Minus 5

As promised, here’s a pic of the Minus 5 bar in Sydney.

Like I said, EVERYTHING was made of ice. Cool beans.

We’re Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Phew, what a week. It feels like I just left, and now I’m back home again. For those of you who don’t know I’ve been gone for Spring Break. I spent four nights in Sydney and three nights in Cairns. My face feels like leather, my clothes smell like salt, and I have lots of pictures to show!

Okay, so I left Friday morning, the 21st, for Sydney. Flight went smoothly, landed around 10:30. I spent the day wandering the streets and looking at sights. The very first thing I took a picture of…was Master Chief. Here’s how it went down:

One of the girls I was with: Does anybody else see that robot?
Me: Huh?
Me: *turns head*
Me: *eyes light up*
Me: Oh that’s no robot!
Me: *runs over to Master Chief as he boards a bus*
Me: Hey Master Chief!
Master Chief: *slowly turns around to face me*
Me: Smile! *click*

It was random and awesome. The suit was well constructed.

Afterwards I went to see the Sydney Opera House in all its glory. It’s quite the engineering feat. Very impressive inside and out.

Very bizarre and very cool design.

The main performance stage.

The rest of my time in Sydney consisted of touring various things. Darling Harbor had a sidewalk chalk thing going on, and some of the art was damn good considering it’s chalk.

Impressive…most impressive.

Luna Park is an amusement park for little kiddies. I was told to go there simply to be horrified by its entrance gate. I wish I didn’t go…

This thing is going to give me nightmares

The Sydney Aquarium is pretty cool. Lotsa different fish and whatnot to see. They had some underwater tubes below the large shark aquarium that allowed you to get up close with the sharks.

ZOMG Blurry Shark!1

There was this bar called Minus 5 that was completely made out of ice.  The walls, tables, chairs, bar, glasses, everything was ice.  It was really cool to see.  I’ll get some pictures when I can, since we couldn’t take any of our own and had to pay for some guy to take them.  Lames.

Tuesday morning I left Sydney and went to Cairns. Cairns is a small touristy town that’s right close to the Great Barrier Reef. Pretty much the biggest thing I wanted to do on this trip was to go diving on the reef, and I got to do that…kinda.

Because it was an introductory dive (I’m not licensed…yet) we were only allowed about 25 minutes underwater. We were briefed on what to do, hand signals, etc. So everyone should be prepared to go and have a good time, right? WRONG! My group consisted of a guy, a girl, and myself. We all geared up and were in the water off the side of the boat. We were going to do a few underwater exercises, about 10 feet under, before looking at the fishies. Simple stuff. The instructor showed us how to do it, step by step, and we had to repeat. The girl in the group, though, would panic everytime something would go “wrong”, and would shoot up to the surface. The instructor then had to calm her down and take her back underwater. She did this FIVE FUCKING TIMES! So what should have been about 5-8 minutes of exercises ended up taking about 20 minutes…leaving literally five minutes to look at fish. I was pissed. The fish I did see, though, were neato.

Me rocking out with Nemo

I did get to snorkel as much as I wanted though, which was good. Saw some pretty awesome looking fish, and a sea turtle!

The rest of my time in Cairns consisted of relaxing on the beach and enjoying the warm weather. I arrived back in Geelong about 2 hours ago, where it’s cold, windy, and rainy. Blek.

Tomorrow’s a big day for Geelong. The AFL Grand Final is happening, and Geelong is in it. For those who don’t know, the AFL is the Australian equivalent of the NFL in the States. Though they’re two completely different sports the popularity is about the same for both. So the AFL Grand Final is the Superbowl of Australia. Geelong plays Port Adelaide, who lost to them earlier in the year, and is one of the games I went to (see previous post). This game is going to be big, and a close match. Geelong hasn’t won a Grand Final in 44 years, and lost the last 4 they’ve been in. This entire town is giddy with anticipation. If they win tomorrow, the city is going to fucking erupt in celebration for a week. I can’t wait.

It’s Official

The DS can now do everything, including phone calls. I need to try this out.

On another note, I have an unusually strange urge to play with K’nex right now. I’ve devised a gun in my head that will shoot rubber bands at either semi or fully automatic speeds. Once I get home I’m building this sucker, and torturing peeps at the next LAN party. Mwahahahaha!

Spring Break in a week! Me + Sydney + Cairns + Sun = Happy

Now that this week is done I can finally concentrate on Flash games again. I had 3 papers due in the past 4 days, so as you can imagine there was little time for game making.

