CanCon... hurrah!

Everyone loves a road trip... in a train! This Australia Day long weekend, I took the trip up to our nations capital to take part in CanCon 2006. It is (presumably) Australia's biggest annual gaming convention, running competitions in wargames, shops selling all kinds of nerdy crap and generally a huge gathering of people with loud shirts and poor personal hygene.

I travelled up with Geoff Watson to take part in the "Australian Bloodbowl Nationals". There were about 40 people there taking part, in a seven round tournament held over the three days.

I have been playing Bloodbowl (which is a fantasy strategy game based loosely on american football) for a bit under a year now, and this was my second competition. I actually won the first one (Eucalyptus Bowl) due to a shameless amount of luck (its a dice heavy game, so while strategy is important, luck can play a large part).

I took my Necromantic team again, since they did such a great job last time, and all in all they didn't disappoint! I started off fairly slowly, my first game was a loss thanks to a combination of my own stupidity and his inconsiderately taking advantage of it! The way the points worked out, the most you could get was a 6, and the least was a 1. While I lost the first game, I still ended up with 3 points, so it wasn't beyond repair.

I then went on to draw my next game, and win the final one of the day. I had a great day, and met some really nice people. It turned out Chunky and a few others were staying in the same motel, so after going out for the biggest schnitzel I've ever seen, we spent the night playing poker.

The next day went much better, with two wins to start off. The first was against Scott, one of the tea baggers staying at the motel. Thanks largely to some luck near the end, I managed to pull off a close win. The second game, against Dwarves (in my opinion the most overpowered team in bloodbowl) was a total slaughter in my favour (shows what my opinion was worth!). The poor guy was feeling a bit ill which can't have helped, but he was just very unlucky and while he probably wouldn't want to hear it, made his fair share of mistakes. He obviously considered himself a bit of a veteran, and wasn't thrilled that these "novices" were handing his ass to him on a plate (Geoff had kicked his ass the day before). He went so far as to give me some absurdly obvious advice at the end of it all, like I didn't know all about it. I took the time to explain why I had done things differently, but if he was really as experienced as all that I shouldn't have needed to.

The third game was also against Dwarves, this time against ClayInfinity, the commish of the online league that I participate in. I didn't expect this game to go as well as the last one, and I was spot on there. It was a brutal war of attrition, he was winning in terms of both casualties and touchdowns. Unfortunately for him, I managed to force his second touchdown early enough to allow me time for an equaliser. There was still an enormous amount of luck needed, but without a doubt that was my toughest and most enjoyable game of the tournament.

So going into the final day, I was actually in a pretty good position. I hadn't had a single bad result (lowest score for a match was 3) and I had had a couple of full point games. Geoff Watson was in pretty much the same position, he was only half a point ahead of me at this stage, and we were both in the top ten somewhere.

I had the best final game I could possibly have, a full six points, so it was all down to how my opponents went. Geoff Watson got a five point win, putting him half a point behind me. I ended up in fourth place, only a point behind the guys that came second and third (they used sportsmanship as a tie-breaker). I won the prize for best newcomer to CanCon, although the guy that came second was actually a newcomer too, they decided to split the prizes up where possible.

It was great to see some familiar faces from Eucalyptus Bowl, and also to put new faces on people I had met online. I was really pleased with my final ranking, and I am looking forward to the next event!

Gay cowboys eating pudding...

I had the "pleasure" of listening to Fred Nile on Triple M this morning (the alarm is set to play Triple M as an incentive to get the hell out of bed) explaining why gay people suck, and shouldn't be portrayed in movies. He gave examples such as young people will be confused because cowboys are supposed to be macho, and how upsetting it is for a wife whos husband leaves her for another man...

So on our way to burn down the nearest cinema in protest, Suzy and I... oh wait, I almost forgot I think Fred Nile is a small minded lunatic. He is quoted here as saying that he feels it shouldn't be available to anyone, but he supposes if it were available on videos a few gay people might want to see it.

