We Love Katamari

This game makes me scream with joy like a little girl. This game makes the world a better place to live in. If you have a PS2 then you must buy this game. If you don't have a PS2 then you must buy one, then buy this game. If you don't have a television then... etc.

If you want to see some gameplay footage (from the first Katamari Damacy to reduce spoilage), then click the link above.

Walking and climbing robots

Walking and climbing robots are coming! Imagine that big one when it learns to perform lethal kick attacks on humans. Imagine that little one climbing your leg while you slap it in desperate agony as it digs it's little claws in harder. GAH!! ROBOTS!!!!

Motorcyle Maintenance

I would like to relate this true story in the form of a dialogue. The muffler is like a soup can and the bit that fell off is like a cap on the can with a hole in it. The cap keeps the cotton wool looking stuff from falling out and I think it also stops the can shaped bit from coming loose.

Motorcyle shop guy 1:	You've lost the little end bit off your muffler.
Me:	Okay. Can you get me a replacment?
Guy1:	What you need to do is buy this muffler and clutch kit. It's $340 for the kit plus $160 installation.
Me:	Well my clutch works fine. Can you just replace the muffler?
Guy1:	(As though I was a bit slow) No. It's a kit. They come together. It's a performance kit.. It will make your scooter go faster. What's your top speed?
Me:	75 kph.
Guy1:	Ok... Well it might make your scooter go faster. A little.
Me:	Is there any cheaper option?
Guy1:	[Thinks for a bit]. I could sell you a used clutch and muffler kit that we took of another scooter when we installed the performance clutch and muffler kit. It might make you go slower though.
Me:	How much would that be?
Guy1:	$250 plus $160 for installation.
Me:	[Thinks. I was actually considering paying for this!] Okay, I'm going to leave it for now. Thanks very much.
Guy1:	You'll be back...
[Later]
Me:	The end bit of my muffler fell off. Can you help me?
Motorcyle Shop Guy 2:	Here take this [can shaped thing] right off. You don't need it. Might make you a little louder than before.
Me:	Okay thanks!
Guy2:	Keep it and if you ever want me to fix it I will weld a little bit here and you'll be good as new.
Me:	Okay, how much would you charge me for that?
Guy2:	Let's say around $120 depending on how long it takes.
Me:	Fantastic. Thank-you very much.

In you're wondering... Guy 1 is the long haired guy who works at the big Yamaha place on Ross River Road. Guy 2 is Steve at a place over on the road to Joyce Mayne.

Everybody Hates Chris (TV is good)

When I heard Chris Rock wasn't actually in the show I wasn't sure if it was going to be good. I tivoed the first episode on my super home media thing and it was excellent. Chris actually is the narrator. The show is about him when he was thirteen. The cast are all brilliant and the writing has a Chris Rock edge to it that elevates the show above the majority of TV drivel. And there's no laugh track so it feels more like a Freaks and Geeks style of show than a typical American sitcom. Recommended viewing. Sunday night on Channel Ten.

Videogames are good

In the space of a couple of days two new games have arrived at my house. Firstly Shadow of the Colossus. After plenty of hype and a long wait I have been looking forward to playing this. So far it has not dissappointed. The beasts are so beautiful though that it seems wrong to kill them. The sound of your sword plunging into their skulls and the black blood jetting out as they try to shake you off is quite a moving experience!

The other game that arrived is We Love Katamari, the sequel to Katamari Damacy which I have never played. This must-play game was clearly created by some insane genius. The game consists of rolling stuff up in an ever growing sticky ball and presenting it to the king of the cosmos. By stuff I mean everything, but you can only pick up stuff that's in your size class. Anyway, you should really try it some day.

Also still playing Half Life 2 on the Xbox. We are up to the part where you have to pick up your car with the crane while avoiding ant lions.

Ps, in a little over a week I'll be going here to attend this. Should be pretty good!

Poetry is good?

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.

I actually read that the day before yesterday in a book. A real book made from paper. :) It's from a Robert Frost poem. I also read this one which had some good stuff in it also. Then my phone rang, the shelf stacking lady told me off and I departed the library. Why Robert Frost? The song of course...

