A series of 12 images entitled “Stormwater”
Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category
Twelve Stormwater Drains of the Greater Newcastle Suburban Area
Saturday, January 12th, 2008UFO Failing
Saturday, January 5th, 2008There’s an arcade in Sydney, not far from Central Station, with a large amount of Print Club and UFO Catcher machines. It rivals some of those seen in Japan. I spent a few dollars trying to win some cute goods for KLS, and here’s a video of one such attempt.
If the link didn’t work, here’s a photo of the item I was trying to win.
My approach may have seemed strange. I was going for the ’tilt approach’ – rather than pick up the item and carry it over the bin, I was trying to get under one side and angle it right over the edge. I was *very* close (It was at about 90 degrees when it fell back).
Lego AT-AT
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007This post is a little late, but here’s a shot and brief video of the lego AT-AT
< About 40cm tall
Video of it walking
The video quality isn’t excellent, as I used my old Sony T1 camera. The previous videos were shot on KLS’s newer digital camera. I’ll be bringing the Sony to Australia though, and during that trip it will surpass 10,000 photographs taken (yep, ten grand). That’s a lot of memories from one little camera.
He may be ‘retired’ after the trip 🙂
With regards to this lego model though – it’s another amazing kit, and surely the standout from the 2007 line. It boggles my mind why this was online-only, because even at $110 it’s hands down better than any other kit this year. It was a great build as well. The innards are as complicated as you may guess they are!
Atomic!
Friday, December 21st, 2007Less than a month ago I renewed World Of Warcraft for the fourth time in a few years. Things were different this time around. For starters I renewed to help JBF level his new Paladin up. For seconders I waved goodbye to raiding (even though I was very casual about it since BC) and in fact to my guild in general.
I formed my own guild – named Atomic.
There are three members at the moment, myself, JBF and SFL (a mysterious person never-before-mentioned on this blog). Despite my initial wish to scale back on my playing, and only play whenever I was helping Jim…well once again I sold my soul to the gods of WoW.
< Momo's mounts
My account expires in 2 days, since I cancelled for my trip. But I will return!
The Mii Post
Sunday, November 18th, 2007About a week ago Nintendo launched a new channel for the Wii called ‘Check Mii Out’, and it’s a doozy…
But before I start. For those that have been living under a rock this past year, the Wii is Nintendo’s newest game console. It’s been sold out worldwide for over a year due to it’s innovation and how much fun it is. In addition to playing all sorts of games, the console also has ‘channels’ that you can use right from the operating system, include news, weather, a web browser, photo viewer etc.
One of the first channels to ship with the console is the Mii channel, which allows you to make avatars (called Mii’s) of yourself to use in games or just for the fun of it. Here’s a video of the process of making an Mii.
As soon as we got the Wii we made Mii’s or ourselves, and of Jim & Joyce (who very soon had a Wii of their own). We also made a few ‘celebrity’ Mii’s, mostly by coping designs clever people had done and posted online.
This past week Nintendo launched the Check Mii Out channel, which is a mega-depository of Mii’s from people all over the world. You can search through lists of favourite Mii’s, or just screens of random Mii’s and then import them into your console. The channel also includes contests which will be voted on by all Wii owners, and then the winning Mii’s can be downloaded. Appropriately, the first contest is to design a Mario Mii.
Needless to say, the popularity lists are dominated by celebrity Mii’s, and selecting one allows you to call up variations as well, until you have screens and screens of subtle takes on a specific person to choose from.
And yes, that is Hitler in the first shot. I suspect 95% of all Wii owners must have a Hitler and a Jesus by now.
The channel really shows off the amazing creativity of some people. While the amount of facial pieces seems high, it’s actually quite tricky to get a Mii to look ‘just right’, so we were amazed by some of the spot-on likenesses we found on this new channel.
The non-humans in particular, are astounding. Even inspecting the Darth Maul, it’s not clear how he made it using the pieces provided. And that Miss Piggy?? Woah! (The short red-faced guy on the second row is Corporal Giroro from Keroro Gunso aka Sgt. Frog)
We’ve already added 40 odd new Mii’s to our Mii plaza since this channel went live, and I’m sure that number will increase (latest additions: dead-on likenesses of Beavis & Butthead). I can’t wait to play Wii Baseball again and have some of these new ones on my team…
…although Bernard has always been a mean outfielder:
(And yes, that is C3PO just below him)