Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
Another year, another COVID-19 booster. Which, coincidentally, I got exactly one year after my last booster :)
Selfie of a bald man wearing glasses and a grey t-shirt sitting in a car. The man is grinning at the camera as he has his left sleeve rolled up to show the adhesive plaster on his upper arm, indicating that he has just been vaccinated.
I took the first two of these photos at a community footy ground and the rest when I went to an Emerging Writers’ Festival event at narrm ngarrgu Library in the city.
Close-up photo of the spout of a public drinking-water fountain in a large sports field. This water fountain has not been used in a while and is completely dry.
Photo of one end of an Australian Rules Football field in which tall nets have been installed behind the goal posts.
Photo looking straight down at a bright yellow line painted on the asphalt of a tram stop. An incomplete phrase written in black, all-capitals text on top of this line reads, “stand behind this”. Installed just behind this line is some tactile paving: a series of raised, white-coloured, reflective circles that are looking strangely bright in the harsh, eerie light making its way through the clouds on a sunny day. In the bottom of the photo are the front of the photographer’s white sneakers stepping on the first two rows of tactile pavement dots.
Photo of a sandwich board placed on a pavement with a sign on the floor painted next to it. The sign on the floor contains an arrow and text that reads, “narrm ngarrgul Library and Family Service”. Text drawn with multicoloured chalk on the black sandwich board reads, “narrm ngarrgul Library, all welcome. Take one cookbook from your library, combine with fresh market produce for a winning recipe”.
Photo of the corner of a brick building with two large, solid-letter signs on it. One has an arrow and reads, “library entrance” while the other is around the corner and reads, “narrm ngarrgul Library and Family Services”. Below this, a sign painted on the floor and a sandwich board on the pavement both also point towards the library entrance.
Photo of a wide pavement next to a large market. The pavement is completely covered by an awning that has lights strung up below it. Also attached to the awning are signs showing the names of the shops along the market. There are several sets of tables and chairs arranged on the pavement. The area is not very busy, though there are several people walking along the pavement.
Photo of a sandwich board on a pavement. A sign painted on the pavement next to the sandwich board contains an arrow and text that reads, “narrm ngarrgul Library and Family Service”. Pasted on the sandwich board is the posted for the Emerging Writers’ Festival being help between 11 and 18 September 2025.
It’s been months since I’ve posted any of my photos here, so here’s me catching up :)
This batch is from my first photo walk after recovering from my latest bout of post-viral fatigue. I basically walked from my office in Docklands to Flinders Street Railway Station, and I did that by walking along the Yarra River (as I have several times before).
Photo of a woman in a champagne coloured puffer jacket standing in a small urban park next to a train station. The woman is looking down at her phone. In the photo the woman has been taken through the glass railing of a balcony and some rectangular bicycle hoops.
Photo showing three large road signs erected on metal poles. The signs are next to a massive concrete pillar with a stone facade. This pillar is one of several that are holding up a series of elevated train lines that cross over the roads that run beneath. The signs read, from top to bottom, “Flinders St” (the cross street at this intersection), “Docklands” (the suburb to the right of this intersection), and “Marvel Stadium” (the point of interest to the right of this intersection).
Black-and-white photo of a wall of disposable, take-away coffee cups arranged on a cafe window sill.
Black-and-white photo of a coffee cup with, “Coffee here!” written on it along with a smiley face. The coffee cup has been placed on a cafe window sill.
Photo looking up at a large, blue neon sign in the shape of two stylised fish. The sign is mounted on two tall, white poles on top of a large building. The darker blue of the fish stands out against the lighter blue of the sky behind it.
Photo of a tall building in the middle of a large city. One window of the building is shining brightly as the sun reflects off it. The photo has been taken from underneath a set of railway bridge, with a train crossing one of the bridges in front of the photographer.
Photo of a torn, bright yellow sign on a rusted shipping container that reads, in all-black, all-capital letters, “Caution, 9'6" high”.
Photo of a woman wearing a bright yellow jacket sitting in a commuter train at a railway station platform. The photo has been taken through a brick passageway that separates the platform this woman’s train is on and the platform that the photographer's train is on.
Three months ago I wrote about how, for my personal use at least, I’ve changed office suites, moving from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice.
I’ve now made a corresponding change to my primary desktop operating system, moving from Microsoft Windows to Linux – specifically from Windows 11 to MX Linux with the KDE desktop environment.
My reasons for the switch are pretty straightforward: I am increasingly unhappy with the decisions Microsoft is taking around Windows.
For example:
I’m tired of having unwanted large language model (LLM) chat interfaces and other artificial intelligence (AI) functionality integrated into Windows and Microsoft software with no ability to opt-out or turn this functionality off.
