Curled frond

Curled frond
Originally uploaded by Nicarra.

I thought this was a pretty nice close up. Lot's of symmetric detail.

Flowers and the sea

Flowers and the sea
Originally uploaded by Nicarra.

Photo of the day posted to my flickr account. I love the bright flowers overlooking the blue sea.

Black headed Heron

Black headed Heron
Originally uploaded by Nicarra.

Handsome bird in tree in South Africa

Short from a random line

The random line is "peachpuff photographs jungle requiem cocoon lemonchiffon pewter watercolor "

"Which do you prefer, the peachpuff or the lemonchiffon blouse?"

"For the photographs? The lemonchiffon, the peachpuff gives your skin a hideous tone."

"Is it true? Charlie died in the jungles of Brazil?"

"Yes, unfortunately he opened a cocoon containing thousands of young spiders. He never had a chance."

"The requiem is in an hour, are we ready?"

"Just a couple more minutes."

They place the photograph in front of the pewter cup, the last trophy ever won by their jungle going friend. The cup is just beneath a watercolor of the brave explorer at the age of nine.

Two very different Comedies on SBS

The first is Corner Gas a Canadian production. The action takes place in a tiny town called Dog River. It's very sweet, with believable characters and some great dialogue and ideas. One episode featured a group creating a book club. The first book was something you'd expect a group like that to read "Life of PI". It quickly switches to reading action/thriller type novels when the second book was "The Saint in New York". (Side note, I own that edition of that particular book). Listening to their discussions about a Rambo novel and the original James Bond novels is pretty funny.

The second is completely different. It's Drawn Together, the animated version of Big Brother. Each of the 8 characters in the house is drawn in a different style including a Disney Princess, Japanese anime and the classic comic book hero. The humor here is rough, rude and crude. But it is quite different and you never know quite where they are going with each plot.

Who ever would have guessed?

We have, of late, been recording Top Gear - a British car show. Now, that isn't actually delibrate, the show is on in the time slot of MythBusters. That's a show we do watch.

So what is interesting is that I find Top Gear entertaining. I'm not at all into cars but they don't spend ages blabbing numbers and spouting car rubbish. They drive the cars. In all weather conditions. On real roads. And they chat to the camera about how the car feels and what it is doing.

They also have a weekly guest. They do a brief interview and then, show a video of the guest doing a lap with their standard car. The times are preserved and guests are ranked for how fast they did the lap. (There is also a practice lap and guests get some tutoring from 'The Stick'.) All the names and times are on the board and the new guest added at the right spot.

I think I like it for much the same reasons as MythBusters. It's guys having fun and showing off their abilities. The last episode I watched could be subtitled 'Why you should never buy a super car for less then 10,000 quid.' Not one of the 3 cars they bought survived the challenge of the day.

Not a true fan yet. The presenters are still 'the short one', 'the fuzzy one' and 'the other one'.

From rain at last to too much water!

Townsville, for the first time in a number of years, is having a proper wet season. It started raining 17 January and there has been a bit of rain most days since. In fact, quite a lot of rain on a few days. Our rain total for 2007 is now 735 mm - about 29 inches of water. Much of that has fallen since the first of Feb.

Townsville is so unused to having rain that the first few days of rain, you could watch people going to windows and doors just to stare at this strange wet stuff. But I think everyone is ready for a couple of sunny days as a break. I know I need some sun to dry the laundry out.

So very geeky

There are times when I realise how sadly geeky I truly am. Yesterday, was very exciting because I successfully created an excel spreadsheet and xslt transformation sheet that means I'll be able to map research sites on Google Earth. Give me a set of sites with latitude and longitude (doesn't matter if you use decimal or old fashioned coordinates either) and I can send you back a Google Earth kml file.

Only geeks think creating this stuff is exciting.

How to create a news slant

I noticed this one last night on the SBS brief reports

1. Announce a story about reactions to using recycled sewage as drinking water
2. Announce a story about recycled water for drinking water

Same story, massively different impact.

BTW guys, all water is recycled. Just some of the recycling is done on a much longer time scale.

This card game sounds fun

Steve Jackson's Munchkin Card I was tempted to buy these cards when I saw them in a game shop. They look like a great take on trad D&D without any of that bothersome character development. Great illustrations, funny descriptions.

Brilliant tv drama

We have been trying for years to limit our tv watching to shows we really enjoy and not merely watch tv for the sake of watching. Below is a list of some of my favourite drama series of all time. They aren't in any particular order, just some of the best.

• The Singing Detective - Michael Gambon
• The Prisoner - Patrick McGoohan
• Twin Peaks - Kyle MacLachlan
• Quantum Leap - Scott Bakula
• House of Cards (and sequels) - Ian Richardson
• Carnivale - Nick Stahl

This post has been inspired by a recent viewing of The Singing Detective - Michael Gambon version and The Prisoner - Patrick McGoohan.

proof that the talent is more important

This is an amazing little video. It demostrates someone using MS Paint to create a very nice car. I couldn't do anything like that using Photoshop or another good drawing tool!

The future of robots?

This is the cutest little dinosaur that acts as though it is really alive. I think I want one!

Resolutions for 2007

Attempt to do better with last years resolution about losing weight. Lost some but it all came back after a holiday.

Either take this blog more seriously and post a bit more frequently or abandon it all together.

