delicious things, Juliette and I made our way down to the YHA to get checked in and the like, and not too long after that I met up with Nick and got my stuff out of his car.

Not too soon after that most people had trekked up to Coles without Juliette and myself, so we hurried up there to catch up with them and buy some things of our own ... Including some Up & Go for the 4:15am wake-up time. Things bought and back at the YHA, we decided to head out to Echo Point for some sight-seeing! Into the cars, then out of the cars, then walking a bit, followed by a little bit of freezing and a lot of wind ... oh an about a million photos of the Jamieson Valley, other deviants and sleet! There was this cute little kid hopping around, Sammi (~osirisunnefer's girl) disappeared into a hoody, someone forgot to bring warm-enough clothes, and Nick took loads of video which should be quite a good source for your daily lollage. We even saw some more sleet, and here's a few pictures from there:



From there we went back to the YHA, and I think some poor souls even had to walk ... poor them suckers! One welcome hot shower and a defrosting later and we were ready for a night on the town!

Again, Juliette and I were left behind, hehehe ... but we eventually found some people in the top of town, in two neighbouring restaurants. We passed on the Thai, and decided it was gourmet pizza for us. In there we found Nick, Tiny (*sh00t3r888), Ian and Sammi sitting on couches barely able to fit themselves ... but Juliette sat next to Ian I squeezed in between Tiny and Nick, which was a very scary experience. I'm sure pictures will turn up any day now. We ordered and ate, and some time during this we spotted ~JRCSmith sitting at a neighbouring table and discussed various ways to gain his attention.

Fed and paid, we exited to find the poor deviants next door had only just been delivered their main meal! Poor creatures ... oh well. We planned to go to some place that serves alcoholic drinks (), but the tables were turned when Juliette discovered she had left her ID at the YHA (She is the organised one whilst I am the always-losing-things one)! We decided we didn't really need alcohol, and retired to the YHA for the night.

A little while later I was still awake and Juliette was clutching at the blankets trying to get warm, so I went to the payphone downstairs to call Nick to see if they were still out. They weren't, so I trotted off down to their room and had a nice little discussion, and then went back up to our room to get something and saw Juliette was still awake, so I dragged her down to the room too More nice little discussions ensued before bed-time.

It's 4:15am; I grumble and stumble out of bed, turn off the alarm and decide to lay down a bit longer. It's 4:30am ... "Oh crap ... honey, wake up!" I dress very quickly and walk downstairs while Juliette brushes her hair, and everyone is waiting, all rugged up and looking even more like penguins.



I pick up my up and go and down it; that's breakfast taken care of ... and off we go!

Because it was so windy Nick decided to defer to our back-up location, rather than have everyone hiking through the darkness to a cliff with no fence ... safety first! But the sunrise was still awesome! We had a good panoramic view in front of us, and the cold and wind made for more sleet! Then we thought ... hey, where's =phreakhawk-14 ? He slept in Noob. Here are some pictures from the sunrise:



Oh my dog was it cold. So ... cold. So ... very ... cold. I checked the temperatures afterwards, and that boxed blue one below lists the conditions just after sunrise.



So back to the YHA for a defrosting in a hot shower. When we got back the sleet had become heavier and it was rolling up the road courtesy of the wind, which Nick got some video of. After the hot shower I lay back in bed and rested.

Then I get a call from Nick, who is outside in the car with all the other people, waiting for us so we can all go to the chocolate place. This is 9am, on a Sunday ... oh, and we hadn't even been told they were leaving until just then.

So we quickly readied ourselves and hurried out ... got into the car, and then we headed over to the chocolate place ... to find it closed, opening at 10am. Whoever made that call ... We could have stayed in the warmth of the YHA until the 10am check-out time.

Anyways, so we decide to explore Leura. Juliette and I got left behind, not knowing where all the other people went ... stuck in the cold. I got this beautiful shot of her, though:



She's so gorgeous!

