Wedding Plans in full swing....

So we've got the wedding plans almost all done!
We managed to actually get around to setting up a registry on the
weekend and a wedding blog. http://CamAndNess.blogspot.com has all the
details of the gift registry and some other gift ideas if you're
looking for ideas.

Ahhh... Alcohol

Yesterday was a very alcohol fueled day. I went barefoot bowling down at New Farm bowls club as a bit of a boys day/morning out. I have to admit that any "sport" where you can happily knock back quite a few drinks has to have a tick in my book, especially when you start playing at 10am and it's expected that you've had at least one round before you take the green!

It was great fun, I have to admit it's much more fun to play than it ever looks in any ABC telecasts, probably because most of the players don't have the bowl in one hand and a beer in the other. The only real draw back of the day, apart from my team getting their butts kicked 11-1 in the first round, was the fact that I didn't really take sun protection into account and now am feeling a little on the tender side.

Also on the alcohol front, went out for a great dinner with a very good friend from my last job which resulted in lots of scotches and glasses of wine. This seemed like a perfectly good way to pass the evening... that is until this morning. Although I don't have a hang over my voice isn't exactly in the best of form and I have to sing in under two hours... I think it's going to be a long warm up this morning.

Bread, glorious bread!

It's seems strange that this is the first time we've been to Sol Breads, as it's about 300m from our house, but better late than never I guess. We picked up a Rice and Polenta loaf yesterday to have with breakfast and it was simply wonderful. It's just about the densest bread I've ever had, the loaf was about half the size of a normal loaf but weighs 850grams. The only bad thing is they only bake it on Mondays and Saturdays :(

Drink coffee

I love this quote i saw on the way home -'drink coffee, do stupid things even faster'

It's a sad day...The Wharfedales are officially for sale!

As of today my beloved old speakers are on the market.
Front Speakers - Wharfedale Diamond 8.4 (black Ash Finish)
Centre Speaker - Wharfedale Diamond Centre(black Ash Finish)
Rear Speakers - Wharfedale WH2 Diapole Rears (White Finish)
Centre Rear Speaker - Wharfedale WH2 Centre(White Finish)

There is a brochure on the Diamond 8 series here and the one on the WH2 series here.

They've given me many wonderful hours of service but with the Jamos firmly settled in it's time they moved onto a new home.

It's truly a sad day :(

The Intenet is dead! Long live the Internet

I woke up to a very disturbing thing this morning.... a dead ADSL router. I've been having numerous problems with my router for a few weeks now. The Wireless has been dropping out, blunt refusal to talk to the internet on either wireless or ethernet. This morning I woke to
an horrid discover, all the ethernet ports have died. There is no signal to any PC/Mac on any port. Of course, last night I was getting a lot of wireless activity while all my wireless devices are off, so I turned off the wireless access point. So now with no ethernet ports there is no way to access the box. Even a hard reset of the box doesn't seem to help. The 10 emails containg pages of errors from the box yesterday should have indicated not everything was happy.

So now I have to go out and find a new router so I can again be on the internet! "Go Web!"

What anime series to start?

I've had an awfully strange craving lately to watch some good anime. I think it comes from watching the new Starwars: Clone Wars Vol 2 DVD, not having seen Howl's Moving Castle when it was at the cinema and finishing the Robotech Boxsets I have. The blockbuster that I've been walking past on the way home has about the biggest anime collection I've ever seen, but the trouble is picking one to start? With about 50 billion different series and then the different series within the series I just can't pick one to start.

Being a Robotech fan in my younger days Gundam was a fairly obvious choice, but then do you choose Seed, or Wing or any of the other versions that are out there. Ninja scroll and Ghost in the Shell are two of my favourite movies which only makes the choices even wider!

HELP! Basically I think I want someone to say, this series is good... start with that one... Oh wait... that's what the internet is for! To the forums! "Go Web!"

Woohoo New Games

I love EB sales (well the good ones anyway). I picked up the sequel to one of my favourite games on the Cube, Viewtiful Joe. It's one of the best side scrolling platforms around, just about the right amount of action and combos with puzzles all based on timing. I admit it's not everyones cup of tea, but I'm hooked.
The unfortunate thing is with the number of games that I've got recently there is a real backlog starting to emerge. That combined with the time spent on the Wedding Machine! is really reducing the amount of time I've had for gaming. I haven't even been able to sneak much time in on the DS as I've been walking to work every day.

In other news I've made the decision to let my Wharfedales move on to a new home. Now the Jamos have taken up residence they are simply sitting in the lounge room taking up space. I had every intention of keeping them as a music setup but with the amount of time I actually get to just listen to music (ie none) they are wasted. So if you know anyone looking for a new speaker setup, I know some that are very loved and need to go to a good home.

TRAGEDY

For the last couple of weeks Ness and I have been actually getting in some tv time. We bought Season 5 of The Simpsons and have been gradually working our way through the season. It has some classic episodes (like Bart gets an elephant and the squishy bender) along with some that I haven't seen before. It's been a great mindless pastime just lounging back and soaking up the cathode rays!

Last night however, tragedy! We finished the season! Now we are lost... we must go out in search of some more mindless TV!

Resolution to Flickr more

I've been trying to put in a more concerted effort in documenting the photos that I take on Flickr. I've setup my phone so I can push the photos straight to my photo stream. I though this way I could keep most of the good-ish scenes that I spot.Hopefully I can capture at least one really interesting image...

