Wish List... Updated...

It's not long until my Birthday so I've done a bit of an update to my wish lists. I will probably update it a few more times before my birthday comes around.

In other news, my eye is much better and I'm back on the laptop (as you can tell). I've also had a fair bit of time to game while I've been away from work so I've been playing the 360 and the Wii a fair bit.

I downloaded N+ from XBLA and it's a fantastically frustrating game. It's not long, not visually stunning but just so addictive... If you've got a 13Mb free it's totally worth the download. I've gone back and put some more hours into Oblivion (there are just too many side quests!!! TOO MANY!)

I also spent some time with Connect360 and now finally have the 360 functioning as a media centre. Content is really the only issue... the HD podcasts form iTunes are good and it also means I don't have to set up the PVR for the ABC shows (like Good Game) but some Movie downloads would be nice.

Laptop has Landed

Although I'm home today I am back into the swing of work, which is lucky because my new Dell XPS M1330 turned up today... I must say it is very bright and shiny. 4Gb Ram, 320Gb HDD. It's running Vista (because that was the only build option) but so far it's not caused me any pain. I may rebuild it but for the moment I'm just adding all my usual work junk to it.

(my favourite feature... HDMI port, although I haven't hooked it up to the projector yet)

Fishing Adventure...

I'm still techincally on a PC ban, so here's a quick update. Went to my uncle's for a fishing trip on his boat... Photos below and an excert from the captain's log.

Fishing Trip on the Raven

Hi from Captain Bob,
I bet you are sick of hearing from me but I ned to keep you informed.
The day started badly with terrible rainy weather but Captain Bob used his meterological skills to asses the conditions and decided to go ahead with the planned voyage. Nephew Cameron and his wife Vanessa looked forward to an exciting day with Venessa out to catch her first fish ever. A big responsibility for Captain Bob. We had a perfect start except for the outboard on the little boat. Captain Cameron (in training )
took the boat to the hole in perfect conditions. Hardly any body about and we anchored on the spot. Bites were hard to come by and Vanessa missed a good fish. some little snapper were caught but all was not well. Out came the secret weapons, the tins of Sardines in jelly and over they went. Vanessa was focused and rewarded with a nice Cod(her first fish ever)She only caught it because we brought out food. Things were quiet with turtles everywhere after the Sardines in Jelly.
More food and more fish would come. Sure enough Cameron brought in a big flathead of all things. we tried drifting but no more bites so we headed home as the sky blackened.
A smooth trip home and Cameron use the Satellite Navigation on his phone to pinpoint the hole and measure our speed and distance travelled. The Raven was cruising at 10km/hr and the hole was 7.3km from Redland Bay.
On arrival back home we took a picture of Cameron and Vanessa holding their fish but Vanessa screamed and dropped hers when it moved.
A great day and how much longer can the Raven keep going before it plays its next trip.
Signing off from another great voyage-Captain Bob.

This post brought to you by the wii.

Does this answer your question on how I'm coping Ben?

Check out Vanessa's Blog if you're confused as to why I'm using the Wii...

IT LIVES!!!!!

Ok, first I know I said I wasn't going to blog but this was worth it...

A few weeks ago (as some of you may recall) my DS met with some foul play and ended up not looking in the best of health.

Amaya gave me the idea (and link) to recase my DS instead of shopping for a new one... So I order a black DS case and the plan for the Panda DS began...

The case turned up during the week so this afternoon I canabalised the old DS, combined it with the new DS and the Frankenstein Panda DS was born!!!!

The whole thing took only a couple of hours and apart from one small hickup with a connector that took a little trouble shooting it's back together and working. (the pics of the whole process are below)

DS Panda Frankenstein

Happy Easter!!!!

I know it's a little early but I'm heading home for the long weekend and a week off so I thought I'd get in early as I'm going to try not to use my laptop much... unless of course my new laptop turns up.

Oh in response to Mick's post this week.... here's an email I got this week...

Customer 2 (in Sydney) would like Cameron to assist with the New Project. I appreciate Cameron is a little tied up at the moment with Customer 1 (also in Sydney), however Customer 2 want this work carried out ASAP. Therefore dare I request that we ask Cameron to work on this for say 4 hours per night with Customer 2 until it is finished?

