All things ballooning

Andrew Robertson's Blog (71)

End of an Era - Aunty Monkey will be turned off 30 June 2013

Dear Aunty Monkey members,

Nearly 20 years ago, a group of young Australian balloonists gave birth to the first carnation of Aunty Monkey. It started with an 8 page newsletter, full of typos and photocopied in the middle of the night at my Dad’s work. Since then, Aunty Monkey has had many guises, but none of…

Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on March 22, 2013 at 4:29pm — 7 Comments

Support Aunty Monkey - Buy Merchandise!

You may have noticed there is now a "Merchandise" menu item on the site. Well you can now buy Aunty Monkey merchandise on the site and all proceeds go directly to the hosting of Aunty Monkey site.

A few months Ning announced that they were going to start charging for the hosting of sites like Aunty Monkey. When this was announced I started a discussion… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on July 5, 2010 at 10:00pm — 2 Comments

Play nice or I am turning the site off!

What is going on? All of a sudden there are all sorts of people bagging each other out (in a non-sarcastic, non-smiley face way) on the site.

I can't spend all day answering complaint emails about one person said this or another person said that. I am currently spending most my day getting rid of spammers, so I don't have time to read every post and moderate what everyone is saying.

Seriously.... if people don't start playing nice on the site I will turn it off.

Added by Andrew Robertson on April 16, 2010 at 3:29pm — 10 Comments

Inappropriate use of Aunty Monkey

Just a general note to everyone...

Please do not use this site to publicly disgrace anyone or any company. I don't care if the reason is right or wrong, if you do it I will ban you. I am all for discussions about safety etc., but posting examples of other people or company's techniques and naming them is not the right way to do it.

Also, if you are going to sign up to Aunty Monkey, please use your own name. Don't sign up as an organisation or company name. Again,… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on January 30, 2010 at 7:30am — 13 Comments

A Note to New Members

Just a quick request to new members. Please upload some sort of profile photo and add a description (at least a sentence or two) about your involvement in ballooning. We are getting a lot of spamming people joining the site and it is sometimes difficult to tell who is legit and who is a fake person. I have already accidentally suspended a real person once, so I don't want to accidentally do it again.

Thanks!

Added by Andrew Robertson on January 5, 2010 at 11:07am — No Comments

2010 - Let's Save The Monkey

Dear members,

As you are probably aware, it is very rare that I email the entire Aunty Monkey membership. However, it is the end of the year and I thought it was a good time for me to send out the Aunty Monkey equivalent of an Address to the Nation.

You will be able to tell that I am on holidays at the moment, because it is the only time I have to sit down and think about the site and where it is going.

For those who have been around Aunty Monkey for a… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on December 29, 2009 at 8:01am — 19 Comments

A note about Spammers

You may have noticed in the last couple of months that there have been a couple of malicious "spam" like people join the group. I am jumping on these guys and banning them as soon as they look like they are up to no good.

So basically, if you join AM and look like you have nothing to do with ballooning (or don't appear to want to have anything to do with ballooning), you will be banned.

So if someone joins and starts talking to you and they don't appear to be a legit… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on August 20, 2009 at 3:04pm — 7 Comments

Rotating Photos

A few people have asked me why there are so many sideways photos on the site.

It is really easy to rotate your photos so they are the right way up.

Just view your photo and click on the "Rotate Photo" link until it looks correct.

Added by Andrew Robertson on August 7, 2009 at 1:43pm — 2 Comments

Old Aunty Monkey Websites

If anyone is feeling like being nostalgic or wants to step back in time, you can see what the Aunty Monkey website used to look like over the last 10 years.

Check out these links on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

1999 - 2002

Post 2002

Some of the image are broken, but still… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on April 27, 2009 at 9:00pm — 2 Comments

Canberra Photos on Flickr

I was just cruising on Flickr and found there are 100s of amazing photos of Canberra. Check them out...

http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=rec&q=canberra+balloon&m=text

Added by Andrew Robertson on March 11, 2009 at 6:25pm — 12 Comments

Aunty Monkey Redesign

You might have noticed Aunty Monkey has gone green. I personally got sick of the blue site, so I hope you like the new "fresher" look.