I’m wary of the telemetry that Microsoft adds to its products and the monitoring it does of all its customers.
I’m exhausted by the constant tinkering and unasked-for “improvements” Microsoft keeps making to its operating system (OS), giving their OS no chance to settle and stabilise.
Overall, I’m angry about big tech’s technology lock-in and the ongoing enshittification of their products and services.
Fortunately, Linux [1] takes a far different approach from Microsoft.
For example:
Linux is mostly community driven and its developers are much more open to feedback from users.
There are many competing implementations of the Linux operating system – meaning there a great many Linux distributions to choose from – so it is difficult for any single group or organisation to lock-in its users and then enshittify its products and services.
Modern Linux is surprisingly user friendly, which makes it relatively easy for most people – even power users – to switch to this as their primary OS.
That said, it helps that I’ve been using UNIX and Linux for almost 30 years [2], so the idea of moving my life over to Linux was a lot less daunting to me. Quite the opposite, in fact, since I’ve really enjoyed the process of learning and experimenting as I’ve made the move :)
I’ve almost completely migrated my day-to-day computing life over to Linux and, over the next several weeks, I plan to write posts about:
Why I picked MX Linux over other Linux distributions
How I’ve had to reorganise the way I store, sync, and back up all my data
What steps I took to make the switch from Windows to Linux
What I’ve learned about specific Linux applications along the way
For now let me just say that I’m super happy with my move and I’m really enjoying my computing life right now :)
[1] Or GNU/Linux, if you want to get into that naming controversy!
[2] My earliest experience (circa 1996) was with IBM AIX, FreeBSD, and Red Hat Linux. Since then I’ve tried many, many, other distros, with Fedora (KDE desktop), Linux Mint (Cinnamon desktop), and openSUSE Tumbleweed (KDE desktop) being my favourites.
After not posting anything here for three months, I’m back!
Why was I away for so long? I got a cold and, shortly after that, caught some viral infection or the other. (It wasn’t COVID, Influenza, or RSV; I checked and was also independently tested.)
The time I was absent from here is the time I spent recovering from those illnesses and the post-viral fatigue that followed.
Photo of a medical centre waiting room with comfortable chairs, side tables, and inspirational/advertorial posters about the medical practice hung on the wall.
I’ve had COVID-19 only once (at the start of 2024) and that infection seriously messed up my immune system. [1] Now when I get even a mild cold or viral infection, instead of feeling unwell for a few days, I get knocked down hard for, like, six to eight weeks. [2]
During those weeks I tire easily and I get a massive headache every time I concentrate on something for more than an hour or so. That means the most I can do is sit on the sofa, take frequent naps, listen to music, read a book, or watch TV. [3] Anything more than those simple activities requires concentration. I can’t check my emails or browse my RSS feeds, I can’t drive for too long in heavy traffic, I can’t even cook anything more complicated that a fried egg. It is not a fun time.
This was the second bout of post-viral fatigue I’ve been through, so at least this time I knew what was happening. Last time (back in May/June 2024) I kept trying to live my life as normal and almost collapsed from exhaustion while walking the dog! [4]
Sadly, all you can do when you’re suffering through this type of fatigue is rest, so that’s what I did.
Once you’re a little better, you start gentle physical and mental exercise, ramping this up as you get stronger. I did that too. [5]
Happily, this approach worked – like it did last year as well – and now I’m pretty much back to normal.
I still have some stuff to organise from my end – which I am very much looking forward to blogging about, by the way – but that shouldn’t take too long, so posting will resume here shortly.
Yay!
[1] Regular influenza infections also mess with my immune system, but those effects last only a few months. The effects of the ‘spicy flu’ infection have lasted for a year and half so far. *sigh*
[2] Because my immune system is weak these days, I also catch colds and various types of viruses much more easily. Wearing a high-quality, well-fitted, 5-ply, medical face mask helps – and I do wear one whenever I’m in a medium risk situation – but that’s just a single line of defence against infection. And it doesn’t help that I’m often the only person in a room who is wearing such a mask.
[3] On the up side, I used this time to read a lot of books; catch up on a lot of movies and TV shows; and listen to a lot of music on my new audiophile-grade sound system :)
[4] When this happened I called Nurse-on-Call to get some immediate advice and then I went to see my GP the next morning. My GP got me to do a battery of tests (just in case) but those all came out normal and so post-viral fatigue was declared the cause. Turns out this type of fatigue has become much more common in the “post-COVID” era. Most people who suffer through this fully recover in about six weeks, but if the symptoms last for more than six months, then you might be looking at long COVID or chronic fatigue.
