Chalk up another Premium Upgrade

I’m flying back to Sydney today and I’ve been lucky enough to get another upgrade to Premium which will be nice to get a bit of shut eye and miss all the school holiday kids on their way home... The big thing with the Red Seats is not so much the leg room but the extra arm room which makes using the laptop an option without having to dig my elbows into my next door neighbour.

It’s been a fairly quiet week, but it’s been great to be home (for what seems like an eternity but really only a bit over a week). I’ve caught up with a bit of gaming and some recorded TV. The big gaming addition for the week was Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which is just like the Game Cube version but better. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea (even if you are a fan of the fighting genre). It’s currently up there alternating with Mario Kart as my no1 Wii game (although I am trying to put in some Wii fit time every day, except today). Mandy and I put in a few tracks online last night with mostly favourable results... My online rating is slowly climbing towards 7000. It’s a brilliant concept having dual screen play online, human players are always more fun to take on than the AI and it’s often you’ve only got one other player around...

We’re slowly moving towards being ready for the new arrival. We’ve order a few more bits of furniture and started clearing out a lot of the stuff we don’t use. It’s getting close to serious with the stereo wiring with hopefully a few quotes rolling in next week. I think we’ve decided on colours for painting so hopefully that won’t be too far away either.

The Tivoli setup has got a surprising amount of use. I’ve found myself just flicking it on in the mornings when I get up or at night when I get home rather than firing up the projector. Tom lent me a phono stage to do some testing with the Project turntable and it’s the best sound I’ve got out of it since I’ve had it. The DAFT PUNK LP kicked out really well and even when the bass kicked in it still held its own, it’s never going to shake the room (well not before I add the sub at least) but the low frequency don’t cause the unit to sweat too much. Most of its work, though, has been on the radio and I must admit a fair amount of that has been a classical channel. I think because the system just shines on classical music.

On less exciting topics though my laptop is starting to cause me a bit of grief, Vista is crashing on all too regular intervals. Its favourite trick at the moment is to crash and reboot every time it goes to standby. It failed completely earlier in the week and ran an automatic system restore which removed most of the applications that I’d installed since I got it, apparently this was the last “Stable” restore point... Of course it’s only after this that it won’t go to standby anymore.... *sigh*. I’m seriously considering the “upgrade to a more familiar experience” at the moment.

I’m off to Melbourne next week but it’s not actually for work. I’ve cashed in one of the public holidays that I’ve had to work; Ness and I are going to fly down Thursday night for a long weekend away.

That’s about it for this flight to Sydney, it’s time for me to try and claw back a few minutes of sleep...

The post that I just can't finish...

So this is about the 10th time I've tried to blog over this weekend. Maybe a better title would have been the post I can't get past the first line....

First of though some more recent news, I plugged my backup drive in this morning to copy some more backups to it and.... Nothing but some lovely metal on metal clicking sounds... *sigh*

Ok so back onto the weekend. We had a pretty full weekend (at least for me filled with a lot of gaming). Tomas and I had a huge (8 hour) Mario Kart Wii Session online while the girls were out shopping. This was fueled with some awesome (and gigantic) Carrot Cake.

You can just spy my coffee cup hiding just behind the beast!

We also made a bit of a trip to Ikea and setup some Ikea PS gear ready to move all the stuff out of the soon to be nursery.
There is still a bit to go but all the components are built. There is a laptop cabinet that hasn't made it to the wall yet and that display will get mounted up somewhere near it as well. I like the retro/school locker look next to the arcade table.

I've spent a bit of time on Wii Fit as well here and there. I've unlocked most of the games now and they are quite amusing to watch other people shake themselves around trying to ski or hula. I've dropped my Wii Fit age from 40-33 in about 2 days so I think a lot of it is knowing how to play the games.

Foxtel is due here Wednesday and I've prewired the cabinet in preparation hopefully it's a smooth drop in as a result.

Wii (not so ) Fit

Since I've been home this week I've been slack on the blogging so here's a bit of an update.