Signs of way too much game playing over the holiday

1. Natural sunlight is too bright
2. Achy wrist or fingers
3. The music currently stuck in your head is from a game.

I played Sims 2 far too much over the past week. I have two of the expansion packs, Open for Business and Pets. There is no such thing as playing Sims for a short time. Once you start, time just vanishes without a trace. Mostly because you have been trying to fulfil one or more of the Sims aspirations (or perhaps fulfulling their fears instead). I avoided getting the original Sims game since I thought it would be one of those addicting things. Turns out, I was right.

So what's your latest addiction?

It is officially the Christmas season

I have just listened to Merry Christmas by Bing Crosby. It's not Christmas until Bing sings for me, therefore Christmas has begun.

Other random Christmas albums I own; A froggy Christmas (frog song, owl hooting and synthesizers), one from Harry Belafonte and a Celtic Christmas (don't like this, bagpipes are not something I like to listen to. Got it from my sister.)

Interesting game question of the week

I have recently discovered Gamastutra.com and in particular, the question of the week. The two questions I've read through were Does size matter? where they asked a number of game professionals about length of game play. Another question of the week was "Are game professionals buying PS3 or Wii?". Both are long articles but the content is quite interesting.

Baen Free Library

Baen free library is an interesting concept. This publisher of sf and fantasy is making a number of titles available for free. Having been to the site, it's a great idea. They are offering one or sometimes more titles by a number of their authors. This means that you can read something new at no cost. Like the author? Baen may well have more books by them, which you may want to start buying. So you win, you find something new to read. And they win if they get more fans for their authors.

Happy reading. Link via Userfriendly

Funny ebay spoof

Part of the ebay spoof

titaninc5orx ( 82)  
 Positive Feedback: 100% 
 Member Since: July-15-07 
 Location: PA, United States

Obviously a time traveller, been a member of ebay since 2007? Still 2006 last time I checked.

Christmas gift giving approaches

Wired Magazine has picked some of the best products for 2006 and posted the results. So if you are looking for something to give or get, you might want to check this out.

I do believe that Toshiba Gigabeat would be a welcome sight in my stocking this year. ;)

True confession

There was the annual workplace Christmas party on Saturday night. There was karaoke. This time, I actually sang up in the karaoke group. MUCH better sounding up there where you hear the music louder than your fellow singers. A couple of the group can sing but not all of them.

Great Animation

Animator vs Animation. This is a very very cute animation and the real reason only professionals should ever create Flash animations. Via the Userfriendly link of the day.

Ouch! That hurts!

Looking through my stats log and found a new referer. The game reviews have a mention in GameRevolution in an article entitled "Mind Over Meta".

The ouch? Here is the paragraph linking to my site "In some cases, half the scores Gamerankings included in their aggregates were from small, unheard of fan sites with terrible writing and ghastly design, and we were certain the opinions of these amateurs were inflating aggregate scores." Yep, I am the example of a small, unheard of fan site with terrible writing and ghastly design.

Now let's see, small - yep that's ok. Unheard of - well, I do get 1500 page views a day - is that unheard of? Fan site - not by my definition of fan site but I'll let it pass. Ghastly design - matter of opinion there but mine is very basic. It's the 'terrible writing' that I object to! In a world where spelling is optional and complete sentences rarely seen, how can they point to my site and say it is 'terrible writing'?

On the other hand, I think their site has ghastly freaking design. White text on a black background is very difficult to read. And they have a set width which looks silly on my nice big monitor.

As a side note, I believe that Gamerankings has never used my site for aggregating scores.

More clips from Extras

First there is Patrick Stewart describing a script he is writing.. Pretty funny.

Second is Dan Radcliffe (Harry Potter), as a 17 year old interested in any female. Extremely interested.

I have a long way to go

A report from Wired that iTunes library fails when faced with 90,000 songs. My little Nomad box says it only has just under 4,000 separate pieces of music. I obvious need to build my library more.

Oh, and to the writer of the article, that bloke wouldn't be the only one. I have a friend, Henry G. who would have that much music at least. Your 500 tunes would never do for me.

Harry Chapin Verities and Balderdash

For those that don't know about the folk singer/songwriter Harry Chapin (I read your comment!), this is a great album to start with. The album has three songs I love to listen to: Cats in the Cradle, Six String Orchestra, and 30,000 pounds of Banana. Mind you, Six String Orchestra - I always see Robin (the nephew of Kermit the Frog) singing because Muppet versions of songs tend to stick well. All of the songs on the album are worth listening to though.

Bowie on Extras

Brief video clip of David Bowie on Extras Looks like he was having fun.

Blog has been updated

I've made the big switch to the new Blogger, and with it picked out a new template and started doing some labeling. So what do you think; Simon, Daniel, Friendless? (I know all three of my readers ;) )

Babooshka - Kate Bush

I'm fond of Kate Bush's music and Babooshka is one of her songs I've always enjoyed. But now someone has done a remix. It is just so irritating. Chopping up the song ruins the effect and all you get now is a lot of Babooshka without realising that there is a story behind the song. I hate that.

The last time I had serious problems in the remaking music vein was when Ugly Joe Kid covered "Cat's in the Cradle". After hearing a part of that once, I would turn off the radio if the cover started and bought Harry Chapin's original because that is a great song.

Very odd trend

My normal web site has had a feature for years now allowing visitors to post info about their favourite game and why they like it. There are comments dating back to 1999.

Lately, people have suddenly been putting guestbook type comments in it. There may be a few general comments about my web site in previous years, but this is the first time I've ever had multiple comments about the site left here in such a short time frame.

Make me wonder if maybe I should open a guestbook again. I killed it when almost all entries were to advertise someone's porn site. Now that my script a) hides new entries until reviewed and b) doesn't permit urls to be posted, a guestbook might not be too painful.