[5] Frustrated by doing nothing but consuming media all day, I figured the way I should gently exercise my brain is by creating media instead. For me that meant finally learning how to play bass guitar :) I’m now halfway through the Beginner to Badass course from BassBuzz. That is an excellent course. 10/10 would recommend.
Photo of the body of an all-black electric bass guitar resting on a guitar stand in a living room in front of a shelf of books.
I’m always looking for an excuse to create a graphic, and now that I’m also looking for an excuse to play around with LibreOffice Impress, I figured I’d document all the word processors I’ve used over the years, since those were my gateway into using full office suites.
(In case you missed it, in my previous post I explained why I’m dumping Microsoft Office for LibreOffice.)
Randomly, while doing research for this post, I was surprised to learn that Microsoft Word isn’t even the most popular word processor in the world. That crown goes to Google Docs which has almost three times as many users as Word does!
It’s been fun learning how to use Impress, especially since I am such a PowerPoint super user. It’s been frustrating at times, sure, but still fun :)
Anyway, here’s the graphic (created in Impress and exported as a PNG).
Timeline graphic (similar to a Gantt chart) that is titled ‘My word processor usage history’. It shows a list of all word processors used from 1987 to 2035 in a list, with usage bar charts labelled by year next to each row. The chart data is as follows: WordStar 3.0 (DOS) 1987–1990; WordPerfect 5.1 (DOS) 1992–1993; WordPerfect 6.0 (Windows) 1993–1994; Word for Windows 6.0 1994–1995; Word for Windows 95 1995–1997; Word 97 1997–2000; Word 2000 2000–2003; Word 2003 2003–2006; OpenOffice.org 2.0 2005–2006; Word 2006 2006–2010; Google Docs 2009–2025; Word 2010 2010–2013; Word 2013 2013; Microsoft 365 v15 to v17 2013–2025; LibreOffice Writer 7.0 2020–2023; LibreOffice Writer v24.0 to 25.2 2024–2025.
By the way, this isn’t the first office suite-related chart I’ve created. Here’s one from 2013 about how you can track my career progression through which parts of the Microsoft Office suite I use the most: ‘My Career Progression Through Microsoft Products’.
It’s also not the first time I’ve written about my history with Office products. Here’s one from 2018 celebrating twenty years of using PowerPoint: ‘20 years since my first PowerPoint presentation’.
I love Microsoft Office and I consider myself a power user of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but it’s time to start disentangling myself from the Microsoft ecosystem.
I’ve already made good progress on the operating system (OS) front, with Linux Mint as the primary OS on my laptop. But I’m now taking things up a notch by making LibreOffice my primary office suite.
Why now, though? This meme explains it best.
Photo of a teenage schoolgirl pinned up against a wall by the bell of a massive tuba that is completely enveloping her head. The bell of a tuba is the big, round bit at the front from where the sound comes out. This tuba is behind held by another schoolgirl who is standing in front of the first one. Text overlaid across the girl at the receiving end of the tuba reads, “Me trying to do a basic task I’ve managed to do every day without incident for many years”. Text overlaid across the tuba reads, “AI” (that is, artificial intelligence). Text overlaid across the girl holding the tuba reads, “Every organisation on Earth”.
Yes, Microsoft is shoving Copilot into all parts of its Office productivity suite.
When you open a blank Word document, you get asked what you want to write. #RevengeOfClippy
Screenshot of a Microsoft Word window with a red arrow annotation pointing to a Copilot prompt above the blank word document. The text in the prompt reads, “Describe what you’d like to write”.
When you write some text in Word, the Copilot icon follows you down every single line of the page, hovering creepily just off the left margin.
Screenshot of the text in a Microsoft Word document with a red arrow annotation pointing to the Copilot icon hovering immediately off the left margin of one of the lines (the line that the cursor is presumably on).
When you’re working in Excel, that Copilot icon is with you in Every Single Cell.
Screenshot of the cells in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with a red arrow annotation pointing to the Copilot icon hovering off the top-right corner of the selected cell.
And when you’re in PowerPoint, Copilot is not only in the menu bar (“New Slide with Copilot”), its icon also hovers off the top-left corner of each slide, messing with your slide zoom level.
Screenshot of a Microsoft PowerPoint window with red arrows annotations pointing to two things. The first is a new button in the toolbar next to the ‘New Slide’ button. This new button reads, ‘New Slide with Copilot’. The second is a Copilot icon hovering off the top-left corner of the blank slide.
All this reminds me of that scene from the movie WALL-E in which the captain of the evacuee ship Axiom comes to the realisation that AUTO, the ship’s AI autopilot, has been hovering ominously over the shoulder of all the past captains and is, indeed, the antagonist.
