Changes

Well.. life has been interesting since my last angsty emo post. So I thought now would be a perfect time while I’m feeling angsty and emo to write more.

Actually, I’m not angsty and emo at all. Life has been good to me, tiring and busy, but good enough anyway. Work has been going well, busy as ever and keeping me occupied learning new things all the time. We (Blake and myself) have also been looking for a new place to rent, seeing as currently this place is costing me very close to half my pay each month. After a few very frustrating weekends of either looking at shitboxes with worse neighbours, or very nice houses with no interest from the agent re our application, we finally managed to snag another place in Castle Hill. Continuing my proud tradition, I am yet to see the house (Did you know I have never moved into a house that I saw before the day I rocked up with my stuff? Makes life interesting to say the least). Moving will be another fun time, with a reasonably large amount of crap to be shoved into various cars and vans, and a house to clean.

I will miss our current place, I’m currently sitting in my bedroom, looking out over sydney to the south, as far as I can see until it fades into the smog of everyone returning from easter holidays with friends and family. I decided to stay in sydney this weekend, and somewhat regretted it, I have always enjoyed spending time with my family, and perhaps I could have picked a better weekend to be completely slovenly, four days is a little too long for my liking. I guess it came down to the fact that there was nobody around really.

Autumn has well and truly arrived, my second favourite season of the year after winter. The temps have been dropping, snowfall predictions starting to show 5% odds, and friends are heading back to the snowies for another season in that magical town. Whats that? Sounds like I miss it? No kidding. I’ve had to push myself very hard for the last three months to stop myself from running back down there. I especially miss the people, the environment and the atmosphere of the entire place, that freedom mixed with the cold mountain air is like a drug for me. I long for next year or the year after, when I intend to head back, perhaps more permanently. I can think of few places nicer to live for a while as I try and get my life into some sort of shape.

For the time being, I will have to be content with sitting on our balcony without shoes on, pretending its four degrees outside. Alas, this isnt so, but I think I will certainly be returning for a weekend or two this year to try and get my fix.

Thats all for now I guess, I’m still not sure what to do with the last six hours of my evening, but it will be something suitably mind numbing to fit with the standard my weekend has taken on.

Hope everyone had a happy and safe Easter long weekend.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Singleplayer Review

Well, I’ve just finished the Single player campaign for Bad Company 2, which entitles me to an opinion. I did not finish it on easy so I could blitz it, I did not finish on hard so I could be a purist, I went for vanilla “Normal”.

Overall, I very much enjoy the mechanics of this game, but I think there are a few flaws, and definitely a few traps I have seen developers fall for in the past, but I’ll get to that later

A quick rundown of the story is in order really. You are put in the shoes of Bad Company, a team of four trope-y special forces soldiers. The first level opens putting you in the shoes of a 1944 band of similar characters, racing to extract a defecting Japanese scientist. As expected the whole battle goes awry, after a dramatic escape on a submarine, the team is conveniently killed off. As a side note, I expect to see this more often in games as pioneered by Call Of Duty Modern Warfare. It builds the emotion of a game to kill off the character the player has known and loved and fought alongside during the game.

Fastforward to the present, and Bad Company is negotiating a minefield in order to retrieve a package from the grasp of the enemy, led by a typically bald evil mastermind. Does his head get cold in all these shitty wintery town?
Blasting through this level was fun, the weather effects immersing you in the environment, with plenty of opportunities to test out the dynamic level design, and quite a few new weapons.
After blowing through the village, you commandeer the transport vehicle, and take off, pursued relentlessly by a stream of enemy vehicles (where were they when you were laying waste to their forces in the town? Smoko?)
I wont go further into the detail of the storyline, but its all a touch predictable. Maybe that was just my view as it does admittedly follow many of the conventions of a good storyline to build.

The level design troubled me somewhat in this game. I’m not sure why the particular environmental designer hated the player, but they really do. I love the physics engine, coupled with the destructible environments, but the environment itself is nearly unbearable.
I should point out that I am not playing this game on a low-spec machine, but neither is it a SLI or crossfire monster of graphics capability. I play on High graphics settings, 1280×1024. I have noticed a loss in framerate during very busy scenes, especially some of the jungle battles through the middle of the game, but otherwise it is quite acceptable.
Line of sight in the game can be a frustrating thing, if you’re in a desert? Its a sandstorm. A winter level? A whiteout (there is actually a small portion of an early level based around this, which was admittedly quite fun), if you’re in a jungle, its the bloody amazon.

