Good by MinX!

We finally sold our beloved MX-5 the minx.... It's nice to have it sold and not have to be shelling out for the car park but we will miss you!

Biking and Zachary...

At the moment I'm not doing much (read any) cycling since Zachary came along. It's not as much of a complain as it sounds. The time I'd normally be riding I actually get to walk along the river watching the sunrise pushing the pram.

I have been toying with the idea of combining the two though. While pushing the pram is nice it has limited distance capabilities. I did find the ideal option the Taga bike pram

Unfortunately I haven't found anywhere in Australia that you can buy them. However, on the weekend I stumbled across what seemed to be the perfect alternative, the Gazelle Cabby.

    

It looks like a great design and has all the bases covered, admittedly it's not the coolest looking bike around but not many of the kid+riding options have "cool" written on them. The biggest problem is the cost with this one... $3500 is a lot for a bike (considering my current bike set me back less than $200). It almost comes in as a car replacement, being able to make trips to the shops and city with groceries in tow (lets face it, that carry spot in the front is as big as the boot in the MX-5) but I still haven't talked myself into the justification yet.

There are other alternatives such as the trailer and seat. The seat is out at the moment as Zachary is still too little. The trailer I have some (probably unfounded) reservations about with concerns of traffic. There are some trailer options on ebay for a much more reasonable cost that also turn into jogging prams (which means you've still got baby transport options when you arrive at your destination).

The trailer is the obvious fiscal choice but for the moment, I'm going to be sitting on the fence trying to talk myself into the $3500 car/bike/shopping trolley  hybrid.

A picnic, a fabulous weekend and organising the appleTV

For my b'day festivus last weekend we planned on going for a picnic, with the weather we had to cancel (not bad thing still had a fantastic party at home) but today we had the picnic over again.

It was brilliant, a beautiful day (although a little too much sun judging by my arms) and super relaxing. We went for brunch and stayed until about 10:30...

Picnic in the Park (April 09)

There was only a small (but hilarious FAIL) with the butter the whole day. It really was the perfect way to finish a fabulous weekend. The source of it's fabulousness was that I managed to achieve exactly nothing. Saturday I pottered around, caught up with some friends and progressed a little further through GTA:CTW (if you own a DS you should really pick up this game if you're after a more adult experience than the 4000th revision of Pokemon). Today was a wander along the river, then one to New Farm Park for a picnic and then home. I had started a whole list of jobs to get done this weekend and unsurprisingly that list is still standing... just the way the weekend should be.

The only thing that can partially be labelled acheivement is some organisation of my itunes  and iphoto library. Having the AppleTV has meant that I'm seeing a lot more photos while I've got music playing so I've been sorting through albums both old and new trying to get a good selection of photos. I've also discovered that I lot of CDs I own haven't made it to the itunes library so I've been moving the CDs over to the iMac while I've been sorting through the photos. As a result I've also got some more photos to upload so in no specific order here are few more albums

Holiday on the Beach (April 09)

Zachary and his cousins

Zach's first ferry trip

Misc Zachary Shots

What is it with us and loud neighbours

I'll warn you now this blog post is going to be a whiny one... read on
at your own peril.

It seams that we seem to have a run of noisy neighbours. For quite
some time we had the techno junkies living on one side of us. Their
music wasn't too loud so m:uch as just their sub. I couldn't hear the
rest if the track but the sub was so loud and close to our wall that
all I heard was the sub track. It was so loud that we had to take the
pictures off the wall they vibrated enough to knock one off the wall.

Those neighbours have left and we have new ones on the other side of
us. I think they are worse (better the devil you know I guess). These
guys play their music so loud that I can't hear my tv (ok so I could
turn it up louder I'm sure the THX speakers and 500w sub would be
happy to oblidge but this at my normal listening level). It feels like
they only have about 6 songs on their play list: TLC, Whitney Huston,
Seal, Destiny's Child, Sophie B. Hawkins and the Summer Days song by
Pez. They top it off with yelling along with the music or just
yelling. I don't know if it's because it's uni holidays but they are
just playing the music all day. thankfully the yappy little dog that
came with them is gone. I'm currently working on a retaliation
playlist consisting of every wall shaking bass track i can think of.

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Sent from my mobile device

Birthday Festivities

Yesterday we had a fantastic party for my birthday even if the weather
chimed in and forced the picnic to plan B indoor venue at our place.

A huge thankyou to everyone who came along to make it a great day and
for all the great gifts.

A special thankyou to everyone who kicked on to blowfly and ensured I
had entirely too many moscow mules. The hangover and cab trip to
church at 4 (because I was still drunk) was totally worth it.e

--
Sent from my mobile device

is this the death of twitter?

My twitterverse is broken, no updates for the last 20hrs and my
updates disappear... is twitter dead?

without thw twitterverse how will i know what is going on? i feel so alone..

btw i'm at the farmer's market at the powerhouse and there are so many people...

phew a status update. i feel better already

--
Sent from my mobile device

Birthday List.... (better late than never)

Ok, so it's my birthday coming up and a few people have asked about Birthday lists. So here goes (easy ones first)

Microsoft Points for the Xbox 360

WiiPoints

iTunes Gift Cards (Can you tell I just got an appleTV?)

New DSi Console

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars DS

Chrono Trigger DS

Fire Emblem DS

MadWorld Wii

House of the Dead: Overkill Wii

Street Fighter IV 360

Fable 2 360

T-Shirts (Gaming/Geek related)

Some Sleep...

Mario Kart Slot Car Set

That's about all I can think about at the moment...

Street Fighter Arcade Stick (360)

AppleTV - A Story of Bandwidth...

This month I picked my latest (and possibly last... but more on that later) piece of gear for my home theatre setup, an AppleTV. Since having Foxtel I've cut down on the number of DVDs/Blurays I've been buying as most of the new releases I've been catching on the Foxtel Box Office. Although the sound quality on the Foxtel Service is not as high as some (but not actually that many) of the  Blu Rays (Dolby Digital vs TrueHD) realistically it's rare that I could have it at a volume level that it would make a difference.  This is where the AppleTV comes in.

Having never been big on *ahem* downloading movies I've never gone down the path of having a media server for my system. iTunes, however now offers a pretty wide variety of new release and older movies for download/streaming which makes the AppleTV pretty attractive. The cost of new releases is about the same as Foxtel (both SD and HD) but the big advantage of iTunes is they don't disappear off the watchable list after a period of time, they just get cheaper. You can also choose to download the movie on a more perminent basis for about the same price as a DVD.

The interface is great and you can start the movie as soon as you've queued enough of the show, which is surprising quick even with HD content (which is lucky as waiting for the full movie in HD to download could take a while... see D). I think it would even pass the Parental test for interface.

The big key though is that it's not just iTunes content available it also has all the podcasts and youtube videos so if you don't feel like shelling out for itunes content.

The only downside would be it's bandwidth sucking capabilities... 

My monthly usage

A - BSG Finale Episodes

B - Mad Men Series one and Eagle Eye

C - Dr Horrible's Sing along Blog

D - Prince Caspian in HD

Total - approx 19GB

On the plus side though I'm with iiNet which gives you all downloads from iTunes for free.

Overall I'm really happy with the unit, the interface is great and the range of TV, Movies, Podcasts and Youtube gives you endless viewing potential... oh and i almost forgot... the trailers.... so many trailers.

The reason it's probably the last gadget for my setup is because I've really run out of things I could possibly want.... JB Hifi is dead to me