New Cabinets?

I've been looking for some additions to my stereo cabinets for a while and have even been toying with the idea of getting some custom cabinets built. After a fair bit of searching though I've stumbled on this modular solution which seems to be the perfect solution. The ModulModul solution by Finite Element allows you to build customer cabinets with clever storage and consealing techniques.
It seems to be the perfect solution and there are some great ideas for the solution that they've demonstrated really well in their solution movie. There is even a distributer in Australia. Now all I need is the price.

It really is wet...

Road flooded, rain is just pelting down... I even bought an umbrella.

A not so beautiful day in Sydney

Yesterday I took a photo of the view from my hotel, a great view of the bridge. Today though isn't quite as nice, it's positively wet and dismal today.
This is what it looked like yesterday...
Fortunately it's only about a 2 minute walk to the office here so at least I won't get too wet (without an umbrella).

This week is only a short travel week with a flight back on Wednesday but that I think just makes up for the Sunday -> Sunday Travel next week, including a Townsville to Sydney flight somewhere in the middle.

I also posted the food photos from lunch on the weekend.

The Greg Cooley Wine Tasting Lunch

Just a short follow up post to add the photos of the great food.
Entree - Sand Crab on Green Tea noodles (I didn't eat this one)
2nd Course - Goat's Cheese and Beetroot stack
3rd Course - Pork Belly
4th Course - Wagyu

The Big Ticket Wii Releases keep coming

This week is the release for probably the biggest title on the Wii this year.. Super Mario Galaxy

It's been a big few weeks for the Wii after so many weeks/months of hardly any titles...
24th October 2007 Guitar Hero 3
7th November 2007 Lego Star Wars Saga
8th November 2007 The Simpsons
8th November 2007 Metroid Prime 3 Corruption
8th November 2007 Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
8th November 2007 EA Playground
15th November 2007 Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
22nd November 2007 Mario And Sonic At The Olympic Games
23rd November 2007 Pokemon Battle Revolution
29th November 2007 Super Mario Galaxy

Now all I have to do is decide how many of them I can justify.

Yet another Monday Breakfast at the airport....

In what is becoming an all too familiar Monday morning ritual, I'm having breakfast in the Virgin Blue Lounge again. On a bright note on the travel though I have almost enough points to get to the UK and back.

After planning on having a quite weekend together with all the travelling we only managed it a little on Friday and Sunday.

Friday night we tried out a new local Red Room DVD store, someone had recommended. I've never been big on hiring DVDs usually preferring to buy most of the title that I like. We were only looking for a trashy movie experience so it seemed the perfect time to try it out. It's a pretty impressive system allowing you to reserve titles from there web as well as instore and all the titles are held in a storage system saving the endless walk up and down shelves. They also charge based on how long you have the title so if you can get it back in 6 hours it's only about $3, you can even opt to keep the title... for a fee of course.

Saturday was a bit of a marathon of eating with morning tea, followed by a Wine lunch at Bespoke and then an Election BBQ at Mandy's.

Lunch was fantastic. The event was for Greg Cooley Wines and was a matched degustation menu. Probably the longest lunch I've been to in a while, which we skipped out early at 5pm, with just enough time for us to make it to the polling booths before heading to the BBQ. In what was slightly unexpected for a young wine maker the Reds were much more impressive than their white selection but we still managed to leave without any! I took some photos of the meals but I have yet to upload them so you'll have to wait.

Yesterday, after singing in the morning, Ness pottered around the house and I finished off some work I didn't get around to on Friday.

This morning I'm off to Sydney (and delayed 20 mins already due to traffic control) but a relatively short trip with only 2 nights before I'm heading back.

The wedding photos are up!

I had a bit of time this morning after I got in from Townsville and I've put the rest of the photos from Andrew's and Kat's Wedding up.

They aren't all captioned yet but that might be a job for tonight! Here's a quick sample though

Up before the sun

6am flights aren't the best fun... the least fun part is the getting up before the sun!

I'll be back in Brisbane today and the flight should give me some time to get a few more missions done in Call of Duty 4 or finish a couple of quests in Orcs and Elves.

Most of my gaming at the moment is on the DS with all the travel. Orcs and Elves is a nod back to the old skool RPG (when it was a few people sitting around a table) genre. It incorporates a grid based move system and completely turn based combat system but that's what gives the game it's charm. The graphics are very remenisent of Doom 1 (&2) but again adding to the charm of the games retro feel. Probably only worth picking up though if you remember the old RPG days or every played the first D&D PC games (like Eye of the Beholder).

Call of Duty 4 for th DS though pushes the console to produce another good FPS. Still not as polished as Metroid Prime: Hunters, but still a great title. The graphics are great and the action is frantic pushing you to press on to each new mission. It's turned into a hard title to put down. The only real disappointments is the lack of online for the game or co-op multiplayer, it does support 4 player deathmatch from a single cart though.

