Rock on!

Super weekend! The Social Club Christmas party on Friday was a blast though I must say that the party boat got pretty darn small with everyone on board. Especially during the stampede to the bar for one dollar drinks. There were some pretty darn crazy hats and wigs out there and Craig and Don didn't disappoint.



Four hours of karaoke, drinking, dancing, more drinking, huge oily burgers and yet more drinking was a pretty good effort by our standards. The boat docked close to midnight so we had to wait for ages at the station for a train to come in. It's kinda scary seeing the sort of people that are up at those hours waiting for the train. Large groups of goths, drunks and school kids high on sniffing paint or whatever they do these days.

Saturday turned out to be another late night on the town as we got to see MISSY HIGGINS AND BEN LEE in concert!!! Cue hoards of teenage girls screaming "Missy!" from the ridiculously packed hillside. I can't believe how much money they must have made squeezing all of us into the venue. A good 80 people had to stand in what was effectively the aisle because they couldn't move to find a place to sit down on the grass.

Anyways, it was a Missy Higgins and Friends concert at Riverside so there were a few other acts before the main event but we were just waiting for Ben and Missy to come on. Missy is probably the closest I'll come to a Tori Amos concert over here (That angsty, wailing, piano pounding, chick rock that I love so much). Both of them put on a great show though Alison and I both thought it would have been better if Ben Lee had a longer set. I think he's going to be playing at the Arena on the 27th of November so there's a good chance that we'll be buying tickets.

Flock to the Web OS

Here's a bit of non-google news for a change. Albert just pointed me in the direction of a new browser to test drive called Flock which is another Mozilla based browser like Firefox. It's still in beta at the moment (like half of the applications I use) but the feature set certainly seems promising. Basically the developers have tried to integrate a lot of social aspects of the web into the browser itself. Flock supports del.icio.us, flickr, blogging, RSS and I'm sure a bunch of other nifty concepts I've yet to discover. I'm writing this post from a Flock window so hopefully the formatting will turn out fine on the site.

Another bit of web gadgetry I've stumbled across is Goowy, obviously a play on GUI (Graphic User Interface). Goowy is a flash based web... hmm... platform I suppose that the developers are using to create a (my favourite word) persistant desk top. Creating an account allows you to log in to access a web mail client (with two gigs of storage space), calendar functions, games, widgets and a heck of a lot more to come. Goowy's web mail even supports POP3 so you don't have to give up your Gmail account. This could easily become my start page if they add a bit more functionality and provide support for synching with my mobile devices.

In the real world Alison and I are looking forward to this weekend. We'll be rocking up to South Bank to board a boat for the Michael Hill social club Christmas party on Friday. There will be a crazy hat and wig theme for the night, karaoke and company subsidised booze so I envision much silliness and drunken antics.

On Saturday we'll be nursing hang overs and shuffling down to Riverside for a Missy Higgins and Ben Lee concert. It'll be the first concert I've been to in years, the last one being with Nevermore and Lacuna Coil. I somehow doubt there'll be a mosh pit at this one. :P

50th post and a Happy Birthday

Wow, didn't think this phase would last very long really but I'm still posting here sporadically. Just thought I would write a short one to wish my mum a very happy birthday today. We we're going to use this as an excuse to buy a cheese cake to celebrate over here but my expanding waist line and dismal gym attendance proved compelling enough to scrap that idea.

Happy Birthday Mum. Can't exactly remember how old you are but that's never been important in my eyes. Looking forward to your visit in December. :)

TGIF

Woah this week just flew by. Looks like it's going to be a nice long weekend for me. We have a developer meet up to discuss future IT work practices today so it'll be a nice change of pace, hopefully with some good outcomes. It's going to be at Taringa which is one train stop away from Indooroopilly so this'll probably be the only time my trip into 'work' will be shorter than everyone else's (possibly with the exception of Jane as it's her house). Not much gaming time on the train today it seems.

Absolutely loving the new firmware patch for the SuperCard. At the moment I'm jumping between two games I have on it depending on my mood.

The first is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Heh, if Trauma Centre were a surgical simulation I guess PW would be a lawyer simulation. It sorta plays out like an episode of Law and Order in Anime style. You have to question witnesses and find clues to contradict witness testimonies so you can prove your client is innocent. Sorta half logic puzzle half english comprehension and darn it's addictive if just to see what the next twist in the trial is.

The other game I'm hooked on right now is a Japanese music game "Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!". It roughly transaltes as "Go! Fight! Cheer squad!", which you can probably deduce from the title is one whacky game. The game involves different scenes of people in need of help so the Cheer Squad, three gangsters that dance and cheer to keep the subject's fighting spirit up so they can complete the task at hand. This may be anything from a student trying to pass university entrance exams to two policemen fighting alien robots so watching the cut scenes is a real hoot. The music is excellent too and includes titles from my favourite Japanese rock bands L'arc en Ciel, Hitomi Yaida and Asian Kungfu Generation.