Screenshot from the animated film WALL-E. The scene shows the bridge of the spaceship Axiom, specifically one of the walls of the bridge on which there is a row of holographic portraits of all the ships captains. Hovering over the left shoulder of each captain is AUTO, the ship’s autopilot AI.
No, I don’t hate AI.
AI is cool and I’ve enjoyed using aspects of it for many years. Heck, I’ve been a fan of AI since I took Introduction to Artificial Intelligence in my computer science undergrad back in the late 1990s. I even got an A- in that subject :)
What I hate are these things.
I hate the AI bubble we’re currently going through. It was caused entirely by tech giants that are desperate to gain (or at least not to lose) their first-mover advantage.
These tech giants are throwing stupid amounts of money at getting their brand of AI in front of everyone in the hopes that they get to be the ones to make billions of dollars off this revolutionary technology in the future.
They’re also stealing all the intellectual property they can get their hands on and are consuming ridiculous amounts of energy while doing so – all in an effort to work harder, not smarter, and hoping that this approach will give them a leg-up in the short term.
Well fuck them.
The inevitable outcome of this desperation is tech companies throwing shit (AI-powered apps, features, tools, and functionality) at the wall (which, in this metaphor, is us) hoping that some of it sticks and that people actually find something they want to use.
This is much like the “killer app” madness from a few years ago when hordes of tech bros were scrambling to make an app so useful that it would justify people’s ongoing use of their platform – which they would then eventually attempt to monetise. The same is happening now with standalone AI apps (like all the generative AI ones) and AI functionality added to existing apps (like adding Copilot in Microsoft Office).
I hate that everyone is jumping on the AI bandwagon.
AI has been through several hype cycles and, when there’s money to be made, every algorithm is suddenly said to be based on AI.
Of course each hype cycle has historically been followed by an ‘AI winter’ during which the term AI becomes so toxic that people start calling their work other things – like ‘machine learning’ and ‘neural networks’ and other such euphemisms.
But for now, the bandwagon effect means that algorithmic functionality that Microsoft offered a few years ago under a different name is now being called AI and then shoved in our faces.
The AI tech that’s led the charge in the current hype cycle is large language models (LLMs).
The problem with LLMs is that:
they aren’t actually intelligent;
they don’t genuinely understand what you’re saying, asking, or implying;
they make mistakes, like, all the time;
their outputs can be biased one way or another by their creators;
they can’t be contained and controlled (ie they can be jail broken surprisingly easily); and
people believe them.
Importantly, LLMs aren’t the be-all and end-all of modern AI. They’re a hammer that everyone has gotten a hold of and, boy, isn’t everything they’re trying to do now starting to look like a nail?
All that said, the thing that shits me the most as far as Microsoft Office is concerned is the lack of choice in all these AI “upgrades” we’ve being blessed with. We never asked Microsoft to add this AI functionality to their software and there is no way to opt out of it or disable it.
So fuck Microsoft specifically.
I’m sad to be using less of Microsoft Office. It’s a great tool and I’ve been happy to pay an annual subscription for it for the last twelve years (I signed up the instant it became available in Australia in 2013!). But there is a limit to how much enshittification I can take before I walk.
I’m not going to cancel my subscription though. I’ll probably still need bits of Office at some point in the future. Also, I have a family subscription and the other people on the plan need this for their work.
And I’ll still be using all of Microsoft Office at work.
But going forward, for my personal usage, I will use LibreOffice for all my document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation needs.
I love learning how to use software that’s (relatively) new to me and, eventually, becoming a power user of it. That is very much what I intend to do with LibreOffice.
So let the fun begin!
PS, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about hating Copilot in Microsoft Office. Here’s what wrote about six months ago, before I realised that Microsoft wasn’t going to let this go and I decided to make the switch to LibreOffice: ‘Copilot’s integration into Microsoft office is really shitting me’.
Also, if you’re interested, I created a chart that shows my word processor usage history, from Word Star 3.0 for DOS in the 1980s to today :)
Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to music on my walks instead of taking my camera with me. Things have been super busy at work and I’ve needed that time to clear my head.
These are the photos taken the handful of times I did go out with my camera – which all happened to be around sunset, funnily enough.
Photo of a well-work wooden bench with wagon wheels instead of legs that’s been placed in a large stone veranda in front of an otherwise unassuming weatherboard house.
Photo of a dog that has stuck is snout out of the gap left by a missing slat in a white wooden gate.
Photo of a dog that has stuck is snout out of the gap left by a missing slat in a white wooden gate.
Photo of a crow sitting on the top of a utility pole. The sun is setting in the background, casting a golden-orange glow in the sky, so the crow, the pole, and the tops of the trees that are visible in the frame are all in silhouette.
Photo taken along the length of a residential footpath, with the front fences and walls of houses running along the right side of the frame. Jutting out from one of the driveways are the rear bumper and the boot of a black car.
