Robot Claw

The Burning Land

December 22nd, 2019

Landing is Sydney was surreal: the smoke from the fires reduced visibility so the usual see-for-miles vista from a few kilometres up was dirtied by a hazy fog.

There’s a slight smell of smoke, and I’ve seen a few people wearing masks. Buts it’s not so bad at street level.

You can see some protesters outside the QVB, to the left of the statue. The queen herself has been adorned with a rudimentary gas mask that was attached by a protestor. They were of course protesting the climate deniers running this country (who were alas voted for) but tourists looking for Christmas bargains mostly ignored them.

The trip had been awful. Endless, boring and hungry since the food they offered me was inedible. I didn’t sleep a second and mostly played my GBA. Every year it gets harder and Australia seems farther away.

Customs and the airport was speedy though, and while my room wasn’t ready due to the early hour my hotel was nice enough to provide me with a changing room to shower. Then I hit the streets of Sydney.

The light rail through the CBD is now running. I’ll try it one day, but not this trip. The shops are decked out for Christmas and it’s hard getting my mind used to the fact I’m here before Christmas Day rather than after as usual. It was still early when I took the above shot; the crowds massively increased later in the day.

I hit my usual spots, ate my usual foods, discovered again that postcards have become scarcer as they have everywhere. I’m sure the ones I bought yesterday were from stands that haven’t been restocked in a decade.

It was warm before lunch but a cool change blew in later in the day. I was staggering by about 3 and grabbed some dinner before retiring around 4 pm. It’s now 4 am and I’m mostly (?) rested, but the jet lag is real.

Off to Newcastle by train today. I read The Hawkesbury region has been badly burned. Will I see evidence on my journey?

Posted in Trip | Comments Closed

Gimbals & Tic-Tacs

December 17th, 2019

Back in 2004 sailors on the USS Nimitz that was at the time doing training exercises reported sightings of UFOs. This is not highly unusual: there is a rich history of UFO sightings by fighter pilots and near military assets. What makes this encounter strange is that it was recorded, and you can watch it yourself:

This video was leaked by a sailor many years after and the incident became part of an effort by interested parties to obtain more UFO information from the Navy.

You may have heard of one of the results of such efforts: the Navy has now legitimized UFO sighting reporting, and personnel are encouraged to come forward rather than keep silent in fear of recrimination.

It’s also led to other videos being released, which last month the Navy confirmed as unidentified. Quite literally, these videos show UFOs.

This is the so-called ‘gimbal’ UFO. Watch it rotate at the end:

And here is footage of the ‘go fast’ UFO, which as with all these others was filmed by fighter pilots:

When the news that the navy had changed its tack on UFO reports emerged earlier this year there were a few pilots coming forward with astonishing stories of sightings, and the official admission a few weeks ago that yes, navy pilots have seen (and recorded) UFOs will likely lead to more pilots speaking out. It seems, after 70 years, the military is finally acknowledging strange things in the sky.

But what are they? As I’ve said here before I absolutely believe in extraterrestrial life, but I find it hard to accept living beings making interstellar journeys. The vastness of space also makes finding other civilizations no easy task. So the odds seem stacked against them being alien or from parts unknown. I’d love to be wrong though.

For now I’ll accept the navy definition. These are unidentified. This simply means we don’t (yet) know what they are, not that we claim them to be anything specific 🙂

Posted in Science, The Unknown | Comments Closed

The Year In Postcards

December 10th, 2019

As I’ve shared on this blog several times, this past year I started Postcrossing, and it’s become a favourite hobby of mine. This post is about the postcards I sent and received from friends and family, and once again it was a great year.

I received postcards from all over the world! Specifically from Scotland, England, Budapest, The Netherlands, Australia, Hawaii, Tonga, Norfolk Island, Denver, China, India and probably one or two other places I’ve forgotten. The above photo shows just a few of them, and as usual they ran the gamut from scenic to funny to saucy.

I love them all of course, but the above – sent by SMC from Colorado – gave me the absolute giggles. The cowboy just looks so serious 🙂

Naturally I sent myself/KLS a legion of cards (more than one per vacation day on average) and once again I relaxed in many a hotel room sketching, drawing or even painting on the back of such cards. Many of these illustrations went to one of you, but I made sure to send many home as well. Here’s a selection:

Australia was when I developed a few extra skills in watercolor, and I think you’ll agree my likenesses became photorealistic. The above examples – all sent to KLS from Oz – weren’t chosen randomly: for some reason each of these three are often repeated as topics of my postcard art. I’m sure many of you have received a Grimace by now?