Oh! I almost forgot, I released another one of my games, Coin. Now I know counting coins isn’t your ideal game, and this is a rather poor looking one, but I thought it was an interesting concept nonetheless. Took about 15 hours or so to make, and got me $200. Can’t complain with that.

In a few days I’ll be releasing Spheric, and I’ll link it in another post. Got a sponsorship with Armorgames on that one, and they’ll pay me more the better it does on Newgrounds. So vote 5 for it damnit! Perhaps after that I’ll release a demo of my latest and greatest creation. Once completed it’ll be delicious…oh so delicious.

Footy, Spring Break, and other shtuffs

Australian football is a strange beast. On one hand it’s a lot like our football back home, on its twenty other hands it isn’t.

The field is big. Very big.

The game requires teams to kick a football (much like ours, only flatter on the ends) through goal posts. There are three possible areas to hit it through. Kicking it down the center gets 6 points, while hitting it through either side of the center earns only 1.

The crowd after Geelong scored a goal.

The game I went to Sunday pit the #1 and #2 teams in the nation against each other, and it was a wild game. It was the Geelong Cats (my team) at home against Port Adelaide Power. Geelong had a 15 game win streak coming in (there are only 22 games per season). Geelong played like shit in the first quarter, only getting 13 points (that’s low in case you didn’t know). By half time they were only down by 6. The third quarter was more shit, and by the beginning of the fourth they were down by about 20. Then, somehow, they pulled their collective heads out of their ass and started doing decent. With a minute left, we were ahead by one point, 101-100. They were trying to move the ball around and kill time off the clock, but Port ended up with the ball and with 5 seconds left kicked a goal. It was devastating. Still a great game though.

Spring Break is in a month, and I have my trip all planned out and ready to go. Friday, Sept. 21st I’m taking a flight to Sydney to see all sorts of things. The Opera House, Bondi Beach, and the Australian Aquarium. On Tuesday it’s off to Cairns for a few days. I’ll be diving on the Great Barrier Reef! How awesome is that? The trip ends Friday, where I come back here for another month or so of school.

As far as other things go, Flash games are still being chugged out. I have another one that’s sponsored for sure, while a few others are being shown about to various sites. Two more are in the works. One involves lots of enemies, bosses, and bullets everywhere. Another is a puzzle platformer. Each will take at least a month to make. Hopefully they’ll pay off.

Everything I’ve been reading online has been giving Bioshock glowing praise. Which of course means I HAVE to play it when I get home. That and Super Mario Galaxy. And Phantom Hourglass. And Smash Bros. Brawl. And Guitar Hero 3. And Rock Band. Damn you Fall and your onslaught of awesome games. Why must I be so poor?!

Destiny Reunion

Just got back from Destiny Reunion, an orchestra quintet that plays video game and anime music. And it was AWESOME. The performances were great and sounded fantastic. Here’s what they played:

Final Fantasy 3 – Main Theme
Romeo x Juliet – Kakki
Noir – Canta Per Me
Rakugaki Oukoku 2 Game – Hako no Niwa
Romeo x Juliet – Oshyaberi
Odin Sphere – Main Theme
.hack//Liminality – Grandpa’s Violin
Princess Mononoke – Main Theme
Laputa: Castle in the Sky – Main Theme
My Neighbor Totoro – Main Theme
Hitoshi Sakimoto – Kanransha (Ferris Wheel)
Gundam Seed – The Song
Kumo no Muko, Yakusoku no Basho – Beyond the Clouds
Romeo x Juliet – Main Theme
The Seventh Seal – Sailing to the World
Rakugaki Oukoku 2 Game – The Hill Overlooking the Windmill
Xenosaga Episode 1 – Pain
Neon Genesis Evangelion – Thanatos
Chrono Cross – Radical Dreamers

Then after the crowd begged for an encore, we got two more songs. I’m SO happy they played these.

Super Mario Bros. – Various Tunes
Chrono Cross – Scars Left by Time

Videos of my favorites below. Apologies for the shitty quality:

My Neighbor Totoro

Radical Dreamers

Scars Left By Time

Super Mario Bros.

Arrrghhh! The bandwidth! It burns!

Afterwards they did autographs and I got a T-shirt with all of theirs. Coolness.

Overall I had a fantastic time. Totally worth $50 and an hour long train ride.