Recently Google Maps updated the quality of maps that are available for Townsville, Australia. Previously the quality was horrible, but now you can actually get some pretty decent shots out of it.

Here is an aerial shot of our old house. We had the tin roof painted with a white insulating paint, which is why it looks so bright. Also on the bottom of the house you can see the shade cloth that was over our deck.

It’s pretty amazing the quality of the photo, but I am not too sure how old the photo is. Most of the houses in the photo are now gone to make way for a parking lot, although our lot looks like it’s been turned into a dumping ground for fill.

If you have a decent computer with a broadband Internet connection head over and grab a photo of your house and then let us know in the comments below where we can check it out…

We have been extremely blessed to have had good neighbours at all of our residences in Townsville since we have been married. When we were renting our unit we had the end unit and a young couple on the other side. Then at our old house we had a neighbour who was a real pain to the city and the shopping centre, but a great neighbour for us as he really advocated for all of us people in the neighbourhood.

In our current house we have another young family with kids on one side and another couple on the other side. Both of them have been great neighbours so far, even during all the noise of us lifting the house and signing the documents to allow us to put a deck on the back of the house (it will be closer than usually allowed to the property line, but in line with the current house).

Unfortunately all is not well in neighbourly relations here in Australia as you can read below and in the article I’ve linked to:

Overall, 16 per cent of Australians have been forced to move house to escape bad neighbours with NSW and Queensland residents leading the way at 21 and 20 per cent respectively.

You can read the shortened Internet version of the article (for a limited time only before it hides behind a subsciption page) at News.com.au: Bad neighbours prompt home moves: study.

What has your experiences been with neighbours?
How have they handled the noise and disruption caused by renovation?
Is this experience unique to Australia?

Let us know in the comments below…

This weekend Tamara and I went out and had a look for a micro HiFi system for under $200. Our main three requirements were that it looked good on our book case (more Tamara’s requirement than mine), it had decent sound and it played MP3 CDs.

We tested out pretty much every system under $200 and decided on the LG LX-M240 Micro HiFi System as it gives fantastic sound for that price range and it met all of our requirements. There is certainly a large selection of sound systems out there in this price range and with these specification though.

The temptation was definately there to look at the $300 multi-disc changers and to look for more, but since we only needed something small this was a good fit for us. Because access to the system would be pretty easy and it played MP3 CDs, the need for a multi-disc changer wasn’t very great.

The main reason why we were in the market for a micro hi-fi system is that with our living room reorganization we had lost most of the room on our entertainment unit. The old stereo didn’t fit in the bookshelf, so we were stuck with the old one sort of hidden behind the TV. The new system has helped us to better organize our space. The only downside is that our chrome moose had to find a new place to live on the desk instead of on the bookcase.

After getting home from the hospital with Jessica we came to realize that our living room layout really wasn’t all that functional. Live many families we had made the focal point of the room the television, at the cost of space on the floor.

Not only were we cramped in the living room, but we were also cramped in the dining room and I would quite regularly knock my chair on the wall behind me when I got up from my chair. Tamara was also starting to feel quite claustrophobic with her, Caleb and Jessica in the room all at the same time.

We managed to arrange a temporary swap of entertainment units with some of our friends. They got our large unit which you can see in the image above, and we got their smaller unit, which you can see in the corner in the image below.

The room is now a lot more conducive to conversation and there is a lot more usable room in it. The new entertainment unit is a bit cramped, but we are planning to someday get a smaller stereo that we can put on our book self that is in the dining room. That will unclutter the unit even more and make it even less of an eyesore. There is also a lot more room to play with the kids and I no longer bang my chair against the wall as we were able to move the table over a few inches.

Watching television in the room isn’t as easy now, but we really aren’t watching all that much of it any more. When we set it up for Caleb to watch we just ask him to pull out his bean bag, which he is more than happy to do (getting him to put it away is another story…). Our reasons for not watching much television anymore is partly because we are very busy, but also for personal reasons, which you can read about on my other blog Television is Sucking my Brain.