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.

I’m back in the country, and back at work today. Luckily, it seems like work has been quiet while I was away, so no frantic running around for me.

San Diego and Ly’s wedding were OK, but a reasonable amount of work. The real holiday was in Maui, which was excellent, despite a few rainy days to start with. We went to a luau, which was very impressive, snorkelling which was amazingly cool, and on a helicopter ride across the island, which was just spectacular. Don’t expect me to have a tan,as my cursed european skin pulled its usual act, which is that unless I get a little sunburnt every day for a few weeks, I just don’t go brown.

Photos may well be posted at some point.

Well, the time at work is now coming to an end, and it’s time to jet off to the mysterious land known as America. If I get the chance, I’ll try and post while away, but don’t count on it (hah! as if you would!).

In other news, Trang gave me my birthday present early, as it’s my birthday while we’re away, and now I have the sweet sweet super duper collector’s edition of The Two Towers extended Edition DVD, with funky Gollum statue and extra DVD. Yay! And lots of thanks to Trang for such an excellent present.

As regular readers would know, I cosplayed at the Sydney anime convention, Animania, this year. The organisers of the con are now producing a DVD of highlights, and they’re made a trailer. Funnily enough, the trailer features me in a key bit near the end, which I thought was pretty cool. So I thought I’d share the joy: Grab it here.

Well, I just got back this morning from a night spent in Wagga Wagga. Yesterday, I went out there to do what should have been a one-and-a half hour job. Unfortunately, it was a six hour job, and meant that I missed the last flight out of Wagga. So I spent the night at the lovely Lincoln Cottage Motel. Which I was not happy about.

Oh well, c’est la vie.

Oh, and it’s less than two weeks until we leave for the States. That really crept up on me…

Well, I’ve seen Matrix Revolutions now, and it’s interesting to compare and contrast reviews of it with my experience of it.

Reviewers seem to be either disappointed by there not being enough exposition, or excited by the action sequences, and happy that there is less ‘overblown philosophising’ than in Reloaded.

Personally, when the credits rolled, I was pretty happy. There were some quite big things that were left unexplained, and I thought the really, really big Zion action sequence was too long, but I was pretty happy with the way the themes were pulled together for the end of the trilogy. Some quotes from reviews:

The special effects are a lot better than the second film, yet when I saw the sentinels attacking with tentacles and the long tubules of snaking plugs sneaking up on neo I thought to myself, ?These brothers sure watch a helluva lot of Hentai.?

filmrot.com

…the cold truth at the heart of the matter is that what the Matrix films take almost seven hours to tell, Alex Proyas’ Dark City told in less than two, and with more poetry besides.

filmfreakcentral.net
On a wholly different note, I stumbled across Defend America: US Department of Defense News About the War on Terrorism today. Looking at the site, all I can say is that I’m grateful that the US military’s propaganda team is still living in the fifties or sixties.

Woohoo! Only a few more hours until the Matrix marathon. Eight hours straight at the movies. It’s going to be sweeeeet.

‘A night in Fantasia’ the Infinity8lue Ghibli/Final Fantasy concert was great! Although I would have paid the $35 just to get the chance to hear ‘Liberi Fatali’ (aka the FFVIII opening sequence movie) live, everything else was great as well.

I’ll post something about Revolutions tomorrow when I get up.