wafblog v3.0

So, I want to quickly get out some thoughts on DH before I go reading everybody’s reviews.

Overall, I was quite impressed.

Needless to say, HBP to me, was by far the worst book. Influenced greatly by my dislike of the R/Hr and H/G ships… I’m glad that the series has been redeemed by a very fitting ending. The book was fast-paced, I was literally clutching the pages in suspense quite a few times.

I was so impressed that JKR managed to tie up so many loose ends, touched upon every book so far and managed as well, to wrangle out some twists on things that we had previously read about. I’ll try to break up my thoughts into proper topics…

BEWARE: Spoilers contained inside!

(more…)

Wow. Comment moderation actually WORKS in WordPress. So if your comment doesn’t automatically appear when you submit it, it’s cos I have to approve it. I think there is a way to make it appear automatically, but I’ve yet to work it out and I’m scared to do so in case I get lots of crap suddenly appearing. Anyways, keep commenting and I’ll make sure the right ones actually show up :P

I didn’t end up meeting Manda for drinks on Friday as she decided to stay home. Instead, I was invited to drinks with the first year RailCorp graduates. The undergraduate that replaced me at North Strathfield met one of the grads at a training session and he invited her, but she was too shy to go by herself LOL. Not one to turn down drinks or the chance to meet new people I went along anyways. I now know one more person in this building (his name is Moscow, which is rather unusual I think) and one of the other guys was an undergrad when I started as well. It was an enjoyable afternoon, although I felt a little out of place but it was good to test out my meagre social skills and meet more people my age working in this organisation.

Saw another movie on Saturday – “The Covenant”. Admittedly, I didn’t know anything about this movie. Mike said it was about vampires, which it isn’t. I didn’t bother to read anything about it before seeing it, as it seemed both Manda and Mike wanted to see it. Touted as being by the people who made ‘Underworld’ I figured it would be decent enough. Suffice to say, lucky it was the cheapo movie of the week. I would’ve felt really jipped if it wasn’t. The premise of the movie was decent enough, although probably more interesting to those who did ‘The Crucible’ in high school as I did (twice) but it’s not necessary to get into the story. I just found that it dragged on and on. Considering I thought it was ultra short when hearing it only went for 1.5 hours, it seemed to go on forever when we were sitting in the theatre. Too many of the scenes were just fluffy filling, and some scenes weren’t needed altogether. The best line was right at the beginning, and said by a boy that I reckon would do well as a grown-up Draco – “Harry Potter can kiss my ass!” hehe. I will have to find a decent picture of him. Ah. It was all downhill from there. So verdict? Don’t waste your time. Or your money.

We headed off to the James Squire Brewhouse for dinner after that. I was quite impressed with the food, although it was a little bit pricey. Considering it’s at King St. Wharf though, can’t expect too much. It was a shame that all the specialty beers had run out, but that couldn’t be helped I guess. Not sure if I would eat there again, but I’ve had my fill of steak now so that’s good :D Went to karaoke as well, which was amusing as always.

Hrm, currently waiting to see how much of my ‘junk’ Travis sold at Supernova… I need to pay off my credit card. Not sure what I’ll do with the stuff that didn’t sell – maybe wait till next year otherwise I’ll try to sell it on eBay I guess.

I’ve been debating on whether or not I should go to the Motorshow this year. The last time I went was two years ago, and it was really disappointing. But the ads I’ve seen for this year look promising and it seems like there’s a lot more concept cars as well. Plus there was that ad for the SAAB (I think, else it was Subaru) car where the doors and the windscreen lift up and that looked particularly awesome. But then, I’m not sure if it justifies the exorbitant entry fee and I’ll probably pick up a bunch of useless pamphlets/magazines/advertising that I don’t need either. Maybe I should just wait for the next motorcycle show to roll around and just go to that.

Two Harry Potter related things today, and also a test to see if all the DNS changes have gone through so my site is actually being hosted at the new place.

First off, a new dinosaur has been discovered, and the paleontologists have named is Dracorex Hogwartsia, The Dragon King of Hogwarts which is pretty cool huh! I actually read about this in the mX on the way home this afternoon. The article I linked to has pictures, which I thought was good, cos sometimes it’s hard to imagine what a dinosaur looks like if they’re just like “it has spikes on it head”.