The above was drawn in Florida back in May, and on that trip I think I made a few strides toward more realistic renditions in this and a few (requests) I sent others. I also did a series (ten or so?) of Dobby the elf from Harry Potter cards that I sent from Florida. When I do such things I usually choose who gets which one randomly. I hope you liked your Dobby 🙂

In California I dabbled with many more likenesses, and using watercolor pens even went so far as to attempt blending and shading! I even did matching portraits of the Supernatural boys that I feel cane out pretty good:

Alas my cards are in disarray, and the necessary task of sorting them so I can better prepare a post like this must wait until the new year. I’ve also got lots of them now – going back >25 years – and will have to upgrade my storage.

Very soon I’m off again to Australia and Japan. Needless to say I’ll be sending cards again so watch your mailboxes in the new year. And if you have any art requests – I’ll be using watercolors again – please let me know…

Posted in Art, Postcards | 1 Comment »

2019 in Games

December 7th, 2019

Another year, another ‘Year in Games’ blog post. It’s still my #1 hobby, and in some ways I’m more invested in it than ever. But it’s interesting to see how my spending (and playing) has changed over the years, moving ever-so-slowly more toward replaying old stuff than buying new.

In 2019 the numbers dipped upwards slightly this year, with 57 games bought for 10 systems at an average cost of about $25. The PS4 led in terms of games purchased and total dollars spent, but much like last year a decent amount of my spending was for retired (and in some cases distinctly retro) systems. Here are the charts, in another new format to please my critics:

The above is a proportional plot of games purchased by system. Yes your eyes don’t deceive you: I bought one game each for the Commodore 64 and PC-Engine in 2019. I can’t play either since I don’t own either system, but both were Wizardry games and I collect them so how could I pass them up? In fact more than a third of all my game purchases this year were for retired systems, and even more if you include the 3DS which is very much on the borderline these days.

And that is the breakdown of dollars spent. The 3DS has a large block since I bought an actual new 3DS system this year (which was my sixth…), and you’ll note that even though I bought more GBA games I spent more on the C64 and PCE games. This is because one of the GBA games was a mere ¥65, which is about US$0.60! The average game price remains low since I very rarely buy any new releases these days, instead waiting 6+ months until they inevitably drop in price. On Black Friday I bought nine PS4 games – all released within the last year – at an average cost of $18!

Despite the retro gaming (I’m not mentioning here the hours spent with the NES, SNES, C64 and Genesis Mini) I sunk a massive amount of hours into some extremely high quality new games as well. The following three were amongst my favorites of the year:

Monster Hunter World: Iceborne (PS4)

What can I say? Will there ever be a year a new Monster Hunter game doesn’t make this list? Iceborne – the expansion to world – added a higher difficulty, oodles of new monsters and lots and lots of fun. It was even better than World, and given they’re still adding content I doubt I’m done with it yet!

Nioh (PS4)

Imagine a hybrid of Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and this is what you get. An absolutely fantastic mission-based fuedal Japanese monster hunt, that has incredible amounts of content and oozes flavour. A wonderful, wonderful game and I look very much forward to the upcoming sequel.

Hollow Knight (PS4)

A ‘metroidvania’ set in a world of bugs. At times very difficult, but with a gigantic map and lots to see and do. I got lost in this one for weeks, which wasn’t bad for a digital game that cost me only $5!

I can’t end the year without a final farewell to the 150+ games and consoles that I parted with back in June. I ‘ve not regretted it and don’t miss them, and I very much hope they’ve gone on to new owners and are now featured on someone else’s “2019 in Games” list :

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech | 1 Comment »

Snowpocalypse 2019

December 3rd, 2019

In the last 48 hours we received a lot of snow. I took regular photos from the same angle to show the accumulation. Here they are:

The above three run from noon to about 5 pm on Sunday. The snow was falling lightly at first, but picked up after nightfall.

The above is a 10 pm shot. It looks brighter than the 5 pm one due to the remarkable low light camera mode of my new iPhone. You can clearly see the snow has been coming down since the last shot: the driveway is barely visible here.

Above shows 6 am Monday morning. According to the weather service we’d received about 16 inches (~38 cm) overnight, and it was heavy snow which proved difficult to remove. Down near the street it was as deep as our snowthrower can handle, and although we have a powerful machine it really struggled.

That’s immediately after we finished clearing the snow. It was still falling lightly at this point. Although it was Monday almost everything was cancelled and we were both staying home for the day.

By around lunchtime not much had changed. The footprints were from the postman, who isn’t stopped by ‘a bit’ of snow!

By evening though (this is around 8 pm Monday) you can see it had built up somewhat again: there had probably been another 3-4 inches by this point.

And then we woke today to this: another 6+ inches since yesterday. Once again it was tricky to remove due to heaviness and the cold (it was -4 C) but at least it had stopped falling.

And here’s the final shot, after we had finished this morning. All told the official tally is 22.6 inches of snow (57.4 cm) in Albany and slightly more where we live just to the south. It was the 8th biggest snowfall of all time in this city. I expect well remember it for a while 🙂

Posted in Blog, Garden, Home, Miscellaneous, Nature | 1 Comment »