Evil Rain

We went to see a friend’s film last night – “When Evil Reigns” from Luke & Alix Jackson. Ian from Kitt’s office is one of the cast so we went along to check it out and it was a LOT of fun. 90 minutes of low budget, made in Melbourne psycho zombie slasher flick.

It was at the Glitch Bar, a small place at 318 St George’s Rd in North Fitzroy. They have a cinema space out the back with a DVD & projector and the guys have been using it for their screenings. The night we went, a number of the cast were there to watch it as well (oh great, I’m sitting next to one of the psychos… :)

The concept of the movie is pretty standard. Basically, a rain starts falling (not exactly uncommon here in Melbourne :) but with a difference. Anyone outside who gets wet gets turned into a death dealing zombie. A group of young people wind up trapped in a school, barricading themselves in and trying to deal with the situation and their clashing personalities. There’s a nifty twist to it that’s not realised until towards the end (of course :) which makes it all so much more fun.

It was all done on a very low budget (ummm, almost nothing? :) and took many years to produce, filming on weekends and evenings, editing it all together, etc. They have a distributor but are having problems getting the film out as their distributor is a gangsta-rappa in New York who wound up having to use the production money for bail. Gotta hate that. For now they’ve pooled their own money and produced a small run of DVDs to at least get it out to the public.

All up it was a fun night out and we even wound up buying a copy of the movie on DVD – we’re looking forward to watching the makeup specials, the easter egg (Alix told us where to find it) and the director’s voice over. Makes it all a lot more fun when you know the people involved :)

Happy Feet is a boring movie

Finally got around to seeing the movie Happy Feet today – well – most of it. I got up a few times to do other things and didn’t bother getting Kitt & Nykolai to pause it.

Nykolai’s seen it before and was only watching it ‘cos he wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to leave his beanbag. I think that’s the only reason why Kitt stuck it out to the end as well – she wasn’t feeling well either.

Suffice to say, this movie is lucky to reach a 4/10 on my scale. Sure, it’s got some funny bits and Robyn Williams does a good job in it (but no where near as good as he did in Robots). Sadly, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a flop. The feeling I got was that the director was trying to be a new Baz Luhrmann for animation but, you know what, Moulin Rouge wasn’t that great either (although Kitt was OK with that one, she found that Happy Feet just wound up pissing her off).

So, all up, a movie to avoid unless you’re desperate for something new to see. There are far better animated movies out there.

Numb finger

The stitches in my finger came out yesterday arvo, so now I have a numb finger with a fair bit of scarring on it. I can feel things with it, but it’s like I’ve got pins & needles (or am coming off anesthetic). If I stretch the finger tight and extend my arm, it feels as if I’m peeling the skin off the very end of the finger. Most odd. Guess it’s the skin around the cut being stressed and the nerves which would normally link to my finger tip going spastic.

Oh well, at least it’s recovering and I can use the finger to type, drive, etc. Would be a major pain if I couldn’t use it at all.

Typing with almost one hand, baby

On Thursday night while starting to prepare dinner, the knife I use to cut up garlic & onions slipped out of my hand and sliced into my other hand as it headed for the floor. The result:

  • one big gash in my left hand’s middle finger (to the bone)
  • a kitchen that looked like a crime scene (spray of blood up the cupboards & microwave on one side, over the floor and then up the cupboards and sink on the other side)
  • Nykolai deciding he wasn’t up to this and winding up in his room sitting on his bed to recover
  • Kitt grabbing a cotton pad and bandage to do a quick patch & wind job while I held the bits together under cold water in the sink
  • Finally, a quick taxi ride to the hospital for 3 stitches and a tetanus jab.

Doh!

Getting the local anesthetic in was “fun” and then It took about 5 goes to get the 3 stitches in as the skin kept tearing around the area. Of course, the local hadn’t worked across all areas of the cut so most of the work was felt quite clearly.

Now it’s got some sticky strip dressings over the top and a plastic wrap, all of which I’m about to change today. There’s a bit of blood seepage but not much (bugger all
compared to what was gushing out when it happened :)

So, now the big knife and I are eyeing each other off each time I’m in the kitchen – you can tell it’s got the taste for blood by that sneaky glint on the blade. I may just have to kill it before it strikes again… :)

Oh my gawd, I’m employed!

Well, after a few weeks of serious concern re: would I ever get real income again (crewing hot air balloons and doing some IT consulting is fun but it sure don’t pay the big big bucks) I am now gainfully employed. I had been doing a few interviews for a contract Business Analyst position with Sensis but, although they liked me, they were concerned about attention to detail and so on.

While they were pondering this and checking with my references re: my tendancy to be a pedantic S.O.B, another agent found me via LinkMe and threw me at an interview for a Project Manager role at EDS. I went to the interview thinking that, what the hell, let’s just have some fun ‘cos I’m probably too “out there” for EDS – interviewed at 2pm on Friday, got asked by the agent around 3:30pm to supply references and was given the job by 5pm. Wow.

