Not content with the three or so months we spent meandering around Europe on the Hilarity100 almost two years ago, the two of them are now heading off to cycle around the Med for the rest of 2008.

Life really is tough.

It’s strange seeing farmland out there — most of the mountains are national park and look more like the view near the famous tourist lookout at the Three Sisters, just a few minutes drive away from where we were climbing.

It’s worth the trek out to the mountains for the space and clear air. It feels like a world away from inner-city Sydney where I spend most of my time, and it’s good to be reminded that under all the concrete, bitumen and brick we’re actually standing on a giant bit of rock.

I should also mention that aside from the fact updates have been sketchy at best lately, they’ve been even worse than usual while we’ve been living without net access at home for the last month or so.

We made do by jumping on a neighbour’s open wireless connection, but it’s unbelievably slow (by my reckoning, borrowing someone else’s wireless is just balancing the karma for the free open wireless that we’ve got running from our place).

The good news is that our connection’s back, so at least I have the opportunity to post more. Whether I actually do update or not we’ll see (I’ve also got to try to take more photos so I’ve got something to post).

Lately it’s been rock climbing that’s been keeping me distracted and away from the keyboard outside of work hours. Along with a gang of mates from work I’ve been climbing indoors a couple of times a week, and now I’m taking my first scary, scary steps into the world of outdoor climbing.

I’m not sure how much longer the weather’s going to hold for climbing day trips out to the Blue Mountains. There are a few photos from last weekend’s trip to Blackheath, the climbing mecca of the Blue Mountains, including one of my first lead climb (apparently I did okay).

In the meantime, here's a photo of a giant, earth-conquering iron atom in Belgium.

I'm not entirely sure how you get a wall looking like that.

In this case it's very much the former.

I did manage to take a few shots while camping near Jervis Bay over the weekend, while I'll get around to posting at some point soon.

I've been entertaining myself here in Sydney, but I've been lazy and haven't taken many photos... That said, I'm really proud of the ones I took at the Boys Night Out the other week in honour of Lachlan (that's his quiff in the photo above).

The fresh start is also a good excuse to start from scratch and really mess with manual settings, something I stopped using while I was traveling last year and wanting to worry more about framing and timing than getting exposures and apertures spot on.

I'm also counting down the days until I wing my way back to Perth for Christmas and a chance to catch up with family and friends I haven't seen in a long, long time.

When I'm not working I've been spending my time taking in the new surroundings in the Inner-East of Sydney — a bizarre mix of multi-million dollar apartments and the seedy underbelly, mixed in with plenty of great food and drinking holes.

In the mean time, check out Money and Technology, my two pet projects of late in the office.