Photo of two large panes of transparent plexiglass that make up the back of a bus shelter. Through the plexiglass you can see a house. But scratched onto the plexiglass, and visible due to the sunset in the background, are several scratches made by people. None of the writing is readable, though a five-pointed star and some letters of the English language can be made out.
Photo looking at the part of the driveway that curves around the back of a house. Parked on that driveway is a small trailer that you can hitch behind a car. The coupler / locking ball / hitch at the front of the trailer has been covered with an orange traffic cone, making it highly visible to anyone walking or driving on this driveway.
Photo looking up at a bright, multicoloured bird that is taking off from a tree. This has resulted in the bird appearing blurred compared to the rest of the tree.
Photo of a black-and-white cat sitting in a residential garden. The photo has been taken through the upper vertical bars of a white metal gate.
Photo of a black-and-white cat sitting in a residential garden. The photo has been taken through the upper vertical bars of a white metal gate.
Photo of a large, red-and-white dog sitting on a paved driveway behind a tall chain link fence towards the back of a house. The dog is calm, but is very focused on the photographer who has stopped at the bottom of the driveway.
Photo of a large, red-and-white dog standing on a paved driveway behind a tall chain link fence towards the back of a house. The dog is standing on alert, making sure the dog that was just walked in front of its house stays out of its house.
I switch between music discovery (when I add songs to my ‘current’ playlist) and music listening (when I listen to that playlist).
This happens super rarely, but in my most recent discovery run I ended up adding ALL the songs from the latest Garbage album ‘Let All That We Imagine Be The Light’ to my current playlist. It’s that good.
I also immediately bought and downloaded the whole album in FLAC so I can listen to it in high resolution :)
Garbage is one of my all-time favourite bands, by the way.
Album cover for “Let all that we imagine be the light” by Garbage. The cover is a depiction of a blue octopus that is underwater and is being illuminated by a light shining into the water from above. The water is tinted a deep red. The album title is written evenly spaced out across the entire square image in an elegant typeface using white, all capital letters. The band’s name is written in lighter red, just below the octopus.
Another week, another batch of photos from around the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
For whatever reason, all the photos I took this week looked best when cropped at 16x9.
Also, I should point that while editing this whole series of northern-suburb photos, I seem to have fallen in love with Fujifilm’s Classic Neg. film simulation. A lot of the (literal) street photos I’ve taken over the last few weeks, I’ve edited using this film simulation.
Classic Neg. is based on Fujifilm’s Superia photo film stock from the 1990s which, in turn, makes photos look like they were taken in the 1960s. When you use this film simulation you get contrasty photos with a muted colour palette that leans slightly red, thereby making your photos look classic or “old timey”. For photos taken around residential areas, suburban parks, and local shopping strips, this style seems to work really well.
Anyway, here are this week’s photos.
Close-up photo looking down at the exposed top-most brick of wall surrounding a garden. The brick, as part of its construction, has ten evenly-spaced holes in it. Green grass stalks and tiny green leaves are growing in these holes.
Photo of a combined walking and cycling with a weathered and faded walking-and-cycling path sign painted on it. The path curves to the right as it disappears out of frame.
Photo of a road sign along a residential street. The sign tells drivers that there is a 40 kilometre per hour speed limit from 8am to 4pm between Monday and Friday. A second, smaller sign attached to the same pole, just below the speed limit sign, reads, “new limit”. An identical pair of signs has been attached to an overhead wire pole on the other side of the street.
Photo of an octagonal cement tower with a hole at the top. This hole is protected by a wire fence surrounding it. The tower has been build at the corner of a large, grassy field that has been dug out and is at least one storey below street level. There are houses around retarding basin.
Photo of a weathered and faded combined walking-and-cycling path sign painted on a path running along a road.
Photo of a large, grassy field that has been dug out and is at least one storey below street level. This is a flood retarding basin, with a stepped water inlet at one side feeding water into a small creek that runs diagonally through the middle of the field. Several large, white birds with long, thin, black beaks are hanging about in the field.
Photo of several marble graves seen through a gap in some trees.
Photo of the side of a house along a residential street. Spray-painted on this brick wall in bright red/pink paint is the slogan, “Free Gaza”.
I’ve started taking my camera with me every time I go out of the house –work, running errands, meeting friends, going for a walk, all of it.
To make things more fun, over the last few weeks I’ve only used a single lens: my (relatively new) TT Artisan AF 56mm F1.8 prime. That gives me a full-frame equivalent focal length of 85mm, which is great for picking out specific details in what I see around me.
Here are some of the photos I took this week.