Manchester

Not the city. I'm talking about bed sheets. At Target they had 500 thread count percale cotton sheets on sale. They were $49.95 reduced from $199.95. Sharyn found them and bought three sets. They are white on white pin stripe and they are GOOD. In case you don't know 500 thread count means approximately 500 acres of cotton were harvested per sheet to make these sheets. Lying on them is like resting on a cloud in heaven. But you know what? I heard that Oprah has 900 percale. O-PRAH.

Madonna please put your pants back on

Okay we get it. You work out a lot and you're very flexible. You have great hair and a killer new album, but please Madonna I don't want to see your grandma arse any more, no matter how firm it is.

Please!

It's kind of embarrasing

Otherwise it's a cool video...

My picks from Google Video of the Day

Manamana, insane Korean b-boys, emo lyrics explained, visual Bach, old lady versus Mercedes, more emo lyrics (if you liked the first one

My first Ruby hack - Array.each_with_count

I've started to learn Ruby. It is very cool. You can try it out now in your browser. I'm currently trying to use it instead of (my old faithful) Perl for little text manipulation scripts. Here is a little thing I put together because I was doing this kind of thing a lot:

count = 0
some_array.each do |v|
  # do stuff requiring count
  count += 1
end

It's an extended each iterator for arrays that includes a built in counter. Here it is:

class Array
  def each_with_count
    count = 0
    self.each do |element|
      yield element,count
      count += 1
    end
  end
end

Example usage of my new iterator:

["abc","def",123].each_with_count do |x,i|
  print i,"\t",x,"\n"
end

Which of course prints this:

0       abc
1       def
2       123

Cool huh?! (Apologies to my non computer geek readers... :)

Update 10-Mar-06

Oh boy do I feel foolish! My next project is a roundish thing that might have some application in the field of transport. :) See Enumerable#each_with_index. Ps, ruby is good.

Poker Night 2

Poker night has been renamed to "give your money to Michelle" night. Instead of having a game this weekend could all players please just send $10 to Michelle via PayPal. Thanks.

Sigur Rós tickets

I missed Sigur Rós on their last tour. I was flying from Cairns to Tokyo literally while they were flying from Tokyo to Brisbane. They had just played the Fuji Rock Festival. I was quite upset. Little did I know they would return to Australia so soon and that I would get tickets for their Sydney and Brisbane shows!!!!!! (Sorry, this is old news for some of my readers). I have to thank Lynn (aka PiB) who told me about the tour on the day the tickets went on sale back in November, otherwise I probably would have missed them again. Anyway the shows are on Easter Saturday (Tivoli, Fortitude Valley) and the Wednesday before Easter (Enmore, Newtown). Check back here later for a gig review.

Super home media thingy update

As I have previously mentioned I have a computer next to my TV that I use for recording TV shows. Here's a list of good and bad so far.

• I can pause, rewind and fast-forward live TV. This is cool. Eg I watched Double Jeopardy the other night with Ashley Judd on Channel 7 and fast-forward the ads...
• ...but not while watching Austar. The Austar comes in through the svideo input and there's no way to timeshift that.
• The remote control that comes with the card is excellent. It works via an IR usb thingy.
• I can't figure out how to use it with VLC player or Media Player Classic. I think perhaps it's possible though. The remote says it's preconfigured to work with certain other programs like PowerDVD or something.
• It's excellent for watching bit torrented divx files straight from the hard disk to the TV...
• ...but my wireless network bandwidth isn't good enough to watch a show from my disk upstairs via windows sharing. I can play iTunes shared music downstairs from my main iTunes upstairs though. That's pretty cool.
• I'm still fighting with WindowsXP and dual monitors. I have nvidia desktop intstalled which has a control panel for saying "Open all new windows on monitor 2". But too often I end up with a window or a dialog opening on monitor 1 which is my TV. Then I have to turn on the TV (if it's not already on), change to the right channel drag my mouse over to the tele and try and retrieve the window and drag it over to the monitor. I have the TV as the primary monitor because FusionHDTV seems to want to go fullscreen on the primary monitor only.
• I have some fun with aspect ratio. My (SD) TV is running 1024x768 but at widescreen. So for a 16:9 video I have to set aspect to 4:3. It looks squashed on the monitor screen but correct on the TV. And sometimes the player doesn't want to use the aspect ratio I tell it to. I've found the VLC player is the best for this reason. Other players sometimes won't go to 4:3. Windows Media Player, doesn't even seem to have an option for setting the aspect.
• The FusionHDTV software is a little flakey. It's recording scheduler is just barely useable. But they seem to be releasing new versions regular so hopefully it will improve. I've downloaded WebScheduler to see if it's any better but haven't tried it out yet. I've been looking longingly at MythTV but so far I've decided not to take that plunge. I don't want to risk not being able to actually get my hardware to work.

