Bangkok Holiday New Camera

About a week ago I finally made it to Bangkok, Thailand for the first time.

I have been looking around for a good digital SLR camera for a while and I wanted to check out the CANON 550D. I ended up buying the CANON Kiss X4 (identical to the 550D but this one is the Japanese version). I have never owned a DSLR so I did some research before I went and I checked out all the prices on ebay and in my local camera stores etc. Long story short, I bought the Camera plus a bunch of accessories including 3 different (basic) lenses for about half the price of what it would have cost me in Brisbane.

I did what I'm sure every person does when they buy a new camera and went out and took about 1000 photos in the first couple of days. Here are a few that I like more than the others.


This is the standard "Oh my I can do long exposure I'm going to try it out on the traffic at night" shot. I made the effort of walking all of about 20 metres away from our hotel to take this one.


This was actually harder than I thought it would be, turns out fish don't like things hovering above their heads and every time you get over the top of them the shoot off underneath the nearest ledge. I also found trying to avoid glare on the water was a bit of a nightmare.


We were having Yum Cha (one of my favourite foods) in Brunei and I was playing around with shortening the focus to just one item. I am loving playing around with my new toy.


I wanted to see how clear I could get a cityscape image from the rooftop, but I'd only had my camera for all of about 2 hours so I didn't want to try my luck sitting the little tripod on the rail of the rooftop where I was standing. This one was shot by hand, I tried to frame the neon sign of the neighbouring hotel.


There are about 1000 more shots from my week long holiday, I'll try to sift through and find a few more favourites. I think I'll have to make another blog post pretty soon.

Please feel free to leave any constructive criticism on my pictures, I can assure you I have been practising and the next ones to come will be a considerable improvement.

If you are on Twitter make sure to say hi and introduce yourself if you add me @rhyscooper

www.doophone.com is up!

I'm super proud to be able to say that thanks to Stephen Kelly, the Doo Phone is going to be launched in a few months time. And now we've got the site up at www.doophone.com so you can go and check it out.



It's been a real journey working on the Doo Phone and it's really had some ups and downs. But this deal takes the cake, it means that the Doo Phone is going to be publicly available so that the people who I've been working so hard for are going to be able to benefit from it.

The site has been up for less than 2 days and it's already had more hits than this blog has since I started. But who am I to complain. This is great news, and we've already got our first confirmed pre-order for the Doo Phone.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts.

My new favorite timelapse

The making of is the funniest clip I've seen in ages. Thanks to papi for posting this on his myspace page ;) Meanwhile I am getting so lazy with this blog thing, must start to make more effort soon.

60 days of GYM (day 15)

Ok, so I've still been going to the gym, I made it there another 3 times last week. I'm really loving the atmosphere at Sporting Wheelies Gym. In the past I've never really been into going to the gym but everyone is so friendly and non-competitive. I've even lost a kilo.

In other news, my life is going gang busters (in the best way), which means I'm working even more. The Doo Mobile deal is going swimmingly and I'm confident that my work is really going to pay off. We also got some great advice on how to take the Doo Phone to market. I've never been in this position and am not really sure how to feel about it all, I'm super excited but also pretty stressed out at the same time.

Then I get an email about another project I'm really passionate about but it's a little bit secret squirrel at the moment, so I'll tell more about it in about a month once I know how it goes.

I had really better get back to work, so many things to do.

I don't think I'm going to twitter about this post (it's not that exciting) but I'm posting it for the sake of #GAS.

If we've never met before feel free to contact me on twitter @rhyscooper

60 days of GYM (Day 5)

Lately I've been finding myself working ridiculous hours both on my company and in my role as being a lifestyle support worker. I've pretty much devoted my life to making change in the lives of people with disabilities. I found that if I work myself too hard I only end up becoming less and less effective because I don't have the brain power left to make the right decisions any more.

Long story short, I've decided that I need to make more of an effort to look after myself. I set myself the goal to go to the gym as much as possible (within reason) over the next two months. I started on the 1st of this month, and I was surprised to see how much change it made straight away. I hadn't slept properly for about 4 days and after just 1 hour 30mins in the gym, I slept like a log for 12 hours straight. I woke up feeling so good the next morning I felt like going to the gym again the next day (until I tried to get up and realised how sore my whole body was).

My second gym session was on Wednesday 3rd, I was testing out my limit on the bench press when a friend of mine from the gym started pushing me. Turns out my limit is 1 rep at 60kg. I'm 105kg so I've got a while to go to be able to bench press my own body weight. I started to give myself a little pep talk in my head and thought if I can lose 15-20kg (how much I've put on in the last few years) I would only need to bench press about another 25kg and I'd be pressing my bodyweight. I am not sure if I will ever get there but I figure why not aim high.

My 3rd session was this morning and I felt like I was really crushing it but had to shoot of after an hour to get some jobs done.

I figured I'd start posting on here about how I'm going with this so that my #GAS buddies can harass me if I don't keep it up. My starting stats are as follows:

Weight: 105kg
Waist: 42 inches
Bench press: 60kg

These are what I want to focus on.

Now to work on the diet, any suggestions? I'm aiming to lose about 10kg in 2 months. With 3 days gym a week.

If we've never met before, make sure to say hi to me on twitter @rhyscooper

I LOVE Stop Motion Animation!

For a long time now I've been meaning to buy a digital SLR. I've always had a love for photography and video production and I love some of the stuff people are doing with stop motion animation. I could only wish to make clips as cool as these ones.





If you know of any other cool videos like this let me know in the comments section or tweet me at @rhyscooper (if we've never met, add me and say hi)

Patrick Henry Hughes

For a while now I have been using my twitter tool on my laptop to follow the word "disability" as a search. I'm glad I checked it today because it lead me to this video. I have a real interest and passion in disability and I am always looking for inspirational stories from around the world. I want you to take the time to have a look into the life of Patrick Henry Hughes. The video says enough, watch it and be inspired.