I found this to be incredibly distracting, disadvantaging, and rather poor gameplay. I tend to think that because of the way the environment works, the designer has found that the only way to stop people sitting back and picking off their targets from a distance is to make the level design extremely ambush prone. Additionally, they have added so much haze/smoke/snow/sand/flare that I found myself squinting at the screen trying to make out the enemy goon five meters away who is pumping me full of death.
A very disappointing solution to what could be a much more elegantly solved problem. If I had my way, I would have switched out perhaps the last level (through the town) and also the level rescuing a certain team member (I will say no more) for night-battles and added the extra claustrophobia of night vision goggles and flashlights. This could have broken the pace of the game a lot, added a lot more depth to the tactics the player must use.

Enough ranting about the environment, my next two gripes are about the weapons and the NPC’s. Unfortunately, the NPC’s irritated me most, so they will be my first victim. To say your team is stupid would be a little of an understatement. I understand that this being a single player mission, you are expected to lead your team, but this game takes this to a point of pain at times. I don’t want to be the first person through that door? Oh well.. my team are back there somewhere negotiating a small rock that is inexplicably harder to conquer than Everest. Off I go to contract lead poisoning then.
The squad can be useful in many situations, mainly only as a diversion, and at times, a meat shield (they cannot die), but in others they can be plain obstructive. I would have really liked to see a context menu (similar to the multiplayer ‘issue orders’ menu), go here, stay there, kill this, hold fire etc included. By all means for 80% of the game I would have left them on ‘follow me and shut up’ but there were a number of situations where cover fire from just the right angle would have made a situation solvable with skill instead of plain luck and grenade spam.

Next up was the weapon layout. Ugh. I love a huge choice of weapons in multiplayer, but in single player this really sucks. The convenient ‘Supply crates’ everywhere, including deep within enemy territory, store all of the weapons you may have encountered in your travels. Completely unnecessary. I think with the exception of one level only, my two weapons were the XM8 and the T88 SR. The XM8 is well balanced, the grenade launcher a nifty (yet overpowered, I’ll get to that in a moment) addition, the T88 is lethal at any distance with one shot kills regardless of the enemy, or where the shot lands. The Sniper rifle is slow and uses far too much zoom (harking back to the aforementioned problem with visual distances in whiteouts), the heavy machine guns far too inaccurate, the submachine guns too underpowered for the balance of game this requires.

This is perhaps why the convenient weapon supply crates were included, so the player can experiment and have fun with their weapons. I tended to see a new gun, pick it up, put a few rounds into something then go right back to my old weapon.
I was dissapointed in the layout of the ammunition in the game. Far too many ammo crates were scattered throughout levels, to the point where I began seeing them as crates-cum-bunkers (they, as a gameplay element, are indestructible) with a built in supply of kickass. This allows you to at some points, swap right past your guns and go for the grenade launcher, and keep running back to the crate. Not good. Convenient, yes, good level design, not really. I would have much preferred two weapons (one heavy, one light) and a pistol, allowing the player to take the risk of pushing further on limited ammuniton, instead of returning to the crate as soon as they emptied a clip, which I found myself doing a lot.

Gameplay is varied, presenting the player with several (actually, short of a sea-battle), all, of the environments war takes place in the modern theaters of combat. I was happy to see they took some levels environmental factors and worked them into the story, the descent down the slopes of an icy mountain while fighting frostbite was especially clever. There were a number of parts of levels where I found myself unexpectedly presented with a situation I had no idea how to solve. More often than not, this meant looking around for the convenient rocket launcher I have come to expect.
I would have liked to see the developers work with the destroyable environments more, especially forcing the player to destroy/blow their way through buildings to move around would have been a nice addition to a few of the levels. There was even C4 in a number of places, but I found no obvious level situations requiring this.
The storyline has a suitable amount of development to maintain flow, including the required twists and turns, but some more explanation of who you are actually fighting would be nice. It seemed to be a mismatch between doo-rag wearing gangsters for hire, or crack squads of Russian SF soldiers. Another level design I enjoyed was ‘Sangre del Torro’. This level, set in the desert, presents the player with a vast number of suitable approaches to each objective, some of them easier than the others. Beware of going off-map, 10 seconds is sometimes barely enough to turn your dune buggy doing mach 1 around and get your ass back into friendly territory.

