Robbie's Journal

ethanthescribe @ 2009-07-15T15:55:00

2009-07-15T05:56:23Z

There was discussion a while ago about what the coolest thing on the web was.

This has to be up there:

The Middleman

2009-06-28T23:29:29Z

I've recently been watching "The Middleman"... very funny, chock full of SF and comic book references, really doesn't take itself seriously.

And, good as that is, as the series is progressing, there is character and plot development and the writing and acting are getting better and better.

Pity it only went for one season... :-(

F-f-f-freezing

2009-06-11T03:57:48Z

Rode my bike to Campbell Park for the first time since I went to NZ. In many ways, it was a lovely day... sun shining, no wind, crisp...
Extremely crisp, actually. F*cking freezing would be more like it, The frost was still frost by the time I got into work, even when it had been exposed to the sun for the best part of an hour. Ice still on puddles. And the #$%%# sun went behind a cloud and stayed there for the last third of the trip, just when it could have been doing something useful.
I didn't make very good time either, as any time I got up to a decent speed, bits of my anatomy started to freeze off.

Don't remember last year being this cold...

NCC

2009-06-10T12:23:28Z

The NCC is gone... long live the NCC!

Welcome, halloranelder

And we're back.

2009-06-03T12:37:48Z

Landed in Mascot about 5:10pm, was in the hire car and on the road by 6:10pm, and then straight into very slow Sydney traffic all the way to the toll booth.

But we're home now, dogs are still talking to us, didn't get charged excess baggage even though we were a few kilos over.

Hotel tried to charge us for the full period, in spite of the con having already paid for most of it, but Dea yelled at them until they went away.

Anyway, had a fun holiday, saw most of NZ (north and south island, not quite circumnavigating it but coming damn close. Clocked up over 3000 km before returning the car last Friday.

The Con Part 2

2009-05-31T23:50:19Z

Have enjoyed con. Closing ceremony is any minute now, and after that the Dead Dog Party will be held in the bar... which is an eminently sensible way of doing things.
A high point for me was actually presenting the Sir Julius Vogel Award for short fiction to Grant Stone for a story we published in ASIM.
And then I got presented with the Award ASIM itself picked up last year, so I was tolerably pleased.
(If an ASIM person reads this, could that pass that onto the list? Internet is a bit limited at present...)
The filk scene here is much more active that it appears to be back home... I may have to do something abouit that. High point was last night at about 2pm, when the hard core of the filkers sung, in beautiful harmony and with multiple instruments, a song about eating people's brains... :D

Guests having been intersting, both to meet and the listen to. The panels I've attended have been interesting.

Organization... I'm going to call it laid back... :D ... and it did put me off a bit initially, but once I caught onto the rhythm of the conj, it all worked out.

The hotel... not overly impressed. It's perfectly nice, but overpriced, and their booking staff are pretty hopeless. Been back about three times to confirm out booking details, and the hotel liaison has looking kind of stressed yesterday, as the hotel "forgot" about a whole heap of things they'd agreed to do.

(And by "nice but overpriced", remember we'd just spent the last 10 days staying in different hotels and motels, so we've had a lot of experience. The two motels either side were half the price, and not that bad, frankly)

Anywho, my $2 is running out.... stay tuned for more.

NZ Trip - the con

2009-05-29T09:43:26Z

At the con. Been meeting interesting people, been having fun.

Dinner was a nice Indian around the corner from the Hotel.

deamondea has stolen the room key and vanished.

Manged to get a bunch of books sold, and the ASIM's showed up on time.

Internet limited.
More to follow.

NZ Trip 5

2009-05-27T11:40:32Z

Tonight we're in Whangarei.

This is about as far north as we are likely to get, as we have to return the car to Auckland tomorrow, thus ending the touring part of the trip. Had a nice early dinner/late lunch at a place called 'Dickens Tavern', with a Charles Dickens theme, of all things.

Finally got to see latest Star Trek movie. Enjoyed thoroughly.