Heading home early

Due to a few issues up in Townsville today I'm getting to head back early. I've got to head out at 6am and next week I'll have to do double travel week, but it will be nice to be home early.

The weather is getting hot for the end of the week so it's probably not a bad time to be heading home.

I'm planning a bit more work on the blog tonight before an early night ready for the flight.

Template updated.... again

So after doing some work on the blog yesterday I had a quick look at Ness's blog and realised that we had the same base template... Clearly that had to change so I've picked another base template. Unfortunately I don't have enough time this morning to do any major changes to the base template so this is how it's going to stay for most of the day.

Until the next update...

Also, in the news today (only interesting really because of all the historic sites that we saw in Rome) they have discovered a cavern believe to be that she-wolf suckled Rome's founders Romulus and Remus. At least now we have a reason for going back soon!

Europe Photos, some more

I've started uploading the photos I took on my real camera while we were overseas.

Holiday Post Cards

I've called the album Postcards from Europe and I'm including all the big attraction photos of the trip. One of the best things about the upload is there is a new feature from Blogger allowing you to put the photos in a slideshow in the blog (I'm going to leave all the camera phone photos up as well). As a result I've done a bit of a redesign of the layout of the blog... There's still a bit of work to do but I figure there will be a bit of time to play around while I'm in Townsville this week. I don't have many more photos but there will probably be some more changes to the blog.

Speaking of Townsville, for dinner tonight we went to the Watermark Restaurant on the The Stand and they had the most fantastic Orange and Chocolate Brulee for desert. If you're in Townsville it's worth a look.

Party Weekends....

It is coming into the silly season and most of our weekends are filled with parties. The last two have been no different. I finally got around to putting up some of the photos from Bee's Birthday Bash and Andrew and Kathleen's Wedding.

There are a few more to come from the wedding but it's a start.

Andrew and Kat's Wedding

Bee's 80s Birthday Bash

Delayed... Again

It seems to be a recurring theme with trips to the airport at the moment... the big theme is delay. Every flight I've had since I've got back has been delayed and today's is no different... Fortunately my Dad very kindly drove me in today so I had someone to chat to in the VB Lounge.

With all the time I'm spending in airports it's becoming a bit of a pain... hopefully it improves soon.

Traffic....

It's been a long time since I've had to travel on the Southeast freeway from Loganholme in peak hour. This morning however after Andrew and Kat's Wedding (more on that once the photos are up) in Tamborine Mountain we're experincing the joy of the commute from the hyperdome. There isn't much joy. We left Tamborine at 6:45 this morning and now as it's nearing 8am we're just at Garden City. It's been very much bumper to bumper just after getting onto the freeway at Beenleigh. Fortunately Tom is driving in the 430 SEL so there is enough room in the back for me to use the lappy (actually there'd be enough room for us to get a couple of dual display 20" setups in the back here.

I don't think I'll be complaining about the 30 minute bus ride in for quite a while!

A little of (GF) Spain in Sydney

First of all I'm going to make an effort to do a few more posts.... Last night, however, I went out to dinner with a Vendor and they took us to a Spanish Restaurant on Oxford st called Raquels Spanish Kitchen. The food was fantastic, but the most impressive thing was the service. We had a largish table and ordered the Banquet. The thing that really surprised me was they asked if anyone needed specially dietary requirements. Normally in big groups like that I just steer clear of anything that might be risky, after telling them I was both Seafood and Gluten Free they not only brought out special meals just for my needs (included as part of the banquet) they also went to great lengths to ensure that the rest of the food was not placed too close to my food and told me which dish I could and couldn't eat.

It was a level of service for dietary requirements I've never seen before (even in restaurants that are big on Gluten Free menus). To top it off the food was great and it was the best Patatas Bravas I've had since we were at the Taxidermista in Barcelona. The food was quite authentic and there quantities were well and truly more than any of us could eat... We were all completely full even before the Paella came out.

I would definitely head there if you were looking for some nice Spanish cuisine

Europe 2007 - It's OVER! (aka the Summary)

It's a been a full two weeks now since we've been back and had a chance to get a good dose of reality and remember all of the things we would rather be doing had it been a few weeks earlier.

(Sorry it's taken so long but I'm travelling again for work and it's reduced the blogging time significantly)

As a close to the fantastic holiday I thought I would give a summary of the best things about the holiday

First of all the top 5 attractions. I found it so hard to decide what was best they are just the best 5 not in any particular order

Best 5 Attractions

Cameron's	Vanessa's
Ruins Pompeii
Gondola Ride in Venice
Walking the Cinque Terre
Modernism + Gaudi architecture (La Sagrada Familia) in Barcelona
Colosseum

Best 4 Restaurants

Cameron's	Vanessa's
Il Chianti (Rome)
Taxidermista Restaurant Barcelona
Le Torri di Bagnara Umbria
Restaurante El Churrasco

Best 3 Hotels

Cameron's	Vanessa's
Le Torri di Bagnara Umbria
Guest House in Venice
Castle Steps Prague