Overall, the game for me was quite enjoyable. I split it up over a day and a half or so, requiring a few breaks after the jungle, my eyes were starting to hurt from trying to see through the misty sun flare. I believe the singleplayer campaign provides a good opportunity for a new player to get to know the game, or for a storyline sucker to find out the next installment, but I wouldnt hold my breath for this feature alone. Poor level design in places, coupled with imbecilic NPC’s and a little skills padding in the way of weaponry and resupply points all make this a frustrating game to get involved in if you are looking for something to take your mind off the rape you will be served up once you have joined the online servers.

The TL:DR – Three out of five terrorists from me. Some bad level design and game play elements, but a reasonable story, fun characters and interesting situations all make this a good complement to the excellent multiplayer series that Battlefield has become.

Hands on with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – First Impressions

Alright, well, in a fit of ‘Holy crap that looks cool’ I’ve gone and preordered the new installment in the Battlefield series, Bad Company 2.
Now, Bad company 1 was never released for PC Gamers, leading a lot of players to wonder if they were going to leave the PC market to Call of Duty. Dice has teamed up with EA to make this happen, most likely so that battlefield doesnt lose too much ground to the behemoth that COD: Modern Warfare 2 has become. Essentially, COD and BF have been similar games, but seem to appeal to different demographics of the player base. COD has a distinctly first person feel to it. The maps are smaller, and people don’t seem to work towards goals as a team so much. There’s no such thing as healing, or revives, no airdrops (unless you kill enough people, then they’re just plain effing irritating), and no drivable vehicles, let alone aircraft.
Battlefield has filled this gap remarkably well since their debut with Battlefield 1942. 1942 revolutionised multiplayer shooters, bringing the ticket system, as well as drivable vehicles and realistic weapon performance to the online world. Many games have heavily borrowed from this system, but none do it quite as well as Battlefield seem to be able to do. Following 1942, Vietnam was the next big release, bringing people the M60′s and river boats they wanted. Throw in some AFV’s and a few aircraft, and you have another popular seller. Dice reinvented the franchise somewhat with Battlefield 2, set in a recent desert-storm like campaign, this was the first major appearance of expansion content for a multiplayer game such as the special forces addon. Battlefield 2 remains very popular to this day, allowing players to live out battles with what is essentially todays technology.
Moving forward again, the next game in the line was Battlefield 2142. Coming a full century from the first game isnt easy, but this transition was pulled off with a remarkable degree of flair and polish. A few new game modes complemented an already solid base, allowing veterans of previous games to get fighting right away, and only requiring a little lead-in for new players.
Skip forward four years, and the next PC game to come out of EA/Dice is Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Battlefield: Bad Company reinvented the storyline yet again. Bringing back our old friends, the MEC, the Russian Federation and some mercenaries for good taste, the environmental, physics and game engines were overhauled, bringing a whole new dimension of gameplay to the series. Destroyable environments led to new tactics being formulated, and old ones being scrapped entirely. No longer can you hide behind the wall, or in the house, and take potshots from cover. That cover aint as hard as it looks, and that tank cannon is more destructive than ever.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 adds to this, bringing it to the PC and allowing the refinement of this system. Previously, in the BF:BC engine, only the shell of the structure was destroyable, walls and ceilings, floors and doors. BC2 has blown the top off this (pun intended), and now you can level the entire building if you’re not a big fan of the decor. Nearly every structure in the game can take a hit and show the appropriate amount of damage according to exactly what sort of brutalisation you inflicted on it.

This leads to the next point. The vehicle combat has always been a pivotal and important role in the BF series, and they’re not going to stop now. Of course, the system has changed to fit the environment. Overall, vehicles take less damage, but deal a little more. The operation isnt exactly childs play, but destroying one sort of is. This is to compensate for the impolite fact that with any small amount of determination, you can quickly rob your enemy of any cover they would otherwise rely on to destroy you by normal means. So, to keep it fair, now all you have to do is shoot them before they shoot you. Tanks are no longer the juggernauts we saw in 2142 and BF2, however they are still the most potent force in the vehicle lineup. Helicopter fans be damned, have you ever run over someone in a helicopter? I thought not.
My newest favourite addition to the garage is the quadbikes, currently only usable by the attacking team in the beta level. Small, nimble  but not exactly hardy, these little beasts go from zero to holy shit in about two seconds flat. Great for flanking maneuvers they hold two players each, and are impressively hard to roll or flip.
Finally, the UAV makes a triumphant return in the game, now taking the form of a small helicopter. Flown from a first person view via an on-board camera, it is stocked with hellfire missiles, allowing the controlling player to, once every thirty or so seconds, make the enemy shit themselves as they try and find shelter from the death raining from above. Again, not especially hardy, so hovering at low levels while flipping the bird at the guy on the mounted MG is rather hazardous to your health. Also, if the opposing team is very sneaky, you are also liable to be shanked while you’re engrossed playing the in-game equivalent of a flight sim.