I signed the paperwork yesterday (Monday) and start tomorrow (Wednesday).

As if all that weren’t enough, Kitt got a promotion last week as well. Good news all round then, eh? :)

Arts Law event

Was working at the Rights Online event last night at Cinema Nova, part of Arts Law week, that was organised by Open Channel and APC.au along with Creative Commons Australia. I was helping on the registration table (briefly, I was late getting there – doh!) and then running the video camera for the night.

A very interesting night and food for thought all round. Afterwards a few of us went over the road for drinks, nibbles and discussions. Met some new folks and had a great time talking about all sorts of fun things.

Ring around the moon

Went up on the roof about 3:30 this morning to check out the weather for ballooning. The entire sky was covered by high-altitude hazy cloud and not many stars were showing. The moon was about 3/4 full and right at the zenith with an enormous ring right around it and Jupiter shining brightly just to the north-west area inside the ring.

Wish I had a rig for taking sky shots – this would have been a great photo. Amazing sight.

Old School X-Men

Watching an old X-Men DVD – “Legend of Wolverine” – from the 90’s cartoon series – this is *so* funny. Interesting when compared with the modern “live action” movies. The voices for Wolverine and Beast in the cartoon are amazingly close to those from the movies – the rest are, well, don’t even ask. As Kitt points out, the personality of Scott is close to the one they showed in the movie.

One amazing difference that’s rather amusing to check out is Jean Grey – in the movies, she was cool and sexy, but very well clothed (yes, even in the third movie). In these cartoons (dating back to the 90’s) she’s wearing a flesh colored body suit with a “Brazilian Swim Suit” over the top. Well, it’s almost a Brazilian but it covers too much of her breasts… I can see why they changed the uniforms for the movie – in the words of Cyclops from the first X-Men movie:

“Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex? ”

Balloonatic Go Karting

Today saw the inaugural Balloon Sunrise vs Global Ballooning go kart challenge held at Ace Karts in Sunshine. The day began with rain, leading us to think we’d be down graded from Super Karts (9HP) to Modified Karts (6.5HP) as the track is open air. Fortunately, the skies were clearing, the rain had stopped and the track was dry when it came to our race.

Global had 9 racers and Balloon Sunrise managed to get 6 to the track (we had a couple of cancellations due to family issues). After completing our briefing, we donned helmets and jumped in our karts, heading out for a 10 minute qualifying period, then got arranged onto the starting grid based on our best laps. We were supposed to do a 15 minute race but there was a glitch in the computer so we got stopped, re-aligned on the grid in our present race order and then given a final 10 lap race, giving us about 18 minutes racing all up.

I spun out during qualification as I hit the brakes at the wrong time in a corner. I also spun out during the second 10 lap race as a bunch of us tried to get around one of the corners (that one got VERY messy :) Over all, I came 7th out of 15 which wasn’t bad, but was one place off gaining team points :(

We had agreed at the start that the first 6 drivers would win team points where first driver gets 10 points, second 8 and through to 5th getting 2 and 6th getting 1 point.

The end results after all the racing were:

Position       Driver       Team Score       Team Points
1st Barry Global Ballooning       30 10
2nd Nick Balloon Sunrise 28 8
3rd Rob Balloon Sunrise 24 6
4th Luke Global Ballooning 24 4
5th Ron Balloon Sunrise 20 2
6th Brian Global Ballooning 19 1
7th Grant Balloon Sunrise 17
8th Darren Balloon Sunrise 13
9th Les Global Ballooning 12
10th Peter Global Ballooning 11
11th Chris Global Ballooning 11
12th Sanjay Global Ballooning 9
13th Marlon Balloon Sunrise 9
14th Kiff Global Ballooning 7
15th David Global Ballooning 1
Position       Team Points
1st Balloon Sunrise 16
2nd Global Ballooning       15

So, a close race with lots of spins and hard racing. Lots of fun was had by all and we’ll be getting a trophy that the winning team can keep in their office for a year :)

Power reading

This evening Nykolai completed his 50th book under the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge. The challenge runs from 31st January to 31st August and kids Nykolai’s age have to read 15 books from a given list within that time. Well, Nykolai blew through the 15 books in the first month and just hit 50 today. He wants to push on and try to read 100 by August 31st.

We had a deal running that if he reached 50 books, I’d get him a copy of the Kirby Canvas Curse game for his Nintendo DS. When he reached 40 books, I went an hunted it down (it’s out of production – I wound up having to go to Ebay to find one :)

Now we’re putting together a reward plan for the next 60, 70, 80, 90 & 100 books, each point earning a different gift.

Go Nykolai! (yes, we’re very proud of him :)