Camera on the south coast

Nick and I went down to the south coast to test out my new camera underwater - it wasn't easy without getting wet myself, but I got some good pics in rock-pools, and some interesting video too :)



Cool wee Tripplefin

Half in half out

Anemone


We also saw some crazy hippies dancing to Drum & Bass music coming from their hippy-van. (dirty hippies!) I didn't get the worst of it sorry, but I was trying to be subtle!



FYI - I'm allowed to say that because my mum is a hippy and I have an affinity with them... I just wouldn't dance like that in public, but good on them!

The camera also does well out of the water, this snail would have been about 1.5mm across

Why don't you get in the pen dickhead?!

Funny and very kiwi!



more here

MY ANUS IS BLEEDING!!!

WOW

I think this is actually the funniest most random short film I've EVER SEEN!

Disclaimer: Adrenaline, caffeine, alcohol or other mind altering substances (keep it legal people) will increase enjoyment of this short film

Distraction

If you are trying to write your thesis, this is very distracting!!!

Let it load, and then play away :)


If you can beat my high score of 334620 I'll be very impressed!!

My kind of porn!!

I've just found the best kind of porn EVER!

It's Green Porn, well Green Porno to be precise, and it's a series of short films that have been made by Isabella Rossellini. She's the daughter of the famous Ingrid Bergman, and as well as doing her bit for the Sci Fi Channel and training guide dogs for the blind (I'm serious, she's awesome!) she has also created a very entertaining yet informative series.













First, to get you in the mood, check this out!



Other funny animals covered in the first series include Earthworms, Praying Mantis, Spiders and Bees.

Isabella has now made 3 series of Green Porno, all amazingly funny and all viewable here. The 3 series also starts to take on a real environmental awareness theme which is GREAT :D

Oh and you can also find out your 'Green Porno Name' too; you can call me Nat Fungus ;)

geeking out on Avatar

I still can't get over how awesome the 15min preview of Avatar was that I watched last week... To celebrate, here are a few screen captures from the HD teaser trailer (for those of you who have a crappy computer like me - I can't play the HD version cause it' too much for my computer to handle :P)

The world of Pandora is very cool at night - the forests are full of bio-luminescent plants and animals... Apparently inspired by James Cameron's love of deep sea life. This scene is the only one of that in the teaser, the ones in the preview were SOOOO much more intense, and according to Nick even that was nothing!!! This stuff looks so incredible in 3D!


He stands 3m tall, his bones are made from 'naturally occurring carbon fibre' and he's the Avatar (created using the DNA of the Na'vi - native species of Pandora) of Jake Sully. Needless to say he rocks!

As well as generally kicking ass, Jake goes all native and plays with face paints! ROAR!

Jake's lady-navi-friend Neytiri. She's pretty!

Avatar's first appearance

Over a year ago I remember spending a while trying to track down some info on Avatar... Back then it was all so hush hush that I couldn't even find an image!

Today however, I went to a preview screening of Avatar, James Cameron's first movie since Titanic.

It was at Readings, Wellington's only theatre which has a 3D screen (if you didn't know the movie is in 3D) and all we had to do to get in was queue for about an hour :) The queueing was made harder by the total nerds (in my book worse than geeks!) who were in the queue behind Nick and I, talking total crap. Thankfully I was able to pass some of the time playing my latest addiction on Nick's iphone; Flight Control!!

So back to Avatar - the preview was about 15 mins of 3D awesomeness, and I even spotted a friend of mine who was an extra in it - quite funny cause he's very tall and slim and not really what you'd expect a Marine to look like, did a good job though, nice one Ed! *thumbs up*

I also learned that James Cameron seems to refer to himself as "Jim"... FYI

After seeing the teaser trailer (which went online this morning) it was a great relief to see some decent content. The trailer is good at introducing a bit of the environment of the movie, but the preview really did give a good look at not only the visual awesomeness of Avatar but also a bit of an introduction to the main characters. VERY impressed :)

It was great to see it with Nick as he could show me which bits he'd worked on (as well as which bits he was still working on!) and after watching it I quickly took Nick back to work so he could finish making it :P

Roll on 18th of December!

District 9

Wow, what an AWESOME movie! Tonight i went to the preview screening of District 9 at the Embassy with Nick and Mat R. It's a great movie combining an awesome scifi story with morals and kick ass visuals! It's a must see, best movie I've seen in a long time :D

And it just proves yet again how great wellington is - where else in the world would Peter Jackson himself come along and give a pep talk at the start of a movie screening??!