Do we really live in a world where the thought of a romantic story that happens to be about two men should cause such commotion? We aren't talking about taudry, hard-core gay porn here, what the hell is the difference between this, and memoirs of a geisha (another story about two people and their long enduring love for each other, but its OK because its about a man and his high class hooker). Why can we have a movie which revolves around people getting skinned alive and hung in trees by an alien, but as soon as two men kiss it must be BANNED!

I just hate this concept of censorship where loonie extremeists like Fred try and tell the rest of us what is appropriate to watch and think. The idea that there are people sad enough to picket movies like this, or performers they don't like (I recall a demand to ban Eminem from the country, a global embarressment to non-insane australians everywhere) is depressing to say the least. When will they learn that a) they have no right to force their views on the average person and b) all they really do is highlight what they oppose, and give it tonnes of free promotion, encouraging people who otherwise wouldn't have bothered to go out and see/read/buy whatever it might be?

I guess the thing that really bothers me about this isn't so much that these people are closed-minded bigots (which is still sickening, don't get me wrong), it is more that they feel that their beliefs give them a right to try and force others to conform to those beliefs.

If you don't like something... don't go! But don't use that as an excuse to stop others from making up their own minds!

Various Media

Movies:

Suzy and I hired a few movies the other day (first time I've hired something in years). She wanted to see Braveheart for the first time, and we also got Kung Fu Hustle since I missed it in the Cinema. I'm not going to comment about Braveheart too much, it is a good movie but Mel Gibson's pathological hatred of the english gets annoying. I'm not saying that the english were awesome people back then, but come on! His english-hating sympathies come even further to the fore in "The Patriot", which is similar to Braveheart just with a different nation downtrodden by the evil english (swap Scotland for America).

Anyway, what I really wanted to mention was Kung Fu Hustle, what an awesome film! It was really funny, and the action was great. Stephen Chow was great as Sing, the plot was like a crazy person on drugs and all in all I would recommend it to anyone who likes their martial arts to be a bit light hearted.

We also saw Memoirs of a Geshia on Sunday, and it was a really beautiful movie. Go and see it!

TV:

Last week, a new show started called "Supernatural". I like to keep my TV commitments low, if I want to watch something I prefer doing it on my own time via DVD and avoid the ads, but I think I will be adopting this one. Don't ask me what it actually is, but it has some kind of connection to the people that made X-Files... probably someones cousin's brother's friend's sister once saw Chris Carter on a bus.

Anyway, I have seen one of the two leads before (whoever plays "Dean" was in Dark Angel with Jessica Alba) and he did a good job in that show, I am sure he will do well here too. The other one wasn't familiar, although apparently he is Rory's boyfriend on Gilmore Girls... I'll try not to hold it against him.

It is on 8:30pm on Ten, Monday nights. Check it out, definitely worth a look.

Books:

I'm about to finish "Iron Council", China Meiville's third book set in or around "New Crobuzon", a sort of melding of science and fantasy, horror and magic into this titanic city. The three books have all been self contained (the second one is only set in the city for the first chapter or two), but it doesn't hurt to read them in order. Perdito Street Station is the first, and still the best of the three. I would love to read it again, but unfortunately I lent it to someone and never saw it again.

Anyone interested should definitely check it out, they are like no sci-fi/fantasy books I have ever read before... China has created this deep and scary world, full of history and myths. They are extremely vivid reads, one of the best books I have read. Period.

Zoo-Tacular

Over the NYE break, Suzy and I went up to the delightful Dubbo to visit Western Plains Zoo. It was a great few days, plenty of swimming in the various motel pools, and a day of cycling around the Zoo (needless to say, I was the first to beg for mercy!).