Photo of a sky-blue coloured food trailer parked on a street. The trailer is not in use. It is not attached to a vehicle and all its windows are closed. On its side the logo for Pastry Boys: two dots for eyes and a croissant designed to look like a moustache.
Photo of a small ‘keep left’ sign at the start of a divider in the middle of a street. Half of the sign – on the side that’s next to oncoming traffic – has been crumpled by a passing vehicle.
Photo of a small, weathered, stamped-metal pit cover with a slit in the middle that allows it to be lifted with an appropriately shaped tool. The cover is square and is painted yellow, with a circular centre that is painted red. The letters MMBW have been stamped around the red section. These letters stand for Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, the agency that is now called just Melbourne Water. The paint on the metal has been stripped over time by weather and people walking over it. The cover is set in a square hole cut out of cemented pavement. Surrounding the cover is a yellow-coloured surface treatment – essentially, thick paint – that has cracked over many years, with chips of this lying around on the pavement.
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Photo of a tag and text written in black marker on a hexagonal utility pole. The message shows the tag followed by an arrow pointing to the phrase, “was here”. The tag is a stylised, backward, uppercase ‘S’ that was popular with rock bands in the 1980s and that kids used to draw on their Trapper Keepers and other hole-punched note paper binders.
Photo of a water tap at the edge of a residential garden, next to several bushes that have been planted along one side. Lying on the ground next to the tap is a ceramic bird bath full of water.
Photo of a dense spiderweb constructed between the bars of a black, wrought-iron fence. The sun is setting off-camera so the spiderweb is illuminated by golden coloured light.
Photo of a low brick wall at the front of a house, with a taller pillar that ends at the driveway. A white coloured, metal mailbox has been embedded into this two-brick-wide pillar. The ground beneath the house has shifted over time, so the pillar and some adjacent bricks have separated from the main wall, creating a crack.
Some more photos from the various suburbs near where I live.
Photo of a narrow strip of grass outside a residential fence that’s had its edges very carefully trimmed.
Close-up photo of a triangular give-way sign that’s mounted on a pole along a residential street.
Photo of three, brightly coloured, plastic children’s toys lying on a residential nature strip.
Thanks to a bout of post-viral fatigue, I didn’t take a single photo with my mirrorless camera in all of April.
It’s only now that we’re approaching the middle of May that I’ve had the energy to go (a) out anywhere and (b) take my camera with me – even if it’s just when I’m going for a walk, to the shops, or to a cafe in a nearby suburb.
So here are some more of my photos from around the northern suburbs of Melbourne.
Photo of a ceramic sculpture placed on a tall tree stump in the front garden of a weatherboard house. The sculpture is of a bald, large-headed baby – the child Buddha – hugging the back of a small elephant. The elephant’s trunk is reaching back to touch the crown of the Buddha’s head. The tree stump has a string of lights wound around it.
Photo of a male AFL footballer standing in front of the goal posts at a local ground. The player is standing alongside a player from the opposing team and in front of an official. The player is pulling at his shirt so that he can brush some dirt off it.
Photo of a AFL game being played on a local football ground, as seen through some trees are there to provide shade to spectators.
Photo of the back of a small, black, AKAI CRT television lying in the nature strip outside a house in a residential area, awaiting hard rubbish collection.
Photo of a small, black, AKAI CRT television lying in the nature strip outside in a residential area, awaiting hard rubbish collection.
Photo of the front of a house with a jet airliner in the sky far behind it. Their airplane has its wheels down in preparation for landing at Melbourne Airport.
Photo of a small roundabout in a residential area. A tree and a few low bushes are growing out of the centre of the roundabout. Cut off by the right edge of the photo frame is a car that is waiting behind the line to enter the roundabout.
Photo of a rusted, half-broken satellite dish mounted to the roof of a house.
After a few, quiet, post-pandemic years during which Nadia and I didn’t attend many events, the start of 2025 has been quite busy for us!
I’ve already shared photos from the Australian Open tennis tournament we attended in January and the Avalon Airshow I attended in March. So for completeness’ sake, here a photos from the other events we went to.
These photos aren’t great, but that’s on purpose. When I attend concerts, plays, and comedy shows, I don’t make an effort to take good photos and I deliberately try to take as few photos as possible. I realised several years ago that focusing on photography and videography at events like these takes away from the overall experience of being there and makes the events less fun to attend. So now I just go there to have a good time :)
This was a huge, fun, straight-up rock concert that was gorgeously produced and a joy to attend with thousands of people who were happy to sing out loud with you.
Photo of a four-piece rock band performing on a large stage with a massive video projection behind them.
Photo of a rock band performing in a stadium. Above the general admissions crowd (the people standing in front of the stage) is a large, inflated, white convertible car with the words, “Bryan Adams” written in black market along one side. This inflatable is being steered by drones attached to each corner.
