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'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!