Heading back to Auckland tomorrow, and getting into "Con" mode.

NZ Trip 4

2009-05-26T10:27:25Z

It's been a few days since I had access to internet.

However: Island crossing was made by Ferry, albeit running rather late. Five hours late by time we actually made it into Wellington. This was due to heavy weather. We sat in the queue for 3 hours before getting onto the ferry, it having taken a long time to cross in the first place.

Having said that, it was a big ferry, quite comfortable, with a bar, a food court, a cafe and a cinema. I'm told it was a rough ride, but I've been on much rougher seas in much smaller vessels, so I didn't think it was all that bad. I did note quite a few people gather near the loos, looking green and clutching sea-sickness bags.
I've yet to be seasick ever, so I just enjoyed the ride. The only problem was that because everything was running so late it was after dark by the time we set sail, so we were sailing through some gorgeous waterways without being able to see a damn thing.

And because we were running so late, we didn't have the time we were expecting to look for a motel (it was 10pm before we got off the boat.) But we found a motel in Wellington just as it switched off the lights, so all was well.

Next day, we headed north, towards Rotorua. Stopped for morning tea and to change drivers in Levin, where I found something cute... a travel guitar, quite cheap, quite compact. Technically a guitar-uke. I bought it, much to deamondea's disgust. The sound is surprisingly good, although sometimes its ukulele heritage comes though. And it'll fit in my bag, so I can probably get it home again.

Stayed in an interesting cabin in Turangi that night.

Today, we headed up through Taupo, where we stopped and walked around the Craters of the Moon, which was interesting... steam everywhere.

Had a really nice lunch in Rotorua, but having walked around the above craters deamondea had had enough walking around thermal sites, so we headed out, arbitrarily picking Hamilton for the night's destination. However, spotting "Hobbiton" on the map, we went to go see what it was about, ending up in Matamata. Where they run tours of what is left of the film set.

However, the last tour for the day had already run, and ticket prices were pretty steep. I was all for stopping the night (it seemed as good as anywhere) and checking it out in the morning, but deamondea was entirely uninterested. Meh. There wasn't a lot of suitable accommodation anyway, so we headed out, now toward Auckland.

Stopped for coffee by the side of the road, trying out a little fuel stove I'd bought the day before. It worked out pretty well, only slightly setting the picnic table on fire. Toast was made... deamondea making toast armed only with a tiny plastic knife used for cutting fudge.

And now we're in Auckland, just down the road from the con hotel. The place was chosen because it had free internet, but is otherwise reasonable comfortable and quite cheap.

NZ Trip 3

2009-05-23T08:58:58Z

Drove back across the top of the South Island today... from Hokitika on the West Coast, via Greymouth, through Reefton to Blenheim. Thusly.

Made it with no real problems, and only 27km from the Ferry Terminal, leaving at 1:10pm tomorrow to sail to Wellington on the North Island.

Problem is, Ferry services were cancelled today due to high winds, and may be again tomorrow. So we might be in this area longer than intended. Shouldn't be an issue, as we have several days in hand, I am mildly bemused by it all.

The West Coast of the South Island is very sparsely settled, I've come to realise. Haast was not much more than a caravan park, and most of the places we went through yesterday were little more than villages, widely spread.

But the country feels an awful lot like Northern NSW (except with added snow-capped mountains everywhere you look!) and in spite of dire warnings from the locals when we first arrived, the roads have been pretty good.

OK, deamondea was freaked out by all the railway crossings... especially the single lane bridges with rail lines running down the middle. Still surprised at the abrupt way the country changes from mountains to plains. The water is an odd colour... turquoise, from glacier run off.

We are already making plans for a more leisurely exploration at some later date.

NZ Trip 2

2009-05-22T10:06:10Z

As previously mentioned, couldn't go to Queenstown as planned because Lindis Pass was blocked. By snow.

Anyway, Dunedin was dull, continuing South just to come back up the same roads seemed pointless, so we headed back to Christchurch (which had a really nice motel).