Anyways, we briefly met with ~Tiberius47 and =phreakhawk-14 before wandering off again in search of the others, finally spotting them towards the bottom of the Mall.

"Oh hai", we said. ~XSI-Apprentice and his girlfriend were leaving, so we got our stuff out of their car before meeting everyone again in The Red Door Café ... the chocolate place was off the agenda

I think ~osirisunnefer and Sammi left soon after that, because they came into the café twice and left, and I didn't see them again ... at least the food was nice.

After the café people were keen on getting back to more believable temperatures; Juliette, Nick, Nick's sister, Jess and I, however, wanted to venture further afield to Blackheath because of reports of snow! In the car and off we go.

When we got there there was no snow But we did have a good time sitting in the car and resting: I was so tired by this stage, and I think all of us were.

The rest of the day was pretty much a blur from there ... We all slept a bit in the car ...



And suddenly Juliette and I were waiting for a train a Lapstone station, for the train into Sydney.

I have effectively a week off uni (until Thursday), but I still need to get some things done within the week. Juliette and I are thinking pretty hard about deferring for a year, getting jobs and moving out together ... preferably up to the Blue Mountains (the good thing is that it's generally cheaper than Sydney). Uni has been a steep learning curve, and I'm not entirely sure on whether I want to continue this particular course anyway. It has been killing my creativity (as you might of noticed, I have been submitting deviations and journals in a significantly reduced tempo this year).

This time next week I'll be in Armidale. My grandmother has graduation at UNE and Juliette and I are invited, so I'm taking the camera ... hopefully we'll be able to get some decent shots there.

NCIS: LA is as expected ... pretty average. The original NCIS still kicks ass though, the first two episodes of this season have been epic.

Anyways, I'm done with this journal ... if you have pictures from the #SydneySyders Katoomba meet make sure you upload them, and let us know about it!

=AaronBradford

Wow; it's been a long time since my last journal entry. Lots of things have been happening: uni, deviantART and the rest of it.

First, if you haven't already heard, #SydneySyders is making September's meet an overnighter at Katoomba. This one's been on the books for quite some time (since all who went last year enjoyed it immensely) and I'm happy for it to be out there and happening. I've already made bookings for my angel (=Julijaaa) and I. If you're interested in making the trek out there you should bring yourself up-to-speed by reading this blog entry; it should be a great time. Nick (=gimmyfood and I made a promotional video up in the Blue Mountains on Wednesday ... I'm not exactly sure how much good footage we got as we didn't put as much effort into it as last time: we were just trying to survive the cold. If you're coming to the meet, rug up!

The groups system is coming along well - #SydneySyders is still beta testing for the development team, as well as the numerous other groups that are now active. If you find anything iffy with groups drop us a note, or you could head over to #devBUG, a dedicated group for the finding of bugs on deviantART. For updates on the status of the groups system make sure you check out #hq.


I haven't picked up the camera to take photos for a long time. I mentioned going to Katoomba the other day with Nick ... I took my camera but forgot the battery. Oh well. I hope to get back into it, but as I've said on previous journals and what-not, I'm a bit 'meh' about photography now. To me it's not a great art form any more: point and click. Not to mention the fact that cameras are about as popular as belly buttons. I've been thinking for a while about getting into some more traditional art ... that and more literature. In fact, I have this story on my mind and it's been there for some time, but I've just never been in the mood to concentrate on it and get it down on paper. Maybe soon.

Uni's okay. There have been a lot of "art and craft" assignments that (although they get you thinking about design) are more of a thing that should be in-class rather than actual assignments. Some of the other stuff is interesting and most of it isn't. Oh well.

I'm still working on my website ... again, I haven't had the time nor the proper mood to work on the content.

That will be all for now, I think.

I've been thinking a lot about deviantART since chatting with Angelo ($spyed) and Heidi ($Heidi) on the World Tour in May. The upcoming groups system, portfolios and the new search really got me excited.

