In anticipation of Starcraft II's release at the end of the year, I decided I should take up Starcraft again, so I began from the very first mission on the original Starcraft and have begun working my way through each chapter in the Terran campaign. I'm currently up to the one where you have to destroy the Ion Cannon, if those Starcrafters can remember how far along in the story that is.

I've also become increasingly addicted to iSketch, an online Pictionary game where you're given a word from a themed word bank, and your friends guess what you draw. I've been playing with my friends at Psypoke, so we've gone for the Pokemon theme, naturally, where we have proceeded to draw the most horrifying and mangled 4-bit coloured Pokemon you could ever see. Observe my Koffing doing a Smog attack:



Yeah.

On Friday, while waiting for our Beta build to finish, I played my game for the first time. And even though it's not really my kind of game, I had fun (gasp). I have to say, I prefer the GameCube button combinations more than the Wiimote movement, simply because the tactile feedback is immediate and you know exactly when you've executed a particular move. Because we support GameCube controllers, up to eight people can play at once, so I do recommend it..but yeah, I still can't tell you what it is.

We had some people over on Friday night just to hang about and play some games. Sunni brought her PS2 over so I got to play a RETAIL COPY of Rugby League 2, World Cup Edition for the first time. I watched the credits (yay) and did the magic unlock all cheat to view the photos we took during production. Overall the game wasn't too bad, of course there were lots of improvements that could have been made (especially that customisation bug, Peter) but Dave and Chris seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Andrew and Mel had their combined farewell dinner at Mac's Brewery on Saturday night, but for some reason I was feeling rather antisocial and didn't really want to talk to anyone. I mean, the atmosphere was good and the food was pretty good too, but I just didn't feel like opening my mouth to converse. I was lucky Chris gave me a ride home, otherwise I would have had to bus through the dark, wet, cold Wellington night to go home early and sleep.

And finally today, Andrew and Sunni got baptised in our apartment pool. I'm really glad for them, but it just seemed weird for Jono and Matt to officiate it and have it in our pool. I guess I'm used to seeing it done in a church pool..haha. Nevertheless, a baptism is a baptism and I support them in their decision to declare Jesus as their Saviour, so congratulations to you both, if you ever get off Facebook and read this.

I should probably stop apologising for the lack of updates. But to be perfectly honest, it's been pretty much the same old things happening week in, week out. I've been doing a bit of overtime lately as we lead up to our beta submission next Friday.

Last Saturday we had a farewell lunch for Jane, who's leaving to study journalism overseas. There was also a large booze up at Matt, Pete and Owen's where I proceeded to get totally plastered off my face, which was very red and then very pale as I started feeling sick. Never again. Anyway, in accordance with the bet I have going, I made it to six standard drinks so Owen had to ramp it up to a "Hot" Tom Yum Laksa from Cinta last Thursday. I think I suffered more than he did :(

Ness and Sabrina are in Wellington for a few days, so I met up with them for drinks at Momo's on Tuesday night after work, then again today for STRAWBERRY FARE where we proceeded to stuff ourselves silly with high-sugar desserts. I'll spend more time with them tomorrow (hopefully not too much shopping) before they head back to Auckland.

We got free tickets to go and see Transformers 2 on Wednesday night, courtesy of the social club at work. It was so cringe-worthy. I mean, it had lots of good action and destruction and so on, but the novelty of the first movie had worn off and the second one just had so much cheese and corn, it was really difficult in some places to watch the screen. Rob, who was sitting next to me, can tell you how many times I facepalmed throughout the movie, because it was just that bad. Average at best, but don't expect too much. Best Transformers: Devastator and Bumblebee. Worst Transformers: Starscream, the Twins.

Today's news was just swamped firstly with Farrah Fawcett's death, then with Michael Jackson's heart attack. It was pretty shocking, I heard it through the chats first, then watched as news sites across the world began updating with reports of his hospitalisation, then finally his death. Some of the radio stations here just played several of his songs over and over again. What a day :s

We've moved up in the world and upgraded from the Fortress... to the Villa.

