Shark vs. Elephants

Last night, Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers free-shot their way to victory past the cocky White Elephants, their second victory against the pale pachyderms this season. The teams were evenly matched, and despite an early lead, it looked like the Jumper's poor stamina might loose them the game in the final quarter.

Thankfully, a series of obstruction and contact calls on the Elephants kept the Jumpers in the game.

It all game to a head in the final minutes of the game, where the Elephants took the lead for the first time after trailing by a small number of points all game. The Jumpers equalized, but it looked like it was too late for a victory....

...until their goal keeper decided to muscle in on Jumper goal attack, Matthew Patterson, just as the buzzer was called! This resulted in a free shot in extra time, which Matthew converted to the winning goal!

Fonzie and the Shark Jumpers have jumped another shark.

Curtains and "moving in under licence"

We had an email from our real estate agent yesterday about completion dates, and options for moving in. The builder has said that they should have the certificate of occupancy by the end of August, which means the units will be habitable, and finished for all intents and purposes. The date of settlement (which, as I understand it, is when both parties get what they are promised in the contract - ownership of the unit for us, money for the builder) will then depend on the registration of the units plan with the ACT Govt.

This is where things fall down a bit - the ACT Govt could take anywhere between three weeks and three months to register the units plan. It probably should take a lot less, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a rule somewhere that it must take less, but this is not something that the ACT Govt seems particularly worried about. After the units plan is fully registered, there is a 14 day settlement period. So the best case scenario adds five weeks (three weeks units plan registration, 2 weeks settlement) to the time that the unit is ready for occupation physically, and when we could take full ownership of it.

Which is a bit shit to be honest.

The builder/developer have suggested an alternative option, which is that the owners to be "move in under licence". My understanding of this is that we enter into a sort of special landlord/tenant relationship with the developer, with a fee payable at settlement in lieu of rent. We don't know how much this will be yet, or any of the other details of the potential agreement. This will come from developers lawyer to our lawyer at some stage in the future.

Much as it frustrates me to give more money to the developer despite the whole thing being at least 7 months overdue, I'm actually rather keen to take this option. You have no idea how ridiculously keen I am to get into our new house and start sorting it out properly. Of course, for that to work, there would have to be scope in the agreement between the developer and ourselves for use to do things to the house. For example, we would need to be able to have TV aerials, phone lines, curtains etc installed. Otherwise it wouldn't really be worth it.

Speaking of curtains, Dana has been making moves on that front. She's recently requested swatches from online fabric company duckcloth, which should hopefully arrive in the next couple of days. They're variations on the same theme, and they are Henry Approved, pending a gander at the swatches.

This is my favourite of the two. The other, seen below, has a different background colour that just doesn't appeal as much. Having said that, I'd probably be happy with either, and it's hard to imagine what the curtains would actually look like from a picture on the internets.

The plan at this stage is to try and buy the fabric online and then have someone else make it into curtains for us, and install the necessary curtain rods (or whatever they're called). This is not something I can do myself - I am no handy man. We're going to get on to that this weekend, in addition to couch purchasing!

Very exciting times all round, I can't wait until the end of next month!

I'm going to head home and prepare for tonight's netball game. We're without our star centre due to injury, so I hope we can still hold our own without her. If I recall correctly, we beat the team we're facing tonight last time around. However, we also managed to almost poke one of their eyes out in the process. It was an accident, but I wouldn't have been too happy if I were them.

Taking care in caretaker

Now that the election has been called and Parliament has been dissolved, Canberra enters a special time called "caretaker" in which the public services continues day to day functions, but can no longer have ministerial or cabinet approval on more substantial issues. This means that policy directions, stakeholder consultation and major projects are all basically put on pause while the country works out who the Government is going to be for the next couple of years.

For a policy area like the one I work in, this means that things get very, very quiet for a while. This has already started, and the feeling on the floor is rather frivolous and festive.