As everyone is painfully aware (from all the complaining about flying in the last few months of posts) I've been flying back and forth for months now. During this I've done very little in the way of exercise (except for the work down to the hotel restaurant each day). So using that as an excuse to get back into some sort of exercise I picked up a Wii Fit in on of the stock take sales yesterday. The initial body test wasn't so great with a WiiFit age of 40 (feels like Wii Sports and Brain Training all over again).
I figure my need to get better stats (Xbox Live points I'm looking at you) will drive me enough to use it every day so I'll see how it goes. It's set me a goal to reach a BMI (the worlds most completely useless statistic) of 22 so we'll see how my progress with that goes.

Morning from Adelaide

The last couple of days of my week are in Adelaide after a bit of a stretch in Sydney early in the week. I made a bit of a mistake not taking any gaming devices with me this week. Good Game (and work) has filed most of that gap for me though. I haven't been able to watch them during the week (mostly due to a lack of ABC2) so I downloaded a stack of past episodes and I've been slowly churning through them this week. It's a bit of a flight back tomorrow so I've made sure I've got one for the flight home.

Wiiware came out this week in Australia (a little disappointing as I can't be sitting there in front of the screen waiting patiently for the gaming glory to arrive).... Good news though is that it looks like you can share demos with your friends. Dr Mario is on the list for the Game downloads... I'll be sending around a few demos on the weekend I imagine.

Graph of Mario Kart

Amy sent me this great cartoon that pretty accurately maps Mario Kart.... although I think ITSM could definitely take a share of the Mario Kart Slice.

Early Morning Flights

My favourite thing about morning flights, after being delayed of course, is a cancelled flight. You get up at stupid o'clock, cab it out to the airport, check in, try to scoff some breakfast to then be told you're flight was cancelled. I could have slept in to stupid o'clock +30 mins.

Anyway, as you can tell (from the previous post), there was some Mario Kart Wii action at my house last night. Mandy and Tom kindly bought over their copy and we played for a few hours over dinner. I still think it's fantastic (even though it's not my best karting effort ever). There is something about the new mario kart that I can't seem to master... I'm sure it will come in time.

I'm back to Sydney for the rest of the week. I'm meeting my folks there for a bit either side of the weekend (Mum is flying to Sydney for Mother's Day). I've got a double day today (on top of an early start) and I'm feeling tired just typing that. It's a half day requirements session, then a full day project hell, then a few hours on other project that's just starting.

Small update on the new cabinet, I was a little worried about how it would hold up heat wise being fully enclosed. Yesterday was a pretty good test with a full day of music (all be it not very loud) and then about 5 hours of Mario Kart (both the Wii and the Amp are in the same compartment) and while the cabinet was warm it wasn't at overheating levels. The big concern is when the fan forced heater (aka Xbox360) comes back into the cabinet. I have a place for it in a compartment of it's own so at least it won't be sharing it's heat around too much. Speaking of the 360 I started off it's repair process, which turns out isn't going to be a short process. I'm still waiting for a response from MS Support with a case number so I can send it in.

Mario Kart Wii Code

For those looking for some online Mario Kart Action.

CamDS
1032-1880-7138

Message me back your code and I'll add you!

Oh and a small gripe with this... why can't they add a "Send mario kart friend request" from people I already have in my Wii Address book? Why people??

Wii Fit

I haven't picked up any new Wii games for a while, WiiFit and Mario Kart are on the list... but having Rabbids for WiiFit is almost enough grounds to own it.

Mario Kart Wii

Just 'cause it's Mario Kart

Can I take your order???

(So I admit I stole this post name from a chat I was having, sorry Roman)Anyway, I'm taking my geek levels to a new low tonight and I've taken my laptop to dinner in the Hotel Restaurant.

I was getting a bit sick of sitting in a restaurant trying to amuse myself while I ate and the hotel is quite used to "high flyers" working during dinner so some guy in jeans with a laptop doesn't phase them too much.

So a bit of an update on the week...

