It's time for the half-year status check.

I've been pretty busy with Psypoke, helping to rewrite the news system and the admin panel, both running on code written six years ago by 18 Year Old Noob Jeremy, and also the GPCT code and marketing materials which I am very proud of, for the record. That intro flash is epic <3.

Since my last blog update, we've had Queen's Birthday where Richard and his girlfriend come down to visit, as well as Jono's girlfriend and her sister, and in amongst the typical sightseeing and random Disney singalongs, we went to Strawberry Fare for a night of delectable desserts.

Sidhe celebrated its 13th birthday with a night out at the Lanes on Wakefield, where we gathered in our drunken stupor to somehow make the bowling balls and pins connect. It was a great night with fantastic food - I just could not get enough of the seafood platter of prawns, scallops and mussels. There was also breads, dips, pestos, ribs, chicken drumsticks, mini cheeseburgers, squid rings... so good.

We've also been given the first hard copies of Shatter for PC, as well as the greatest game of all, Rugby League 3 for the Wii!

Our success with Flick Kick Football continues as we hit the #1 paid app in the UK store last week, as well as good rankings in other countries. In celebration, we were taken out to Little India for lunch on Friday, as well as showered with Haribo gummi bears. Tech planning for my dream project also kicked off last week, with lots of things to do to prepare for the core programming, so we'll see how things pan out as time passes.

I've been spending an increased amount of money on food lately. We've had a few visitors from out of town and friends organising dinners and drinks...all adds up. Last week we went to Strawberry Fare on Monday. Friday was Satay Kajang and Motel. Saturday was Foxglove, One Red Dog, Hashigo Zake and the Library. Today...well, today was nice and simple, we bought lunch from the supermarket. But still! Food and friends are great.

I've updated my Gallery with photos dating as far back as May, so check them out.

And finally, I need to find accomodation within the next three weeks. ¦[

It has come to my attention that instead of playing "placement" matches, I have been playing "practice" matches.

Epic. Fail.

Sigh. So I have to do all five of my placement matches, which equates to more stress. Aughhh :(

In other news, that damn damage calculator is finally done, with the first iteration going live approximately 1.5 hours ago. The second iteration will include the option to override a Pokemon's type and ability (due to effects from Color Change, Camouflage, Conversion, or Skill Swap, Role Play and Trace), and probably fix whatever bugs people find. It's taken so long, but it looks hot, and the code is pretty damn clean too.

Not many exciting things happening at the moment, but I'll blog anyway for the sake of appearing up-to-date with everything.

Yesterday, at Charlotte's insistence, we went to Animates in Thorndon to admire the adorable animals there. It's weird when she does the baby talk thing to them. They had a few bunny rabbits there, and three kittens. So cute!

On Saturday, I met some workmates for yum char at Majestic Cuisine. I was so thrilled with the food (and uh, the wonderful social aspect, of course) that I forgot to take pictures. But oh well. Seems like everyone enjoyed it, so it might be grounds to organise another one in the future.

I won another Starcraft II game on Saturday night, but I was playing a noob so it wasn't really that satisfying. Playing online is so stressful, especially 1v1. I'm always freaking out over my build orders and what to do and micro-managing everything, I don't know why I keep subjecting myself to such torture everytime I play. Oh well.

Had another round of golf/driving range on Thursday, but I was rather off-form and didn't strike that many good hits this time round. Hopefully this will change for this week.

On the Psypoke front, I'm still trucking away at this damn damage calculator. What used to be three files doing the bulk of the calculation is now just over ten, all in neat classes and database-driven functions. The silhouettes for the three Generation V starters were released today, with the actual pictures suspected to be leaked sometime tomorrow. I'm kind of apathetic to it, but it would be nice to know, I guess.

Firstly, the fabled remakes of Pokemon Gold and Silver are out in the US today with the Australian and New Zealand release 10 days later. Of course this means it's busy time for me and the Psypoke staff Mike and Stephen. In the past few days, our HeartGold/SoulSilver section has had several guides added to it, including game maps, TM/HM locations, a walkthrough for 16 badges, and touched up a lot of naming changes to various pages around the place. It has been a very productive weekend!



Shatter, Sidhe's revolutionary brick-breaking game, is out on Steam, with my name making a brief cameo under the Special Thanks to the original Shatter team. Go and get it!



And finally, on Thursday, the long awaited Rugby League 3 is out for the Nintendo Wii. Featuring slick menus, awesome player and team customisation, and of course some classic rugby league action using the totally unembarassing Wii Remote controls, why WOULDN'T you want this game? (sorry Americans, this game is not for you)

Since the other website I secretly work on is down, I thought I should come crawling back to this thing and post some stuff. I have a lot of photos on my phone I need to upload as well...

Anyway, something is definitely up with IGN's webservers because it's been down for the past two days. We found some malicious scripts in two of the PHP files which I managed to remove, but who knows what else has been compromised. Sigh. In any case, I can still work on it I guess, it's just that there's nothing to show for it.

Let's see, in the past three weeks:

There was an awesome fireworks display over Wellington Harbour on Guy Fawkes' Day. It was damn cold and really windy, but we were sitting by the back end of Te Papa so it slightly sheltered. We got to lean back against the concrete wall and watch the spectacular pyrotechnics in the sky.

There was the All Whites Victory Celebration and the Santa Parade. It was boring. There were three things that interested me: Snoopy, Pikachu and the adorable corgis. Oh, and I'm really happy for the All Whites, but I don't care much for soccer sport in general, so meh.

Sidhe celebrated two shipped projects (Madagascar Kartz and Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5) and two submitted projects (Rugby League 3...and one I can't say but it's for iPhone and I worked on it) with yet another ethanol-filled night at Red Square. Lasers were included, as well as a generous bar tab, thanks to securing more work for us. Yay employment!

Got invited out for a wonderful lunch at this couple's house in Titahi Bay last Sunday. I totally miss home cooked food. The wife is a magnificent baker - the Tiffany cake is for royalty. Besides that, it was cool to listen to their stories. They've certainly had some fantastic experiences, including a three week voyage over the Pacific Ocean from Auckland to Miami (back in the days when air travel was super expensive). A few years ago, they even got a photo with the then junior senator of Illinois... Barack Obama!

After a big lunch, we went for a walk on the beach. The sand was so perfect and untouched, I felt the urge to write in it.



Of course, this led to discussion about parabolas, trignometry, differentiation...all part of a normal day's work.

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.

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!