I saw a snippet of this video during my lunch time browsing in a short doco posted on Gizmodo about pixel art. The doco itself wasn't hugely interesting, but some of the pixel artwork that it shows off looked quite interesting, especially the animations.
This one took my attention, because I've always loved side scrolling platform games. The story follows the life of the hero, in brief, after he beats the boss and rescues the princess.
The other art that caught my attention in it was the rather excellent Pixels by Patrick Jean, which did the rounds a little while back. Pixels is well worth the watch, if you haven't seen it already.
Now, get back to work, you slackers!
26 May 2010
24 May 2010
House update - almost caught looking around the site
We went to have a look at the house on Sunday, and we got a bit excited to see that the internal walls are in, and it looks like all the cladding on the outside is finished. This puts it at just about lock up/air tight stage.
We were so excited, we jumped the fence to go and have a look inside without taking any precautions; usually we at least circle the block to see if there's anyone working on the site. To cut a long story short, there were workers on site, and luckily we saw them before they saw us. I don't think they realised we were there, but we legged it at full pelt anyway.
As an aside, I was reminded of sneaking around my high school at night one weekend as a misbehaving teenager. On that occasion, we seemed to have free run of the place, and delighted in drinking a smuggled beer in the same spot we ate lunch on a school day. However, being young and in search of a thrill, we then proceeded to sneak up on the security guard's post and were chased off the campus.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
Despite the set back, it was still pretty exciting to see that there are interior walls up! The two places next door have been painted as well, which hopefully means ours will be painted soon too. I was really interested to see how far along the units that were already painted a couple of weeks ago were fairing, but unfortunately, that's exactly where the workers were.
We also started looking at curtains over the weekend. I learned a few things, first amongst them being that I don't have a bloody clue about curtains. I had actually thought it was all relatively simple, but it does not seem so.
The second thing I learned is that there are not many curtain places open on a Sunday.
The third thing I learned is that I really don't find curtain shopping enjoyable. Thankfully Dana has far more enthusiasm for it. My negative reaction to it actually surprised me a little bit - I've quite enjoyed all the other house shopping we've done, especially furniture shopping.
We did, after looking through a lot of swatches in the single shop that was open, manage to find one curtain fabric that we both agreed was quite nice. I couldn't find a good picture of it online, but it is the curtain fabric in the background in the picture below:
It was, at least, slightly gratifying that we mostly came to the same conclusions about the fabrics. Previous conversations with Dana (and an understanding of her likes and dislikes in colour learned over time) had me a bit worried that she would want something much more striking, where I would favour something conservative. Next weekend will (unfortunately) involve more curtain shopping. Maybe this time, we'll even talk to a sales person about how much it will cost and things like installing tracks.
We were so excited, we jumped the fence to go and have a look inside without taking any precautions; usually we at least circle the block to see if there's anyone working on the site. To cut a long story short, there were workers on site, and luckily we saw them before they saw us. I don't think they realised we were there, but we legged it at full pelt anyway.
As an aside, I was reminded of sneaking around my high school at night one weekend as a misbehaving teenager. On that occasion, we seemed to have free run of the place, and delighted in drinking a smuggled beer in the same spot we ate lunch on a school day. However, being young and in search of a thrill, we then proceeded to sneak up on the security guard's post and were chased off the campus.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.
Despite the set back, it was still pretty exciting to see that there are interior walls up! The two places next door have been painted as well, which hopefully means ours will be painted soon too. I was really interested to see how far along the units that were already painted a couple of weeks ago were fairing, but unfortunately, that's exactly where the workers were.
We also started looking at curtains over the weekend. I learned a few things, first amongst them being that I don't have a bloody clue about curtains. I had actually thought it was all relatively simple, but it does not seem so.
The second thing I learned is that there are not many curtain places open on a Sunday.