On a bit of a whim, headed inland from Oamaru to see if we could see one of the Lord of the Ring locations... more than half expecting to get turned back because this Lindis Pass place was still closed, and everything we wanted to see we the other side, but what the hey... landscape was lovely.

Snuck through the Pass anyway. They'd reopened it a little before we got there, but it had started snowing again, so we were driving through snow and sleet and stuff, but we made it through! Excitement! It looked like this:

Anyway, view from motel window in Queenstown was amazing (motel room bloody cold, though), but we have to be at the inter-island ferry by midday on the 24th, and we were now behind schedule, so from Queenstown we drove across the mountains to Haast (on the West Coast... weird crossing an entire country in under two days) then up north past Fox Glacier (impressive, though we didn't get that close), Franz Josef Glacier, and finally to Hokitika, where we have a nice room with a spa bath and free internet. :D (But slow, right on the edge of wireless reception).

Tomorrow, North to Blenhiem and then the ferry the day after.

Dunedin

2009-05-20T21:32:00Z

Our plans to go to Queenstown were thwarted by early snow... the pass was blocked, so we went to Dunedin instead.

Drove through snow to get here... freaked me out, what is snow doing this far from Cooma?!?!

The architecture is pretty, but we feel no particular desire to hang about.

We're staying a block away from the Cadbury factory, and they offer tours... may check it out before we head back North. May not, too...

Land of the Long White Cloud

2009-05-17T22:39:41Z

Off to NZ for a fortnight!

deamondea and I haven't been OS since going to the UK in 1999. Bags are packed (mostly) and in a short while we'll be off to pick up the hire car to drive up to Sydney. (It works out the cheapest way to do it, as we can leave it at the airport, and connecting flights from Canberra cost more than the flight to NZ, and don't connect all that well anyway...)

Visit a client in the afternoon, stay overnight, then fly out to Christchurch on Tuesday morning, spend 4-5 days driving around the South Island, followed by another 4-5 days driving around the North Island, and then attending Conscription as Fan GOH in Auckland, then flying back into Sydney on the 3rd.

Wish us luck!

Bottle Domains et al

2009-04-15T10:59:16Z

Lazyweb alert:

Hmmm... I've just received notification that Bottle Domains has lost its registrar accreditation, which means I need to move mithril.com.au to some other registrar.

First of all, before doing crazy stuff, has anyone else heard about this?

Second, any suggestions for where to move the domain?

I'd already decided I was going to move hosting servers, anyway...

Dollhouse

2009-03-23T02:10:46Z

I've heard that reviews of Dollhouse have been mixed, but I'm quite enjoying it so far.

I feel that it started out being a fairly straight-forward (if, you know, really quite creepy if you stop to think about it) action/spy drama. It was cleverly put together, but wasn't very Whedonish.

Just watched episode 6, and that was a real *wham* episode, and the arc threads are starting to come together, and there was some damn fine writing going on.

Quotable quote:

Dominic: You played a very good hand, Ma'am.
DeWitt: No, I played a bad hand very well. There is a distinction.

COH Update...

2009-03-21T01:30:42Z

... four patch loads and over 200Mb downloads later, I find it won't run on my video card.

And it even ran a systems test before loading, and while it complained about my CPU being a bit underpowered. it was quite happy with my Graphics card.

Annoyed.

Company of Heroes - How many patches can there be?

2009-03-21T00:39:24Z

Bought Company of Heroes from EB because they were having a 2 for $50 dollar sale. Price included "Opposing Front", and makoknight got something else to make up the 2 games.

I haven't had a new RTS for a while, it was cheap... but I started loading last night, and it's still asking for patches before it will play online.

Annoying bit one: I don't even *want* to play online, I just want the single player campaign, thankyou, but it won't let me get that far until I load all the damn patches.

Annoying bit two: My desktop may be underpowered in one area, so it might not even be playable. (I have a laptop that should do, but I'd rather have in on the desktop).

If it's going to take another umpteen hours to load there, I'm not sure I can be bothered.