The Project from Hell which I've been on (and in Sydney for eternity for) is coming close to it's deadlines and despite it's continual scope creep there is no extension to the timeframe we're just working longer hours (because what else would I do I'm in Sydney and apparently may as well work) to fit about 3 months worth of work into 3 weeks. As a result there hasn't been much time for blogging (or catching up the sleep I missed out on. Something I've successfully failed at this week).

Tuesday night though I did manage to get out and have some social time. I caught up with Casey who cooked a fantastic barbecued and flame grilled chicken.
This was followed up by some Mario Kart Wii, I was a little worried how I would hold up after my demise to Mandy and Tom. I managed to pull out a few wins here and there though so it wasn't a complete embarrassment. The new game is fantastic... I was really impressed with the graphics and particularly with the online capabilities. The addition of the Channel so you can check if you have friends online even if you don't have the game in the console is a great improvement over their previous online attempts and a much closer experience to the polish of the Xbox Live interface (disregarding the annoying 12 year olds).

It was a great night and proved that Mario Kart, like pool, is often played better after a couple of scotches.

The rest of the week has been pretty much work slavery so not much else to report.... I managed to slip in an episode of BSG Season 3 though for good measure.

On a side note though I have managed to a lot of music this week (in order to avoid random people from "Project from Hell"s company talking to me about irrelevant things for HOURS on end when I'm already cramming months into weeks)

I'm very much looking forward to getting home this week... I've been a bit homesick this week. I think the combination of overtired, lots of overtime, the endless weeks away and Paris are catching up with me... I'm very much looking forward to the end of May when I'm supposedly starting a project a bit closer to home.... (fingers crossed)

A typical Monday.

So as you can probably guess it was a joyous day today. I won't go into too much detail but i managed to depress myself a little with some travel statistics. My project in sydney was extended today and once it's completed I will have spend 38 out of 52 weeks traveling (I won't go into the stats for the last 26).
In brighter news I managed to region hack the dvd player in my hotel so I could play my imported BSG Razor Dvd.
Mario Kart Wii is due out this week and I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it may waver my Advance Wars addiction on the weekend.
I'm trying to think of a new poll so I'll probably put one up before the end of the week.

The long weekend ends

The long weekend is over and I'm back at the airport (sorry I missed your birthday party Mandy).

We had a pretty good weekend with not a lot happening but some relaxing. We saw "I Am Legend" in gold class, which wasn't the best experience. Was a bit more of a horror movie than most of us were planning (some people didn't make it through the whole thing) and the service was terrible. We order some food with the idea that it would come out 1 hour before the end... They took so long that it came out 10 mins before the end.

I also picked up Ghost Squad on the Wii, which has been great fun. It's just like an arcade light gun shooter should be, although with lots of unlockables.

Well my flight is boarding... more from Sydney

Time for a Gaming post

My update is cugging away in the background so I thought it was a bit of a time for a gaming update (for those who are interested, phase one was going better than expected, phase however got held up by some reporting services but has finished...).

There has been some pretty big gaming changes in the last week. I finally entered the next gen arena with an XBox 360. The graphics do look impressive especially off the HDMI feed in 720p.
Even Ness made comment that the poor Wii looked 'fuzzy' after the 360 dashboard. The 360 has started to make it's way into the stereo as a media streamer. I downloaded the trial (and subsequently payed for) Connect360 application for the iMac and it's been fantastic. It instantly discovered my 360 and indexed my iTunes and iPhoto library and once searching for music on the 360 was available for streaming. I haven't run with any movie streaming as yet but so far it's done everything I would have wanted an AppleTV to do. It's even usable from the harmony which makes it a breeze to use.

On the Nintendo front we've started again on Galaxy and it's just a fantastic game everyone who picks it up loves it. It's far and away the title to own if you have a Wii. The DS has had a fair bit of work the last couple of weeks. I finished the single player campaign of CoD4 last week but had a chance to play some of the multiplayer games tonight during the load phase and it was great fun even with 2 players. The Hunt/Prey mode is a great variation on the standard deathmatch and the maps have been well made to handle the draw distances for the DS console. They also have an unusal setup that allows you to pick your start weapons, which can make for some interesting sniper vs rocket battles. I've also managed to finish Orcs and Elves this week so I'm going to be on the look out for another DS title in the not too distant future. Orcs and Elves was a good game but really only appeals to those who are a fan of the Ulitma Underworld games.