The problem for me, is that because I'm on a temporary task force at the moment dealing with a very specific issue, and I've also just lost the only other member of my team to the restructure, I still have a metric butt load of work to do. I'm finding it really challenging not to get caught up in the relaxed mood of everyone around me when I still have a lot to do!

To this end, sound isolating canal phones and the music on YouTube are my best friends.

Here's what I'm listening to right now:

A little warning on that, the visuals are a bit whack. Plus, you know, it's dubstep so it won't appeal to all tastes.

The upshot of this for blog readers? The frequency of posts will probably bump up a little bit in the near future. We're also getting closer and closer to completion on the house, so there will probably be lots of things around that to blog about.

For example, the real estate agent has advised that she will be sending out an email about the estimated completion date today or tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to. Hopefully this will inform the timing of any more furniture purchases!

Now, time to eat some lunch, and then make annoying phone calls that I don't want to make.

Couchgate 2010: The Winner.

So. After further deliberation, and a telling seating test with some close friends, we have a winner in the couch choice saga. And it a circle of life, triumph of decision making by committee moment, it's the same bloody couch we were looking at months ago.

That's right, the winner is the Club Grand 2 by 3 seater from Bay Leather Republic, pretty much exactly as pictured above.

We've mapped it out in the lounge room of the new place. We've sat on them both in the same day. We've argued about colour options. This is it. We're going to order it this weekend. I'm feeling very comfortable with the purchase, and now only a little bit frustrated that it will take a further 10 weeks approx before it is made.

Now we can turn our wearied decision making powers to other issues. Dana is choosing to focus on curtains, and has lots of ideas about it. I'm actually fairly happy for her to do whatever the hell she wants on that front, but I will retain a power of veto, just in case.

Instead, I've been inspired to look at other furniture for the house, like "occasional" tables (which I think means little tables to put your drinks on pretty much), lamps, coffee tables, and other cool odds and ends. I blame a recent coffee table acquisition some friends of ours made that I saw for the first time on the weekend.

This is a replica Isamu Noguchi coffee table, (available from all sorts of places online, like Matt Blatt, ClickOn Furniture and Milan Direct), which looks even more gorgeous in real life than it does here. If my friends hadn't just bought one, I would seriously consider buying one for our lounge room - not in the least because they're cheaper online than a lot of the horrible generic crap that you see in furniture shops and they look soooo much better!

I'd never even looked into the world of replica designer furniture before, but I think I'm in love now. There's so much stuff that I like on those three sites linked above, but one of my quick favourites has been the work of Sean Dix (a selection of which can be seen here). So much more to discover and enjoy!

I'm not sure if it's some sort of huge artistic faux pas to buy replicas, but I'm pretty sure that originals would be far out of reach anyway.

I'm going to keep looking at the beautiful design to distract myself from the horrendous restructure that's currently going down in my workplace.

Speaking of distractions, its time for pub trivia - the mighty Dugongs ride again tonight!

Marketing works

I'm so very looking forward to the Tron Legacy movie, their slick advertising and flashy special effects have me salivating already!

I'm waiting until December with baited breath! In the mean time, I think I'm going to try and find a copy of Tron - I wonder if it's available on blu ray...

Colouring in the lines

I realised it's been a little while since I last posted on here. There's a few reasons for that, but the leading contenders are work (busy!) and also no successful site visits. We did do a drive by the other day, and it doesn't look like there's been too much progress on our house, but there's been some serious digging going on in preparation for the rest of the internal roads.

We also ordered a lamp for the living room (mentioned previously) from Aero Designs. I'd hoped to have it by now, but they tell me they're having issues with their suppliers.

Anywho, what I can say, is that we've been thinking a lot about couches. There are currently pictures of them spread all over the living room floor, and their pros and cons come up at least once a night. Will the one we're keen on be too big? Does it look too big in the new place? Would it fit in our current apartment? What about the colour? Will we have enough seating? Could we actually fit any other seating in anyway? Leather of fabric? Which colour?

Sometimes we think we've resolved a lot of these questions, or at least have answers for them, and they come round again to haunt us. I guess the biggest one that was a problem for us early on and continues to be is whether the couches we're interested in will fit. Actually, I was just reading an earlier blog post, and it really looks like we've been going round in circles for a while now.

