The Author

2004

The Bondi Beach Home Page is maintained by Brian Robson. This home page aims to provide fast, useful, enjoyable information about Bondi without the clutter seen on most web pages.

Instant bio: Brian has lived in Bondi for over 35 years. In his other life he writes databases for archaeologists, and before that he wrote databases describing heritage-listed properties.

Brian's interests, other than web pages, databases, the NBN and the Internet generally, include the history of the Romans, the Dark Ages and the medieval cathedral builders, the history of science and engineering, the history and technical development of transport (especially trams and trains), alternative country and western music, 50s and 60s rock'n'roll, the use and abuse of the English language and counteracting the effects of advertising. He prefers cats to dogs. He never plays computer games and has never rented a video or been to a gym.

This web site began in March 1996, with original design and writing by Nicos Souleles and Claire Pillar. Many thanks for the enduring simplicity of the design and to all those who have made suggestions along the way.

Cameras: Brian's digital cameras starting from August 2003 with Olympus, models C-5050 and C-5060. The latest camera is a Sony A-5000 'Mirrorless' compact camera.

Note that Olympus cameras take pictures with an aspect ratio of 4:3, the same as a old TV set or an old movie (pre-widescreen), and took pictures of 5.5.megapixels. The current camera is 20 megapixels, with an aspect ratio of 3:2.

From 1999 to 2003, film cameras by Konica (great shutter-priority SLR's), and negative film by Kodak with prints by Fuji processed on Bondi Road (back in the era of one-hour processing shops). Ah film, an era has passed - Kodachrome 64 and 25 slide films were gradually perfected, and now look what's happened.

Scanning: Since August 2008, an HP C-6280 All-in-One scanner has been used when needed (for example the old Bondi photographs) with scanning directly to a memory chip at 300 dpi. Prior to that, it was an HP-5300 at 150 dpi to scan the prints taken with film cameras.

Picture Editing: Only when necessary - PaintShopPro Version 7. Ages ago it was PaintShopPro Version 3 (yes, version 3) from 1995.

All re-sized images are all made using Easy-Thumbnails downloaded from the www.fookes.com/east-thumbnails web site. A bit confusing to use, but good results.

Picture sizes: People expect much more these days and the bandwidth is now available on the internet to deliver good quality. Originally inages were 120 by 90 for thumbnails with 600 by 465 for larger images. Given the widespread usage of broadband connections and larger monitors, the picture sizes was been increased to 160 by 120 for thumbnails and 770 by 577 for the larger images. The current size for new images is 180 by 120 for the thumbnail and either 1200 by 800 or 1600 by 1065 for the larger image.

Web pages: HTML is constructed using Notepad Plus. For Quality Assurance and usability testing, this site uses the W3C on-line HTML Page Validator, the webmaster tips pages and the on-line Link Checker all from the World Wide Web Consortium at www.w3.org (see under Validators). Link checking is done using a German program called Xenu's Link Sleuth.

File transfer (FTP) to the web server currently uses FileZilla (that's File-transfer crossed with Godzilla - it looks old-fashioned but it's correct and robust). Other FTP programmes that are used to talk to the server have included WS-FTP (an oldie but a goodie) and Fire-FTP (basically a poorly written dud from by a self-selected self-obsessed team of volunteers).

Sunnies were not worn and no bottled water was drunk during the making of this web site. However, everyone here in Bondi exists on a diet of just Cappuccinos and Sun Dried Tomatoes on Turkish Bread, although on the weekend, we have Bagels as a special treat. For backpackers, a cafe on Bondi Road has 'Irish Chips' on their menu.

This site is dedicated to Vincent Flanders and Jakob Nielsen whose contributions to the Internet still remain in the mists of history yet to be written. Further helpful thoughts about web page content are in the Gerry McGovern newsletters.

Last Updated - Monday 3rd April 2017