Farewell, Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre!

Well, we have known for some time now that the Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre, gathering point for our group of University friends and also our namesake (The Stephen Roberts Foundation), was slated for demolition.

This was sad news to us all, as we all have fond memories of the place, and it is sad to see it being destroyed. Since I now work at the University, I get ample opportunities to see the work in progress, and sadly they have now gotten stuck into the little theatre, it is almost gone.


Here is a shot of them getting started on the building. Edgeworth David building had been pretty much ripped down by this stage, and they were prepping to start on the SRL.


About halfway through the process now, you can see how the roof has been ripped off. The slope you can see is where all the chairs were for the actual lecture theatre. It was a massive waste of space to have a building which was just a lecture theatre by itself, but it's still a shame that it is being bulldozed for a new Law Faculty building.

And here you can see the desolate, rubble-strewn wasteland that previously held our gatherings, handball courts and other such non-study related activities. It will be sorely missed.

Where the hell did my week go?

It's amazing how quickly the last week has flown by. I have been incredibly busy at work in the lead up to Semester 1, and before I knew it Friday was done and the weekend lies ahead!

Tomorrow, Suzy and I are having an action packed day of meeting with real estate agents to arrange putting our house on the market. We aren't going to be putting it up until April when I get back from my trip to Hong Kong, but we need to start the ball rolling.

I've been meaning to log on and write a little rant about Lee Harding for a while now. I finally saw the pointless dross they call his second single, but have mercifully been spared from seeing his debut "Wasabi". The new single is pretty funny, since it is the least edgy music I have seen from any of the Idol "stars". Considering how much he plays up the "punk" angle, it was hilarious to see him singing a stupid pop song... just FASTER!

The look he has going is also getting worse (I think he might have a committee from Sony BMG deciding what will make him "cooler"), basically he is just shaving off his hair apart from the try-hard red patches, and putting on more eye makeup than ever. They also decked out his band with the same look, just in case you forgot that it is all about Lee. I saw a small "interview" with him in TV Week, where he talked about auditions for his band. Apparently, Lee was in a normal band before Idol, but they had to audition along with everyone else (Lee said his old drummer really wanted it and had been rehersing non stop in the hopes of being picked!) Good to see Lee didn't forget his friends when fame struck!



But saving the best to last, Lee's debut album is now out, looking like the cover of dolly magazine, and its called "What's wrong with this picture?". I have the answer mate, YOU'RE IN IT, YOU TALENTLESS HACK!

Behold... Australia's "Greatest" Necromantic Coach!

Or to be far more accurate, Australia's Luckiest Necromantic Coach...

Babs, the organiser of CanCon 2006 finally managed to update the match reports on the NAF Website. The NAF exists to connect Bloodbowl players across the world, and amongst other things provides a ranking system for when NAF coaches play each other at conventions.

It's kind of interesting to see familiar names up amongst the top in the world, such as Ian Williams (one of the guys that was in the original league I joined, and a top bloke besides). The best part about the ranking system is that you can view the rankings by race, country or both.

So for example, if you look at Australian Necromantic coaches, you will see *cough cough* a certain "Richard Andrew" in the top spot. How did I get there? Plenty of bullshit luck and a tiny bit of skill (maybe). I've been to two conventions so far, won the first and came fourth at the second, with all my games against other NAF coaches.

In fact, it has put me into fourth place overall in Australia, and 60th in the world. With Leviathan coming up in a few months, I'll be taking my Necro again to either destroy my ranking (ala Tommy 'ozjesting' Dean who has managed to drop from #1 in the world with High Elves to a shocking #43 in a single weekend), or push it up even higher! (I'm the 6th highest Necro coach in the world, and one more convention like CanCon would theoretically push me up to top place, or nearby anyway).

Happy Herkaversary!

Greetings my non-readers, and let me wish you all a Happy Herkaversary for yesterday! Yes indeed, it has now been three years and a day since we first went down to Monica's to pick up Hercules. Naturally this auspicious event eclipses Valentine's Day.

Although this year we did make some effort on Valentines day. I asked Suzy to choose whatever she wanted for dinner and I would make it for her. She went with Pasta Mariana followed by home made apple pie (and ice-cream, naturally!). I don't normally like to cook seafood, so it was something I know she enjoys which we don't end up eating that often.