Second thing, in my LJ clickage, I stumbled upon this abomination: Harry and the Potters. First you’ll notice that their site is hosted at MySpace which leads to all sorts of interesting questions. Anyways, the particular place where I read about them, that person actually went to a show by these people and said they were good. So I thought, let’s check them out. Needless to say, I was horrified when I heard the music start to stream and now I’m just going to have to find something decent to erase the memory.

… which probably isn’t going to be that big.

The Easter Show
Word of the day: foul
Quote of the day: “ye olde pixelated graphics” – Travis in reference to cross-stitch

So, after much bribery and negotiation, Manda and Travis agreed to come to the Sydney Royal Easter Show which is held annually. It’s been like 8 years since I last went and I really wanted to go now that I can afford it! Only I realised at the end of the day that I really could *not* afford it :P Everything is so damn expensive now!

Anyways, whilst waiting for Manda and Travis, I got this lovely view of the Telstra Stadium (is that what used to be the SuperDome?)

I’d forgotten how big Olympic Park is, cos whenever I went there I’d go straight to the Aquatic Centre or the track. They have these metal poles with all the names of the athletes and the poles speak. It’s a bit eerie walking through them.

Anyways, first place we went to inside the show was the “Woolworths Fresh Food Dome”. Pretty cool, cos really the Easter Show is all about buying lots of stuff you don’t need but look good anyways. Those fruit displays are always pretty cool :D I can imagine they’d take forever to make and I’m not really sure how they manage to make the fruit last for so long o_O And then we moved onto the Arts & Craft section. They have these cake displays (again.. how do these things keep?) and even one section that said “perishables”. Unfortunately, looking at dozens of fruit cakes doesn’t excite me. So we quickly moved on to the scaled models and wood work. I thought this navy carrier was awesome:

but Manda didn’t agree ): Some of the artworks were pretty good, especially the kids’ ones. Sometimes I think kids capture art so much better than adults, maybe because their perception of the world hasn’t been made to conform to anything yet.

Now, it’s only because my parents would never read my blog that I feel safe in posting up the next picture:

I got one of those airbrush tattoos, cost me $10! But it looked pretty cool when finished :D Only lasted for a few days, but was fun anyways. I really wanted one of those ones that lasts for like a month. Bu it’s not like I could show it off considering it’s winter and my mum would probably kill me if she ever saw it.

I must say, the showbags sure aren’t what they used to be. I was actually worried before going in that I wouldn’t have enough money to buy showbags I wanted. Instead, I found it hard to actually find a showbag I *wanted* to buy! In the end, I got a computer magazine one for $10 (cos it had like 4 magazines in it) and I split the giant Cadbury one with Manda. Least I got lots of chocolate :P

It’s at this stage that I must mention the FOOD at the Easter Show. Manda assured me that “cheese on a stick” and “dagwood dogs” were foodstuffs that I must try at least once in my lifetime. Having parents like mine, they never let me have those sorts of things when I was younger… so I took this opportunity to try them. I must say, they do look rather… unappealing. And after eating half the cheese on stick all I could say was “foul”! Not that it tasted foul, more just the notion that I was eating something that was 90% oil *shudders*. After eating half the dagwood dog I felt rather ill knowing I had consumed stuff that was probably entirely manufactured. I had some nachos as well for lunch, and even though I was full, every time we walked past a good store I was like “ooh! hamburger! ooh! pancakes! ooh! german sausages!”. I finally succumbed and bought a corn cob. YUM!

Of course, no trip to the Easter Show would be complete without a visit to the animals. We saw sheep, goats, pigs, giant cows (ok, so they weren’t actually giant but have seen the size of them? they’re HUGE!!!!!), little baby animals, horses and cats. I was about to say I was sad they didn’t have a poultry section, but looking at the map now, it looks like we missed it. Shame, I wanted to see some chickens and geese. Oh wells ): Got this cool picture of a sheep (it won a few prizes from what we could see) and I absolutely adored this little Boer goat:

I don’t really know how people can go to the Show and not go see the animals. Maybe just cos I don’t normally get the chance to see them so it seems really cool to me. I did feel sorry for those cows though, all these people were patting them :P