'nuf said (not there was not complaining... I could have said "harden up princess", but didn't)

In other news, my DS may soon be on the mend with the case turning up this week. Also another pile of HD titles apparently turned up so there will be a lot of movie watching in my future I can foresee..

22mins until I head home....

Can you tell I'm excited to be going home? it's HOLIDAYS next week!!!!

Region Free....What's it worth?

How much is too much to pay to discover if my player is Region Free. According to one of the forums the early firmwares of my player allowed all regions to play. The trick is no one seems to know if that's for sure or if they have locked it down....

The Curse of the Golden Flower is $14.95 on Amazon... is that too much?

Of course if it is region free... Blu ray discs suddenly become a lot cheaper.

Who needs a DS... Warlords ONLINE

The makers of Puzzle Quest have released an MMO.

I think Joystiq summed it up well.

Sorry have to get back to Warlords now.

Ironic Dinner

On top of everything else this week, I ordered the "Spanish Style olive rubbed Chicken Breast" for dinner. Turns out Spanish style means on a bed of Seafood Paella. There were more prawns, scallops and other shellfish than there was chicken. Lucky I ordered a side of steamed veg, because that was my dinner....

Back to Sydney.....Again

Well, as you can tell from the title, I'm off to Sydney. Not much else to report except I'm really busy... Stupidly busy in fact.

I'd post more but it's all work related...

Oh and I got more HDs in the mail... (again not a big surprise)

A day at home with some Big Kid's Lego

After a trip to Ikea (aka Lego) last weekend I finally got around to putting the last of our purchases. It's really just like a big lego project...

Lego for Big Kids

There is still the doors to align (as you can see in the photos) but I did manage to get them together before singing.

Is it worth getting old movies in HiDef?

On Thursday night while we were waiting for a table, we were talking about whether you'd notice the difference in quality of old movies on the new HiDef formats. Specifically we were talking about films like Casablanca, which is a classic among classics. There is no argument that it's a great film but would something that old really benefit from a 1080p transfer. Yesterday when I got home some of my Amazon shipments turned up among them was Enter the Dragon, definitely more cult than classic but it was interesting to see just how it held up more than 25 years after it was shot.

Apart from the shots having a very 70s feel about them, the general presentation of the film was outstanding. It looked really crisp and the colours were bold and vibrant, the production values were not as high as a more recent film but it still presented better than a lot of dvds.

It still remains to be seen how this would look on something like Casablanca but I guess that will only be decided if I bite the bullet and order it from Amazon.

What to blog....

Ness berated me earlier for not blogging enough so I promised a post tonight. The trouble is I'm not sure what to post about...

First up on the weekend (which I didn't do much posting about) we had a few movie sessions. I trotted out a couple of titles from the (ever growing) HD catalog. We also had a chance to test it out with the new furniture we managed to pick up.
Tom took this great photo (which looks like it should be in a Real Living). The couch is fantastic for watching movies adn the new rug is great under foot (especially while you're playing Wii Tennis).

In the best news since my DS was broken I discovered that you can get full replacement cases online. I've put my order in and hopefully it will arrive by the weekend and my frakenDS will be born!

It's been a bit of an odd week with a midweek flight down and only a couple of nights in Sydney. Hopefully it's a continuing trend until the end of my Sydney project. There are a few more travel projects on the horizon but hopefully we can keep to the 3 days away 4 days home model.

Tonight I had a great dinner out with Amaya and Mikey at Ichi-ban Boshi. It took about an hour to get in, but it was worth it! It was surprisingly alcohol free but a good feed never the less.

There isn't much planned for the weekend. I might attempt a couple of movies and there is always the odd TV show to catch up on.

Early flights are good for some things

Yes I'm back at the airport again, I'm off to Sydney for the rest of the week. As a result I was up fairly early (and unsurprisingly on the net) which meant I could catch a few more of the HD sales early and pick up some titles before they sell out.

I hadn't been buying DVDs for a while (mostly because I was holding out for the high def formats) but with all the HD sales there has been a bit of a flood and my HD library has grown very quickly.

Well my flight is boarding so that's it until Sydney.