First came portfolios, and I had a good time playing around with that and giving some feedback to the developers. I haven't used it of late, though, so maybe I'll do a little tinkering with that again soon.

Then #SydneySyders became a group, and Nick (=gimmyfood) and I began to beta test the system, shortly joined by others. It's been over three weeks since that's happened and I haven't had anything major to report to the development team in quite some time, which is excellent!

These things have prompted me to think about other areas of deviantART that could be improved upon.

The first thing that came to mind was all of the crap on deviantART. I'm talking MS Paint drawings, quick little sketches on lined paper, webcam pictures and all these 'artistic nudes' that look like they came straight from a pornographic website, and all the rest of it. So I thought about ways to limit all this from either getting on deviantART in the first place or making it into the main categories that should be reserved for true art works.

My idea was moderation. For example, when one uploads a deviation they nominate it to go into a category (say, Photography > Street), however it is not accepted into that category until three different moderators have voted to accept. If denied, you would get the option to upload into scraps. Scrap submissions would go straight in, no question. And then there came other thoughts: all the moderators would have differing opinions, and it would be a chance of luck to get into the category of choice. People not accepted would kick up a fuss and there would be a mass migration of deviants to other websites such as Flickr, which would cause deviantART a significant loss in income ... not to mention the cost of hiring moderators, unless they were volunteers. This would in theory raise the quality of the content on deviantART, however who is to say what is art and what is crap? And what would we do with the crap that's already here?

Then I got to thinking what deviantART would be like after such a change. I answered myself: it would no longer be individual, it would be like so many other artist communities out there that rely on moderation. You see, the thing I've realised is that deviantART is not a website for great, inspiring art. It is first and foremost a community of artists, and the goal of most deviants is to learn rather than to display. I joined here with the motive to learn, and hundreds of deviants have helped me to do so. I think more needs to be done by deviants to share their knowledge and wisdom, though. Most of the comments on here are "nice picture" or something of the sort. This, although perhaps giving someone something to smile about, isn't really helpful. Many of my early works have few or no comments, which was something expected. Critiques have helped to address this, I think, and I'm certainly going to make more of an effort to provide feedback and critique, and I welcome these on any of my works as well. One last comment on this matter: I really don't understand the people's motives to discourage critiques.

It's hilarious: some deviants are in uproar over the new share feature and there's lots of dArama afoot! See Angelo's article about it here. He raises some good points but there are a few things iffy, and I understand the opposing argument but I don't agree with it.

I think there should be options to turn sharing off, but it is on by default. I turned deviantMOBILE on my deviations off because I do not want my deviations being on another website or blog without prior consent (I still don't know why they combined mobile access and blogs under the same setting, though). It is my understanding that some deviants think this and the share buttons are the same thing, but they're not. deviantMOBILE displays the full deviation on the external website (granted, with a link, however people will most likely not click on it because they can see the full image already), sharing is nothing more than an extremely low resolution thumbnail and a link directly to your deviation on deviantART. So the advantage of sharing? It gives you more exposure, and in theory more love and/or feedback. A winning situation, yes?

Some have argued that sharing encourages art theft or 'copyright infringements'. This new share feature is just making it easier for people to link back to you so you get the credit, the love and the feedback, and it in no way makes it any easier for people to infringe on copyright. If deviants are worried that more exposure increases the likelihood of people stealing their work, what is their artwork doing on deviantART or the internet as a whole anyway? People can easily steal images without the share function, without the ability to right-click and without even making much effort. Other websites have systems where a transparent .gif image is stretched over the main image, making the most common form of stealing (right-click > save as) impossible. There are ways around that, though ... however is does act as a deterrent, but if someone really wants to steal your art and it's on the net they'll find a way. About the only real defence one has is watermarking, which can degrade the image somewhat but renders the image unusable to the potential thief.

Sharing is a wonderful feature.