We drove up the day before, and stayed overnight in Dubbo proper so that we could start at the Zoo bright and early. The next morning we headed up to the Zoo, and picked up our bikes for a cruise around. It was only slightly cooler than Sydney itself, about 40-43 degrees, so spending about 4 hours on a bike was super fun! But we saw a lot of animals, and had a great time.


Here is the place we stayed within the actual zoo. It was like a canvas studio apartment, with bed/living area and a small separate bathroom (which was a more permanent structure). We had full electricity, lights and a fridge, but no need for any cooking implements because dinner and breakfast were included. The eland is like a kind of antelope or something, all the other lodges has similar animal names.


Here we are on one of the tours we went on as part of the package. This was the area where the Girraffes go to sleep and be fed, and we all got a chance to feed them some carrots.



Here are the meercats, although there were not that many of them. Apparently they all like to tunnel, and as their enclosure is designed so that they can't get out, that means they just tunnel the hell out of the actual area they have available to them. Shortly before we arrived, they had caused a cave-in which killed about half the population. I think there were only 5 or 6 left.


The African Wild Dog, something I hadn't actually seen before. There was a pack of them which we watched getting fed. The matriarch of the pack is the first one to get food, and if she isn't satisfied that she got enough, she will start making this high pitched squeal which will make the others throw up so that she can have some of their food too... I'm still working on perfecting the technique.


This just made us think of a certain fur baby who had been left at his country resort (read Suzy's parents). While Herky is technically canine, we are all pretty sure he is mostly cat.


The WPZ is one of the first places to breed cheetah in 15 years. I can't remember which one this is, but essentially they got a male and tried to get him to choose a mate. And he did... his sister. So after the sister was removed from the compound, he picked again and sired two cubs. They were pretty much fully grown when we got there, but skittish as hell. While we were looking at them, a car drove past making a touch too much noise, and they both bolted before you knew what had happened.


I was pretty surprised to see Otters at the Zoo. With the exception of the Hippo's, they were pretty much the only animal there that spent a noticable amount of time in water. It just seemed a bit random, I would have thought it was too hot for them there. They were extremely active when we arrived, but never really managed to get a good shot of them.


Here are the Siamangs, who are one of the apes which make a massive hooting sound to mark their territory. We saw them on the morning tour, and they put on a show for us. Apparently you can hear it in Dubbo (a few kms away). They had a little baby with them, which spent most of its time glued to the mum. But she was teaching him to be a bit more independant, which basically involved putting him down somewhere, giving him a shove to knock him over and then running away hooting. It's creepy to see how similar to humans they are, isn't it?


Here we have the baby "black" rhino. He was a bit tired here, because of all the running. They had switched a big sprinkler on in his area, which was totally awesome to run at and then run away from over and over. Clearly. I say "black" because the black and white rhino look pretty similar, they got their names due to a stupid mis-translation. The white rhino were called that as the person misunderstood, they were trying to say "wide" for their wide squarish mouths, but somehow white has ended up sticking. And if one of the rhino is "white", the other must be black! Let's not let the fact that they are the same colour influence matters!


I like this picture, but I'm not really sure why. This is one of the Barbary sheep, a kind of mountain goat.

So if anyone is thinking about heading up to the zoo, I can really recommend going for the "Zoofari Lodge" and spending the night there. Perhaps when it is a bit cooler, but even in the heat we were fine at night. The food was excellent, the tours were really fun and you get bike hire etc thrown in.

Lets start with something simple...

The other day, mum sent me a link to a website called ohgizmo (currently down, no idea why). Amongst other things, including a table saw that retracts if you're about to cut your finger off, they had run a competiton for Tokyoflash, a japanese watch website.

It is a great little site, full of crazy ass watches. The picture you see here isn't a prop from a 70s James Bond movie, it is in fact a watch. As you can clearly see, it is currently 11:49... and all for a mere $140 AUD including postage.

It makes me wish I wore a watch. Perhaps the "Active Reactor" is an extreme example, but they have plenty of other cool and quirky watches to choose from.