Next up is the class system. Lots of online games offer customisable ‘loadouts’ for your various playstyles. I happen to be a fan of the COD way of doing things, with custom kits unlocked after a reasonably brief period of time, allowing unlimited options with regards to your toolkit for doing nasty things to your enemies. However, this has never been overly realistic, and sometimes its plain silly. You have snipers with a shotgun as a secondary weapon, Special ops players kitted with silenced pistols and an RPG.
The Battlefield way of doing it, mirrors the real world version of the process – you have a specialisation, you get a little choice within that realm with regards to your weapon and such, thats about it. No more heavy machine gunners with little silenced pistols.
The other change is that yet another class has been dropped. In BF2, there were about twelve hundred classes, whereas BC2 has just four. Your standard assault, run and gun with a grenade launcher, an engineer kit, with a SMG, Rocket launcher and repair drill, the Medic class, who now doubles duty as the heavy weapons class, with an LMG, revive kit and health packs, and finally the Sniper class, now also doing the special ops rounds, with a rifle, motion tracking grenades, and remote detonated explosives.
I feel this works remarkably well, and with a little time, each class is easy to master and fun to play. Unfortunately, both the sniper and the medic need some balance.. there are almost always more medics than assault players, and the snipers just duke it out with the other teams snipers. This is because the sniper rifle has such a slow reload that by time you have re-zeroed your aim, the player you critically wounded has found better cover, or returned fire, and you’re now missing large portions of your body. The medic class, with an impressive lineup of weaponry (so far the SAW seems to be a favourite amongst players, due to its early unlock and rate of fire), and ability to revive and heal teammates offers far more than the base Assault kit seems to.

The beta now deserves some attention. This is the first such beta that I have participated in, and overall I am impressed with the quality of the game as it stands right now, but also excited for the immense possibilities that will come from the full game. As a beta, there are of course plenty of bugs, but these seem to be ironed out remarkably quickly, with new patches being released very often. There are a number of gameplay fixes I would like them to fix, namely the power of a sniper rifle, the system used to highlight (spot) a target, and the reimplementation of the prone position that seems to have been removed to speed the game up for console players. There are a number of wall glitches, and falling through stairways is irritatingly common. There is no latency meter included in the server list yet, although the place where it will be is there. Server names are not sortable by any means yet, but again, all in good time.

Currently GameArena seem to be the best servers for .au players, I refrain from using the ‘Play now’ button, simply because it always lands me on a server in the US or EU and I get slaughtered because of the lag.

I’ll write a little more on the subject once more of the game is released, including a few comments about the tactics that seem to be growing in popularity at the present.
If you feel so obliged, add me as a friend, my gametag is Makazaru.

Regards

Pip

Dolphin Point HR – October 2009

I havent posted this album yet, so here goes.

If you look closely, you might even see Mr Fitzsimmons having a crack with a driptorch. Great to see management getting their hands dirty too!

Powerbookmedic.com and their DualDrive FAIL.

[POST UPDATED: See end of post]

Well, this morning has been frustrating as hell to say the least.

The plot line.

I have a dead DVD drive in my macbook pro. At some point in my wanderings I heard of, and eventually found, Powerbook Medic and their DualDrive system (Powerbook Medic). Cue impressed noises and rustling of credit cards being yanked from wallets.

A few days later (this morning) once it had arrived, I decided to spend a little time installing it. “Oh, sure, it’ll be a fifteen minute job only” I told myself, eyeing off my screwdrivers. Yeah, right.

After fifteen minutes I was only just lifting away the keyboard after trying to get the 2.5″ drive to happily fit in the new dualdrive case.. not easy, especially as it leaves about 3mm gap between the drive and the flexible metal top of the case, something i was rather nervous about.