Haven't had the chance to play much PC games lately but I'll be sure to rectify that this weekend. Itching to install Black & White 2 so I can wreak wanton havoc on my misguided followers.

Melbourne trip

Ah, a little more time to write about our weekend trip now. We landed on Thursday night at about 9 in the evening and caught a cab to our hotel in the city. Not wanting to waste any time we dumped our bags and hit the road looking for some supper, which we found just down the road at the aptly named Supper Club. It was great sitting among the Melbourne bourgeois in their black turtle necks sipping wine while we scoffed down a tepid bowl of chorizo and chick pea stew.

The next day we trekked into the city centre to take in the sights and sounds of a bustling city. The city skyline and wide roads really put Brisbane in perspective and it feels like we live in a small country town in comparison. Here's a picture of Flinder's street station and the ubiquitous Melbourne trams that trundle pass on the main streets.



We had a real nice breakfast at Federation square (my staple for the weekend seemed to be eggs benedict) and marched on. Alison of course had to stop by Haigh's, her favourite chocolate store to get some chocolate covered orange slices. I don't fancy them too much myself for which she's very grateful.



John and Sheena suggested checking out the Queen Victoria Markets which we did. It was really surprising how cheap all the food was and the samples we tried were delicious. I've since discovered that the cost of living in Melbourne is actually lower than Brisbane so chalk up another reason for relocating.

I started getting lazy with composing pictures and just wanted to catalogue the sights as we went so this shot (among others) was taken from the hip 'lomo' style.



For lunch we trotted along to Lygon street which is probably one of the most famous food spots in Melbourne. It's basically a long row of predominantly Italian restaurants with especially friendly waiters that entice you with the specials as you walk past the store front. We ended up choosing this little spot on the promise that they had great lasagna (they did). Here's Alison scanning the menu before settling on chicken and mushroom fetuccini (also excellent).



I didn't hope to find a large board game store on our trip but Alison was kind enough to point out a Mind Games store we walked past so I had to go in to take a look. I really wish they had as wide a selection here in the Brisbane shops because I could have picked up at least three or four new games right there and then. We ended up walking out with just one new game (Formula De) and three Blue Moon expansions which was pretty restrained considering.

Here's a picture of our game of Formula De in the hotel room. It was seven in the morning and nothing was open before anyone starts screaming at me for wasting our time playing games when we could have been out shopping/eating. It's a good game for lots of players that doesn't use up too much brain juice. I believe it'll be great for an wine and cheese evening with friends.



We met up with Tim on Friday evening and on Saturday to head out for some Chinese food and a quick trip to St Kilda. Every spot in Melbourne reminds me of AFL which is understandable considering how many teams there are in Victoria. While in St Kilda we stopped to take a few pictures of Luna Park's disturbing entrance way. Clowns are just freaky.



On Saturday we walked across the bridge over the Yarra river, which is basically a drain, to Melbourne's South Bank. There were heaps of really nice looking restaurants there but nothing really took our fancy at the time. Instead we decided to stop to watch a side show that was just starting. The girl was just about to hula hoop forty rings at the same time.



Our anniversary dinner was at a little cafe on Hardware Street. There was a wedding procession making their way through while we waited for our meals to come. It was a very nice candle lit meal accompanied by a jazz trio on one end of the street and a flamenco band on the other.



Sunday was a quiet one which we spent wandering through the international art exhibition that was held in Federation Square. It wasn't long before we found ourselves packed up and waiting for the shuttle bus to the airport. A very relaxing weekend and we really should do this more often.

I noticed while writing this post that the new version of Picasa has stopped using Hello as an upload system for posting pictures on Blogger. The new format along with support for my camera raw files earns mucho points in my book. Ah, I love Google news.

We're back

What a fantastic weekend. Alison and I had a great time down in Melbourne taking in the sights and sampling lots of local cuisine. We managed to do quite a bit in the three days we were there so we're physically stuffed and financially buggered. Must say that it was all worth it in the end though.

I'd write more and put up a bunch of pictures that we took but the new firmware/loader for my SuperCard has been released in our absence so I truly don't have the will to break away from my DS as yet. A longer update on our trip to follow during the week if time permits.

Thought I might share a picture of what we got each other for our two year anniversary though. Shame Alison's ring isn't in focus but that's what you get with a one handed shot while waiting for breakfast.

Not so super colours

Picked up my Supercard yesterday but didn't have time to write a post as we met Kath and Andrew for dinner. It's been a while since we've eaten at Pizza Cafe and I think I'm starting to like it again. Probably got sick of it after eating too much before.

