MAKE IT STOP!!

Urgh what a week!
Everything that can go wrong has and I'm just over it. Anyway onwards and upwards!

We went to Mogo zoo the other weekend which was pretty cool :) Nice little zoo with a surprising range of animals, the kids even got to feed a giraffe which was awesome!
We also called in to Kiama and had a look at the blow hole. I took most of my photos with the DSLR so I'd normally put some pics here but they are still in the body.

We did go for a family bushwalk as well along the National Pass at Wentworth falls and that was super awesome! Across the top of the falls, along the cliff edge, down the stairs and through the valley before heading back up through Empress falls :D

Bushwalking is something that we are really enjoying as a family. Our youngest is now 5 and has so much energy it is ridiculous! He jogged the last 20 minutes of the last 4.5 hour walk we did!

Anyway we are off to do the Ruined Castle walk at Katoomba on Saturday and I'll try to get a photosphere done to post :D I've got my new backpack (for carrying everyone else’s stuff of course) and an awesome jacket. I never normally wear jackets or trousers, but its going to be around 3 degrees so I'll give it a shot!

Movie Night!

In the tradition of taking the fun out of things by scheduling them each week we have a movie night.
The kids watch a movie that they want and then when they go to bed my Wife and I watch one as well.
We have been working our way through the Top 100 movies list from IMDB for the last 12 months or so and the other night we hit number 48, Gladiator.

Gladiator was the first DVD I ever bought and it is the only movie I can remember taking my Dad to see at the cinema.

So far in this list we have seen all sorts of things, from modern big budget movies to old black and white subtitled Japanese films! Its been interesting to say the least!

The current list is HERE, it will be different to the one we are working off as ratings change over time but still worth doing :)

Lots of stuff

So this is a bit random... I know it's been 10 days since I last posted, even I started missing myself.

Anyway a few random thoughts/things....

I know this is almost turning into a board game blog but we are spending lots of family time playing them recently. We picked up Pandemic and lost (Sorry world) and today our other expansion for Castle Panic turned up and we will give that a shot tomorrow night. We have a few more games ordered for upcoming birthdays and have a list of titles that we are looking, if only they were a bit cheaper :)

Another round of the V8's has been and gone and I must congratulate V8 Supercars on their progress. They have managed to turn me from someone who used to attend all of the local race meetings, into someone who made sure they always watched the race coverage on TV live and now into someone who grabs a delayed coverage and watches it by pressing the 30 second skip button all the way through. Who knows where I will go from here!

What else do I have to say? Hmmmm

The little monitors are growing up and I'll probably do a post about them and put up some photos soon. Oh I had an awesome customer the other day as well... but that's all I'm going to say about that :D

Castle Panic 15 - 3 :)
Wizards Tower 2 - 4 :(
Pandemic 0 - 1 :(

New games!

As the weather has been craptacular for the last week or so we decided to go for a drive to a games shop and check out some new board games. After looking around at quite a few shelves of fancy looking boxes (including one that looked so much like Monkey Island!) we walked out of the place with Munchkins Deluxe and 7 Wonders :) Tough games for our 4 year old to play but we will ease him into them and go from there.

So we had our first play through of each game tonight and it was tough (As we had no idea of the rules and the Munchkin manual isn't that new player friendly) so a few more games and we will hopefully have most of it sorted.

The end of the 7 Wonders game... we weren't sure how the points would work out at the end, but I won so it was great :D

On a side note we won at The Wizards tower yay!


Castle Panic 15 - 3 :)
Wizards Tower 2 -3 :(

The Wizards Tower

Keened eyed viewers will notice the addition of another score on the last post. (I know no one reads this, and it's not for anyone to read but I still like to post as though they do, is that weird?)

The Castle Panic board game has quickly removed the other family games from our life and relocated them to a dark spot in the granny flat.
So it only makes sense that we purchased the first expansion pack for it "The Wizards Tower"!