The funny part about this was how impressed her workmates were that a) I was cooking at all (I cook more than Suzy does BTW) and that b) I made my own pastry for the pie! Now, unless I'm doing something wrong, pastry only takes about 2 minutes to make in a food processor... it definitely isn't what I would pick as the tricky part of making a home made pie! Considering I almost made my own pasta too, it's probably best I didn't since that would have sent them all into shock!

I was pleasantly surprised with the results, the mariana sauce was easy to do and tasted great, and the pies worked out well too (although note to self, don't use frozen berries, they release too much juice into the pie while cooking!).

So take note! As long as it sounds impressive, you can score major points cooking even the simplest of foods, because there are lots of meals out there that most people assume are alot more fiddly than they actually are!

Vampire movies, hurrah!

Suzy and I went down for breakfast at Mum and Dads today, and stopped in at Broadway on the way home to catch a flick. Personally, I had my heart set on something heartfelt and meaningful, but Suzy put her foot down and insisted we see a movie which focuses on a hot woman wearing a rubber suit.

I am a big fan of Vampire movies, most fantasy and science fiction in fact, and I really quite enjoyed the original Underworld. I picked it up on DVD the other day, knowning that I would be going to see the sequel, and we watched it the other night. I was really struck by how well they made the transition from the original movie into the sequel. I'm pretty positive they didn't film them back to back, but they managed to get all the actors from the original (even those that could have easily been ignored/killed off instantly) and generally kept true to the feel of the original film.

There was one glaring exception, the action had been mysteriously moved to some random european country. I know they didn't actually say which city the original was set in, but by damn they spoke english! Why the hell is every background character suddenly speaking russian or something? I guess they realised it couldn't be in America since half the action happened 800+ years ago, and other english-speaking areas didn't make sense geographically. Or something.

The funniest bit was when Kate gets her new powers, she doesn't mutate into a hideous freak like all the other superpowered characters... oh no, her eyes just go bluer than ever before!

Anyway, it was a good flick for a Sunday afternoon, and if you like that kind of thing I can recommend watching the original to catch up before going to see it (but be quick! I doubt it will be on much longer).

House Hunting is for suckers!

This is a note to all real estate agents the world over... GIVE US A PRICE RANGE!

Suzy and I commenced what promises to be a long and painful campaign to find a new house, today was more of a preview for us to get an idea of what sort of house we could get for the money we have, and where is best to look.

We saw 14 houses today, from the crap and noisy, to the beautifully presented and right through to the totally insane. The last is definitely worth a look if you are in the Leichhardt area, it defied description, and I can't believe the agent is seriously trying to sell it as anything more than a block of land with pile of bricks inconveniently stacked on top of it.

What drove me crazy about the whole process is that when you go looking on the various real estate websites, the sheer number of agents who don't give you a price range is staggering. Why in hell would I go to see a house without SOME indication of whether or not we can even hope to afford it?

Lesser offenses include a lack of pictures, or no floorplan. Those aren't deal breakers for me, but it just doesn't make sense for people to skimp on a few hundred dollars of advertising to try and sell something for more than half a million bucks. For gods sake you idiots, make an effort!

We will be going the whole hog when our place goes up on the market, floorplan, pictures and price range. We are planning on de-cluttering the house something fierce, move some of the furniture into storage and banish the fur-factory to his country estate.

When we bought this house, it had been on the market for a while and had been dropped in price twice I think. The only explaination I can think of was that the agent made no real effort to sell (when we saw it, he didn't even bother to tell us about the lock-up garage out the back!), it was crammed full of the renters crap and it had clearly been painted by a blind mental patient. People on the whole seem to be inable to see past a bit of mess to what the house itself is actually like, which worked out well for us because we got a townhouse that cleaned up a treat for about 40k less than we realistically should have paid.

Today was completely exhausting, but we found 3 or 4 houses out of that lot we saw which we really liked, and could have seen ourselves choosing if we were ready to make an offer on the place. We also saw plenty of dross for the same cash, but at least now we know that there are properties out there that we like, at a price we are willing to pay!

Painters... bah!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was waiting on some figures that had been sent off to a guy in the states for painting.

As a bit of background for the non-nerdy, I play a board game called Blood Bowl, a kind of strategy game based loosely on american football. You have two teams on the pitch, from a number of race choices, and you basically fight it out for 16 turns.

One component of the game are the team figures, which are cast out of lead and then painted. You're supposed to do it yourself I guess, but screw that. I couldn't do a decent job if my life depended on it, and I don't mind paying someone to do it for me. We aren't talking about hard-core professionals here, just some normal guys out to earn a bit of cash.

