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Mar 31 2012

Beware – April Fool

Tomorrow iis April Fool’s Day.

Beware if friend’s who have seen this video by Richard Wiseman.

What I Learnt On 31st March in other years

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Mar 25 2012

Didja Havagoodweegend?

How was your Saturday?

Sydney, Saturday 24th March, 2012.
Weather : Fine with completely blue sky.
Occasion : Will’s Birthday trip to Sydney

Bridge

10:00 am : Traditional Saturday breakfast
 Sausage Roll and Coke – at Patisserie in the Rocks.

Bonus: The enormous ‘Rapture of the Sea’ docked at the Overseas Passenger Terminal.

10:40 am : Express ‘Discovery Climb’ to summit of Harbour Bridge

Our climb took the ‘Discovery Route’, as opposed to the ‘Bridge Climb’ route. The Bridge Climb is the traditional route up the higher ‘outer’ arc of the bridge. The Discovery Climbs wends its way through the structure of the bridge and climbs up the inner arc. Both end up at the same place on the summit.

The express climb takes 2hrs 20 minutes instead of the usual 3hrs 30 minutes. Most of the extra time in the longer climb is spent mucking around getting dressed in the special gear, having lectures about safety, and learning to use a special climb ‘simulator’ to get used to the harness. In the Express Climb, there are extra staff to help your team get in the gear and then you are straight out on the bridge. 

I’ve now done both climbs. I think that the Discovery Climb and the Bridge Climb are both great, and wouldn’t be disappointed if one was available and not the other. I prefer the efficiency of the Express Climb.

Bridge Climb runs in all weather conditions – so tickets are not refundable. Bad luck if it is a wet,windy and miserable day with no visibility. We tried our luck without a booking on a sunny Saturday and the next available climb was in one hour.

Shelley our guide was great. Bridge Climb runs like a well-oiled machine. It should – more than 3 million people have made the climb since it began operations in 1996.

Bonus: Australian Swim Team making the climb at the same time as us.

Double Bonus: Sky writer making the message ‘Marry me, Jen?’ directly above our heads.

Triple Bonus: A few minutes later, he was able to write “She Said………..Yes’

Shelley said that there have been 4000 proposals at the summit of the bridge – with only four knock backs. There is also a platform at the top (‘The Sun Deck’) on which you can get married.

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13:00 Forbes Hotel
$10 Angus Rump steak and chips – with schooner of beer / coke.

Bonus: James Squire Sundance Lager on tap.

Double Bonus: The Greek Yum Cha (!?) looked interesting – for future reference

Triple Bonus: The Forbes Hotel must have been there for a hundred years, and that appears to be when the inside last got a coat of paint.

14:30 Sydney Football Stadium SuperRugby
Waratahs vs Sharks. 

Bonus: Waratahs play their first entertaining game of the season and pull off a try in the closing minutes to win the match.

Double Bonus: Despite only having General Admission tickets, sitting directly behind the Waratah’s team. (apologies to John and Andrew Coorey for stealing their seats)

Triple Bonus: Catching up with H’butt  Negus and B’head Phillips and their boys. The Engine Room of the St John’s College Men’s Four 1994 haven’t had a beer together for a long time. Where is Theo?

18:30 Kebab (with Hot Chilli Sauce)
at Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush.

19:00 Greater Western Sydney’s first ever AFL game.
(@Sydney Olympic Stadium vs Sydney Swans)

Swans won by 61 points

Bonus: The Giants won the last quarter

Double Bonus: A Four and Twenty Pie with tomato sauce balanced on the knee at half time.

Triple Bonus: Train x 2 and Bus Home to Gran’s with no missed connections.

Now for Sunday……..

 

What I Learnt On 25th March in other years

25th March 2013 Alfabeto Medico
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Mar 22 2012

Bach without Bite
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via amazon.com

9 Hours of t.he Best of Bach for 99c – today only. (that”s $100 off)

JS would be rolling in his grave.