Anyway, Supercard... all exciting. The only thing I was concerned about when I picked it up was the colour of the card. To date I've never seen a site that lets you choose what colour you get when ordering so I basically hoped I would get a decent one. The original cart when RomMan first released it was a transparent blue which looked a little cheap in my opinion but certainly servicable. From other pictures I'd seen I hoped for a nice solid grey card to suit my silver DS. Imagine my surprise when I tore open the box to find... PINK



At least the darn thing works. I flashed the latest firmware onto it and can now play NES, GBA and NDS games all off my spare 128MB SD card. It's wonderful doing away with flash hardware. Now I just need to wait for the next firmware update to allow larger ROM sizes which should be released this week.

Guess I'll get to try that out when we come back from our trip on Sunday. Hope to have lots of urban pictures of Melbourne to share.

Google goodness

It's been a while since my last Google gush. Google has just released Google Reader, it's own web based RSS reader and another building block on the house of Google OS. I've tried numerous times to get into subscribing to RSS feeds but I've never found a decent reader with a good layout. Firefox has a few good RSS plugins but the problem I have with that is the same issue I take with localised bookmarks, you just can't take them everywhere. I like my web browsing experience to be as persistant as possible so as del.icio.us has done for my bookmarking, Google Reader will do as an introduction to RSS for me.

On the off chance that you're not familiar with RSS I'll do my best to give you a quick and dirty definition. RSS or Really Simple Syndication is basically a service that most websites these days provide that allows readers to subscribe to feeds. New updates to the site are then atomically distributed to subscribers to view on their RSS reader/viewer. Updates usually come in the form of new posts to a site (like this blog for example), news articles, music (which is basically what a podcast is), video or pretty much anything you can think of serving. That's my understanding of what it is anyway, if you need a extended/accurate description you can always find one on our favourite online encyclopedia

Oh, and the Australian Postal service is back on the Christmas card list. I just got my notice of attempted delivery so by this time tomorrow I should have a beautiful new SuperCard to test out on my DS. Oh joy oh joy oh joy.

Fun day of sun in the city

We originally planned on having brekkie with Kath and Andrew today to celebrate Andrew's grand accomplishment with finishing all his medical exams. Unfortunately the two of them still haven't come back from their trip and with our Melbourne plans next weekend we'll just have to postpone the festivities a while. Denied the chance of social contact and unwilling to spend another day sweltering at home, Alison and I grabbed our gear and struck out into the city with the aim to find entertainment and food.

Breakfast consisted of overpriced eggs benedict and a dissapointing continental serve on the river at Southbank. The view was great and it was good fun taking pictures of the cyclist riding by but the food could have been a lot better. Taking panning shots of the moving cyclists turned out to be a lot harder than I anticipated. After a heap of tweaking with exposure settings I was finally getting somewhere but by then we'd polished off our meals and it was time to move on. This was probably the best of the bunch and I love that puzzled look.



Alison was cringing in her chair as I snapped at passers by. She seems to think that taking pictures of random people will get me a broken camera and a fatal beating but so far my 'international features' seem to have placated the angry masses from taking action. I figure if I ever do get confronted I can feign ignorance and try to explain my unfamiliarity with the English language through frantic hand gestures and tongue clicking.

After breakfast we wandered around most of Southbank and the CBD, visiting the Southbank Markets, the Riverside Markets, the King George Square markets and a quick browse in the shops on Queenstreet Mall. I of course was happy to let Alison scavenge through trinkets and amused myself by taking pictures of her among the shops. Here's a picture of Al running out of patience with me at King George Square.



At least she managed to buy a couple of things on this shopping trip including a new black top (very nice) and some cheap $3 earrings. I picked up a photography book at Borders for a little bed time reading. All together a nice day even if I have slipper tan lines on my feet now.

The new ice box

Couldn't have picked a hotter day for the new fridge to be delivered. I think it hit about 35 degrees today so the air conditioner had a pretty good work out for most of it. The crappy thing about defrosting your old fridge and waiting for your new one to get cool is that you have nothing chilled to drink.



We love having a funky looking fridge now. In the store we originally thought that this buy would decrease our fridge space but it seems to have done quite the opposite. Then again we probably bought less this week as we're off to Melbourne on Thursday.

In an uncharacteristic display of semi gadget fetishism, Alison pointed out today that our new fridge means that we've finally gotten rid of all our old aging appliances. In my mind we could probably do with a few more upgrades (a 24" Dell LCD monitor perhaps) but for now I'm happy to share this moment of consumer pride with her.