It uses the original board with most of the original pieces but adds bigger, badder monsters and the wizards tower itself. For as long as the wizards tower is still standing you get to use special "Wizards cards" which are more powerful than normal cards, but with the new boss monsters you're going to need them!

So far we have played 3 games with the new add on and lost every one of them! Not by much though, generally getting down to just one monster left that takes out the final tower so I'm sure we will have our breakthrough win soon :D

Castle Panic 13 - 3 :)
Wizards Tower 0 -3 :(

You do what?

So it's been almost a week since I last posted and it has been due to a few reasons.
It's school holidays, I've been busy working and also I am not that interesting :D

So I've been busy working, but doing what? Well I breed Giant Mealworms and supply them to shops and breeders for (mainly) the reptile industry.
It's weird I know, whenever anyone asks me how "the worms are going" I always feel like they are taking the piss. It's been almost a year now since I left my old job (underground cabling) and signed up as a small business. It's different, I get to take the kids to school and pick them up, as well as deal with stuff around the house.

Giant Mealworms are a pain in the ass (That's 2 swears in this post :O ) to breed, they just take a long time to grow. You're looking at 6 months from egg to adult so you have to make sure you have a system in place. So far so good though :)

I sell most of my stuff through Facebook....

 

 

Yep "I've Got Worms"... please hit me with your jokes, I have heard none of them before..... :D

Castle Panic 11 - 2 :)
Wizards Tower 0 -1 :(

Podcasts :D

In my old job I did quite a bit of driving. Sometimes I would leave early and drive 2 - 2.5 hours to a job and then have to drive the same back again in the after noon. The truck I was driving was noisy and the radio hardly worked so I started using earphones and my phone to listen to podcasts. Mainly tech stuff at the time but it soon became corrupted with nerdy stuff as well.

Now I work at home on my own and both of my kids are at school so my podcast list has grown and I end up listening to probably 6 or so hours a day! So what am I currently listening to? Well in no particular order....

The Incomparable :- Pop culture nerdy stuff :) Old movie reviews and more. The Incomparable network has quite a few different shows on it now, most of which I listen to.

The Skeptics Guide :- Interesting science news, the stupidity of the ignorant and a few fun games.

Nerdist :- I only listen to the main Nerdist podcast, they have some great famous guests on and end up talking about some unexpected topics with them.

Critical Hit :- A D&D podcast! How nerdy right?! Well it worked out well for me because it has a few hundred back episodes! I listen to it in the back ground, it's like a story unravelling and can be a laugh :)

The Infinite Monkey Cage :- Science panel show hosted by Brian Cox, funny and interesting.

SciFi Diner :- I've only just started listening to this one, so I'll see how it goes.

This Week In Tech :- Part of Leo Laportes empire of Tech shows :) A weekly roundup of everything tech related.

There are others, they come and go as I feel. The other day I realised that the adverts seem to be working as well... I have several products that I have purchased because I have heard about them on podcasts (iFixIt Pro tool set, Castle Panic, Loot Crate....) Luckily I'm happy with them so I can't complain!

Castle Panic score  7 - 2

Little lizard homes

I mentioned somewhere on here that I was interested in reptiles, and on Friday I made my latest (last?) purchase! A trio of 3 week old Pilbara Ridge tailed monitors :D

 Yes I know there are only 2 in the photo but they are small and fast and didn't want to sit together!
I'll sex them at some stage and see what I ended up with. Anyway getting these has filled my rack :)

All up its 2.4m wide, 2.2m high and .6m deep. It's almost all monitors! 3 small Mt Isa Ridge Tails, 3 Pilbara Ridge tails, an adult male and sub adult female ridge tail, 3 Pygmy Mulga monitors and one Central Beardie. I've sexed all of those except the Pygmys who are too hard to tell right now and the new 3 that I don't want to fiddle with until they are settled in :) It's a good job I breed a lot of my own reptile food as when they are all adults they will plow through a bit I think.

Well that's my Easter present sorted :D:D:D:D

DEFEND THE KEEP!!!

