Sunday.  24th.  Had a very nice butterfly lamb roast which turned out really well and it wasn't too gristly.  There was even a crackling of sorts, which may have turned out better if I hadn't put a lid on the baking dish!

Lamb roast November

Finished watch the Lego Masters Christmas special from the American series.  For some reason channel 9 didn't put any ads through it.  Go figure!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up early.  Busy hour before work trying to catch up with life.  Frustrating day getting nowhere with my script cause I'm dumb.  Leftovers for dinner and blogging.  Watched Crocodile on Black Mirror - distracted by the scenery in Iceland!

Epic dandelion flower

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok.  More frustration with my script.  Had some time off it and went to figure out some other stuff which was cool.  Gave up trying to work out the bug with my script and ran it over prod anyway.. where the server promptly said piss off and disconnected the script.  Sigh.  Leftovers for dinner.  Mum photo picking then Hang the DJ on Black Mirror which was kinda sweet.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Oh the humidity!!!  But hardly any rain - ripped off!!  Someone decided that we could save a fortune in electricity during the energy crisis in the extreme heat wave by mandating that we close all the blinds and turn off monitors not in use.  Property peeps didn't even say excuse me as they pushed past me to get at the blind handle.  Never mind that these blinds are flimsy AF and closing them would make very little difference, or the fact that it was 21.5C outside when they did it.  Then they turned off the aircon.  

Oh the humidity

Yeah it was a pretty miserable afternoon.

Had some success with my script though - managed to get it to hobble along and generate a nice report for me which was pretty cool.  No progress on the powershell module though.  Leftovers for dinner then Metalhead on Black Mirror.

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok. 

Strawberry haul

Tiniest poppy ever??

Tiny poppy

Tiny poppy

Wanted to get a few things done in the morning but derailed by people wanting stuff.  Work Christmas party in the afternoon which was pretty chilled. 

Balter bucket

Photobomb!!

Work party food

Ate way too much.  They wouldn't give me extra crackling as I went through (even though we were right at the back of the queue and there was heaps of crackling left).

All the crackling

But after the speeches when serving was all done, I grabbed a little bit more.  And then XL grabbed us a bunch more as well.  I may have eaten way too much.  Whoops.  Didn't have anything at all for dinner.  

Friday.  Took a while to get to sleep but then slept mostly ok.

Epic dandelion flower

Had a catchup morning - dealing with several weeks worth of mail.  Had a bit of fun in the afternoon redoing our links portal.  Made the sweetie pizza for dinner since he missed out last night.

Pizzas

Treehouse of Horror XXXV then John Wick.  With a phone call from the mother type person in the middle.

Saturday.  Slept ok I think.  

Titanic in lights

Some house stuff in the morning.  After lunch we headed out to the club.  Helped out with dinner prep and with serving.  It was a feast of epic proportions!  It was a pretty good night, with over 70 people there!!  Might have accidentally stayed up til nearly 2am.  !!!!!

I tried

Table decorations

It might have rained A LOT over Canberra which was pretty awesome.  The Christmas tree .. and all of us.. got a little.. moist .. ! ;)
Christmas tree

Christmas sign

Who's gonna make the gravy..?   Me!!  I've never made this much gravy before!  A whole packet!
All the gravy

Club Christmas party

Veggies

All the turkey

Pigs in blankets

Dessert

Sunday.  Woke up around 5:30 and 6 briefly but slept through til 6:25.  Got ready and headed up a bit after 7 only to find most of the cleanup had already been done.  But I did spend ages doing a heap of washing up.  People took some of the food and I brought home what was left.  Tammy also found this little tortoise!  She had to run though so didn't have time to wait for it to come out fully.

Tortoise

Quiet day at home.  Tired after only four hours sleep funnily enough!!!

Last year Kit did a few Diamond Dotz pictures that looked pretty amazing and looked like fun to do.

So after Christmas last year, I bought myself a Crystal Creations set of a koala.  It was $8 at Target, reduced from $16.

The picture looked great and the stretched canvas over a frame was really good.  It felt like generally pretty good quality.

Crystal Creations koala drills

I started with the flower in the corner first and really enjoyed doing it and it looked really good.

Crystal Creations koala flower

Then I started onto the koala from the bottom.  And this is where things fell apart.  The greys in the set bore little relation to the box/canvas.  Check it out..

The box..

Crystal Creations koala box

The canvas..

Crystal Creations koala canvas

The reality..

Crystal Creations koala reality

Total fail.  Instead of nice gradients of colour you just got random greys plonked together.

I persisted anyway and finished it a while back.

Here's the box versus the finished product..

