Rubenerd

On Wednesday and Thursday my old man, sister and I made a spontaneous trip up to Dubbo, NSW to visit the Taronga Western Plains Zoo. The trip took substantially longer than we thought it would, but overall had a great time :).

After travelling most of Wednesday from Sydney on the Great Western Highway (route 32 on the map) and the Golden Highway and spending the night at a quiet motel, we hit the zoo early on Thursday morning. The entrance looked like something from Jurassic Park, though for some reason none of us took any pictures of it!

Thanks to Roke on Wikimedia Commons for that map!

The zoo is spread out around a six kilometre track which you can either hike through, drive a car, cycle, or in our case hire an electric golf cart looking thing. As with the tickets themselves it was a bit of an expensive option, but it let us leap out and see a ton of the animals and hear all this "nature" stuff that I'm not used to hearing inside my computer room or in trains or cars or uni. If you plan on going there, we definitely recommend doing this!

The park originally started as a lion safari, and today most of the animals are still African, though there were plenty of Aussie critters are well. The foliage and colours looked particularly authentic; I've never been to Africa but my old man has been on several business trips and commented that at times he felt like he was back there!

As with the Singapore Zoo there's very little visible fencing, instead steep embankments separate you from the animals. What I appreciated was the size of each enclosure; the animals had plenty of breathing and playing space, and most even had their own streams and shelters to keep cool in. It was a fairly warm day and I was tempted to leap in with the turtles after seeing them swimming about! I would have also hugged the adorable baby endangered rhino, but I also wanted to live ;).

Of all the animals, the most entertaining were the giraffes! As if they'd rehearsed a routine, as we approached they leaped to life and started eating large swaths of leaves from the tops of the trees, as if to rub our noses in the fact that we have regularly proportioned necks ;).

LLAMAS! Oh yeah and as promised, some more of the Aussie critters! Kangaroos, wallabies are so memorising to watch jumping around.

The welcome centre had a really nice cafe by the water where we had lunch afterwards in amongst the peacocks. They did a pretty good coffee, I must say. The barista, not the peacock I mean. Though I didn't give the peacock a chance to make one, so I suppose I can't be too sure. Neither did the ducks, which were everywhere! XD

Our only tips: if you're coming from Sydney make sure you leave VERY early in the morning, otherwise you arrive too late to do anything that day. Take plenty of water and sunscreen if you go in the warmer months, and by all means come during the week. While they don't offer the evening events then, we were really fortunate that at times it felt like we were the only ones there. Absolutely worth it :).

Doing my bit to spread the cheer! :D Well, that and seeding the torrents!

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:

• Xen HVM support in FreeBSD/amd64 and Xen PV support in FreeBSD/i386 improved
• ZFS on-disk format updated to version 15
• aesni(4) driver for Intel AESNI crypto instruction set
• BIND and OpenSSL updates
• Gnome updated to 2.32.1, KDE updated to 4.5.5
• Many misc. improvements and bugfixes

Follow up from my previous post on Borders shutting down in Singapore and Australia. I guess it says it all.

From the Singapore Expo website.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Mmm… “cheese specialists”!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

funnyordie:

Justice Bell

@Schindizzle

I'm not the only one who can't sing! Yumekui Merry #04: "Dream Eater Merry"

If you were to gauge the reactions of most of the anime blogging community (or whatever it is they call themselves, there's probably far too much in-fighting and pride between people to ever consider themselves a cohesive or integrated "community!") the general response to this episode was fairly tepid. People thought the pacing was off, some of the scenes were predictable and generally it was a yawnfest. Do a Google search and see for yourself.

I remember Bakemonogatari was accused of the same things around the forth and fifth episodes. Too much purple! Firstly, there's no such thing as too much purple. It's my opinion purple is the greatest colour ever. I never used to tell people this because… well, in certain circles such a colour comes with a lot of social baggage. Assumptions are made about your sexuality. And so on.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, many of the Bakemonogatari viewers/readers thought the once fresh and original idea of the series started becoming formulaic. The spirits that possessed people were all starting to become generic and the way in which they'd be fought and dealt with started following a predictable pattern.

