happy new year!

It must be time for another bulk catch up.

Since you last tuned in:

• I went home for Christmas and actually enjoyed my time there. I think I could almost move back to live if there were jobs that paid well enough for the scattered skillset that I have.
  
• I bought a new compact camera after giving my old one to my folks. They had it for a week before it got a major error and I had to pull it to bits to remove the permanent battery. Hopefully it's all fixed now :) The new one does fancy tricks like letting you pick one colour to remain while the rest goes black and white. Cool.
  
• While I was at home, I built a new PC for the parents. When Dad bought home a printer/scanner/copier/refrigerator/bottle opener I started scanning in and cleaning up some of their old photos It was really nice to see pictures that had been faded to orange for as long as I can remember become vibrant and full of colour again.
• Deb and I went to the botanical gardens for a Moonlight Cinema showing of Clerks II. The inflatable screen was a little unstable due to the wind, and we warned at the start that if it blew away the screening would be cancelled. It turned out to be a bit of a chilly evening, but we had a couple of beers, a bottle of wine, loads of food and also rented some beanbags, so it worked out fine (the screen folded in half a few times, but didn't blow away)
• Bushfires knocked out an electrical supply line between NSW and VIC, causing blackouts across the city, which was already struggling due to a 40° day. Trains were delayed (in some cases stuck on the line for 1 1/2 hours), thousands of traffic lights went down and thousands of people were trapped in their office and apartment blocks because security doors weren't working properly (now that's some piss poor planning). I rode to work that day, so wasn't affected in the slightest except I may have lost a kilo or two of sweat on the ride home.
• Bought some t-shirts from Mr Vintage. There's loads of cool stuff, but I got these three:
  

It makes me want to have a crack at designing my own (or even better: taking elements from things others have designed and making them my own)

• The cabinet is still at 85% and I don't really know how to finish it. Ideally I'd rebuild the control panel now that I've used it for a while and put in a 4 way joystick (Pacman, Dig-Dug etc) and a spinner (Tempest, Arkanoid). Would probably move the trackball back a little as well, I've almost broken my fingers on the monitor a few times being a little too enthusiastic playing Golden Tee.
• Troakie (my old boss/booze buddy from Channel 4) has moved to Bermuda. I'm led to believe it's a paradise for records managers, where filing and rum go hand in hand.
  
• Went and saw Tenacious D play at Festival Hall last Friday. The concert was great, but it must have been close to 35° with 95% humidity inside and the acoustics were terrible. We had seats and still came out totally drenched with sweat. I felt sorry for those crammed down on the floor in the general admission area.
  
• Deb and I are off to Apollo Bay on Friday for a couple of nights. This is the first time we've left the city together with just the two of us, so I'm really looking forward to it.
• Deb is off back to NZ in a week or so for her cousin's wedding. A week after she gets back, it's my turn to go home for my mate Geoff's wedding. Shame the weddings weren't closer together, but I'm sure we'll both be happy for a break from each other :P

So, that's about it for now. If anything exciting happens, I'll post it up here.

Actually, I'll probably mention the boring stuff as well.

brown tinted spectacles

The bushfires raging through Victoria and South Australia are having their effect here in the city. There is so much smoke in the air that the sky looks brown and you can look directly at the sun*.
Deb tok the phto below on the way to work:

She didn't take this one:

I'm at home at the moment and can smell the damn smoke when I open the front door, it's really eerie.
Deb and I are flying back to NZ on Saturday morning and there have been a number of delays because of poor visibility and smoke alarms going off at the airport. Fingers crossed we get away ok.


* don't look directly at the sun

stupid fruits of the world #27: pomegranate

I bought a pomegranate at the supermarket the other week. I'd heard of them, but never actually seen one before, so thought I'd give it a shot.
What a shitty, messy waste of time that was! Ignoring the bright red juice that I had to wipe from the walls and scour from my hands, I couldn't eat much because it was sour and made my teeth furry.
What kind of person wants to pick hundreds of corn kernal-sized fleshy seeds out of a leathery husk while waiting for the juice to somehow migrate from the kitchen to the lounge carpet?

fart brings down a passenger jet

Well, not directly, but the woman who droppped one was lighting matches to hide the smell.

