Christmas Eve...

...should not be spent at work.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, my dear human readers (all two of you) and all you bots.

The Holiday pt. 5: Cruising

Sleep was a bit hard to come by, except immediately after dinner. I went to lie down and digest for half an hour and woke up an hour and a half later. I went out on the town, but everything was closed or closing, so I went back to my room and was serenaded by the sounds of conviviality from the far side wall and sex from the near side wall. Concrete blocks seem to transmit sound pretty well.

Anyway, the Cape Brett cruise was pretty good, except for the cold breeze and the overcast. We saw pods of bottlenose dolphins twice — I may have a decent shot or two of them — and of course the famous Hole In the Rock. There’s also one or two panoramas which might come out.

Actually, this trip won’t have many photos, but an awful lot of panoramas. My camera’s almost full to bursting!

Tonight I’ll be going out for a set menu dinner and tomorrow an early start through the roadworks back to Auckland. I don’t know yet if I’ll bum about Auckland a bit before catching the shuttle-bus, or hitch a lift with the driver and bum about the domestic terminal until my flight.

The Holiday pt. 4: Roadwrecks

Well, today was a fairly long road journey from Waitomo to Paihia — we left at about 7:45am and arrived around 4:10pm.

There was the hour-and-a-quarter stop in Auckland, as well as twelve sets of goddamned roadworks to take into account as well.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be off on a Cape Brett cruise including dolphin seeking — hopefully that means better photos than I took on my Queen Charlotte Sound trip.

But… I mean. Twelve sets of fargnaxing roadworks to hold us up.

Damn.

The Holiday pt. 3: Rotorua - Waitomo

Last night was notable for two things: the hangi/concert at the hotel in Rotorua, and the Polynesian Spa.

The food was delicious, and the concert striking. One poor schmuck at the table I was at got picked as the honorary chief, and much amusement and cultural experience was had by all.

Afterwards I spent an hour under the stars (which I couldn’t see through the cloud and light pollution) in the Lake Spa department of the Polynesian Spa, just a short walk away from our hotel, the Sudima. The Lake Spa is the one that keeps appearing in the adverts – four nicely appointed landscaped pools ranging from a cool 36°C to a somewhat challenging 42°C – great for my inexplicably stiff legs. Must be from luging on Sunday and stupid-dancing on Saturday night.

Today, Monday, we enjoyed a sheep show at the Agrodome, although the sheep seem to be a bit jaded about the whole thing these days. It’s also been a trifle damp – we stopped for lunch at Otorohanga and it absolutely hosed down. Not that it mattered; a whack of this arvo was spent underground at Ruakuri cave.

Ruakuri’s entrance is spectacular. It looks like something Robyn and Rand Miller would have run up for one of their Myst puzzle-box games. (One of the puzzles is why you would pay money for a game you’ll play once and probably once only.)

Anyway, this could be the cruisiest day of the tour; tomorrow it’s off to Auckland, then the Bay of Islands.

The Holiday, Part 2: Taupo and Rottenroa

OK, no chance to sit down and blog yesterday, so: Taupo.

I have a stack of good panorama fodder from photo-stops on the Desert Road (the mountains) as well as Huka Falls… and the Taupo Bungy.

Yes, I have finally lost my bungy virginity. And once I can figure out how, I will post the video.

The day started out grey as anything, and finished fine as a month’s free beer. After a little shopping for suitable accessories, I joined the mob for the costume party and dinner cruise. Hell, I don’t think I got back to the hotel until 1am.

Six hours later, off to Rotovegas. Some people call it Rotorua. Actually we went straight through en route to the Zorb: a big inflatable ball which you roll downhill in. I’ll have to do that some time in future.

Then up the Skyline gondola and a couple of dashes on the luge: little black plastic trays which you pelt down a course on. Great fun, and another panorama of Lake Rotorua in the process.

A number of people made comment about Rotorua’s trademark scent – “I thought that was just in the bus!” for instance – but most people are keeping their dinners down. Tonight there will be a hangi for dinner and then a Maori concert.

Anyway, I’m off to walk the streets for a bit and then back.