So anyway, I send three teams over to this guy in the states, two for me and one for a friend. The problem? I sent them half way through 2005, and they only came back last week! The guy had some problems at home, and combined with the fact that he is clearly a bit of a slacker, I was left waiting... and waiting...

So given how long they took, you would think he had time to do a good job, right? Wrong. The first two teams he did, Chaos Dwarves for me and the Nuns for Geoff. He had them done around October, and put the pictures up on his website. All good, they look great and it hadn't taken too long all things considered.

But since then, he kept dropping out of sight, I wouldn't hear from him for months at a time, and everytime I did he would promise them "next week". I was beginning to wonder if they would ever actually arrive, or if this guy had just stiffed me.

So I was pretty stoked when I find the package ready for collection. I take it all apart and get everything out. This is when I am very unpleasantly surprised by whats inside. As I said, the Chaos Dwarves and the Nuns look great, but I get the other team out (Elves) and they look like a 5 year old painted them... in a hurry. I have no idea what was going on in this guys head, but he clearly did a rushed job and botched them badly. It would almost be understandable, if they hadn't taken FOUR MONTHS TO PAINT THEM.

I sent him an email to express my profound disappointment, but of course I haven't received any reply from him. It has been a real disappointment for me, but there is basically sod all I can do about it beyond let others in the community know to steer clear of him.

Meanwhile, I had sent another team (Necromantic) to a guy in NSW called Phil McFayden. I can't tell you how much better an experience it was dealing with Phil than this guy from the states. He was friendly and professional, kept me up to date on the progress of the job and above all did a fantastic job on the team itself. I couldn't be happier, and I will definitely be going back to him if I decide to have any more teams painted (probably won't be that soon, I have enough guys for quite a few different teams now, so it would be a while before I would think about trying a new team). Anyway, if you are in Australia and need to get some miniatures painted, I can't rate this guy highly enough. Check out his website here (not exactly high tech, but it does the job).

Just saw Napoleon Dynamite...

What the @#$% is going on with that movie? GEEZ!

Behold the cuteness!

Mmm... chicken wings

I was going to write a post today about my newly painted bloodbowl miniatures, which were sent to America for painting over half a year ago and ARRIVED TODAY!

But unfortunately, in the roulette which is Australia Post Parcel delivery, the trusty posties today decided not to do the wrong thing by turfing my fragile packages over the wall, and instead left me one of those little notes saying that the package was waiting for me. It's about 50/50 odds, and I am always secretly dissapointed with them when they follow proper procedure.

So what that means, is that I can't get my grubby little mitts on my new teams until Saturday. Which could easily spin me off into a long-winded rant about the evils of Australia Post not opening outside of normal business hours... I'll try to restrain myself.

So instead of gushing about my little painted men, I thought I might spend a moment gushing about my little Hercules. It isn't that he has done any unusually cute or what-not today, but I have been shockingly amiss in terms of talking at length about/plastering photos of the puppy all over the blog.

He is a funny little chap, we adopted him a few years ago from Monika's Rescue and haven't regretted it for a moment. At first he was really quiet and subdued, but after a few days he really came out of his shell and became the happy little guy we know today.

My friends think he is a bit insane, because he doesn't really like it when other people come over, especially big groups. He likes it best when it is just Suzy, him and me in the house, so he can smoosh up in someones lap and generally get lots of attention.

He has recently discovered a new love... raw chicken wings (ahh, who hasn't gotten a hankering for those at one point or another). We presented him with one to see what he would do with it, and at first he wasn't too keen. We did the whole "oh you don't want it? I guess I'll just ta... oh now you want it do you?" thing for a while, which never gets old, and eventually he decided to try and choke it down. Needless to say it was a big hit, all slimy and crunchy... mmmm... now he wolfs them down!

That basically sums up everything we have introduced to him, he starts off by being afraid of it, goes through a brief period of adjustment and then throws himself into it full hog. Like when we got a dog door, and had to start off by posting him through it forcefully, but now he will bolt through it at speed.

Suzy and I love having him as part of our family, and we can barely imagine life without him these days. In fact, we would love to get him a companion (smaller of course, so Herky can be top dog!) but thanks to an evil skank who doesn't even live here, noone else is allowed pets within the small set of townhouses that Suzy and I live in. I suspect one of the first things we will do after moving is go back to Monika's for a second dog.

Unfortunately, I don't have a good picture of him on this computer, so I will follow up with some later on. Watch this space.