The funny thing is, since I first wrote about it, I think we've almost come full circle. We decided that the couch that we were keen on at the time was too big for the space, at 3.1m by 2.5m in an L shape. This led us to look at all sorts of other options, but the one we've just about settled on now is 3.3m by 2.475 - really not that much different at all, and in fact, bigger in one dimension!

However, I've convinced myself that this will actually work, for a couple reasons. First, I've bought some grid paper, and have spent a good half hour of my lunch break sketching out the the proportions of the room and the couch, and I think it will be all good. I may have copped a bit of flak from my work mates for my diligent ruler and pencil work, but I still think it's worthwhile.

Second, we've revised how much room we need for the dining area - we're going to have quite a lot less crap in there in the end. Third, the couch we're thinking about now is quite low, and the ends of it can double as side tables. The short end of the L, facing towards the TV also will not have an arm rest, but a low cushion instead, thus not cutting the end of the couch off.

Finally, the couch we're looking at is modular, and can be converted into a different configuration if we have a large dinner party and need more room in the dining area. It can also be converted into a decent size bed for overnight visitors.

For those that have talked to me recently, you may well be aware that I'm talking about the Kato from King Furniture.

The version pictured here is not exactly what we're thinking of getting - we're more keen on the 'deluxe' line that has slightly deeper seats. There are a lot of different packages that you can get, but the one that we're leaning towards at the moment is pictured below.

There's still scope for us to change our mind a bunch more times, but we're actually considering ordering it in the next couple of weeks. King Furniture have a sale on at the moment, and manufacturing time is about 2 months. If we order now, it should be ready around when we get the keys.

Until we do get the keys, I'm going to keep playing around with the grid paper - it's good to see what we can actually do with the space. It's so big and empty at the moment in there, imagining anything in there is quite difficult.

And now on to netball. Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers have actually had a fairly good run since we dropped down a league (we were previously far above our skill level and were consistently thrashed). We're still not regular winners, but we're actually contesting more games now. May even get round to writing up a game at some stage...

Now it’s time for a little braggadocio, while I swing my arms like Ralph Macchio.

Home sick today, which is very lame. On the bright side, we did get to have a look inside the house yesterday, after all the builders (and sunlight) had left for the day. The more time wears on, the more obvious it is where you can get into the site without jumping the fence. I almost feel like they aren't trying to keep things secure any more, there's a huge gap in one section of the fence.

Mind you, it does make life a little easier for nosey future home owners.

Anyway, there were a few interesting things to see on the site. As mentioned the other day, part of the internal driveway has been put in.

Unfortunately, this is not in our area of the site at all. Still, it's good to see progress around the place.

However, there has been some things happening around our end of the site, namely a kitchen and some painting!

Here is the kitchen in question! Note Dana sizing it up with a professional eye. The bench tops are a pale ceaser stone and the splash back is a white tile. Interestingly, it looks like the telephone line comes into the kitchen, which actually makes it a bit of a weird spot in terms of router positioning. I might look into getting a second outlet put in when we get the phone line installed, just so we don't have to have the router on the kitchen counter. 

I'm also pretty happy with the bench space and cupboard space - it's heaps more than what we have at the moment!

There's also been some painting going on - no idea if the final coat has been done yet, but it's all a lot whiter than it was before. There's also tiles in the bathrooms and the laundry now!

The skylight's mentioned the other day have been installed on the roof, but haven't quite yet made their way down into the interior.

To round out the post, here's a clip from nerdcore pioneer, MC Frontalot. The visuals aren't much, but the music's better. I did have to look a few words up in the dictionary though. To help you out, braggadocio means empty swagger, or that style of rap where the MC talks up how awesome they are.

Edit: I swapped in a better clip - the recording in the previous one sounded a bit poo. This one is from the intro to the doco "Nerdcore Rising".

