Kuchiyose no jutsu

3:38pm: Happy Be With You day!
Especially considering this year = 30 years of goodness!

2:36pm: Not dead = MEME TIME
MEMEME Holler at me and...

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll challenge you to try something.
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you.
4. I'll tell you something I like about you.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours.

Thanks to Ms V.

So yeah, leaving for China next Friday. Nervously excited - being one of 6-7000 athletes is scary because:
1. That's a lot of athletes, and
2. I'm an athlete now?!

10:25am: Me on TV?
So, turns out that the the wushu school I go to got filmed for an upcoming computer games-gadgets-online TV show on Channel 10. They were doing a story on a fighting game, and wanted to have some people do some of the styles from the game for real.

It was a lot of fun, although we made up a lot of the fight choreography as we went… Looking forward to seeing it, though - they interviewed me about the game, so hopefully I'll get to see again how much I hate the sound of my own recorded voice.

The show will be screening on the 22nd of August, at 11pm, on Channel 10. Keep an eye out for it.

9:28am: ZOMG update
Stuff has happened:

Australia was robbed: That's bad.

Game was awesome aside from that: That's good.

I didn't get the job at google I applied for: That's bad.

But I did get to the second interview: That's good.

I'm not going to Manifest this year: That's bad.

Because I'm going to China to compete in the World Traditional Wushu comp: That's good.

My main in WoW is still only 28: That's bad.

But I convinced more RL friends to start playing: That's good.

The topping contains potassium benzoa- wait a minute...

9:47am: TIME PARADOX
Haha! No updates in a long time means it's difficult to start a post again, but I'm short-circuiting that by making references to the problem in question. Self-referential, no?

Anyway, I'm stoked because my email got published in The Escapist. Wooo.

So anyway, WoW character updates anyone? I can't play very often, and so am in the 20's doldrums.

But I upgraded my PC, so that it now runs FEAR super nice. There's just something about nailing a guy to a wall in slow motion that makes me feel better after a day of fixing stupid people's problems. A cutting people in half with a shotgun is cool too.

3:33pm: New job is cool, as is the Silent Hill Trailer
Like the subject says, the new job is the cool - except for how I've got to get heaps of shit working before all the students arrive. Stupid students. It's cool to be the guy as well - except for having to do capex budgeting. But getting to set up Gentoo linux on a dual-core Xeon machine with hardware RAID was kinda fun. So it's very much 'That's bad; That's good' at the moment. But at least nothing contains potassium benzoate.

For those of you who haven't seen, the Silent Hill trailer is out. It looks prety good to me, although I haven't played all the Silent Hill games...

6:30pm: I won a competition. I *never* win competitions!
Yes, I won a competition. It was from Atomic, and I won a whole bunch of games, including:

FEAR
Empire Earth II
SWAT4
Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
Crash Tag Team Racing
And most importantly,
World of Warcraft and two 60-day cards.

So, I need to know who's got characters where (that still plays them, anyway.) I've only got one character so far, a Dwarven Warrior on Proudmoore, name of Baern.

OMG IMA SO ALONE AND FRIENDLESS PLEASE HELP KTHANXBYE

2:59pm: Stolen from wafupan:

( Memes! )

4:46pm: Supanova weekend
I had a great time at Supanova on Sunday, and at dinner afterward. My Ichigo cosplay was pretty well received in general. Oh, and Richard Taylor, the HEAD OF WETA, told me he liked it and SIGNED MY SWORD. That was possibly one of the best prop-geek moments of my life. I'll take some pictures sometime. You'll note that I am kinda calm about this now - I really wasn't on Sunday.

Con itself was cool - I guess Supanova's biggest advantage is that they have enough successful multi-fandom cons under their belts now to be able to pull the big names. Having celebrity panels, seminars and so on really does give you more things to do. I would have loved to go to Richard Taylor's Narnia panel, but it was on at the same time as the cosplay, and at the same time as the Neville-from-Harry-Potter panel. That's what you want from a con - to have people run off their feet trying to see all the cool stuff.

I got photographed a fair bit, and interviewed twice, which was cool too. And I only accidentally whacked one person with the sword.

Dinner was at the Lowenbrau, in the Rocks. I've heard about it, but never been there before. The entertainment was great, and the litre of beer meant I really enjoyed it. To everyone who came, thanks for making the evening a great one.

All-in-all, a great con. I'm definitely glad that my last cosplay got some props from someone I respect as much as the WETA guys. Yes, I'm done cosplaying - I just can't organise it so it doesn't become stressful and not fun. I suspect my need to make stuff will be diverted into around-the-house stuff instead.

9:31am: Google meme thing
Stolen from t3h Vikki.

Go to google and type in "your name - needs" then show the first 10 things you've discovered you need....

(I seem to have ended up with a lot of newlyweds references... )

Nick needs

1. NICK NEEDS MEDS Petition, hosted at PetitionOnline.com. I see. Well maybe I haven't TAKEN MY MEDS TODAY!! I'LL CUT YOU!!