I will update this post later with some photos.

For MythBusters: Freezing Bent BMX Wheels

I want to see this on MythBusters. I don't know if it's true or not but when I was a kid everyone knew that if you bent your "tuff" (plastic BMX wheel) it could be straighted out by freezing it, as illustrated below. Can anyone confirm or bust this for me? I looked on Snopes. Nothing.

Update
It appears that in fact it is true. Myth confirmed!

Chewy's Blog

Chewbacca, the famous guy from Star Wars, has his own blog. He's an articulate blogger with some controversial opinions you might not have expected from a wookie. Check it out here.

Joanna Newsom

I have just discovered and fallen in love with Joanna Newsom, thanks to seeing her on rage. I think she's not actually human but an elf of some kind. Maybe a gelfling. Just look at her ears. I told Chris about her and he was like, "Well duh! I told you we went to see her in October." He also told me she played her harp until her fingers nearly bled. Here is a video, a CD and some lyrics.

Stationwagon Photos

Click the link above to view some new Stationwagon photos. The photos were taken by Sharyn and Alex (I think) at the Radiators support gig on January 14th at the Dalrymple Hotel.

PS, I discovered that flickr won't let me have more than three photo sets unless I upgrade to a paid account. So that's why these aren't in a set. The tag url thing is almost as good though.

PPS, If you have good bandwidth check out Interesting Photos at flickr. It's a good place to waste time and look at nice photos.

Very cool flash games

These are really cute. You have to solve the puzzles by clicking on stuff. Discovered by Lynn at PiB. So far I did No. 5 part 1 and Mr Zhong part 1.

The Radiators radiate

We didn't do the Charters Towers gig as originally planned but the Townsville gig at the Dalrymple hotel was pretty decent. There were around 300 people there, way more than at the Spazzys gig. The crowd were forced to listen to way too much U2 before the show started, so seemed glad when we went on. They really liked our last song "Got Low" and gave us a pretty good amount of applause and even some dancing.

The Radiators were great. I thought they exuded class and sounded really good. They are quintessential 80s Aussie rockers and their sound was perfect 80s Aussie rock. The crowd (mostly in their 30s and 40s) took a while to fully get into the show but by the end the place was rocking. They threw in some covers, The Beatles, Revolution and The Angels, Coming Home, which had me thinking, "hang on, was this a Radiators song?", and an encore including a bass solo and a killer drum solo. The lead singer, who looks like a cross between Roger Daltry, Steve Kilby and (cricketer) Geoff Lawson is very charismatic, even though he doesn't say much, preferring to leave the talking to the bass player. Anyway, overall I give it a solid B+.

I took some photos of the gig.

In response to Michael,

Band	Position
AC/DC	Kings of Oz Rock
The Angels	Queens of Oz Rock
The Radiators	I'm bumping them up to Prime Minister
Jet	Assistant to the Shadow Treasurer of Oz Rock
You Am I	Assistant to the deputy Mayor of Oz Rock

But seriously, I saw You Am I a couple of times. I didn't think that were that great.

Christians on Narnia & Harry Potter

I've realised from Scott Adams that the secret to successful blogging is to post on controversial topics... So, what's the deal with the Christian backing of Chronicles of Narnia? I read those books as a child and didn't notice any Christian message. Maybe it's there, fair enough, whatever. But how can the same people that want Harry Potter burned think Narnia should be shown at Sunday school? Observe:

Harry Potter	Chronicles of Narnia
Hero whisked away to magical world via train	Heros whisked away to magical world via portal in wardrobe
Magical spells and creatures such as dragons, centaurs, mermaids	Ditto, but add some talking animals and fauns
Triumph over Voldemort with the help of Dumbledore	Triumph over the White Witch with the help of Aslan
Reference various elements from non-Christian western folklore	Ditto, maybe a little less on the witchcraft

So are any Christians out there anti-Potter and anti-Narnia? At least that would be consistent.