Adams ended the concert by walking to a mini-stage set up at the very back of the stadium and performing a couple of acoustic songs from there.
Photo of musician Bryan Adams standing on a small stage that’s been assembled at the very back of a stadium. Adams is playing an acoustic guitar and is singing into a microphone on a stand. Many of the attendees are taking photos and videos as her performs.
Both the opening act (Xani Kolac) and Hania Rani were fantastic. Being enveloped in layers of sound and light is a magical way to spend your evening :)
Photo of a woman on stage surrounded by an upright piano, a grand piano, and two large electronic keyboards. Several small spotlights are arranged in a curve around this set-up. A dynamic visualisation is being projected on massive strips of curtains hung at the back of the stage.
I’ve been following Akana and her YouTube, stand-up, film making, and music career for a very long time, so it was great to finally see her in real life.
Photo of a mostly empty stage with just a microphone stand with wireless mic and stool with canned drink on it. Projected on the screen at the back of the stage, in all capital letters, is the name, “Anna Akana”.
I haven’t kept up with the Goo Goo Dolls over the last few years, but they were a massive part of my university years. Unlike the high-production Bryan Adams concert, this was a stripped-down, classic rock show. It wasn’t any less fun, of course, and how can you not be moved by thousands of people around you singing Iris along with the band?!
Photo of a five-piece rock band performing on stage.
This was possibly the least impressive of the concerts we attended, though it was still fun. Roxette isn’t the same without Marie Fredriksson, but Lena Philipsson did an admirable job. And again, it’s difficult not to be feel something when you have thousands of people around you singing their hearts out with the band!
Photo of an eight-piece pop/rock band performing on stage.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from the stripped-back Goo Goo Dolls concert was this Dua Lipa performance spectacular. In spite of the massive production that it was, Lipa has a way of connecting with her audience that made the event feel much smaller and more intimate than it was – while still being hugely impressive to watch!
Photo of a singer and several dancers performing on a large, multi-level stage in a stadium. There is a catwalk in front of the stage that leads to a circular performance area in the middle of the venue. Massive screens above the stage show a close-up of the dancers and the singer.
Photo of a singer and her band in a circular performance area in the middle of a stadium. This performance area is connected via a catwalk to the main, multi-level stage.
Photo of a singer on a circular platform that’s been elevated above a circular performance area in the middle of a stadium.
One of the most fun parts of Avalon Airshow are the dogs you get to see there. Both the air force and border security folks run demos, and the Royal Australian Air Force also has a place where you can go and pat their puppies :)
Photo of a malanois (large, mostly-brown dog) wearing a military harness and holding a stuffed dog toy in its mouth. A name patch reading Cyclon (in all capital letters) is attached to the harness. The dog is on a leash that's being held by its air force handler named Rea wearing battle fatigues. The two are standing in a large field with several carnival rides in the background.
Photo of a brown labrador retriever (a large breed of dog) looking around at the audience at an airshow. The dog is wearing a black harness and the trainer is wearing a blue border security uniform. The two are on a grassy field that's been covered by a large tent. Metal railings and netting have been placed between the field and the audience who are standing around the show area.
Photo of a malanois puppy sitting on a low bench in a fenced-off exhibition area at an airshow. The puppy is looking up the air force handler who is standing next to the bench. There are people standing and walking all around the fenced-off area so they can get a look at the puppies.
Aircraft are loud, so hearing protection is highly recommended at airshows – especially if you’re standing right next to the runway while watching the flying display.
Hearing protection is especially important for young children, with constant announcements about that being made in the hour leading up to the start of flying.
I thought it’d be a fun mini-project to document all the kids (and a few adults) who were out and about wearing some sort of hearing protection or the other.
Photo of a young girl in a pale blue jacket wearing large, white hearing protection earmuffs at an airshow.
It’s not just fun to take photos of the aircraft that are flying around, it’s also fun to photograph the people who are attending the show with you. This and the next post are all about that.
Photo of a young man in the crowd at an airshow taking photos with a professional camera with a long lens. The man is wearing and Air Force t-shirt.
I love the flying display at airshows, and this year I came prepared with a folding chair and a long lens for my camera :)
The flying display at Avalon kicks off with a “wall of fire” along the runway, which is pretty fucking impressive. That’s followed by an aerobatic display and then a military display.
However, there was a crash at this year’s aerobatic display on Friday. The pilot survived, but they cancelled the aerobatic display for Saturday, which is the day I was there.
Also, this airshow takes place at Avalon Airport, which is open for regular commercial flights the whole time. Because of that, I got photos of a scheduled Jetstar flight landing in amongst all this. (Jetstar was the airline I used to work for.)