Amazon Link Update: US Only. Dratted ridiculous copyright laws.

What I Learnt On 22nd March in other years

22nd March 2011 Creating a Web AppCreating a Web App
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Mar 21 2012

Are You Game Enough to Destroy the Werewolves? Real Escape Games

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16 villagers, 3 of whom are werewolves. Can you identify the werewolves and save the innocents, before they are picked off one by one? The clock is ticking. Find and solve the puzzles hidden in the village before it is too late.

Takao Kato has locked over 100,000 people in bars, clubs, cathedrals, and baseball stadiums so that they can participate in his ‘Real Escape Games’.

After five years in which he has operated in China, Japan and Singapore, this week Kato will host a tournament in the USA. If you going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair participate in ‘The Escape from the Werewolf Village‘. But quick, it is selling out fast.

This video shows a previous Real Escape Game.

Takao Kato initially developed the concept of ‘Real Escape Games’ to encourage people to get out and about in his home town of Kyoto. He is taking advantage of the popularity of computer based  ‘Escape the Room’ games, a genre of Adventure Games in which players find and manipulate items they find in a room to solve a series of puzzles to allow them to escape.

‘The Crimson Room’ by Toshimitsu Takagi (2004) is a classic ‘Escape the Room’ game. Can you solve it? NB Like many of these games, this is a Flash based game and won;t work on an iPad, even your new iPad 3, Brendan.

More about Real Escaoe Games in Wired Magazine.

 

What I Learnt On 21st March in other years

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Mar 18 2012

Your next house – stairs are so yesterday

From Japan. More at Tech Blog

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Mar 17 2012

Danger 5

Danger-5

We must have watched a lot of television growing up, as I have thousands of episodes of hundreds of TV series stuck in my head..

Hogans Heroes, Petticoat Junction, The Goodies, Gigantor, The Brady Bunch, Wacky Races, Gilligan’s Island, Scooby Doo, The Partridge Family, The Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Rocky and Bullwinkle, F Troop, Bewitched, The Flying Nun, Mission Impossible, The Time Tunnel, Happy Days, Land of the Giants, Family Affair, Superman, Spiderman, Green Acres, The Flintstones…………

All quality viewing.

(Cathy grew up in the country where they only had ‘Kimba the White Lion’, ‘Adventure Island’, ‘The Magic Roundabout’,and ‘Mr Squiggle’. This must be why she has so much more room left in her brain to put things in.)

If your head is also full of old TV shows (Fitzgerald), can you imagine a cross between Thunderbirds, Get Smart, Bat Man, James Bond, Phantom Agents and The Young Ones?

That show is Danger 5,  currently screening on SBS on Monday nights at 9.30, and is available on SBS Catch Up TV.

Danger 5 is an elite group of international agents. Under the command of the mysterious eagle-headed Colonel, they are send from their secret exotic headquarters on various missions to thwart Hitler and his plans of world domination (in the 1960s!).

(The initial prologue episode ‘The Diamond Girls‘ screened only on YouTube as a series of five clips – which makes the episode numbering confusing.) 

Adelaide filmakers Dario Russo and David Ashby are the team behind Danger 5.

They must have also had a similarly misspent youth. Their first production, The Italian Spiderman, started as a Year 12 HSC project. They had an internet hit with this YouTube series. It attracted the attention of someone at SBS (as well as 4 million other viewers), and the Danger 5 project was funded.

Italian_spiderman

Russo, 25, is quoted as saying that history was their starting point for most of Danger 5’s plotline.

“It’s all completely historically accurate of course, we didn’t have to make up anything at all,” he joked. “There are some scary historical truths in just about every one of these bizarre stories.”

Russo is convinced SBS is the perfect home for the new show.

“We figured two of SBS’s favourite things are boobs and Hitler; so we thought we’d put both in the same show and we’d be on to a winner,” he said.

PS Happy St Patrick’s Day

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What I Learnt On 17th March in other years

17th March 2011 Happy St Patrick's DayHappy St Patrick’s Day
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