Music to try

This is Pitchfork's top 50 best albums of 2005. Number 1? Sufjan Stevens, Come on feel the Illinoise. Never heard of it either. (Or Pitchfork for that matter). M.I.A. and Kanye West make the top 5. Now I have something to use up my remaining download quota. Have you already heard all that stuff? Then see if you need to catch up on 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000 and 1999

Building my super home media thingy

I just ordered one of these to put in my new ex student lab pc. Also ordered a video card with TV out. Will let you know how it goes.

Hottest day in 21 years

Yeah it was pretty hot yesterday. It took me quite a while to find a suitable image for this post. Hope you enjoy it. :)

Hottest day of the year, By VIKKI CAMPION 19 Dec 05
Townsville's mercury soared to a blistering 41C, making it the hottest day this year. It was only 1.1C off the all-time record of 42.1C, our hottest day ever occurring in 1984. Meteorologist Greg Connor said southerly winds were to blame. "Usually we are very lucky and get a sea breeze, but today there are southerly winds," Mr Connor said. "This is what people inland have been experiencing. It feels like western Queensland."

Google crosses to the dark side?

I hope this isn't the start of something bad... From the link above:

• Got content? So does AOL, whose links will be featured in a special section alongside the SERPs. (Labeled as ads, but basically free.)
• Know how to optimize a page? So do the folks at Google, who are going to (ahem) "provide technical assistance so AOL can create Web pages that will appear more prominently in the search results list." (Fairness: They state that the algo will not be preferential.)
• Got video? Again, so does AOL. G "will make special efforts to incorporate AOL video programming" and "feature links" not marked as advertising "to AOL videos."
• Got Adwords? Want to get clicks from AOL users? Get ready to compete with "AOL only" advertisers. Almost sounds like advertisers will be bidding against themselves.
• Got Adsense? This looks like it might actually creat more inventory. AOL will "sell some display advertising that will be placed on the vast network of Web sites for which Google sells ads."

Poker

Last Saturday was my first real poker game. It went pretty well. Five players, three games with $5 entry fee, winner takes all. I few things I learned:

• We had plenty of chips and decided eventually on black chips = 10, colours = 1. I think black = 5 would be better next time so the colours are more useful.
• We started out doubling the blinds every time the dealer button got around the table. This doesn't work as when you're down to two players doubling the blinds repeatedly means the short stack can't survive more than a couple of hands. So better is to increase the blind when someone is eliminated. And not neccessarily double it either.
• I thought that only highest card was significant in comparing flushes, ie A,2,3,4,5 and A,7,8,9,10 is a split pot because both have Aces as highest card. But, as Daniel informed me this is not the case. I learned this very well as I lost many chips with low flushes. :)
• We left out side-pot betting when someone was all in to prevent confusion but I think we can handle it next time. :)
• We didn't do check-raises. I don't quite understand when you can check-raise. Can anyone check-raise whenever they've checked?
• Michelle, Daniel and Alex won a game each. So everyone except me and Adam went home ten dollars up.

Full Screen Mini-Putt

The only way to play! See the update here for more info.

Nice Space Pictures

This one is good if you need a sense of perspective. :) Found it via digg.com.

The Stationwagon to support The Radiators!

After the success of our Spazzys support slot The Stationwagon will be supporting The Radiators for their Townsville and Charters Towers shows! Details are:

• Saturday 14th January, Dalrymple Hotel, Townsville
• Sunday 15th January, Commercial Hotel, Charters Towers

The Radiators (if ya don't know) are Oz pub rock legends. If AC/DC was the king of rock, then The Angels would be queen and The Radiators would be like the prince or something. And they are still rocking.

Movies I have watched this week

I've seen a lot of good movies this week. Here's a list.

Howl's Moving Castle
Beautiful, wonderful movie. Miyasaki, please don't retire yet! Almost as good as Spirited Away. Story a little confusing and a bit different to the book. ****1/2

Saw
Wow. Like Se7en but better. Maybe the best ending ever. Avoid if you're squeamish. ****1/2

Saw 2
Another stunning ending you never saw coming. Lost a half star for the slightly contrived setup for another sequel. ****

Sin City
Believe the hype. It is good. Visually stunning and extremely violent. Worth owning. I think I would watch it again. ****1/2

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Moody is great though I think his eye should have been bigger - about the size of an orange. The Voldemort scene - brilliant. Ron's hair - awesome. It seems like there's more of a sense of fun than previous HP movies. Gets the final half star for Jarvis Cocker. Stay for the credits to hear Jarvis and the unmistakable guitar sounds of Johnny Greenwood. *****