Every Friday night we have a family games night. The 4 of us turn off the electronic distractions and sit around the table to play whatever game is currently in favour.
With a soon to be 5 year old and a just turned 7 year old the list of games that everyone will be happy to play is kind of restricted but we still make it work.

For a long time the games of choice were Ludo (or Sorry), Uno and sometimes a random game the kids had. My son is mental about Ludo and plays it every chance he can get (mainly because he always manages to roll 6's and gets multiple pieces home before anyone else even manages to start!) however after listening to a back episode of The Incomparable Podcast about favourite games I decided to go ahead and purchase Castle Panic.

It's a bit different to most games we play as it is co-operative. Everyone plays the game together, you either all win or all lose! Basically you have a ring of towers in the middle surrounded by walls and a series of monsters that try to destroy your towers. The game ends when all the monsters are defeated or all of your towers are destroyed.

The kids love it and it has become our go to game! There is a strategy element where you can plan your turn to set up the next players turn in the process. There is also an expansion pack available which I think we will be picking up in the future :)

Current Win/Lose score  4 - 2

BAHAHAHHAHAHA *sigh*

Hmm so far this blog seems to be motorsport heavy doesn't it? I'll fix that next time, because I have something to say and you can't tell me what to do!

The first showing of the V8 Supercars "Highlights" package was on last night. Ok before I explain about it here's a little back story.
The V8 Supercars used to be $25 to go to or free on TV to watch. Then the gate prices started rising so now its around $75 to get in. So we started watching the races on TV instead. Last year a new 'deal' was signed which made the coverage also available on Pay TV in HD. Every race would be shown on both systems. However it ended up being that only a few races will be shown in full on Free to air and the rest will be shown as 1 hour "highlights" packages.

So the first one was on last night, they took 2 races, condensed them into 1 hour of broadcast, including 22 minutes of ads and called it a night. Well that's what I assume happened because I turned it off after the first ad break. They went to the ads on lap 4 and returned at lap 11.... in a 25 lap race.

People say "Just get Foxtel you tight arse" but lets look at some numbers. The MINIMUM package you need to get to be able to watch the V8's (in SD) is $750 a year. That's $750 increase from the $0 last year. Oh sure I'll get the fashion network and pig juggling channel so maybe it is worth it?

So what is the end result to V8 Supercars for the change? Probably very little, I don't follow their Facebook page any more as they post race results before it has been shown on Free to air TV, and I'll start watching one of the rebroadcast streams online instead. If that becomes too awkward I'll just stop following and tell them to shove it, like lots of people are.

Stupid people in your stupid houses!

Once a month I take an hour drive with my daughter to our Herpetology meeting and on the way we go past a place called Oran Park Town.
Each time, with out fail, I explain to her that it makes me sad to see the place. You see many years ago it looked like this....

It was Oran Park raceway. A great little track 30 minutes or so from home that we went to religiously. We would be there for every Super Truck round, every V8 Supercar visit and even some random club events. You could see just about the entire track from just about anywhere you could sit, it had a bridge and a tunnel, a windy bit at the back and a straight coming off an uphill tight corner. It was awesome. We would pack up an esky with rolls and snacks and head off early to get there as the gates opened, it was located in a bit of a hollow so it was always really cold in the morning.

I remember getting there one morning and it belting down rain, so hard that the place pretty much flooded and everyone else took off home. After 10 or 15 minutes it stopped, the sun came out and the racing began. The place was pretty much deserted and it was almost like the whole thing was for us.

Then one day they decided they could make a shed load of money by selling the land off to build a housing estate, in the middle of cow paddocks.

The argument was that we had Eastern Creek (Now Sydney Motorsport Park) about half an hour in the other direction so Oran park wouldn't be missed, but Eastern Creek sucks. As a spectator you can see almost nothing, the Super Trucks can't race there as the straight it too long (They would hit the 160km/h speed limiter 1/3 of the way down it) and it's a bazillion dollars to enter.