BBC News

stop motion fight

This is bloody fantastic

john so is my bro

John So took out the World Mayor title for 2006. He is, hands down, the most popular person in Melbourne and the title is well deserved.

I saw a quote recently saying that he was a rockstar in a mayor's body, which I can vouch for after seeing him on stage at Parklife a few months ago.

ymca

catch up

It's time for one of my irregular catch-up posts, whereby I try to cram in two weeks of detail into two paragraphs. The last update was just after Deb's birthday, so since then:

• Went for a Sunday bike ride up the Moonee Ponds Creek bike track. Discovered after an hour and a half that I'd forgotten to put on sun screen and my legs and arms were turning a tasty deep pink colour. Got home just in time with no real damage done
• Picked up the framed pictures, which look pretty good. During the hanging, discovered exactly how far you can drill into concrete with a cordless drill and a standard bit: not far at all. I'll take some pics soon when the sun's out.
  
• Went for another Sunday bike ride, this time south down the Gardiner Creek track. Put on sunscreen, but I guess not enough. The backs of my shoulders have proper old skool sunburn, like an Englishman abroad. It looks like I'll score some blisters out of it too. I hope it scars. Chicks dig scars.
• Got up to 34° today. The hottest temperature of the day is always at the mid point of my ride home.
  

Hmm, boring fortnight. That may be why there's been no updates.
I'm off back to Kiwiland ^TM in a week and a half. I'm looking forward to that, not just to see the folks, but to have a decent break from work...

damn, I'm going to have to figure out how to sign these things off. I always end up rambling on for much longer than is necessary and #comment deleted#

manatee

deb's birthday -supplimentary

I dashed off to JB Hi-Fi on Saturday morning to get a couple of DVDs for Deb. She was hungover again, so I probably didn't have to rush but I wanted to have something to actually give her on the day.
Later we went down and ordered a frame for a print that Deb's had lying around since London. That was the main gift and I think it's going to look pretty cool once it's up on the wall.
A professional hangover can last all day. Ours did, so we went out for dinner on Sunday night instead.
Wagyu beef carpaccio (with truffle oil of course) is probably the ponciest food I've had this year. It's also the tastiest which just makes me question my masculinity.
After dinner, we went to the poker room at the casino for a quick look. It's a very serious place and just made me more nervous about the poker night I have for work tomorrow. There's going to be a number of tables playing off for a single winner so I think I'll be spending most of the time as an observer. I guess that means more time for drinking and food, so it's win-win really

deb's birthday

So, it's Thursday the 16th of November. I have roughly 34 hours to organise a birthday present for Deb and I still have no fucking idea what to get her.

I thought I had a great idea a few months back, so I rested on my laurels. When I finally looked into it, I discovered that it was about 4 times the price I expected, so that idea was shelved.

It's hard because Deb doesn't even know what she would buy for herself, letalone what I could get.
I do have a sort-of-idea, but there's no way I could get it to her in time for Saturday. I'll have to get a stunt double to stand in for the real gift until it's ready.

Procrastination got me through high school, and since then I've never learned to organise my time properly. Next year maybe...

customer service does exist...

I had a spare minute on Tuesday, so I called Dodo (our ISP) with the intention of getting some money back for the lost week of broadband. I expected to get the runaround with them saying Telstra was at fault etc.

The call was answered within the first minute. Two minutes later and I'd got the refund from an account overpayment in September and a refund for the lost week.

I'm stunned.

no internet

On Sunday, November the 5th, our internet connection fell over. I called our ISP who (as usual) was so busy that I had to leave my phone number on their voicemail system so they could call me back. I managed to speak to a real person on Tuesday, which was also Melbourne Cup day (a public holiday here). After running through all of the obvious tests (I guess they have to do that as a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable factory resetting their modem), he put me through to the next tier of technical support who in turn said that Telstra would call me on Wednesday to book in a technician to come round on the Thursday. No phone call until Friday evening when they said that someone would be around on Monday morning.

The Telstra guy was in the house for all of two minutes, then went to the exchange, fiddled around for a second and it was fixed.

Why didn't Telstra just try checking their end first? Why make me take half a day off work to wait for someone to verify that the problem wasn't at my end just as I'd told them from the start?