2. Nick needs a critique. Well, maybe I do, I suppose. But only after I've taken my meds. ^_^

3. Nick needs a Bath. Harsh.

4. I Wonder if Nick needs a Roomate. I'm quite happy with my current one, thanks. I think she'd be upset if I got another.

5. Nick needs to air those little piggies out! Sure thing, buddy! My pigs will be released from their airtight containers posthaste!

6. Saint Nick needs a Modern Makeover. O_O

7. Nick needs to chill. Agreed. Especially if the Meds petition goes through.

8. Nick needs to find something that he is better at than his twin so he can have his own area to shine in. Damn you evil twin!

9. Nick Needs. CEO McLean Events Europe. No comment.

10. Nick needs to be kicked in the butt and Victor is the man to do it. I better watch out for this Victor character.

So who's doing Supanova Sunday? I can't make Saturday, unfortunately...

4:19pm: I won a bronze!
So I won a bronze at the 2005 Australia and Oceania Wushu Competition, in Single Short Weapon, for my Two-handed sword routine. As you can probably tell, I'm a little pleased with myself.

In other news, no manifest for me this year - the competition was originally supposed to be this coming weekend, but got moved at the last moment, after I had spent the money I would have otherwise used to go to manifest. So I guess I'll be seeing people at Supanova or Animania.

2:01pm: I haven't posted in aaages
I only have this to say:



That is all.

Edit: Actually, there's more.
( Animated gifs. 56k beware. )
Now that really is all.

9:20am: IQ Meme Thingy
 

Your brain: 80% interpersonal, 60% visual, 120% verbal,  and 140% mathematical!

Congratulations on being 400% smart! Actually, on my test, everyone is. The above score breaks down what kind of thinking you most enjoy doing. A score above 100% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 100% means you use it less.  It says nothing about how good you are at any one, just how interested you are in each, relatively. A substantial difference in scores between two people means, conclusively, that they are different kinds of thinkers. Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes.  Still, I offer the following advice,  which I think is obvious: Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 80%. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 100%. Don't have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 200%.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 76% on interpersonal You scored higher than 59% on visual You scored higher than 90% on verbal You scored higher than 79% on mathematical

Link: The 4-Variable IQ Test written by chriscoyne on Ok Cupid

D'oh! Seems I'm reasonably balanced this time. No excessive nerdiness for me...

5:06pm: No way - actual posting!
A request for anyone who doesn't work in IT: when things seriously aren't working, be as nice as possible to your IT people. It really helps.

Yesterday is now the official holder of Worst. Workday. Ever.

Setting: Work's office in Sydney.

3pm Tuesday afternoon: Network guy arrives from Adelaide. We're doing a network upgrade, that is, ripping out all the hardware that runs the ENTIRE OFFICE NETWORK and replacing it with upgraded stuff. For some reason, it's been decided that Tuesday night would be a good time to do this. The network guy walks in, looks at the cabling we have to pull out and put back in, and immediately says that it will take 3 hours just to do that much. And that's only the first step in about 10. D'oh.

10pm Tuesday night: After lots of obstacles cleverly overcome, we're waiting for the operators in Adelaide to finish some overnight processing so we can get started. We reckon we have about 5 hours of work to do.

10.30pm: We manage to get started. We tidy up the cabling a little bit, rip out the old switches, and I get started on putting in the new ones. While this is going on, the network guy is programming the VLANs and new routes into the new Cisco switches.

1am: We finish getting everything plugged in and passing traffic back to Adelaide. Woohoo. Unfortunately, we realised that moving the DHCP scope back to Adelaide will result in some issues with printing for everyone. So decide we have to get the printers working.

3am: We manage to finish all the printers in the office and fix a couple of other lingering things. I get to go home.

3.30am: Get home. Try to sleep.

~4am:  actually manage to sleep.

7am: I get up and get ready to go back in. I catch a cab - I figure work owes me that much.

8.30am: I get into work. I (optimistically) buy some breakfast on the way in.

1pm: Finish sorting out residual issues from upgrade. Throw away uneated cold toast. Go and eat lunch.

I hope I never have to be worried about maybe being resonsible for the company losing > a million dollars again.

So yeah, please be nice to your IT people when things are working. It's hard enough without people making it worse.

3:28pm: Website updates...
I've updated my personal website/blog thing. It uses a few tricky CSS things, and I'm kinda wondering if it will break in any browsers. I've tested it in IE, and had to scale back on the funkiness for IE users, but it should still show up OK. Check it out. Wallpapers and other stuff aren't back yet, pending me getting Gallery set up properly.

6:32pm: Meme from Azusachan and Butters:




Woohoo! Bow down before my nerdiness!

11:22am: Why rent a house, when ye can rent a HOUSEBOAT?
Well, I'm only working a half day today, as it's off to the Hawkesbury for a houseboating weekend for Trang's friend Kaylee's birthday. Should be great - plenty of drinking, aquatic shenanigans, and drinking, methinks.