The Holiday Part 1: Rush Job

After some deliberation, I abandoned my idea of early rising and early train, since that would have meant getting up at 4am or so. One dose of searching landed me a room at Just Hotel, which is dead opposite from the hotel where the tour starts from!

I spent more time than I expected doing a final pack and tidy before locking up the house and waiting for the bus to the station. Which was actually nice as I got to see the South Island silhouetted on the horizon along the way. Spectacular.

Right now, the plan is dinner of some sort and then up by 6am to join the tour. Maybe I’ll find the tour director somewhere tonight, but I doubt it.

Tomorrow, the long road to Taupo.

Some people have dumb names thrust upon them...

...Others seek dumb names.

Ladies and gentlemen of the supposedly intelligent world, let me introduce you to Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined, a youthful example of the classic British idiot.

Despite his desperate desire to have a unique name, it should be noted as a Uniqueness Fail for the following reasons:

• “Captain Fantastic” comes from the album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John.
• As already noted in the comments, the whole “Faster than umpteen DC superheroes” thing is from a Family Guy show in which the idiot father names his boat much the same.
• It’s not nearly as long as that of Mr. Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffwelchevoralternwarengewissenschaftschafe rswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvonangreifeudurch ihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolftausendjahresvorandieerscheinenersch einenvanderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraft gestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternaitigraumaufdersuchenachdiesternwelche gehabtbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneurassevonverstandigmens chlichkeitkonntefortpflanzenundsicherfeuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitn icheinfurchtvorangreifenvonandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischenternart Zeus igraum Senior.
• He looks like Jim Carrey from Dumb and Dumber in that photograph.
• He’ll end up changing it again when he matures enough to realise how stupid he was.

In future years, he’ll be known as “that twit who named himself Captain Fantastic. What a plonker!”

FATAL: the worst roleplaying game of all time revisited

It was a slow day and that’s bad: I start having odd thoughts. That’s when I remembered a furore over what was supposed to be the worst roleplaying game ever made: FATAL.

The definitive, if increasingly rant-ish, review panned this leviathan (circa 2005, and now mercifully dead) on the simple grounds that it was poorly researched, badly designed, blatantly denigrated women, obsessed with meaningless detail, required dice rolls complicated beyond all reason (including the famous 4d100/2-1), and was badly designed. Overall, the impression I get is that FATAL was irredeemably crippled by the designers’ obsession with dice-rolling every single detail — right down to just how far your anus can dilate, seriously. Oh, yes, and the utterly immature fixation with sex.

Obviously the review is a hoot to read, if more than a little longwinded, and increasingly despairingly enraged.

F.A.T.A.L. review on primaryerror.net

New Monitor or a Holiday?

It’s no contest, really.

Currently I use a $600 HP LCD monitor which requires a VGA input. Since I now have a DVI card in my computer, I have to use an adapter, which these days seems to be causing “ghosting”, or an unpleasant shadowing effect. Research involving about thirty seconds Googling indicates that I need a new monitor that supports DVI cables.

So I’ll be keeping an eye out in future for DVI monitors for about $600, so I can retire the HP to the back room and finally get rid of the old Phillips tube.

I can live with horrid ghosting. What I need more is a chance to step away from the grind and take a holiday. And that’s going to cost more, have a finite lifespan, and hopefully put the zing back in my working life.

Of course, if I win tonight’s Lotto draw, I’ll get both, and a nice unfeasibly large widescreen monster. And a more stylish case, and SATA disk and DVD writer drives, and a cool house or apartment in Australia to store it in, along with a trans-Tasman pipeline from my built-in beer tap direct to Mangatainoka.

Duck Penis Warfare

Who’d want to be born a mallard hen?

Read more

Last: Older | Next:

Search

Explore Tag Cloud

• Recent Articles
• Christmas Eve...
• The Holiday pt. 5: Cruising
• The Holiday pt. 4: Roadwrecks
• The Holiday pt. 3: Rotorua - Waitomo
• The Holiday, Part 2: Taupo and Rottenroa
• The Holiday Part 1: Rush Job
• Some people have dumb names thrust upon them...
• FATAL: the worst roleplaying game of all time revisited
• New Monitor or a Holiday?
• Duck Penis Warfare