Merry Christmas!

Wishing all my blog readers a very Merry Christmas and happy festive season (for those who don't celebrate Christmas). I hope you all stay safe and enjoy spending time with your loved ones :)

DSLR Gear No Idea Campaign

As someone who has purposely not bought a DSLR, I absolutely love this campaign and this video especially. And as NEX owner, I love it even more!

You see, for the amount I've spent on cameras this year, I easily could have bought two basic DSLRs. Why didn't I? For a number of reasons. One definitely being size, weight and portability factor which is why I've gone high end premium point and shoot and now mirrorless. The main reason however, is I absolutely loathe people who buy DSLRs and don't even know how to use them! Sure you get great quality pics because you're using a high quality camera with great sensors, but that is only half the story. People would probably call me an enthusiast photographer but I by no means purport to think I'm some expert. What I've purposely done in avoiding buying a DSLR is bought cameras with the functionality of a DSLR so that I can learn to fully operate and make the most of those features before I even consider going the DSLR route.

I am proud to say I can at least use simple functions like adjust aperture appropriately to get the depth of field I want, as well as fiddle with shutter speeds, exposures and white balance (this is my favourite!) so I feel I have the right to shake my head at those people in this video!

Anyway I'll get off my soapbox, but here's some more video viewing :)

Travel Tip Tuesday: One Cent Flights

It's been ages since I did a 'Travel Tip Tuesday' post so here's a good one if you're looking to travel soon - I came across this website One Cent Flights.

So how does it work? Basically its like an auction site where you bid for the price you're willing to pay for whatever flights they've advertised which include awesome destinations as Australia to the US and Europe. Basically you're bidding on the amount you will pay to then have their set travel agent book you the return flight on a set list of airlines (which are actually quite good, not cheaper budget airlines!) based on the travel dates you want.

Bids increase in increments of 1 cent, so you'll often see international flights go for less than $100! Bidding ends when no further bids are received and a set countdown timer runs out. The catch is that you have to pay for bids at a starting price of $1 per bid but if you're clever with your auction strategy, even if you bid say, 500 times, that's only $500 plus the auction price (which might be less than $100). At a total of < $1000, that's still cheaper than the average return flight internationally!

Now I'm not affiliated with them in anyway and I haven't actually tried it (as I've already booked my holiday for 2013!) but I thought it was something others might really get into. Even the domestic flights have pretty good deals.

When you sign up you get 5 free bids but if you want a bonus two, click here!

Happy Bidding!

Sony + Visa Entertainment Competition

I've 'officially' finished work for 2012 as my workplace has Christmas Shutdown where they force us to take leave over this quieter season. Well, turns out I actually have quite a bit of work to do so I'll probably still work a bit prior to Christmas however as I am technically 'on leave' I'll try and post more often! I realised I have such a backlog of things I've been to, places I've eaten at, cool things I've seen that I want to post about so I'll try my best to do that over the next few weeks.

Anyway, the most exciting news for me last week was that I'd won a competition with Visa Entertainment! The comp was related to the release of Skyfall and so I apparently wrote something worthwhile in my 25 words or less entry because I won a Sony Gadget bundle!

To my delight, it arrived on Friday...

It's the brand new Sony Xperia S Tablet (16GB) and the Sony DSC-HX30V camera! Now as I've already posted, I've been naughty this year and purchased more cameras than I can use (including my first Sony camera - the NEX 6!) so I'll probably pass this onto a family member but it's still nice to get a surprise and competition winning once in a while!

Also on a random note, this is my blogs 200th post woot! I think it is quite fitting that my blog has come full circle with another competition winning, seeing as I started the blog originally to document my net-a-porter competition winning :)

Aaaand I've also just edited this post to add - I've just hit over the 50,000 views mark! =o I didn't think it would happen so soon!

Where Chefs Eat

One of the food websites/blogs I follow recently featured this - a book that is being released in January called "Where Chefs Eat" which is a chef-y insiders guide to all the best restaurants around the world, as suggested by some of the world's best chefs.

I love love loved this video they made previewing the book. Bill Granger gets a mention too!

Pre-summer tan

It's already been over a week since I returned from Bali and I think my tan is already quickly fading which is quite disappointing! The weekend only had nice weather on Saturday as well which was disappointing, because Sunday was the only day I had time to go and frolic in the sun at the beach =(

This was my tan two days after getting home - excuse the bad mirror pictures!

One of my work christmas parties is on Friday so I'll have some photos of how my tan has progressed since then...

I have to say, I quite like this pre summer tan business, it means that I feel better about going out in my summer dresses with a bit of colour to me!

New kid on the block: Richard Braqo

I was URL hopping and reading blogs the other day and came across some commentary on shoe designer Richard Braqo who is being hailed as the next 'IT' man in the shoe design circuit.

With training at Parsons NYC and experience at Acne and Helmut Lang, I can totally see these design houses influencing his shoe designs.

The shoe above is the 'Benedetta' - I love the pearl and gold detailing for a bit of a fun twist to what is otherwise is such a wearable and classic shoe.

And the shoe on the left above, the ankle detailing is actually like a cuff! Cool, right?

If you visit his website, his collection is quite small but I'm definitely keeping my eye out for his future collections. He might just be the next Jimmy Choo or Louboutin!

All images courtesy of Richard Braqo's website