Soon I had extracted (read: wrenched bodily) the existing DVD not-so-superdrive from the laptop, and even holding the two in my hands I started to have doubts about whether the dualdrive would even fit, especially with its shiney silver faceplate that did little more than hold a crappy LED that I intended to disconnect anyway.
Moving on, I removed the mounting brackets from the old drive, and started putting them on the new drive.. left hand side went on ok… right hand side, not so much. The new drive was too fat, and meant the little bent metal bracket was even more crooked than the Italian government.
Nevertheless, I decided that that bracked was somewhat unnecessary, and proceeded to try and install the last bracket, probably the most important, which holds the drive steady from lateral rotation, vibration and other nasty things.
No go.
The screw holes were all wrong… the closest fit left the remaining screw hole about 6mm away from the matching socket on the PCB, it may as well been 6m. Turning the bracket around, i managed to line it up, but it would only take one screw without being brutally mangled, and at this point I decided I didn’t trust this new modification enough to pass that point of ungodly no return.
Soon enough, I had all the brackets in place as best as I could, and seated the drive in place.. lo and behold, all the tabs that the screws hold onto the PCB were about 3mm off their sockets.. pressing on, I managed to screw the most of them down, bending the brackets even further.
Soon enough, the promised land was in sight (even if I could already detect a whiff of bullshit). Putting everything back in place, I reconnected the keyboard, and oh, what a surprise.. the part over the dvd drive wouldnt sit in place.. not a small gap, more like that magical 2-3 mm. At this point I went googling and found not a single scrap of info, so, trying again, I removed a few of the brackets (the left and right ones) and reseated it. It now wobbled around like a two year on a bike old just off training wheels, but it seemed to sit lower.. again, I replaced the case..
It barely fit.. and by barely, there was a huge and noticable bulge where the drive sat, the edging wouldnt click into the bottom section of the case, and I was nervous to put any screws in, just in case they zipped off into the nether depths of my office at work.
No way did this drive fit, and although i’d love a second drive, I value my macbook too highly to desecrate it with some crap peice of bent metal and a dodgy sata converter that didnt even fit.

So, now I’m going to email them and ask if I missed a critical step involving a  dremel and a hacksaw, or perhaps didn’t utter the incantation right as I was making a ritual sacrifice to the laptop gods.

the TL;DR of the story
Dualdrive (PN, SKU1725711) for macbook Pro, 15″, non unibody, doesnt fit. I wouldnt reccomend buying one of these, even if it seems like an awesome addition to your mac, unless you personally know someone who has installed the same drive, in the same model as your macbook / pro.

The screw of the story? I dont get shipping refunded, so the drive that cost me 60 bucks is going to pay for its own shipping to and from me. What a waste of time.

[UPDATE 15/1/10]
Ok, I finally recieved more information from PBM the other day regarding the dualdrive. It seems the completely fail to mention that on the MBP 15″ Non Unibody, you need to remove the top cover of the DVD drive as the bluetooth module that hangs from the bottom of the keyboard tray just above the DVD drive bay is too fat to fit if you dont remove this. So, pulling it all apart, I’ve gone and removed that cover, re-fitted the brackets, which actually seem to fit a little easier, and mounted it.

I must admit at this point, that my initial indignation at the dualdrive and powerbook medic was a little harsh, but still deserved perhaps. I now have two drives in my mac, and it runs very nicely.

If you would like any more info about this, please comment here with an email address and I’ll get back to you when I can. Dont hold your breath though

- Mak

New Years and what they hold.

Again, its been a while.

I’ve tended to drift in and out of the desire to give people a running commentary on my life, for a variety of reasons. I have so many friends and family, colleagues and clients on my facebook profile now that it seems a little redundant writing these, but in the same moment, I don’t want everyone to know everything I’m doing. Gotta keep you guessing, you see?

2009.. humm.. 2009 has been an interesting year. I’ve seen some spectacular things, done some really fun stuff, met some really cool people and made some of the best career choices of my life.

Fireworks NYE 2008

It all started with, well, I guess new years day last year, when I ended up in sydney with a few friends, including Sam, who I was living with at the time, and Bronwyn and Erin, who went on to become close friends of mine, and for a short while, a little more.

Work was good for the start of 2009, Daraco was becoming a great source of experience for me, both in knowledge, as well as letting me build on my communications skills which have helped me in the year so far.

Blake wearing his.. crown? Jan 2009

After a few months, the time came to leave for the snow again. I’d caught up with some friends before the season, Luke Perkins, and his girlfriend at the time Fiona Johnston, and before we knew it, we were in a house in jindabyne, getting ready to start the season! I’d also been introduced to bouldering in this time, which has gone on to become somewhat of an addiction.