Half Life 2 (Xbox)
Okay it's not a movie but... I'm up the the part where you get a gun for your boat, so not that far into it. The game is incredible. The first time I beat a barnacle with my crow bar while it slurped me upwards... gaming heaven. The physics engine raises the bar forever - any game without a comparable physics engine is going to seem lame. I sometimes watch a broken cardboard box falling down stairs, awestruck by the way it moves. (But then I am a bit of a geek). Why can't I see my hands? *****

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Brilliant! Best Harry Potter movie yet. Voldemort is outstanding. Ps, The Weird Sisters rock. Too bad about this. I wonder if a copy of the unreleased album might somehow leak out onto the interweb... Please Jarvis! I will buy some old Pulp cds. :)

MiniPutt

Check my MiniPutt score. 35!! 13 under par. Yeah baby! Beat that and blog your screenshot. :)

Update: 32.
Update: Daniel got 30.

Update (7-Dec): 26. I got this playing with this url instead of the old one. The new url gives you a full screen version of the game which lets you get more control with your shots and play some shots harder than was previously possible. (Also the old one stopped working when I upgraded to Firefox 1.5 which lead me to discover the full screen play...) I've changed the links above to the new url. I think a score of 21 should be possible. Maybe 20 if you can beat the windmill...

Update 13-Dec: 23! And I figured out it was the AdBlocker plugin that was giving me problems in FF 1.5.
Update 16-Dec: This guy has a 19!! Ahhh!!

Howl's Moving Castle

After being let down by my local movie venues and thanks to ADSL, the wonderful uTorrent and some nameless movie ripper I have seen Howl's Moving Castle. It was good. The subtitles were high quality. Big cheers to all you guys! Seriously, thanks.

NPR has some great streaming rock concerts for free

From digg.com:

Death Cab for Cutie, White Stripes, The Shins, Secret Machines, Bloc Party, the Decemberists, Bright Eyes, Sigur Ros, Wilco. Listen now... Some real good stuff in there

read more | digg story

See digg comments for how to play if you don't want to install RealPlayer.

Google Video of the Day

Google Video of the Day is a guy who looks through loads of videos on google video and blogs his favourites, one per day. I like the robots.

The Brand New Qantas A380 in Brisbane

This excellent shot was taken in Brisbane on the 13th November by Scott and uploaded by Tim.

Jean Baudin

Check this out. It's a quicktime movie of Jean playing his 11 string bass. I didn't know you could get an 11 string bass, let alone play it like that!

The Stationwagon Gig Photos

Here's a few blurry photos from our gig with the Spazzys. Thanks Dave for taking the photos. Thanks Gav for doing a great job with our sound. I took some Spazzys pics also.

Flying bee photo

I thought you might like to see a photo I took of a bee in mid-flight! Click on the photo to see a bigger version. There's a couple more of my bee photos in the flickr set. My camera is an EX-S500.

Blogging about my blog...

I discovered that Glosoli (or to spell it correctly, Glósóli) actually means "glow sun". I believe the term is mostly used metaphorically to describe a person. More lovely icelandic here. I think they mean "soul" rather than "sole" but I can't be certain. Ps, this is NOT funny. ;)

The Stationwagon to support Spazzys

My band is supporting Spazzys (above) at the Dalrymple Hotel on Friday week! That's the 18th of November. Mark it in your diary, buy a ticket, then go watch all the Spazzys videos here.

More on the best value lunch in Townsville

I've previously mentioned the best value lunch in Townsville. Here's what happened when I took a couple of work buddies there recently.

We ordered three megameals and paid $30. First we get a drink and five one dollar coins each. Then for some unexplained reason we got two more dollar coins. To this day I have no idea why. The chicken schitzel was outstanding as per usual. Lynn tried the lamb stew and found it agreeable. Daniel entered six tickets in a draw to win a boat. Nett cost per person: $4.33

I have the fastest 50cc scooter in Townsville

Maybe in the entire world. The other day I reached a record top speed of 75 kph. I reckon I could do 80 with a strong tail wind. Can anyone beat that? I didn't think so. (Photo for illustrative purposes only).

Best Audiophile Products

Here is a great list of the best value-for-money audio products on the market. Check it out before updating any of your stereo gear. I'm saving for a couple of the Silver Rock Signature Knobs.