One of the hidden secrets of flickr is The Commons. It’s an area of the site where various institutions contribute items from their photographic archives.
Lots of institutions are represented: The Smithsonian, National Galleries of Scotland, George Eastman House (founder of Kodak and inventor of roll film), US Library of Congress, and others.
My personal favourite is the collection that the NSW state library are publishing. I like that it’s relatively close to home (give or take ~900km) and I can relate to lots of the images they’re showing. The shot to the left, for example, is rush hour at Kings Cross in 1938. I’ve driven through that area a few times.
The staff are very accessible, too: any comments left against photos where they can add further information are usually responded to pretty quickly.
Some images are foreign to me because I don’t know Sydney super well, but some are very familiar. The shot to the right, for example, is absolutely unmistakable. Any boy growing up in Australia could pick this bloke.
Click through to see the State Library of New South Wales collection. There’s some great photos there, and it’s well worth exploring.
We took The Kids to the velodrome for an hour after dinner last night. Big Kid rode her bike, and we took Little Kid’s plastic trike.
She kept wanting to take it onto the grass in the middle, but eventually managed to sort of complete a lap.
There’s a gallery up on SmugMug with a bunch more photos.
A very informative short clip about giraffes.
Last night The Kids made pizza.
Big Kid has been doing this for years, but the toddler joined in for the first time last night.
We had it outside with a little wine and some garlic bread, which both kids love.
Apparently it’s now illegal for an Australian website to link to Wikileaks. $11K per day fine.
The annual Melbourne Motor Show is on at the moment, so Lisa and I took The Kids down for the day. As usual, it’s just like a giant car show room. I haven’t been for nearly 10 years, but not much has changed. The absence of Ferrari and Mercedes was notable. BMW had some nice cars including an M1 homage that looked more CGI than real. Toyota had a huge stand; pointlessly bland grey interiors as far as the eye could see, as you’d expect. Holden (the local arm of General Motors) and Ford both had a large presence. Lisa has decided the HSV R8 wagon will be her next car.
The highlight of the show for me (as expected) was the F1 stand. They had last year’s driver’s championship winning Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-23 there. I’m not sure whether it was a real car or a show mockup. I inclined to suspect the latter given the true cost of building a real race car (somewhere north of AU$1M).
Regardless, it was there, looked brilliant, and best of all, Vodafone were running a competition where two people at a time got to do a tire change. It had to be done, of course.
One of the hidden secrets of flickr is The Commons. It’s an area of the site where various institutions contribute items from their photographic archives.
The staff are very accessible, too: any comments left against photos where they can add further information are usually responded to pretty quickly.
Who said what?