The third thing I learned is that I really don't find curtain shopping enjoyable. Thankfully Dana has far more enthusiasm for it. My negative reaction to it actually surprised me a little bit - I've quite enjoyed all the other house shopping we've done, especially furniture shopping.
We did, after looking through a lot of swatches in the single shop that was open, manage to find one curtain fabric that we both agreed was quite nice. I couldn't find a good picture of it online, but it is the curtain fabric in the background in the picture below:
It was, at least, slightly gratifying that we mostly came to the same conclusions about the fabrics. Previous conversations with Dana (and an understanding of her likes and dislikes in colour learned over time) had me a bit worried that she would want something much more striking, where I would favour something conservative. Next weekend will (unfortunately) involve more curtain shopping. Maybe this time, we'll even talk to a sales person about how much it will cost and things like installing tracks.
21 May 2010
Schwarzanegger Friday
This demands posting - prepare youreself for 10 minutes of Schwarzanegger glory.
I only wish they'd included a horse or camel punch in there...
Props to Patto for forwarding this on (and less props for the Age for showing it to him.
PS: have just about finished experimenting with twitterfeed. I'm going with a partial implementation - while it's good to have automated posting, I don't think everything I post on this is worth spamming on fb. Twitter I don't really give a shit about, so that will take it all.
Edit: Matthew, I hope you are reading this. MATTHEW MATTHEW MATTHEW!
I only wish they'd included a horse or camel punch in there...
Props to Patto for forwarding this on (and less props for the Age for showing it to him.
PS: have just about finished experimenting with twitterfeed. I'm going with a partial implementation - while it's good to have automated posting, I don't think everything I post on this is worth spamming on fb. Twitter I don't really give a shit about, so that will take it all.
Edit: Matthew, I hope you are reading this. MATTHEW MATTHEW MATTHEW!
19 May 2010
I heart Hot Chip...
... or at least the two albums of theirs that I've got (The Warning and Made in the Dark). I just saw a clip on youtube of theirs that I was not impressed with at all. Sometimes it feels like a small betrayal when a band I really like releases an album that I don't like, but I guess I can't hold it against someone if they don't want to make the same tracks over and over.
Anyway, enough of that mindless drivel. Here's a link to a clip of theirs I really do like - Over and Over. Unfortunately, the emedding has been disabled (curses!). I'm using it to relax my mind before netball tonight, with the possibility of another ignominious defeat.
Friends and accquaintances on twitter and facebook may have noticed that these posts and my google reader shared items are now being pushed regularly to facebook and twitter with twitterfeed. It's something I'm trying out at the moment. Please let me know if it's annoying, otherwise you're likely to keep seeing it. It does rather help having it automated, and it makes me feel like I'm not neglecting facebook when I'm sharing all the interesting things I read on google reader instead. Why should I worry about neglecting fb? That I cannot tell you, but still I do.
Rather than bore you with the details of my rather mundane week, I shall instead share a rather groovy video I saw on Gizmodo.
ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.
In other news, I've spent some time with a measuring tape and ordered a custom shirt from http://www.indochino.com.au/. I'm interested to see how it pans out. The cost was around US$99, which isn't too far off what I pay for a nice cotton business shirt at the moment (less on sale). I'm going to write it up for the office newsletter as well, which I may well repost up here at some stage.
Now...off to netball!
14 May 2010
Frash Metal Friday...
It hasn't been quite as busy today, but I'm feeling pretty brain dead regardless. This has made the banter of the next section over more of an annoyance than usual, so I've had my headphones in all day trying to avoid them.
The best part of this is that I spent most of the arvo listening to the best of Black Sabbath. I went through a huge stage of listening to Sabbath a lot last year, but remarkably, have never really got particularly sick of it. That's a bit of strange thing for me, because I often tire of music quickly - I can never stand to have a CD sit in a player for more than one play through at a time. I always thought that was pretty normal (why would you want to listen to the same tracks again if you've just heard them?!), but Dana feels differently. If she had her way, the CD in the car player would never change.