Things Missing from Watchmen

2009-03-06T13:22:56Z

There some plot elements missing from the movie.
I've been trying to remember what they were.

* The missing artist etc sub-plot... which related directly to:
* The Space-squid ... which I feel was a valid call,
* The Pirate Comics section ... no loss, I tend to skip those bits on re-reading anyway.
* Hollis's death ... just as happy to skip that, frankly.

Oh, one quibble: In the movie, the masks referred to themselves as "The Watchmen"... in the novel, the word "Watchmen" was never used. I'm not too fussed about this.

Have I missed any?

Watchmen

2009-03-06T13:12:30Z

Awesome.
Amazingly true to the graphic novel... caught *every* visual beat, *almost* every plot element, pulled no punches.
Much male frontal nudity, most of it blue.
Actors *so* spot on as far as looks go.
Acting fantastic.
Costuming fantastic.
Set design fantastic.
Music choice fantastic.
Action sequences fantastic (and *very* gory, be warned)

Being a fan of the graphic novel, I found myself grinning like a loon as I recognised certain key sequences coming up.

makoknight saw it with me, and he *hadn't* read original, and he was also gobsmacked.

Best. Comic. Book. Adaption. Ever.

Electrician

2009-02-25T03:48:34Z

Can anyone recommend an electrician in the Belconnen area?

Need to get a stove plumbed in.

New Toy

2009-02-20T12:19:52Z

deamondea and I have just been out playing with my Tom Tom....

which, for the dirty minded of you, is a GPS navigator I just bought.

On a whim, because frankly, I know my way around most places, but it is a cute toy.

I wasn't expecting much... I bought the lowest-end model, (TomTom One) but it seems to work quite nicely, making sensible decisions about routes, not getting upset when I deliberately tried to get lost... it's a nice piece of kit.

The default voice is a pleasant english female, although there are quite a few to pick from. I did note that although there was an NZ male and female, there was only a Male Australian accented voice. Called Ken.
Serena (for that is her name) sometimes gets confused about the pronunciation of 'metre', and insisted that "Nicholls" should be pronounced "Nitch-olls", but otherwise we seem to be getting along.

Battlelore

2009-01-26T09:25:52Z

I picked up "Battlelore" at Cancon, plus a few expansions.

It's pretty good, actually, and I'm enjoying it.

In spite of having my arse handed to me five times on the trot by deamondea (who claims to be no good at tactical games...)

Looking for other who might be interested in a game. I also got some of the expansions, including the one that lets you have 4 & 6 player games.

Johnny Soldiers On...

2009-01-11T22:41:25Z

I've been getting lots of nice feedback about Johnny Phillips, Werewolf Detective (Only A$15, you know you want a copy...:D)

This being small press, most early sales have been to friends, or friends of friends, so I take it all with a grain of salt, but it's still nice.

There has been a theme to a lot of these. "I read your book... it was very good!!!"... spoken with considerable surprise.

The underlying message to me being "I bought it because you're a friend, not because I thought it would be any good..."

I choose to be wryly amused. ;-) But still pleased.

Encouraging is that I'm getting nice feedback now from people who've never met me... I know a bunch of people who bought copies to give as christmas presents, and I've been starting to get hear nice things back, such as:

As you know, I'm giving your book to a bunch of people for Christmas. I gave it to a girl ... who mostly reads crime. On that basis, I said I wasn't sure if she'd like it, but I was curious. That was yesterday. Today I received this sms:

I was silly enough to start that book last night, couldn't put it down and didn't get to bed until midnight!

I hope this is the start of a massive viral marketing campaign...

Compulsive Reader

2009-01-10T01:56:06Z

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Googlebombing

2009-01-06T22:28:12Z

In the interests of updating google rankings:

http://lizargall.com/about/

Liz scrapes together a joyful existence working freelance in educational comics, writing, collaborating and finding spare change behind the couch. She finally took the plunge into full time poverty after being a life model, researcher, union organiser, refuge worker, circus manager and running workshops on how to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.