Thanks again Matt D for the tickets, we got the best seats in the house!

suicidal bunnies

These cartoons definitely make me laugh!

hope you like them too :)

They're by a guy called Andy Riley, very funny I think!

(sorry for the not so amazing quality - I took photos of them with my phone :P)

How to kill moss, scientifically

I'm on an email list for Grad students at both Vic and Massey uni's, which means I get a constant flow of email about what is going on at both places. These range from "lost USB found in the tearoom" to "Guest academic speaking about bla bla bla"

Anyway, I've just got an email from Vic which I think is a real classic!

Normal people who want to get rid of moss somewhere public would maybe say something along the lines of:

"There is moss in the glasshouse, so I'm going to spray it. Please keep out for a day or two. Thanks"
(Moss & Lichen on Mt Arthur, Nelson)

However, in the scientific world, it sounds like this:

"It is my intention to try to deal with the problem of the slippery glasshouse floor later this afternoon. I am going to water the floors with Watkins Algae and Moss killer. This contains benzalkonium chloride and copper sulphate. I want this left undisturbed over the weekend so I can monitor the effect. Please do not go into the glasshouse after 3pm today until Tuesday afternoon 2nd June Thanks."

NO JOKE, that is the exact wording in the email!!

Scientists are... special :P

Good day

I had a good day today :D

I'm not sure where it came from, I wasn't expecting it to be good at all. But here I am, about to get a good nights sleep and reflecting on the past 12 hours it's actually gone rather well!

While gardening this afternoon I had a few revelations about what to do with my (until then) mess of a thesis project... It's too early in the process (and too late at night) to elaborate, but needless to say I'm very pleased with my train of thought and I think it's all going to work out OK.

PHEW!

If not... I can always defect to this form of science and possibly scrape through:

This one is also quite funny... In a geeky sort of way :P

Ciao for now

House Of The Dead OVERKILL

This is the latest game I've bought for my Wii...



Along with working and going through my samples in the lab, I haven't had much time to do much else - but I have found time to play this game - because it's F*%king AWESOME!!!



This game is a taken from the classic House of the Dead arcade game. It's full of more zombies than you can shake a stick at and more swear words than you can shake a tree at. Your game is narrated by a cheesy american voice who gets more and more excited as you dispatch the various zombies without missing any shots, and you can also shoot health and over power-ups, one good one even slows the game speed for 20ish second to give you time to aim for a clean head shot or two!

To let you see just how awesome this game is, I've put together a wee video for you of some of the scenes and game play.

WARNING - this game is R16 rated, therefore this video is too!!

Youtube snippets

I just got off the phone with Ben, and after having a quick look at a few clips he told me about decided I needed to share them!

First, this is how you SHOULDN'T act when you miss you plane, I mean, honestly!


And this one shows how NOT to get laid - I mean I think if someone tried it on with me by singing this song (and in that voice) I would probably have to shoot them. This would put them (and everyone else) out of their misery!

"Rape me in my thighs"!

Ewww...

I consider myself to be quite unsqueamish when it comes to lots of things.
Sure, when I'm not feeling up to it Nip Tuck can be a bit gross, and MASSIVE spiders can be too much sometimes. But there are few things in the natural world that make my blood curdle.

Some of you will know that one of these things (or some of them I guess), are primates.
Not all primates mind - lemurs are cool, gorillas are pretty neat and tamarins are pretty cute. But the average Joe Blogs monkey, or even worse chimpanzee, really grosses me out.
I think it's the whole 'looks like a small hairy person' thing that does it - can you blame me?! its just WRONG!

Here is a perfect example of this, which came from an email my flattie sent me a few days ago, which supposedly contained cute baby animal photos - they obviously didn't realise this 'baby' is actually the spawn of Satan...

SEE??! Forget about bestiality - that should be illegal!
(Actually don't forget about bestiality, that should of course remain illegal...)

So why am I writing a blog post about things which gross me out? Well it's because after snorkeling with a friend on the South Coast the other day, we saw something which grossed me out as much as a monkey!

Have you seen deformed animals before? It must be said they also weird me out... lots...