I’ve grouped my photos into galleries for easier viewing, since there are quite a lot of them! One photo I’ve selected as the feature photo for each section.
Photo of a massive wall of fire along the length of a runway at an airshow. Hundreds of people are standing in the foreground, several with their phones out as they record the display.
Zoomed-in photo of an F-35A military fighter aircraft in the air at an airshow.
It’s only at an airshow that civilians like us get to see two aircraft flying this close to each other :)
Photo fo a MH-60R Seahawk "Romeo" multi-mission maritime helicopter hovering above the runway at an airshow. Above this a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flies low across the runway. In the foreground of the photo there are hundreds of airshow attendees watching, photographing, and filming these aircraft.
Photo of the front of a C-17A Globemaster III military transport aircraft on the runway at an airshow. In the foreground of the photo there are hundreds of airshow attendees watching, photographing, and filming this aircraft.
Photo of an Airbus A320 passenger jet in Jetstar livery about to land on the runway during an airshow.
I love aviation and have always wanted to be a pilot.
My family wasn’t well-off enough for me to even remotely consider becoming a private or commercial pilot so, up until my teenage years, my plan (very seriously) was to join the air force – like my favourite uncle who retired as Air Vice Marshal from the Pakistan Air Force.
As I got older, my love of computers trumped my love of flying, so I never ended up becoming a pilot. Though I did work for an airline for several years, which was absolutely fantastic.
Lots of industries have expos and events, but I think aviation has the coolest showcase in the form of airshows.
Growing up, my father took me to as many Pakistan Air Force Day events as he could. We’d get up-close to military aircraft, chat with air force officers, watch the flying displays, and buy lots of merch.
He’d even let me skip school that day because Air Force Day isn’t a public holiday in Pakistan and he knew how much I loved aviation. (It was his older brother that was in the Air Force, btw.)
I found out about the biennial Avalon Airshow a year after moving to Melbourne, but it wasn’t until 2013 that I could afford to attend. Since then I’ve gone every time the airshow has been held.
Screenshot from Flickr showing four albums containing photos from Avalon Airshows held in 2017, 2019, 2023, and 2025.
Naturally, I take lots of photos while I’m there. This year’s photos are split across five posts because, yes, I took that many photos :)
In earlier years I focused more on the air show’s booths and static displays of general, commercial, and military aircraft. This year I focused on the flying display and the people watching the flying display – but more on that later.
This is my favourite photo from the static display set. The rest I’ve put in the gallery below.
Photo of one of the massive wing-mounted engines of a C-17A Globemaster III military transport aircraft that's parked at an airshow. An attendee is reaching up to touch the bottom of this engine.
I haven’t gone on a proper photo walk for a while, so here’s a bunch of photos I’ve taken over the last several weeks.
Photo showing a small traffic sign with a reflective, bright-yellow background and contrasting black text. The text reads, in all capital letters, “road ahead”. This sign is mounted on top of a metal pole that’s been installed next to a bicycle path. The bicycle path runs parallel to a two-way residential road. The sign is small and placed well away from the road so that motor vehicle drivers don't confuse it for a sign they need to pay attention to.
Photo looking straight down at large, white text painted on the khaki-grey concrete of a bicycle path. The sign reads, in all capital letters, “slow down”. The photographer’s black sneakers are visible in the bottom edge of the frame.
Photo of a bird eating some bird seed on a wide, painted, brick pillar that’s part of the front fence of a house.
Photo of a small, fluffy, brown dog sitting on the road while it waits for its owners who are at a market stall. The dog is looking over its shoulder at the rest of the people wandering around this market section of the street party.
Photo of the bottom edge of a rusted, but still functional, gate at the bottom of a residential driveway. The gate is made of widely spaced iron bars that are covered with a layer of rust, their paint having peeled off likely years ago. One side of this swinging gate is kept shut with a large bolt that goes into a hole drilled into the driveway concrete. The other side is kept shut by a broken brick that has its two halves stacked on top of each other.
Photo of a portable, outdoor sign that’s been placed in front of a large tree. This sign and tree are in a cemetery, and many rows of gravestones are visible behind the tree. The bright yellow sign has black text that reads, in all capital letters, “warning, bees and wasps active in this area”. A large icon of a bee has also been drawn on the sign.
Photo of a medium-sized duck pond within a large parkland area. A large, while bird – an Australian white ibis – has just taken flight and is already halfway across the width of the pond.
Photo of a wooden bench that’s been installed on the banks of a medium-sized duck pond within a large parkland area.
Photo looking straight down at the black sneakers of two people who are standing facing each other.
Photo looking straight down at the black sneakers of two people who are standing facing each other.
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
