Well, Happy Year of the Monkey to everyone, however you say it.

We did a demo for the New Year festivities in Chinatown again – it was pretty similar to last year, lateness and all. Had a nice, reasonably relaxing weekend.

This weekend is also looking relatively quiet, although I am looking forward to some Kung Fu movie action on Saturday night. Then, next Wednesday, it’s off to Adelaide for work, and then wine country next weekend. Should be great!

If you looking in the ‘Watching’ section over to the right, you’ll see that I’ve been watching Naruto for a while. It’s my current favourite anime series. I watched the most recent episode, and it’s looking even more epic than it did before.

Short description:
Armies.
Of.
Ninjas.

How cool is that?

In a more serious vein, here‘s a great piece by a Vietnam War veteran about the similarities between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. And on top of being a veteran, he’s the veteran who leaked the Pentagon Papers that told what the various Presidents who had a hand in that war were really doing. He’s certainly high up there on my ‘credible’ list. Check it out.

Well, Ly’s Australian wedding went well, and boy am I glad to be done with weddings for a while. It’s not the actual wedding part itself, as much as how unbelievably big a deal it is to get everything actually sorted out.

I’ve startedf planning my cosplay for this year’s anime cons. Yay, this time I’m early! And I have a couple of websites to do, for my cousin’s partner and for Wushu.

And I’m trying to get Morrowind finished so that I can finally play something else – the only problem is that it’s so huge that I feel that I can’t in good conscience finish the game without doing as much as is humanly possible with my character. Next up on the list is, I think, Knights of the Old Republic.

Let’s change gears for a moment and feature some links for the first time in ages:

Here’s a summer/cricket item – a set of rules for backyard cricket. The guy who made it has done a great job of making it look exactly like the ICC cricket site…

It seems to be true – Evangelion is being remade as a live-action movie, with special effects being done by WETA, the studio that did the FX for LOTR. Theer’s some concept art available so far. Looks interesting, but I certainly don’t think that the best bits of Eva will translate to live-action.

Anyway, better get back to work…

Went to the cricket yesterday. I was a bit worried when Australia struggled to break 200, and then even more worried when Zimbabwe were 5/17 (!). But the really entertaining thing, as always, about going to a cricket game is the crowd. We ended up sitting in the second row back on the concourse in bay 8, which is square to the Randwick end of the field on the east side, just north of the Hill. And the guys on the hill kept the Hill tradition alive by being quite rowdy, undisciplined, and fun.

The most surprising thing about the day was the number of people ejected from the stadium by the ever-watchful cops. I would have watched at least 30 people be kicked out before I got sick of it and just watched the game. Now I have no objection to throwing out people who are fighting, really drunk, or otherwise very objectionable, but throwing people out for exhibiting the beer snake made from hundreds of empty beer cups seems a bit much.

Well, the festive season is over for another year, which means that it’s another twelve months until we all have to endure the onslaught of it’s-OK-to-be-nasty-all-year-as-long-as-you’re-nice-at-christmas craziness.

Curmudgeonly ranting aside, Chrsitmas was actually a lot of fun this year – there’s something about having lots of little kids around that makes the whole deal much more fun. And, we half-filled the lounge room of my parent’s place with presents, which was extremely cool.

The Christmas-New Year lull was excellent, filled with much beach and pool relaxation, more time spent with nieces and nephews, and relaxing.

New Year’s this year was very nice and low-key, a party at Helena’s place in Coogee. We made a bit of a dent in the duty-free alcohol purchases, and a good night was had by all. I actually took New Year’s Eve and Friday the second off work, which left me with a five day weekend, most of which was spent either at the beach or playing coop Halo.

All-in-all, an excellent holiday season.