Added by Andrew Robertson on February 7, 2009 at 4:45pm — 12 Comments

2008 Aunty Monkey Photo Competition Winners

All the votes have been tallied and the results are in. For those who are new or for anyone with short term memory loss, we had 2 categories; Best Balloon Photo and Best People Photo. We had a panel who selected a short list and then it was up to the members to vote for the winners. So here they are...

Best Balloon Photo

We had a tie for first place...

Equal Winner: IMG…

Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on February 2, 2009 at 6:00pm — 18 Comments

Photo Competetion - Vote Now!!

Thanks to everyone that entered the Photo Competition last year.

The panel has now selected the shortlist of photos for the 2008 Aunty Monkey Photo Competition.

So now it is time for you to vote for your favorite.

There are 2 categories (Best Balloon Photo and Best People Photo) so you can vote for both...but you can only vote once for each.

Voting Closes: 31 January 2009

Winner announced:… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on January 7, 2009 at 6:30pm — 1 Comment

2008 Aunty Monkey Photo Competition

To celebrate the fact that we a have about 20,000 photos on Aunty Monkey, we thought is was about time we had a photo competition. So here we go.

What we are looking for are the best photos in 2 categories:

1. Best balloon photo

2. Best ballooning people photo

The Rules

Being the first competition we have had, we thought we would keep it simple. So the rules are as follows:

1. You can enter… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on November 17, 2008 at 7:30pm — 13 Comments

A New MiniNick

For those who know or remember Nick Holmes (aka Gourmet Nick)...you might like to know he and his wife Lea had a baby boy yesterday. Congratulations guys!

Nick, who was one of the original Aunty Monkey team and famous for his adventurous recipes, has not been around ballooning for a while because he now lives in Hawaii. Fortunately, in his absence over the last 8 years or so (while he was working in Macquarie Island,… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on November 11, 2008 at 6:29am — 1 Comment

Aunty Monkey - Ning Minimum Age

Just a note to anyone trying to sign up to Aunty Monkey...Ning recently added a minimum age of 13 years for members of their Social Networks (including Aunty Monkey). The sign up form will not let you register if you are younger than 13.

If you have any questions about this please refer to the Ning Terms of Service.

Added by Andrew Robertson on October 11, 2008 at 8:33pm — 1 Comment

A Big Thanks to Eric

I just wanted to thank Eric Mueller for organizing the Aunty Monkey T-Shirts. Merchandising always takes a lot of effort to organize, which is the reason we haven't had any AM goodies for many years now. So thanks Eric for organizing this... you are a legend.

Added by Andrew Robertson on October 2, 2008 at 11:02am — 2 Comments

Where is your mail?

Just a quick note to say Ning (the platform this site is built on) have updated the way email works on their sites. So if you are wondering where your inbox has gone to (i.e. used to be in the top black bar) it is now in the right hand box.

Added by Andrew Robertson on September 28, 2008 at 7:22pm — 3 Comments

Austria - Day 4 (Wednesday) - Flight 1

As the weather team promised, we finally got a flight in this morning. The winds above 500 feet were up around the 15 knot mark, but there was a small inversion that was expected to stick around until about 9am. David Levin set 2 HWZ tasks with a planned launch period at sunrise (6.30am).

Most teams took off quite quickly after the green flag went up. It was pretty fast flight, with both markers being dropped within 20 minutes of each… Continue

Added by Andrew Robertson on September 17, 2008 at 8:00pm — 9 Comments

Worlds – Day 3 (Tuesday)

There is still nothing happening over here in Austria. They canceled this morning's flight last night at 9.30pm. The rain is definitely easing, but the wind has come in and there are some nasty, unstable looking clouds in the area. This afternoon is looking doubtful at this stage.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. We just now need to find ways to entertain ourselves and stay focused on the competition.

Added by Andrew Robertson on September 16, 2008 at 9:57pm — 1 Comment