I can’t really remember what we did after that. Oh wait, yes I can. We went on a bunch of rides. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a complete wuss when it comes to rides. I don’t like going upside-down and as I’m scared of heights most rides freak me out. Add to this that my stomach tends to feel ill if I’m sloshed around too much and well, there’s not many rides I’d like to go out. So, of course, Travis said he wanted to pay for me to go on the SlingShot. If you’ve seen this thing, you’ll understand my trepidation. Lucky for me, the darn thing costs $30 a ride (what a bloody rip off!!) and was thus deemed far too expensive for us. We went on the much tamer carousel (which I actually enjoy :D). We also went on the ferris wheel! It was a lot higher than I thought \: but it’s held up by 500 bolts so I guess I should have felt safe. heh. Manda and I also went on a rolelr coaster, that was a lot shorter than I expected but was actually pretty fun.

The ride that Manda and Travis couldn’t convince me to go on!

To top off our day, we went to see Alex Lloyd play live at The Shed. He was meant to start at 9:15 or something, but due to some technical difficulties (or something), we saw Bertie Blackman first. She wasn’t too bad actually, rather enjoyed her songs although I’ve never heard of her. By the time Alex played it was 10:00, so we didn’t get to stay long. I was really glad that he played “Lucky Star” as his second song though, cos that’s my fave song off his first album. Yeay for free live music!

Unfortunately for us, when we decided to leave, we exited out the wrong exit. And when we asked the security guard dude how to get to the car park he directed us but, didn’t tell us it would have been quicker to go back inside and walk through the show to the exit on the other side. So, we walked the entire length of the show from the outside… and kinda wasted 30 minutes. I wouldn’t have been too annoyed except for the fact that it was cold enough to freeze your tits off and thus not so fun. Well, least we’ll know for next time.

Other Stuff

Hrm, I haven’t been up to much else lately – besides job applications, uni, work, seeing a few movies. Which is all typical stuff really. The job apps are taking quite a bit of time and I’ve been to a couple information evenings so it feels like I’ve been really busy.

Oh! I am proud though – I made my first fanmix over the last few days. It’s a Draco/Hermione one and the graphics took me a while. I’m so not used to Corel PaintShop Pro X (last version I used was PSP8). So yeah, I had to go searching for cool fonts and stuff (man, DaFont is awesome). But, I was glad to have finished it and posted it on my LJ today. If you’d like to see it, it can be found here.

Anyways, I should go and do stuff for my thesis. I haven’t really been working on it for the last two weeks and I’m now getting a bit worried that I won’t finish in time. *sigh*.

—-
Happy Hour by bk
“Let me tell you something else, Granger,” he said with a rough sleep-tinged drawl to his voice. “You shouldn’t go changing yourself for that someone special. Because no one else in this whole messed up world should have the power to make you change for the better. That’s the best lesson in all of us. Don’t change for someone else. Never change yourself for someone else. Even if it’s with the best of intentions. Fundamentally, a person has to change for themselves. They have to make a conscious choice to become a better version of themselves. And you’ve pretty much peaked. So I don’t see how it’s possible for you to be better.”

—-

—-
Viva Revenge by witchiepooh
His smile finally broke through the clouds. “You realize we’re perfect for each other, right?”

She rubbed her nose against his cheek. “Yes, perfectly insane.”
—-

Oh, well imagine; as I’m pacing the pews in a church corridor,
and I can’t help but to hear, no I can’t help but to hear an exchanging of words.
“What a beautiful wedding!”, “What a beautiful wedding!” says a bridesmaid to a waiter.
“And yes, but what a shame, what a shame, the poor groom’s bride is a whore.”

Well in fact, well I’ll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved
Well this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne
Oh! Well in fact, well I’ll look at it this way, I mean technically our marriage is saved
Well this calls for a toast, so pour the champagne, pour the champagne

I’d chime in with a “Haven’t you people ever heard of closing
the god damn door?!”
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.
I’d chime in “Haven’t you people ever heard of closing the god damn door?!”
No, it’s much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality.

Again…

Panic! At The Disco – I Write Sins Not Tragedies

Really getting into the Draco/Hermione fics at the moment – hello angst!

Ok,
So I’ve uploaded the pictures plugin, I’ve set up the files and the database table in MySQL. Now check out the goodness that are ICONS!

This one is pretty funny:

But this totally made my day:

Heeeee!