Luke tackling a cool v6-ish we dubbed 'Gollum' down at the lake in Jindabyne

Soon enough, the snow began to fall, and when it did, oh, boy did it come in a big rush! nearly a meter in the space of a few weeks lead to some of the best early season skiing i’ve ever experienced. I was working back on the skitube, as a concourse operator, but soon enough, july rolled around, and things all changed!

Adam up to his waist in the snowdrift I was greeted with one cold 6am at Perisher!

After a season of concourse already, I was looking for something a little out of the ordinary, so, after talking to a few of the snowmaking guys who would catch the train up the mountain each afternoon, I decided to talk to my manager about doing some caddying, or work experience, for the snowmakers, so I could maybe get a foot in the door overseas.

At this point, it would be bad not to make mention of a very special person. I’d known Brooke since my previous season, and at the end of winter 2008, we ended up together, and I distinctly remember foolishly uttering the line ‘In a few weeks time we’ll be going to different states, different lives, we might as well give it a shot now’. Oh how wrong I was. 2009 started with drunken text messages over the state of origin, and ended up with one of the most meaningful relationships I have ever had. After a while unfortunately, the distance began to take its toll, and we decided it would be better for both of us to go our separate ways for now. Thanks Brooke You mean a lot to me.

One afternoon, I got a call from a man who introduced himself as John Palmer, and offered me a job – They had several of the crew who moved to grooming once the snow was enough to require more cats out each night, and they needed numbers. Given a uniform and a number to call, I was told to be at the loading dock the next afternoon, ready for work.

The sleds, at Blue Cow Pumphouse - these little beauties are incredibly fun to ride.

So began one of the most enjoyable jobs I have ever had the pleasure of working. I was taught the ropes by the more experienced crew, Tom, Noodle, Ben, Kip, you guys were great. My manager was Paul ‘Pop’ Nicholls, a gem of a boss, who was always fair, happy to give advice and always in for a laugh. Some nights were absolutely brutal – my first and second night, we had over a foot of fresh snow.. hauling 38mm charged lines of air and water out from underneath that will cause you to sweat, even in -30 windchill! But at the end of every gun check there was a warm pumphouse to come back to, and dry out, so although it was tough some nights, it was never unpleasant, more a test of resolve.

Snowing hard one night at Blue Cow - Oh, Upper rollercoaster, how I love sliding on my ass down your icy flanks towards what seems like certain death

Unfortunately, in mid-august I managed to re-injure my rotator cuff in my shoulder which was injured in my first season, leading to me returning to the concourse, first as a ‘cripple’ as the workers comp staff were known, then as a leading hand once I was cleared for work, as the snowmaking season had wrapped up.

The south coast at this point experienced some reasonably dangerous fires, which I was fortunately able to attend as part of the out-of-area crews deployed by the NSW Rural Fire Service to the area for assistance. Burill Lake and Dolphin point were both great opportunities for me to practice some skills which had laid in disuse since the summer prior.

Blacking out at Lake Tabourie.

The season ended rather uncomfortably, with spring skiing being rudely interrupted by rain, and Luke and Fi going their separate ways. I had contacted David again at Daraco, and incredibly he had agreed that I would be able to return, something which I am still very grateful for. So, I packed my bags, gave Fi a lift to the coast, and after a short defrosting holiday on the gold coast, returned to real life in sydney.

Our livingroom at Boundary Rd from the deck.

I moved in with Blake, who I’d met last summer at Daraco, and soon enough we had our house rolling along. My return to work was surreal, a lot had changed, and so much was still the same, but its been another fantastic opportunity to learn more and bring my experience to the company.

The last notable event of the year was the pilgrimage to Luke’s family farm, out west near Blayney. Its a great week, full of fun, games, chasing sheep, talking to the farmers and owners and general mateship.

On the way to the farm, time for a quick stretch of the legs and to admire the landscape.

I guess its time to stop talking about the past, and talk about the future instead.

I’ve had a fantastic year, and I want the next to be just as good as this. I have made several promises to myself, and I’ve known since I left Perisher last year what my New years resolution will be.
I’ve spent the last two winter seasons dreaming, plotting, planning and possibly scheming to make a break for it and head to Canada to work. I’m going to make this happen this year. I’ve already committed to staying with my job instead of returning to the snow here in Australia for the winter, and I intend to put 100% effort in for Daraco until such time comes when I decide to make my move, which will be to work a season in Canada, at any resort that will take me, in any job that I can find, and to meet as many new people as possible! Afterward, I will be visiting the states, even briefly, with what little money I have left, and visiting friends and places that I have been wanting to see for years.
There are already plenty of obstacles to getting where i want to go, but the truth of the journey is not where you go, but how you get there.