I've got a few more hours to go here and my next phase has finishde so I might have to add some more gaming later

And the Monday airport ritual continues

It's Monday, and in a surprise to almost no one, I'm at the airport. In something that will also fail to surprise, I'm delayed. I knew it was a bad sign when the ETD for the 5:20 flight to Sydney was 7:25. Hopefully I get out of here before then as that's when I was due to land in Sydney. The delay is due to Air traffic control in Sydney pushing back arrivals due to congestion, but how many flights have been in before the 5:25 from Brisbane?

The thing that is the most annoying is the fact I could have done with an extra hours sleep.

In other more exciting news we had a pretty good weekend. Last night Tom & Suse and Mandy & Tom came over to watch the a Very Specky Christmas, as a follow on after we'd been to the live show a few weeks ago. We also managed to fit in a bit of Galaxy, Gears, ZeroPunctuation (NSFW) and Cat Face. Saturday was pretty busy with some Christmas shopping (also some Galaxy shopping as well) before heading to house warming Christmas drinks and Arj Barker (it was a great show that I'd recommend going to if it wasn't already finished).

The rest of the weekend was filled with singing and preparations for Christmas, which included the first inflation of the AeroBed and some more reconfiguration of the Projector setup to accommodate the Xbox 360 and a (ridiculously cheap) HDMI switch from Zazz (the best bit of which was finding the remote codes first go on the Harmony).

As far as the Xbox 360 goes it didn't get quite as much love as the Wii (at least on the gaming side) which started glowing blue from neglect almost perfectly on queue as I finished configuring the 360. Ness played a few of the arcade games before getting frustrated with the control system and wanted a Wiimote back. I doubt either will get much love while I'm in Sydney but I have a feeling that Bejeweled will swing favour slightly in the 360's direction once it's discovered.

Depsite procrastinating with this blog post for about 40 mins I'm still not looking like boarding anytime soon so I might have start on a Wish List.

Monday.... and back to the airport...

The trend continues and I'm back at the airport this morning ready for another trip to Townsville. It's not too bad this week because Suse will be up there for the same time as I will so there will be someone to catch up with for dinner.

Weekend Overview
We seemed to have a busier than normal weekend, first off we started trialling some grocery deliveries. Ness discovered a place called My Fruit which does a Fruit and Veg box delivered right to your door.

The box looked great and all the fruit looked great so I was a little inspired to do some juicing on Saturday morning. I thought I try for a combination with a bit of raspberry in it but it didn't turn out quite as I planned.
The juice itself was fine and quite tasty, but it wasn't so good for the juicer. The result of the berries in the juicer was something a little like blending a small mammal. The berries also don't juice so well, I think for the next run we will definately be squeezing the juice out of the berries separately.

We also manage to fit in a little bit of shopping on the weekend. We have some people coming to stay in the near future and the Desk Bed isn't going to really fit 2 people for a couple of weeks. After seeing some adds for these air beds on the web (and last week on the TV) we ventured to find one... A little (very little) haggling and a bit of a discount later we had the bed... The only real problem is that big boxes (like those of a queen sized air bed) don't fit in MX5s..


The other big event on the weekend was a huge session on the Wii with Mario Galaxy. I haven't picked up the game yet but someone come over on Saturday with their copy and 5 hours and 14 stars later we were still playing... I can see why all the reviewers are raving about it. The added 2 player function means that it's no longer a spectator sport if you're not controlling the little guy in blue and red. Playing one star each while the other plays the 2nd player support is great fun and the graphics are just gorgeous (even on the 100" screen). If you were having second thoughs about it... you should buy it today! I think it will need a few more sessions over the Christmas break so I'll be grabbing a copy as soon as I stop travelling.

That's about it for the weekend and my flight is about to board so until Townsville.

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.