I don't really know where I was going with that story, but I just wanted to put the details down for when I try to get someone to pay for my week of missing broadband.

world record set in dunedin

A new world record was set at my old primary school today.



Dunedin can now claim to hold the record for "The longest human tunnel for a dog to run through"

I feel so proud.

bird food

A pelican in St James Park, London ate a pigeon in front of a bunch of tourists.
There's something about this that is both hilarious and really creepy at the same time.


Read the article

cabinet part xxii

It lives!
And like Frankenstein, it is also a bit patchy, parts are unfinished and it takes up a hell of a lot of room. It also smells funny, but I never met Frankenstein, so I can't vouch for his odour.
I'd planned to put pictures up today, but I took them late last night and forgot to bring the memory card to work. I'll stick them in when I get home.

Putting the rubber t-molding on was harder than I expected. I considered buying a rubber mallet to help, but decided that I'd be able to do it by hand. What should have taken 15 minutes, took over an hour, using a shoe and rolling pin combo.

True to my word, I played The New Zealand story for a couple of hours and discovered that PacMan with an 8-way joystick just isn't going to cut it. I'm either going to have to fix the joystick so it's easily changeable, or get a dedicated 4-way (the preferred option).

As the budget has blown out, I think I'll be making a cheap bezel out of black cardboard to see me through until I can afford a piece of safety glass. It looks pretty rough at the moment, so anything will be an improvement over the gaping hole with paint slopped around it. I'll also have to sort out a temporary fix for the marquee, as that also looks untidy.

Speakers will go in this evening, which will tidy it up a little. The sub is just sitting on the floor at the moment, but that will be getting replaced with a proper amp and volume control at some point soon.

I still haven't sorted out how MAME will actually run either. I need to prevent the monitor from switching resolutions when loading a game, or the poor thing will get worn out really quickly.

So, in short, the whole thing is playable, but quite a way from being "finished". Once I've paid off the current spend, I'll start getting things tidied up.

edit: Here's some pics.

yanks crack down on aussie drug of choice

In yet another example of the fucked up bureaucracy in the US, Aussies are being searched for Vegemite on entering the country. Apparently, it falls foul of food laws that allow folate to only be added to breads and cereals.
To be honest, I never eat the shit myself (I'm from the Marmite camp), but to interpret the law to the extent that you can't even bring it into the country for your own use puts it in the same league as cannabis.
I suppose Vegemite could be seen as a gateway food, leading people to try harder foods, like peanut butter, or even that scourge of the American diet: honey!

Read the article here

Verdict: The FDA are dicks

nes online

Remember the old NES with cartridges the size of a video tape? You probably also remember having to blow dust off the pins to get them to load up.
vNES has almost 300 games you can play online, without having to install any emulators before playing. All you need is Java 5, which most people should have by now anyway.

cabinet part xxi

Went for a bike ride down by the Yarra to Port Melbourne, then down to Brighton and back today. I thought it would take ages, but we got back in time for me to put this together:


It got too late for me to test it out, but it passed the fume test: Deb couldn't smell the paint, even though it was inside for 8 hours or so. This means I should be able to bring the rest of the beast upstairs tomorrow!
I played the New Zealand Story using the keyboard for an hour or so last night, so I think I'll have to make that the first game I play.

Sweet

cabinet part xx

Laid down the second and final coat of paint today. All I need to do before I can start playing games, is wait for the paint smell to mellow and drag the bugger upstairs. I'm going to treat myself and put the t-molding on once everything is inside, i.e. no more working in the garage! Woop!

I've been playing with the monitor, and I think the brightness will look fine. It's definitely a lot more like the crappy old fish and chip shop machines that I used to play. Mitch actually suggested I call it the Chippie, since that's where most of the machines are these days. It's something to think about, along with the artwork that will eventually cover up the cab's imperfections. I've gone off the silver fern idea, I think I must have been feeling patriotic that day or something. I drew a few New Zealand Story characters a month or two ago, but I think they look a little Japanese. It's a shame, because as vector graphics you can scale them to any size without losing details. I'm sure I can find another use for them.

Also, I just added up all my receipts so far. Everything from tools, sandpaper and paint to computer, speakers and joysticks has cost $2787.49. Around $2000 is materials and the other $700 odd is the tools.
There are definite disadvantages living 2200km from your parents!