New Desk

Just a quick note to say that after some shuffling around at work I now have a new desk. It's located about a meter or so from my old desk, but is now sectioned off from the other desks in the office, after we ripped the big long workbench that ran the entire length of the office off the wall. I'm pretty happy with it, and thought I'd share a photo with you as this is probably the cleanest it will ever be.

Wow!

Last term some friends and I were doing a study on the book of 'Ephesians' from the Bible, which focused on all our different senses. There were video clips that went along with the study each week, as well as activities that got everyone up and moving. Even more interesting than all that though was the food that we started each session with.

We took turns, with different people preparing different dishes outlined in the study guide, and for the very first week I was tasked with preparing some 'wow food', something to really surprise and excite everyone. As we were discussing it the week before, we of course made the Toyota joke, 'Where the wow factor is high'. So I took that thought and created a cake and decorated it like a car.

I made the chocolate cake myself from a recipe I found on the Wikibooks Cookbook, the Atomic Fudge Cake. I then decorated it myself using some pre-bought icing that you roll out and lay over the top, which gave it an extra smooth texture. I made the icing blue by kneading some blue food dye into it, and then piped some icing on to decorate it, and finished it off by 'gluing' mint slice wheels on with icing. Overall reports were that everyone really enjoyed it, and that it tasted great.

Just when I thought I'd said all I could say, I thought I'd better draw your attention to the new heading and colours I've picked out, it's like my older one, again a parody of the logo of a video game, this time The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

Birthday Wishes

Hey everyone listen up your attention if you please. First I wanna say thanks for everyone who wished me well and sent me messages on my Birthday. I got stacks of messages and cards, and it was great to know so many of you care about me and are excited that I'm now 21.

The real fun hasn't even started yet though, as my last post, August 25th 2007, is a reference to my upcoming Birthday party. Why is Mario posing as Uncle Sam? It's a costume party, that's why! Not many of my friends have had costume parties before, and I wanted to try something a little different. It was a little risky, as I thought everyone might think it was lame, but so far the response has been really positive, so I think it's gonna go off really well.

I'd really like to post some photos afterwards for you all to see. I've just gotta make sure I finish my costume in time.
For those following along at home, the answer to my Balderdash puzzle was:

• Korea became an independent country

Today is actually August 15th, the day I was speculating about, and if you head over to Wikipedia down the bottom right side you'll find 'On this day...' and see that today is Independence Day in North Korea & South Korea (1945).

Lastly, in tradition from the very begining of my blog, here's a list of everyone that wished me a Happy Birthday. You'll notice my house mates are both absent from the list. It seems they forgot and I wasn't going to remind them.

Name	Method	Time
Alex & Maureen	Phone	7:48am
Pam	Missed Call	8:09am
Tim	Person	8:51am
Ubuntu Forums	E-mail	9:01am
Joel Derrick	Person	9:04am
Steff	SMS	9:57am
Emma	E-mail	11:26am
Trav	SMS	11:44am
Cara	SMS	1:04pm
MeadiaWiki Forums	E-mail	2:01pm
Kate	SMS	4:22pm
Eva	In Person	6:23pm
Steff's Grandpa	In Person	6:23pm
Karen	SMS	7:03pm
Pam	Phone	7:15pm
Lauren	SMS	7:28:03pm
Roxy	SMS	7:28:47pm
Maureen (Again!)	SMS	8:01pm

Thanks once again to everyone who sent me messages!

August 25th 2007

Time Warp

Let's get it started, in here.

Right now it looks like my blog is suffering from some weird time warp, as what I'm about to post about happened exactly a week ago.

And it was exactly a week ago when I got to help celebrate the Birthday of my good (but blogless) friend Karen. A group of us gathered at her place and played what I'd describe as half a game of Balderdash. I'd read an article that mentioned Balderdash in passing only a couple of days before, so to be sitting there playing it was quite exciting. Here's a quick summary.

Each round has a player in charge, who picks a category (such as a acronyms, dates, strange words or 'famous' people) from a card which has 6 different words and definitions on it. The leader of the round writes down the 'real' definition of the word (or event, acronym, person etc.) and the other players have to each write down what they think the definition is. All the definitions are then shuffled together and read out to all the players, who have to guess which is the truthful one. Points are awarded for guessing the truthful one, or having another player guess your 'fake' definition.