They raise so many questions; was it born like that? Did it have an unfortunate accident with a rubber band, plastic bag or shopping trolley? Did it's mother consume too many e-numbers? Will it procreate and raise an army of deformed animals with the ability to talk and conquer the world?!

So many questions... and how will we find out the answers? Well of course we can't, because they can't talk... YET! queue music from Psycho

Well here are the photos anyway, I'll let you decide for yourself. This seagull had no beak which I think its weird, especially when it opens its 'mouth' to eat chips or 'talk'...

BTW it's tongue was still the normal length and stuck right out of it's 'mouth' when it squawked

Kill it now! Before it's too late!!!!

Clouds

The clouds were looking cool as I took my samples today, so I made a time lapse video of them

For some reason youtube made this video quite jerky... if you want to see the full video which is smoother and has more pixels view it here!

Misplaced anticipation

It was probably about a month ago now, and I was at Nev’s house – more than likely eating and watching some form of cheesy Sci-fi.

I picked up an issue of Top Gear magazine, and flicking through it I stumbled across something which I will always remember and want; even though (I have now found out) I can never have one…
So what is this item of such lust? This alluring material possession which instantly made me fall in love with it?! Well, being a car magazine, it was of course a type of Volkswagen.
So here it is, the GX3

This 3 wheeled concept was made, to much public excitement, in 2006 and 2007. I didn't realise at the time, but the Top Gear magazine I'd read at Nev's was actually from 2006 - hence me wrongly thinking, for a short and exciting few weeks, that owning one was a possibility... The GX3 was powered by a 1.6l engine from a Lupo GTI, and could go from 0-100k's in about 5.7 seconds. Not the fastest I know, but still fun!

I think it also looked awesome - love the idea of the asymmetric headlights, and it was nice and low to the ground too.

But as I have already said, it was not to be. I found this out when I googled the GX3 for more information - it seems that VW was too concerned by the lawsuits which would have started rolling in from Americans once people started hurting themselves... As we all know they like to sue for everything in the US, even when it's their own fault.

Never mind though, it was a nice dream, and maybe one day they'll bring it back to life!

RIP GX3

1 series

Have you seen the new add on TV for the BMW 1 Series?
I have... many times... and I think it's cool!

Well I've got a friend in the know, and using my detective skills found out who the song is by, so here is the song: The Presets - Are You The One
The video is interesting!!



If you like their music...

OK Andy, so how much are you going to give me for this free advertising?! A new car would be acceptable...

Anyway, it's the best car add I've seen in a while, although the competition has been pretty low...
In fact one recent add (for the new Barina) is I think the worst I've ever seen. Sure, I realise I'm not the target audience for it, which appears to be girls who think car engines have a 'big heart'. Saying that even my flattie Christine was far from impressed, and she's the one it's meant to be aimed at! If you haven't seen this sad example of how not to sell cars, here it is...



No wonder the local Holden dealership is being liquidated!!

Pics from the weekend that was

Well I worked both days this weekend, so it wasn't the most exciting. I did, however, want to share two photos with you all.
This first demonstrates what a well hung plant looks like:
The second is the view from my new hammock, which I can put up in my garden and relax in after a hard days work! LOVE IT :D

In other news I got a phone call at 8.30 this morning and was told that I'd locked a customer inside the garden centre last night... and after 1 1/2 hours the police had to come and cut the padlock to get her out... ops!

In my defence there were no cars in the car park, and I had checked for people outside, but she must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time cause I didn't see her... Oh well, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it :P

The movie that you SHOULD NOT see this year...

Well I just got home from my weekly movie with EJ... unfortunately this week it really was a bad one, so bad in fact that I thought I'd warn you all...

DO NOT, under ANY circumstance, go and see The Spirit... It is TOTAL crap!
Not even if its free
Or even if someone pays you to go - don't do it!

We thought, from the shorts we saw last week, that it looked at least remotely interesting, with some cool visual effects and some eye candy kicking ass to boot - which is never a bad thing...

However, this was not the case. The story was totally non existent, The lead, although hot, was an absolute douche who completely failed to build an interesting character. The fact that every woman swooned at him could have been amusing, but just came across as being very sad... Basically I think it was the worse movie I've ever seen, and that's saying something!

Don't go there, for Gods sake!

WARNING - slightly PG ;)

I heard this song for the first time last night at party...

Its by a band called The Lonely Island, who are pretty much the US answer to the kiwi legends Flight of the Concords...