Yes that's right, we are now residing in what we have nicknamed the Villa, which is an apartment block 50 metres down the road from the fortress. We pay $30 more each week but in return we get a nice modern apartment, definitely feeling the warmth, and it comes with a dishwasher, fridge, dryer, carpark, and free access to a heated indoor lap pool and a gym. So awesome. We spent all of yesterday shifting our belongings in the cold, wet, windy Wellington weather, but with much help from Jono's family friend who had a Hilux, we were able to spare ourselves total freezing by piling all the big stuff into the boot and carting it over.

All's well that ends well.

And certainly it ended well with a night at Strawberry Fare! I met up with my home group at 8pm, I was totally starving after not eating since lunchtime, and I greedily ordered a garlic bread for myself while the waitress took our dessert order. Turns out she didn't give our order to the kitchen until about 30 minutes later, and she was so apologetic about it and felt really bad, so she gave us a round of FREE HOT CHOCOLATE, YAY!! And on TOP of that, we had an entertainment card worth 25% discount, so a garlic bread, hot chocolate and a lemon chocolate cheesecake came out to $11.75 for that night.

On Friday night we celebrated Sidhe's 12th birthday with an open bar tab at Red Square. And I got totally hammered, I had something pretty bad and got a headache around 10pm, incapacitating me for the rest of the night. So damn embarrassing. When the bar tab ran out, we relocated to the Terrace for yet more drinking. That's two weeks in a row! >_>

This week coming up is our last week before Alpha, so it's going to be pretty full on. At the end of it, I can enjoy a nice three day weekend in Auckland over Queen's Birthday.

Announcing... a revolutionary title for the Playstation3: Sidhe Interactive proudly brings you the next generation in Breakout - Shatter!



A polished, well-presented and addictive game that I've contributed to in a very small capacity. I still get my name on the credits! So you have to download it, it's definitely something you'll want to play.

Winter has pretty much arrived in Wellington, with some epic hail and thunderstorms to start off the season. On Wednesday morning around 6am, the four of us in the flat were woken by a heavy hailstorm, followed by some brilliant thunderclaps that were lagging behind the lightning by only about half a second, so the storm was pretty much overhead. We opened the door to find the following sights:

And when I left the house at 8am to go to work, this is what was left:

Upon arriving home after a long day on Wednesday, I was mortified to find my computer refused to boot. Later diagnosis by my awesome workmates revealed that the BIOS had screwed up somehow and a simple reset by taking out the internal battery fixed it all and now it's working fine again, just in time for the latest Psypoke project...

Psypoke Idol 2

Flash and code done by me! Go and vote for your favourite Pokemon!

In other news, I spent Saturday afternoon lazing in the sun at a friend's place in Wadestown instead of going to Karori Sanctuary, had dinner at Siem Reap again, overtime is scheduled for the coming week and it's also Mother's Day today. So I'm waiting for our cordless phone to charge so I can make a call.

Time sure flies by when you're doing overtime two or three days a week. There's a lot of work to do at work, and on Monday we'll be officially four weeks to Alpha. Following that, another four weeks to Beta and another four to Gold Master, so there isn't a lot of time at all before the game ships. No I can't tell you what it is yet. But on the brightside, things are settling down, we've got a very clear indication of exactly what needs to be done, it's just that in our time frame, things are going to be quite hard pressed.

Anyway, that doesn't meant I've been at home all the time, I've been out socialising. Tuesday nights have become our drinks night, so we pick a pub and hang out for a couple of hours there. Two Fridays ago, in celebration of Dave and Andy's birthdays we went to the Southern Cross for dinner (although Jono and I went to HK BBQ to supplement our meals) and the next day, to Castle Point for a one night camping trip.

Castle Point's a small community about 2.5 hours northeast of Wellington. It's on the east coast just out from Masterton, and boasts some magnificent scenery, some interesting rock structures and a working lighthouse! The best parts about the camping trip were firstly, the drive up where we just sang along to epic Disney songs, and secondly, the weather was fantastic (as opposed to the cold and the rain south of the Rimutakas). Lots of fun, and of course there are photos on the way.