Crystal Creations koala box

Crystal Creations koala finished

If this is what is to be expected of Crystal Creations I would never do anything by them ever again.  Crystal Creations is trash!  I guess it's a case of you get what you pay for...!!

QR Code

The other month I posted this

QR code for kazza

The other day I finally got around to pulling it apart.

If anyone cares .. there's:

60 1x1 white
63 1x1 black
147 1x2 white
192 1x2 black
40 1x4 white

Kazza QR code pieces

Copilot

Still not convinced by "AI".  The only serious question I asked of ChatGPT gave me gibberish in response.

The other day I tried out the Copilot image generator.

I was looking at the example pictures and the Lego Titanic above my desk and asked it to draw:

"Lego Titanic at sunset"

These are the four things it gave me.  Only one of them has four funnels, but waterline on that one looks totally bizarre.

Lego Titanic at Sunset

Then I said

"Kazza the Blank One"

And got this..

Kazza the Blank One

Weird.

I'm yet to be convinced about the usefulness of AI as anything other than a gimmick...

Bamboo

So as I mentioned the other week, the neighbour's bamboo poked under the fence.  

This was it then.

1 November

Bamboo shoot

I decided to cut it back to the ground.  A couple of days later it came back..

5 November

Bamboo

7 November

Bamboo

9 November

Bamboo

12 November

Bamboo

I then cut it back again.  So far it hasn't regrown...

Arkangel

Sunday.  17th.  Had an almost vegetarian dinner (except for the bacon hehe).  The bullhorn chillis were $2 from Toms.

Stuffed peppers

Stuffed peppers

Watched the second Christmas special of the American Lego Masters series.

Monday.  Slept okish (took ages to get to sleep and woke up early.

The sky sure was blue after all the rain on the weekend!

Blue sky

Dunno what was up with this currawong.  Maybe it ate too many strawberries haha

Sad currawong

Nick helped me out with a script and I actually got it working which was super happy making.  Leftover lemon pepper chicken for dinner.  Queensland photo picking, jigsaw, Men Against Fire on Black Mirror.  I'm sure if real militaries could do that they would.  The Bricklink order (the quote) was "cancelled"  #grunt.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep then woke up early.  The Bricklink seller said the quote was already cancelled when he went to look.  And there was no way to reopen it.  #grunt.  

From Bricklink:

Canceled - There are three reasons a quote is canceled:
The seller did not provide a quote within three business days.
The buyer did not take action on the quote within three business days.
The items in the quote were sold before the order was generated.

Probably that last one.  Fortunately I was able to add everything to a wishlist so it was (relatively) easy to reorder it.  

Productive day, got some scripts working, did some music, tidied the house a bit, cooked dinner, did some photo picking and watched some tv.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep and woke up early.

Bogon moth

Finally!  A strawberry haul!  These were in the pool so the currawongs didn't know about them, and the snails never found them either.  

Strawberry haul

Ok day at work - made some progress on scripting - got one of Daniel's premigration scripts working so that made me super happy.  Road block on another function though.  Home late, dinner, backups, hair, jigsaw, bed.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep and woke up early.  Sensing a theme here. 

Another haul

Busy day prepping and working with the vendor on a big cleanup of the mess they made.  Had to work through drinks so didn't really get to talk to people much.  Pizzas, bed.

Pizzas

Oh, and David might have been on the news the other night..

David on the news

Friday. 

Big strawberry

Finish of the cleanup went ok, noone screamed.  Mostly scripting all day.  Managed to get something super complicated working so that was cool (adding IP addresses to a group, sounds like it should be simple right hahahahaahh), but didn't finish Daniel's complicated script converting.  Kievs for dinner.

Kievs and wedgies

USS Callister on Black Mirror which was actually kinda fun.  A little bit like White Christmas in some ways.

Saturday.  Breakfast with Annie at Gang Gang which was nice.

Gang Gang breakfast roll

Did our food shopping afterwards.  Then All The Things all day.  

Christmas lights

Cooked up the last of the leftover pork in a red curry

Red curry pork

Death in Paradise 10.5 and then Arkangel on Black Mirror.  

Yeah so it's early.  Sue me.

It's early, so sue me

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up fairly early.  Just around the time the cacaphony of birds was starting.  Got a smidge more sleep until 5:30.  House stuff in the morning.  I even mowed the lawn!  Probably the first time in over thirty years.  I had to mow the lawn sometimes as a teenager and I HATED it!!  The lawnmower was loud and hard to start and our lawn was huge and I would ALWAYS get hit by debris even with the catcher on (which was a pain to have to empty over and over again).  I never did it here either because our lawnmower was loud and hard to start and I'd been scarred from doing it as a teenager.  Anyways.  We got a new lawnmower the other week because the starter cord on the old one broke right off.  The new one is battery powered (we did get a new 36v battery and charger because it was easier to just get the kit rather than putting in a special order for just the mower.  Turns out the new battery is chunkier so that's useful.  The thing is super easy to start - you just press down the start button and pull one of the levers (you have to keep the lever(s) held down for it to keep operating which is the only real annoyance).  And it's relatively quiet.  So yeah, winning.