Anyway, this brings me to my favourite track of the afternoon's listening: Turn Up the Night. When this started playing it was one of those rare unplanned moments where the music fits your mood and situation perfectly and you can't help by smile. This time round, it was the completion of a tricky document I had been working on that did it for me.
Here it is:
Now for something completely different: Big L - Ebonics. A1++ wordplay, would trade again.
The best part of this is that I spent most of the arvo listening to the best of Black Sabbath. I went through a huge stage of listening to Sabbath a lot last year, but remarkably, have never really got particularly sick of it. That's a bit of strange thing for me, because I often tire of music quickly - I can never stand to have a CD sit in a player for more than one play through at a time. I always thought that was pretty normal (why would you want to listen to the same tracks again if you've just heard them?!), but Dana feels differently. If she had her way, the CD in the car player would never change.
Anyway, this brings me to my favourite track of the afternoon's listening: Turn Up the Night. When this started playing it was one of those rare unplanned moments where the music fits your mood and situation perfectly and you can't help by smile. This time round, it was the completion of a tricky document I had been working on that did it for me.
Here it is:
Now for something completely different: Big L - Ebonics. A1++ wordplay, would trade again.
Ahhh yeah. Knock off can't come round soon enough.
13 May 2010
Sometimes everything happens at once
Have been really busy at work with developments on a few things I work on. It's good to be busy again, but my head has been swimming a little bit trying to keep up. Watching the below video may help to put you in the same mind state:
On top of that, we've been meeting with a mortgage broker recently trying to work out which home loan to go with, and on top of that how we want to structure our finances when we get the house. While the second half of the sentence is still very much up in the air (making the first problematic as well) we did come to a very good conclusion while at the broker - we have enough money saved up now for a 20 per cent deposit (or for those who read my earlier musings on the subject, an LVR of 0.8)! This is very exciting, as it means that we don't have to worry about paying mortgage insurance, which was looking like at least $5k.
Looks like all that saving has been paying off! I'm glad, because I'm getting sick of tinned soup for lunch, and I'd hate to think that my tastebuds had been suffering for nothing.
However, it does mean we'll have less money left over to pay for all the other things that need to happen when we get in there. Our previous calculations had left us with plenty left over for the new couch we want to buy, the curtains, the aerial and the garden. It looks like I will be eating canned soup for lunch for a while longer.
The other alternative is that we opt for a loan where the lender takes a current market value of the property, rather than the contract price. While I had previously thought this was a fairly common place scenario, according to our broker, it actually narrows the choice of lenders quite a bit.
Decisions, decisions!
On top of that, we've been meeting with a mortgage broker recently trying to work out which home loan to go with, and on top of that how we want to structure our finances when we get the house. While the second half of the sentence is still very much up in the air (making the first problematic as well) we did come to a very good conclusion while at the broker - we have enough money saved up now for a 20 per cent deposit (or for those who read my earlier musings on the subject, an LVR of 0.8)! This is very exciting, as it means that we don't have to worry about paying mortgage insurance, which was looking like at least $5k.
Looks like all that saving has been paying off! I'm glad, because I'm getting sick of tinned soup for lunch, and I'd hate to think that my tastebuds had been suffering for nothing.
However, it does mean we'll have less money left over to pay for all the other things that need to happen when we get in there. Our previous calculations had left us with plenty left over for the new couch we want to buy, the curtains, the aerial and the garden. It looks like I will be eating canned soup for lunch for a while longer.
The other alternative is that we opt for a loan where the lender takes a current market value of the property, rather than the contract price. While I had previously thought this was a fairly common place scenario, according to our broker, it actually narrows the choice of lenders quite a bit.
Decisions, decisions!
10 May 2010
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain perform Shaft
Words fail me.
Props to the man like Mark Bothe for forwarding this on to me.
Edit: They also cover Teen Spirit, rather amusing.
Edit: They also cover Teen Spirit, rather amusing.
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