Mmm, coffee! Isono was very nice to take Chizuru under her wing despite her transfer-student reservedness. It seems she and her dad operate the cafe, and that judging from the lack of foot traffic after school they must not get that much business. Or its just easier and cheaper to animate empty ;).

Anyway, needless to say I didn't agree with those Bakemongatari viewers/readers/people and I don't agree with the same things people are saying about Yumekui Merry! Well, mostly ;).

While I felt this episode was a tad more predictable than the previous three and was certainly paced a little slower, I still enjoyed it a lot. I felt there was some valuable character development (some people don't care for this) and Merry herself had the epiphany or realisation or whatever you want to call it that will be continuing her through the series. I don't know about you, but something like that to me seems fairly important ;D.

No wait, before you go any further, I know why the fans were upset. This episode had the fewest midriff shots like this of any so far. NOW I understand! Of course while we have this shot here… after an epic battle she's still unscratched compared to Yumeji who obviously has been injured. I suppose dream daemons don't need protective clothing.

One thing I will admit it has in common with Bakemonogatari other than the use of purple and dealing with general issues of spirits, possessions, dreams and such whatnot, it seems now each episode has a focus character. Today's was the meganekko-moe book club president Mei Hoshino whom Yumeji and the writers club convinced to go karaoke with. It seemed as though she was more interested in texting away on her Japanese flip-phone [that my sister desperately wants], but she caves in and agrees to.

Go the antenna hair! Hey, that's kind of a pun. Phones… antennae? Never mind.

In another anime cliche moment though, of all the high schools in Japan Merry camps out in front of the very one that Yumeji happens to be attending, asking for dream daemons which obviously nobody understands. Either she was completely out of ideas and took a shotgun approach, or she thought she'd use it as an excuse to meet Yumeji again.

Anyway they all go to the karaoke club (KTV in Singapore/Malaysia parlance ;D) and we learn that being able to perceive the colours of people's dreams doesn't have any bearing on singing ability, nor does being a dream daemon ensure knowledge in the operation of a karaoke booth! We find out though that Mei has been messaging a boy this whole time, which flusters her a little ;).

After leaving though, Yumeji puts two and two together and realises Mei is actually possessed. That's not bad grammar, I'm referring to her not myself. They journey into a daydream and he tries his best to tackle the dream daemon that's been haunting her and sending her those messages, but obviously mere mortals aren't a match.

That reminds me, that's a bit of a plot hole isn't it… couldn't mere mortals like us merely imagine ourselves with giant weapons to tackle evil people in dreams? Or better still just imagine enemies out of existence? Its the problem I had with the Inception movie, couldn't they just do anything in the dream worlds?

Merry comes in and saves the world though with this enemy flavour of the day. Okay I can start to see what the critics are saying, this is a bit formulaic. But I still love the witty banter they get up to before she launches into a highly choreographed fight in a miniskirt that would make the scouts from the Sailor Moon franchise blush. In the name of the Moon, she shall punish you! The graphics are infinitely cooler though, just saying.

She also uses her nickname "Dreameater Merry" that Yumeji came up for her for the first time… aww ;).

Of course victory is theirs, and we close the episode with Merry agreeing to move in with Yumeji, Isono and Epic Dad. Of course because the family business is a café, this gives the animators an excuse to dress her up like a maid; I mean, she has to earn her keep right? I let it slide given it was surprisingly modest, at least by anime standards!

As you've read if you've been following my reviews of this series so far, I do think Yumekui Merry has fallen into plenty of anime clichés and overly convenient circumstances, but overall I still am really enjoying it. The art and colours which drew me to it in the first place are still just as gorgeous as ever, and despite what others are allegedly feeling I'm really starting to empathise with the characters now. I'll keep watching.

Lots of rain this episode, which was appropriate given it was pouring with rain in Sydney today. They performed Inception on… the weather here? Am I pushing this metaphor too far?

Revolutions, unrest and violence in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and now news of a huge earthquake and not one but nine aftershocks in Christchurch before they've even had enough time to recover from their last quake. Jeepers.

Sending positive thoughts, for whatever that's worth.

Also helps to put our own problems into perspective, doesn't it?

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Two loads of cutlery and plates… so tired!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

I would LOVE to do that! :D