To all my friends, family, colleagues, and the rest of the world; have a safe, happy, and fulfilling 2010. I know I will, and I want you all to be there to share with me.

Burrill Lake Fires, August 2009

Last weekend I was called away to the shoalhaven, where some large bushfires were burning out of control, here are some of the photos taken while i was there.

Snow!

We got snow in Jindabyne overnight, just a light dusting, but enough to make this morning interesting going to work.

Our deck chairs. A bit snowy!

The snowdrift in front of the bridge to perisher.

Front Valley 6:30 Am

Snowdrift outside Aldo's Pizzeria - 60cm deep!

Jindabyne again!

Well its the time of the year for me to head back to Jindabyne. Life’s been good, just trying to figure out how to get things rolling at the moment.

I’m currently living here, we moved into our place almost a week ago now, and its going very well. I’m living in Jindabyne with Luke and Dylan, with Fiona to come join us in few weeks when uni wraps up.

Our apartment isnt huge, but its about right for the four of us, and has an amazing view of the lake

The view from our balcony over the lake and the town

See? Its very relaxing. Plus we get all the nice lights from town at night – see below

Night Lights of Jindabyne

Our first day we were exceptionally lazy, aside from a quite cool session down near the lake, paying our respects to the local boulders. Once we’d knocked over the ones set in the guidebook (colourfully named – such as ‘sex scandal with a garden gnome’), we found a new set of runs, and managed to name us a few – Gollum and Spidey. I’ve also picked up some new lenses for my camera – just add-ons, seeing as the stock lens cannot be removed from the F5700 – I scored a wide angle/fisheye and a telephoto, along with a UV, Polarising and … rosecoloured? filter set. I took these down with me, and these are the results – I’m happy so far!

Random hard V2 that we couldnt break

The crux of Gollum - tricky!!

Topping out on spidey

Trying to get the leg-up out of gollums cave - intense!

The signiture hold on Spidey

Finished for the day at The Yard - two new routes!

Work has started well, training and a bit of cleanup, refresher from last year.
Our uniforms are the same as last year, just the new logo sewn on over the top, but at least they’re warm!
Work will be very quiet over the next few weeks, perisher is very quiet, not much snow and guests are scarce, so hours will be short for everyone.

Anyway, that wraps up this post, but I’ll put up the pictures from perisher at the moment in a day or so when I get a chance.

The last leg.

Well, its all starting to come together now. I’ve moved out of 4/76 Tintern, my home for the last 6 months and now i’m back in gerringong, starting to get the feel for a new change, but sometimes its a bit daunting, and I feel like this season I have something to prove anew, to try and re-do all that I missed out on last year.

Sam is still in sydney for the time being, finishing off the last few weeks of work at eIntellego before he too moves back to the south coast to take up the uni course I decided not to do. Dan is still working at RWTS, which seems to suit him well. These guys were pretty awesome to live with. We had our differences, some more major than others, but i think in the end we made a pretty decent effort of it all.

Over the last few weeks plenty has happened, so I’ll run through it and give a short summary;

Dinner and drinks at lowenbrau in the city – Awesome awesome fun with some really cool people, drank waay too much, spent wayy too much, was sick wayy too much. All round successful night

Climbing – Managed to get tim completely hooked, and talked him into spending plenty of money on a sweet new harness and shoes (ok, so I didnt have to do much talking!)

More Climbing – South Nowra at Thompsons Pt – I didnt climb much because i was borrowing other peoples harnesses, but the climb that I did do (in the fading light of the afternoon) was amazing, a completely different style of climbing to indoors, and pretty exhilerating as well. I’m not ashamed to say I crapped bricks the whole way up and the whole way down, so i felt quite pleased i managed it >.>

Saturday Night Sober Clubbing – Yes this is as boring as it sounds. Actually, it wasnt bad, but its never amazing if you’re sober. The night was mainly a good chance to catch up with a few friends I havnt seen for months

Packing and unpacking multiple times. – this has been the most frustrating.

Photos to come soon when i’m not half asleep.

Hope you’re all well, i’ll see you soon!