Plus, I get to make all sorts of Sea Capitan quotes while I'm there - like 'Check in the galley, that's real shag carpetin' Arrr!' and 'Squidy, I've got nothin' against ye, I jest heard thar was gold in yer belly. Arrrhahahahahaaa.' Although I can't really see a situation where the second one would be relevant. Maybe I might even get to use 'Twas a moonless night, dark as pitch, when out of the mists he came - a beast more stomach than man.'

11:43am: Wooo! Animania!
Had a great time at Animania on the weekend. Cosplaying (as Zabuza again) was fun on the Saturday, even though I didn't get to carry my sword around, and I had to return it really quickly after the cosplay comp. Azarashi, as usual, had a fantastic costume - I got asked for one photo before she was in costume, and about fifty once the two of us were changed... Next costume is definitely going to be one with no props that can be construed as 'weapons' - I'm sick of having to keep my best work in the cloakroom all day.

Dinner at Fujiya and Karaoke on Saturday night... My throat is still a little sore from singing 'You make me feel like dancing'. Note to self: Three to four minutes of doing falsetto is not good for your voice. That aside, an excellent night!

Sunday, I missed the cosplay after having lunch with Trang's family for her brother's birthday. After I arrived, though, we all trooped over to Kino for buying. Sly beat me in the cheapskates stakes - my Sandman book was $32 - he only bought $25 or so. Waffles, as always, was t3h winnar, with some awesome amount of purchases. Congrats to Mishima for finding his Sister Princess artbook, and his cool-but-scary comic and toy combo thing. Azarashi showed astounding restraint in not purchasing Kino's entire range of EGL bible magazines  - I was very impressed. ^_^

By the way, if any of you non-Sydney dwellers ever want me to do a Kino run for you, just email me and ask - it's two blocks away from my work. I can easily do a lunchtime excursion...

9:44am: Back from holidays!
Just got back from five nights in Byron Bay with Trang. It was so very relaxing. We had a spa in the apartment, and had a spa every day. We got one full beach day, where I got sunburnt (damn my white skin!), a really nice dinner at a two-hat restaurant, and generally a fantastic time.

The wushu demonstration went really well. It wasn't nearly as big a deal as I thought it would be. A highlight of the night was the choir of middle-aged Chinese ladies singing 'Click go the Shears'... ...in Chinese! Oh, and I really have to get a new demonstration uniform...

2:58pm: Big deals...
There's certainly been some big things happening for me the last couple of days... Yesterday was Trang and my seventh anniversary... Which is cool but scary.

And today, well tonight actually, I'm doing a wushu demo on a showboat on Sydney harbour that will eventually be televised on TVBJ, which is apparently a Chinese satellite TV channel that's watched all through Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the rest of China. It's a bit intimidating, even if intellectually I know that it'll probably only be a second or two spot that I'll actually be on TV for.

Wish me luck!

11:01am: Manifest loot, finally!
Well, I've finally managed to take some photos of my manifest gashapon haul.

( Pictures - Dialup users warned! ^_^ )
And links to the other photos of ones I thought were cool.

From FMA:
Al
The chibi gashapons that Joey gave me. Very cute!
Hawkeye
Roy
Winry and Ed This one is quite cool, being two separate figures that come with parts to make a little tableau.

From Naruto:
Sasuke v Gaara.
Haku
Jiraiya
Kakashi, series 3
Kakashi, series 4
Detail of Sasuke.
Shikamaru

12:45pm: Manifest Rocked!
Well, here's my con report. Yes, I'm actually writing one this year.

I'll also post this to my manifest blog - here.
( Manifest con report )

10:59am: In the interest of preserving links and what not, here's a copy of a post I made to my other blog.
---
Slightly disturbing link now - and I really do mean that. It's not for the squeamish. Apparently Japanese internet denizens have made something of a celebrity of the 11-year old who killed one of her schoolmates.
---
Here's one of the pictures from that page...



Of course, this is for those of you who never visited 4chan...

9:06am: Naruto quiz
I haven't done many quizzes before... I guess it's all part of the grand adventure of LJing.

Anyway, thanks to waffles...

Which Naruto Character are You?
quiz by orangeday.net
I find that very amusing.

12:25pm: Trang's back! Yay!
How sad am I? My girlfriend's away for 10 days and I couldn't sleep on Sunday night before I went to meet her at the airport Monday. Still, it's a least sad and pathetic in a pleasant way, I guess.

Rest of the time Trang was away after Supanova weekend was still fun, though. A few friends and I took all our computers over to Rommel's place and spent Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night playing LAN games. mmmmm, twitchy.

I finished Prince of Persia: Sands of Time in about three days. That's a bit unhealthy, I think. Still, it was a lot of fun. There's something about having your in game guy flip to one side to dodge a bad guy's sword, spring off a wall, kill one guy, vault over another guy, freezing him in the process, only to rain down delicious slicing action and send him to his zombie rest.