Skylight

Popped past the house this afternoon - unfortunately there were people working on site (industrious buggers) so we didn't get to check out the paint job that was going up last time we popped by. Things are coming along nicely around the site though - I think all the buildings are just about water tight, but some of the garages are not quite there yet. Some of the internal roads are going in as well, which makes the place that much more finished.

From the outside, there were two new additions to our unit that were of note - they've installed the skylights! I was quite happy to see this, as the en suite and the laundry were looking quite dark on our last visit. I was also pretty happy that there is one installed in the laundry - I haven't checked in a while, but I didn't think there was one on the plan!

Things are coming along nicely anyway. I still think they're going to be pushing things to get everything finished this month, but I can always hope. The silver lining, as always, is that the longer it takes, the more money we'll have in our pocket when we're ready to go. Barring some horrible intervention, it will certainly be ready by December, when the contract stipulates it must be ready, and we start being in danger of missing out on the first home buyer's boost (touch wood). However, I'd be lying if I said I was happy at the prospect that we might have to wait longer than the end of August to move in.

Anyway, the completed skylights remind me of this track from the Blade Trinity soundtrack:

 I enjoyed it, even if it does sound like futuristic elevator music...

Anyway, I'm going to get back to enjoying a lazy quiet weekend - have been feeling under the weather all week, and I think being a hermit for a weekend is the only way to go.

I leave you with a little video a found care of Google Reader's recommended feeds. It's a video made by a student of the University of Hannover in Germany - check the original Vimeo post for the full details. Anyway, it's a CG projection of Super Mario Bros on to a wall.

Super Mario Bros. from Andreas Heikaus on Vimeo.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM

This was a lunch time Google Reader Play find - hasn't had a bajillion hits on YouTube yet, so I thought I'd repost it here. This is BIG BANG BIG BOOM, a wall-painted animation by artist Blu.

The YouTube description calls it "an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life ... and how it could probably end."

I like it, but I can't even begin to imagine how much time and paint went into it!

PS: no updates on the house, haven't had time to make it up to the site recently.

Entertainment, art and clothing

Having just handed over an exorbitant amount of money for stamp duty (that I wouldn't have to pay if I'd bought a house any where else in Australia), my mind has already turned to things that I want, but cannot afford to purchase at this juncture. Some of them may well still be mine in the future, some less so.

The first would be in the "probably not" category - the artwork of Shawn Smith - which was featured on Engadget Alt recently.

The two pieces pictured above are "Gemsbock" and "Re-kindling". I encourage you to check out some more of his work at his website. Shawn created these three dimensional versions of pixel art, which I've always rather enjoyed. I may even have blogged about it at some stage. Anyway, they look excellent. They seem to be mostly made of small painted wooden blocks.

The second item I was lusting after this morning is an AV receiver and some decent speakers. This are firmly on the list of things to buy when we move into the new place. I haven't really made a choice yet, and there are ongoing discussions with Dana about the aesthetic nature of such a purchase (she thinks they're ugly, whereas I think they're beautiful), but we'll get there in the end. Speaking of Dana, she's discovered the magic of RSS feeds and is now subscribed to this blog. Hi Dana!

Anyway, at the moment, I really like the options from Yamaha.

Pictured here is the YHT-694AU, which retails at around a grand. I'm hoping that discussions with Dana can be progressed by the smaller "bookshelf" style rear speaker, and the knowledge that the receiver and central speaker will probably be hidden by a TV unit. It remains to be seen if that will be a successful angle. Wish me luck.

The last is a very groovy t-shirt from Etsy store Happy Family featured on gizmodoAU (if memory serves me correctly, anyway) called "Robot and Triceratops.

Two mortal enemies, together at last. Not really much more to say on that one.

To round what has been a thoroughly nerdy post out, here's a rendition of the Tetris theme on bottles....

PS: I totally forgot to mention, the Fonzy and the Shark Jumpers, my netball team, had an epic victory last night. We are also pioneering a special move I like to call "the Shark Jump" where you do a cross between a star jump and an epileptic fit in front of the opposition if they get the ball. Go the Jumpers!