While it was a game I thoroughly enjoyed, to say I didn't do very well would be a supreme understatement. You have to move 26 spaces (you moved when you score points) to win the game and we stopped it when one of the players was well over 15 spaces in. At that stage I'd moved only a single square. Perhaps now some of my definitions seem quite fake, such as that S.Y.B.F stood for Southern Youth Baptist Fellowship, or that on some date in 1956 some people finished building the biggest jukebox ever made, holding 5000 songs, but at the time they seemed quite plausible.

I'd really recommend to any group looking for a change from the usual Scrabble, Taboo and Trivial Pursuit.

Let me pose my own balderdash for you here though, comment with what you think the correct answer is (no cheating on google or wiki!)

Besides the fact that August the 15th is the day after my Birthday, what happened on August 15th 1945?

• The first microscope was invented
• Korea became an independent country
• Agrippina Vaganova published a book Vaganova method ballet technique
• Two of Saturn's moons, Janus and Epimetheus were first observed
• The first book in what would become the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy is released

Now remember what I said, no cheating!

Elite Blog Agents

Hello readers!

First I wanted to sent a shot out to all my friends who run blogs, particularly those that that have been around longer than I have, and to acknowledge that yes, it is difficult to maintain a blog. I already knew that from trying to update a couple of websites (Odyssey anyone?) but thought it would all somehow be easier when you didn't have to type all the fancy HTML.

Enough about the past, let's talk about the future. That is, Future Sight is the most recent expansion for a card game that I recently started playing again after taking a couple of years break. This also marks my first foray into eBay, as I've been playing enough to warrant buying a few lots of cards from auctions on eBay. So far it's been a fantastic success, and I've been able to grab some stuff that locally I would have hard a hard time finding (and if I did, and even harder time paying for). I'll post on that in more depth later, but for this post I'll move onto another game that I've been intrigued with as of late (and one form which this post shamelessly borrows it's title.

Elite Beat Agents is a fantastic game for the Nintendo DS. You take charge of a group of people style as government agents, who's mission it is to travel the globe solving people's problems through dance. You use the stylus (pen) to tap circles on the touch screen as the agents dance in the background. The game contains a total of 19 songs, and is the first rhythm game I know of created for a hand held platform. I've had it for a week now and while it starts off easy, the songs get really challenging on the higher difficulty levels.

While some people would say this game isn't for everyone, in my opinion, it isn't worth owning a DS if you don't have (or at least borrow) Elite Beat Agents.

What ya'll think of that?

Friends are Forever

Friends are forever, not just a night of pictionary
- Pictionary Rulebook

Above is a quote that my long time friend Steve (now at Melbourne Uni) used to say quite often, and he actually stumbled across it while bored and reading the rulebook. Before I continue on, let me just take a quick aside about the month of March.

I'm not really sure what the deal is, but as far as I can tell there just simply wasn't any March, it must have been left off all the calenders this year. That's pretty much the only explanation I can think of as to why this blog post is in April and my last was in February.

Continuing on, a few weeks back (yes, in March) I got together with some friends and we played a nice long game of pictionary. For those that know, the game works on the principal of working in pairs, then one person has to try to convey a word, object, person or action to the other member of their pair by only using a pencil and paper. Obviously no writing of words is allowed.

Those of you old enough to remember my last blog post might be wondering how this ties into examining what makes a good partner. One thought I had as I was driving home after that game of pictionary was that at times it might be frustrating to be married to someone unskilled in communicating ideas using non-standard methods. This doesn't just apply to pictionary, but also to games like taboo and charades, which I can imagine that once you're married you would be usually attending and playing these as a pair.

If you just read that and thought I said 'marry someone that draws well' then you've missed the point entirely. In pictionary simple drawings of stick people are often the best method of communication. The point I'm attempting to bring out is that it could be frustrating to be paired to someone for life that couldn't communicate in other ways.

Sorry if this wasn't the lesson in love and life that you might have all been hoping for, but hopefully it have got you to think about something you perhaps wouldn't have otherwise considered.

The funniest thing I remember being drawn that night was a monkey drawn by none other than the host of the night. The monkeys she draws have what most people would describe as wings for arms, can't take em seriously at all!