Mmm many games

Sad to say that I didn't come home today to find my SuperCard waiting on the doorstep so I have yet another week of longing and rushing back from work to look for attempted delivery notes. Might be a blessing though as there seem to be a fair few good games coming out lately and I don't have the time to play all of them.

Winter Assault, the expansion (hopefully the first of many) for Warhammer 40K Dawn of War came out a while back and I finally got my hands on a copy yesterday. It adds the Imperial Guard to the list of playable races which I still find a little dissapointing as I would have preferred something along the lines of say the Dark Eldar or the Tyrannids. IG are still lots of fun though from what I could tell in the tutorial and I'm looking forward to spending some time purging heathens in the name of the Emperor this weekend.

Also picked up another ROM for my DS which I've been waiting for. Trauma Centre: Under the Knife is for the lack of a better term a surgical simulation and is another example of why I think the DS is far superior to the overpriced and unoriginal PSP. In the game you follow a anime-ish story line of a young surgeon and deal with various operations, using the stylus and touch screen to conduct your procedures with different tools. It feels like a cross between the old Operation boardgame and a puzzler as you usually have to figure out how best to treat your patient based on the diagnosis and suggestions from other surgeons and nurses. Good clean fun.

Guess these two games and a few other promising ones on the horizon will keep me happy till I find a parcel and RomMan releases the patcher for the SuperCard to play 512Mb ROMs. Oh it's so hard being a gaming geek. :P

Uneventful

It's been a real monotonous week so far. I've been getting up earlier in the morning to catch the 6:20 train to work in with hope that getting home earlier would allow me to frequent the gym that's bleeding my bank account dry. This plan hasn't worked yet but I'm optimistic. Personal fitness aside, the weather in Brisbane is getting uncomfortably warm yet again so avoiding the sun on the walk into work is probably worth rushing out the door each day.

Still no SuperCard package from the UK yet. I've been eagerly checking the mailbox but the only letters I find waiting for me are either bills or adverts. It's a sad, sad life without new toys.

Alison asked me to help her with a little template for her to use at work to keep track of patients. It's odd how user requirements are much harder to visualise when the 'customer' tries to help you come up with a solution. When we first started talking it seemed like I would have to develop and Access database with a friendly frontend. Thankfully we managed to achieve the same thing with a Excel spreadsheet and smart formatting. Reminded me of the endless days of template design that I did at Telstra.

Food for thought

Today Alison and I went out for a walk in the morning down to the Indooroopilly farmer's market. It's held fortnightly on Sunday at the Nudgee Junior school fields and consists of a wide variety of food products from fresh fruit and veg to piping hot take away meals. I started the day with a frankfurter with saurkraut fresh off the grill while Alison had what I believe is the first cornish pastie I've seen in Australia. It wasn't half bad but I still prefer the pasties that come out of my Aunt Lucy's oven in Torquay. After walking around and stuffing our faces with gelati and free samples we left the markets with a huge bag of oranges, three ears of corn for a dollar and this lovely container full of marinated fetta cheese. I think we're definitely going to have to come back to do our shopping next time.

Spurred on by the promise of good food, we finally took the plunge today and bought a new fridge to replace the aging behemoth that sits in our kitchen. I would have gone for the super duper icebox with a built in TV and complimentary IP address but we managed to come to a compromise and picked the most cost effective fridge with some buttons on it for me to fiddle with. Our new toy (an LG GR-R466JTA) should be delivered next Saturday. Can't wait to play with the child lock feature. ^_^

Eyes only

Back from another night at the movies and the show for this week was Serenity. It's a sci-fi flick directed by Joss Whedon (the guy who wrote Buffy and Angel) and is based off his lesser known series Firefly. I'm a fan of the show (Firefly that is) and always thought it was a shame that the studios decided to can it after half a season so buying a ticket to watch Serenity was a no brainer really. Alison required a little more convincing but I genuinely think she enjoyed it so I might stand a chance at coercing her into watching the series with me again. :)

Spent most of today making my way through Full Metal Alchemist which is the first anime I've watched in a while. It's enjoyable and certainly fills in the time on my train ride to work. Might just be that I'm jaded after watching too much anime in my 'youth' but it still seems pretty familiar. I'd probably describe it as a cross between Trigun and Flame of Recca. Never thought I'd start getting picky about the shows I watch. The anime does however get bonus points from me for using a L'arc en Ciel song (Ready, Steady, Go) as an opening theme.

Also picked up my Raynox lens from the post office today. Haven't really had a chance to give it more than a short play. My initial impressions are that the magnification and working distance is great but the attachment seems to slow down my setup considerably so I'm forced to use longer shutter speeds and a tripod. Most of my tests were done indoors in pretty crappy lighting though so things might be different on a flower shoot in the sun.