The evil evil cycle of upgrades.

This being the previously stipulated "Year of Vanessa!" means the changes to the current home theatre setup are going to be few and far between. So Yamaha in a direct attack on the "Year of Vanessa!" have release some new amplifiers with some amazing new features.

The RX-V2600 and RX-V1600 are the world's first receivers in their class to offer 2-in/1-out HDMI switching with up-conversion features. This process provides the most advanced method of delivering high-quality video to a home theater system that allows the user to enjoy DVD and satellite TV with HD quality. Compatible with the HDMI Ver. 1.1 format, they can also decode digital audio signals including DVD-Audio, CD, Dolby Digital and DTS.

Both receivers allow video composite, S-Video and component signals to be up-converted to HDMI output, with a TBC (Time Base Corrector) that stabilizes the video signal. A video de-interlacer superior to any other in this class of receiver effectively delivers best-quality progressive video images. The RX-V2600 can convert 480p signals to HD resolutions (720p, 1080i), and is the first and only receiver in its class to offer the benefits of superior up-scaling technologies.

These models also include HDTV (720p/1080i) compatibility via a Component Video UP Conversion feature, which can upgrade composite and S-video signals to component video format for ease of installation. The receivers allow users to plug an XM Connect-and-Play home antenna and activate the XM Radio service to receive more than 150 news, sports and entertainment digital radio channels. The XM Connect-and-Play home antenna is capable of receiving XM's satellite and terrestrial signals as well as channel tuning, decoding and audio transmission. It is the only accessory needed to receive XM Radio through the Yamaha XM-ready AV receiver. Yamaha is the first manufacturer in the industry to incorporate XM-ready technology into high-quality home AV receivers.

Makes my poor little RXV-2200 look positively outdated! Making me consider trading up.... I wonder if they'd do a one for one swap. They even include THX select certification which would sit in just nicely with my new Jamo D6 PTX speakers.

On that note the speakers have been a welcomed upgrade over the Wharfedale diamond system that they replaced. Not to say the that Wharfedales were bad by any streatch of the imagination but they were somewhat dwarfed by the open area they had to fill in our new house. With music they filled the room efficiently but without a sub and relying on the D8.4 to provide all the bass just didn't do justice to the room. The new D6 Sub however seems to make short work of the problem though. Watching the Starwars: Clone Wars animated series last night really demostrated the scale that could be produced as an ever increasing number of starships entered the scene.

Mounted the surround speakers on the roof has really payed off in the stearing of surround effects in the room. The scene where General Grievous is walking on the roof was conveyed with such realism that I actually thought something had hit the roof above me! I have to say the Jamos have been one of the best upgrade purchases I've made!

The other upgrade that I've been seriously considering and is partially sanctioned in the "Year of Vanessa" is the upgrade of my camera. It's a pretty big upgrade (because I don't have one yet). I'm looking at something with manual focus but without heading to a full SLR so the first two that come to mind are the Fuji Finepix S9500 and the Panasonic Lumix FZ-30. I'd like to have something to take some nice photos while we're on our honeymoon and I get frustrated by the auto focuses on the standard digitals never hiting the right lenght.

There is a dog in the office?

I'm on a customer site and one of the staff has their dog (not a guide dog etc) wandering around the office? Bizarre!! Nuf said!

Just not right

As I was writing the last post i passed a sign advertising 'wine in a can'

Why is it so dark?

Well it's been an exciting night! We booked our place for the wedding and reception. Now for the first time in our new place we have a blackout. In fact the whole suburb is out. Ness is currently filling the place with candles!

Straight back into it!

Thinking I could come back from my holidays and ease back into work was probably a little optimistic. The week has been pretty crazy so far and it's only just thusday! With the combination me work and wedding i've had very little time for anything else. Hopefully the major part in the wedding preparations will be posted out by the end of the week and it will be smooth sailing from there.

Just a nighter

It's a bit late but i thought i better get around to posting about the cricket. A little bit out of the blue Tom organised tickets for the 20-20 match between the Aussies and Sth. Africa. I didn't think i would get into the new format, but it was great. The perfect amount of smashing without having to commit the whole day. I think i'll be booking in for any more that head to the Gabba!

Holiday Catch Up

Well I had a pretty exciting holiday (which included a holiday from blogging), here's a bit of a run down (in no particular order) :-

• Got Engaged (obviously the most important event in the list)
• Picked up my Jamo PTX D6 Speakers
• Rearraged the Home-Theatre Kit to accomodate new speakers
• Mounted the new Dipole rears to the roof
  
• Caught up on a few DVDs
  
• Saw Narnia - fairly well done, the child actors were very impressive in comparison to a previous run of child stars
• Saw Chicken Little - 1hour 10minutes of my life I'll never get back
  
• Saw Fantastic Four - Most Disappoint Final Fight
  
• Got out in the surf for the first time in about a year.
• Picked up Hulk: Ulitmate Destruction, Soul Calibur for the GameCube
• Picked up Capcom vs SNK for the X-Box
• Got shelving for the two studies
• Bought a Microwave
  
• Didn't do ANY work
• Tried (and failed) to buy a new Car
• Played Fighting games on the Xbox until I got blisters on my thumbs... Hadouken!
  
• Broke my addiction to MarioKart DS but getting addicted to Ouendan!
  

She said 'Yes!'

I proposed to Vanessa on Thusday night at the stamford after dinner at restaurant Two. So now we're getting married!