I was walking home last night when I randomly saw this poster plastered on one of those cylindrical columns on the street:



Luke Thompson's a pretty good musician (refer to my Parachute 2009 post) and the gig was only $10 so I was tempted to go. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone else to go and we had plans to go to Strawberry Fare anyway (which automatically overrides all other plans) so I decided to can it - I saw him only four months ago anyway.

We had dinner at Satay Kingdom, and finished around 8.30pm, and we were walking up Cuba Street when who should I see but Luke Thompson himself, walking with a group of other people (probably his band, manager, entourage, etc). So I guess I got to see Luke Thompson afterall... although I was really meaning to hear his music.

Quite the drama for me this Easter trip, although I didn't lose my glasses like the last time I went away for Easter.

Firstly, I was working overtime on Wednesday night and we got curry from Dawaat, which lead to a rather bad case of indigestion. I was still up at 3am on Thursday morning, lying in the foetal position in bed when I remember my parents had given me this miracle Chinese medicine for general stomach aches. It worked so well I even went to work on Thursday and made it to Auckland safe and sound.

Secondly, on Monday night, I got a text message saying the flight had been delayed by an hour; Juliann and Surya were already at the airport so had to wait out the hour. They decided to check in and asked for my booking reference so we could all sit together, but to no success - they kept getting some errors and couldn't do it. So I decided I'd get to the airport early-ish to get a good seat, so I got to the kiosk and swiped my card; it said it couldn't find my e-ticket so I went to the counter. The lady there took my ID and put in all the details, then looked at me quizzically and said I didn't have a ticket. With fears growing, she took me to the ticketing counter and the lady there put in all my details, looked at me, looked back at the screen, looked back at me and said... "You've booked Wellington to Auckland."

Oh man, I have never been so mortified in my life.

But the end result is that they changed me to Auckland to Wellington, free of charge, and they still fed me apple pie and chocolate ice cream. So huge props to Qantas for doing that for me T_T

Anyway, the weekend was great, I got to catch up with everyone and ate some great food (Photos of the food to come soon). It was hard to do stuff because places were closed on the two public holidays, but I still managed to play some pool, some handball, some Trivial Pursuit and of course some piano. It was really relaxing and a much needed break from all the overtime I had been doing.

Achron.

Biggest brain-exploding game since Braid.

I've been incredibly busy with lots and lots of things.

Firstly, my Pokemon website Psypoke got a huge overhaul with a completely new template and a new backend that hopefully futureproofs the site for Generation 5, if that exists. The Great Refactor was an idea I had in November that actually carried through, so the code is nice and tidy, and the template has been sitting there for six years or so, so it was nice to have a fresh new look for Pokemon Platinum's release.

Secondly, I've been doing a bit of overtime at work - two weeks ago, I did four days of overtime with both good and bad meals to compensate. Microwaved food is seriously disgusting. The meal I had was named "Delicious Chicken Breast" and it should have been called "It's A Trap". There's been a huge amount of indecisiveness over the way that the menus and the UI are designed, and the UI coders suffer as a result. We're getting so much work piled on us, we'll be doing three days of overtime next week and three more the week after.

Thirdly, last weekend, I went with some friends to the 'Naki where we stayed at someone's grandparents place, only to get up at 7am the next day and scale the steep heights of Mt Taranaki. And omg, it was one hell of a climb. I was so incredibly unfit, I was struggling each step of the way. What made it really bad was a section of the mountain was just scree (loose rocks) so you'd take a step and slide down. I kept complaining about negative progress and whatnot, but four and a half hours later I was standing on top of the mountain, over 2.5km above sea level. The view was shrouded by clouds but in the gaps there was the splendour of the New Zealand landscape, seeing as far east as Central Plateau itself. My annual exercise for the year can now be checked off and I can mark this as an achievement to be proud of.

We had some spare money in our flat account, so we hit the town and went to a classy restaurant on Cuba St called the Matterhorn, where I had an awesome steak and shared some Bordeaux wine with my flatmates. Steak is my hero, it makes me calm.

A few weeks ago, we also had the annual Newtown Fair, where I bought some delicious ginger fudge, that I still haven't touched because I feel bad for eating so much bad food :(

And finally, I am officially a New Zealand citizen. Take that Winston Peters!