Even before I had kids, even before I was married, I thought that Oran Park would always be there and that I'd take my kids there one day. It stopped operating as a full race track in 2008, the year my daughter was born, and now when we drive past it is just an ocean of tile roofs on nondescript houses packed as close together as they can be built. It makes me sad every time....

I'm over that show.....

So it has been brought to my attention that I seem to go off a lot of TV shows.
I start watching them and then for some reason I lose interest. My wife and I will have a list of shows we watch together and then suddenly they become 'her' shows and I find something else to do.

I still watch some shows, Walking Dead, Game of thrones, Top Gear (Well I used to, who knows whats going to happen now) but so many I gave up on long ago (Defiance, Grimm, Helix and so forth). I have a theory... I watch a new series and follow along, sometimes they aren't great but if they are interesting enough I stay with it, and then they go on a mid season break, then come back and air sporadically before having another extended break. If it was just ok then I lose momentum and can't get back into it.

Anyway there is always a lack of good Sci-Fi going on, I guess I'm looking forward to 'The Expanse' because the book series was great, however the trailer looks urgh, I don't know what to think.
Ascension was interesting, hopefully it comes back as a full series it could go anywhere after the way it ended!

Shirts!

Woohoo I ordered some new shirts from Threadless a little while back and they have all arrived yay!

So what did I get?
"Dunk Gizmo", "My Grandma Likes Dinosaurs", "Some People Shouldn't Hi 5", "Ride The Springfield Monorail!" and "Something Strange, In Your Beverage..."

People wonder why I get so many "funny" shirts, I tend to wear them whenever I go somewhere (unless I have to dress 'properly' pffft) because I like them. Why should I wear a serious shirt? There is enough serious stuff always going on and we all need a break from it.

I did warn you that I'm a nerd.. :D

V8's at the F1

Congrats to Ford for their clean sweep of all 4 races at the Melbourne GP this weekend! In typical style they have won the only non points races this year and I look forward to seeing them lingering around the back end of the top 10 in all races to come.....

Ok that's not fair, I've been a long suffering Ford fan and it was good to see them up the front even if the entire event is a hopeless waste of time. Make the damn thing a championship round to make it worthwhile! Stop doing stupid crap like giving them 3 sets of tyres to complete 4 races, yes it adds some minor degree of strategy but people would rather watch them racing flat out. Making them do a rolling start is also kind of pointless as they don't do them any other time of the year. Sure it means that Winterbottom doesn't bog it down on the line and get swamped every start, but it also turns it into a shit fight.

Anyway hopefully the FGX development helps this year and it doesn't turn into another back rubbing session between the Holden team, Officials and commentators.

So on the same topic the channel 10 coverage is god awful, I can't wait to see what they dish up for the next round as it will be the first race to only be shown as a delayed 'Highlights' package urgh!


UPDATE!!

So breaking news this afternoon is that Marcus Ambrose is stepping aside for now!? What the?! After all the carry on about his leaving NASCAR and coming back to kick some bumpers he has raced in 1 championship round and has said it's all too hard.... something odd is going on.

Why am I here?

Why am I here? That's a deep question isn't it! Alas I don't mean it in a deep spiritual 'meaning of life' context but more of a 'Why am I making a blog?' type affair. Basically I'm doing this because I can, I want a place to put down a glimpse of things I've been doing and somewhere I can express (vent) my thoughts even though I know no one will ever see them :)

So who am I?
I'm married with 2 kids and run a small business from home. As I am the only person who will ever read this I can also be open and reveal my biggest secret, It's probably something I should have admitted before getting married and having kids but here it is....

I am a nerd.

Now I don't mean I'm a typical Star Trek/Comic book nerd (Star Wars is better anyway *BOOM*!) but I do enjoy many nerdy things :) Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi podcasts, fantasy novels and animated movies are all a part of my balanced diet.
I also like motorsport and reptiles :)

So that's probably enough about me for the time being, my plan is to post small amounts of myself often (like some kind of twisted character from one of my wifes criminal tv shows).

Live long and prosper... (I can't think of a good Star Wars sign off for this post dammit!)