Other than that just various house/computer stuffs all day.

Epic dandelion flower

Sunday.  10th.  Roast pork for dinner.  Crackling was awesome, pork was pretty decent. 

Epic roast pork

We started back into The Simpsons again now that we've finished Mash.  The Waldo Moment on Black Mirror.  Reminded me a bit of the end of season 4 of Rake.

Monday.  11th.  Lest we forget.  Slept mostly ok.  Talked to vendor about their stuffup and what they were doing to fix it.  Started to have a think about how to fix the stuff myself.  Certainly a good exercise in learning scripting and the environment.  Cooked lemon pepper chicken for dinner.  It was very lemony.  And very peppery.  Yumm!

Epic dandelion flower

Lemon pepper chicken

White Christmas on Black Mirror.  Wow.. that is literally the definition of Hell (at least one interpretation of it).

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok although woke up very early.  Frustrating day fighting with Powershell.  I'm too dumb for this crap.  Lunch with Tony at Four Winds (he had wine to pick up and had pizza vouchers, so like, same time as last year).  No lizards with a death wish today though.

Sparkling rose (very nice!), riesling, chardonnay, shiraz rose

Four Winds tasting flight

With Potato and Gorgonzola pizza (my favourite) - olive oil base, potato, white onion, gorgonzola, rosemary and cheese.

Four Winds pizza

Unfortunately I was still feeling grumpy from the weekend, so wasn't in the best of moods :(  Life is too damned hard.  Leftovers for dinner and Mum photo picking.  Nosedive on Black Mirror.  Man some of these stories aren't far off being reality in the not too distant future.  Still depressed.  I just want to be a hermit.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok, although woke up very early.  Tantalisingly close to getting my script working.  Except I keep coming up against road blocks.  Like nested json files talking to apis.  hrmm.  Optometrist at lunch.  In and out in under an hour.  The optometrist I had though was very "eh, close enough".  Usually they spend ages going "is this one clearer or this one?".  This dude was like, eh, that'll do.  Should not have gone to Specavers?  Still, definitely could see better.  Then actually spent more time with the assitants choosing frames and them doing levels, which I've never actually had done before.  But OMFG the dude had HAGRID sized hands!!   They were enormous!!  I couldn't stop looking at them.  So with a buy one get one free offer and health insurance, I ended up getting two pairs of general glasses for $78.  WTF?  Home, dinner, backups, hair, bed.

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Here I was thinking I'd actually get a strawberry.  It was not quite ripe in the morning so set an alert on my phone to get it in the evening before the snails got to it.  It was gone by the time I got home.  Sigh.

Strawberries

I did pick a different not-quite-ripe strawberry in the evening.  The only one I've managed to get so far.

Only strawberry so far

Not sure what to do with this self-seeded geranium.  It's in a dumb spot but it's kinda pretty.  So dunno if I should rip it out or just move it somewhere..

Self seeded geranium

Self seeded geranium

Another road block with my scripting.  Asked Nick for help but he's like, hey I got this other thing working.. so I started all over again with that.  Except literally noone has every put this stuff on the internet.  You put in exact commands and get like two pages in Google which are the vendor pages.  Sigh.  Busy drinks which was good.  Pizzas for dinner.  Nearly forgot to get photos.  Gone one of mine (I only ate half)

Pizza

Playtest on Black Mirror.  Far out I wish they'd keep the camera still.  

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Frustrating day with powershell.  I too dumb.  The sweetie got Dumpling Inn comfort food for dinner.  He'd had a crap week.  Death in Paradise 10.4.  Shut Up and Dance on Black Mirror.

Tiniest poppy ever.. just a few centimetres high!!
Tiny poppy

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok (although took ages to get to sleep).  Trying to do All The Things.  Got some of it done.  Leftover pork and veggies for dinner.  The sweetie put My Old Ass, a Canadian movie.  No idea why haha.  It was a bit silly but also kinda sweet.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Bits and pieces in the morning.  Went out the back to get the watering can and noticed a couple of strawberries ripe enough to pick.  Cool.  Went out the front to plant some mini capsicums (yeah yeah shoulda been planted weeks ago).  Returned the watering can out the back.  And saw two currawongs looking at me.  And the strawberries were gone.  The turdburger currawongs are the bastards eating my strawberries!!  Pissed off.  Storm came through so turned everything off.  Was just about to start on my Sunday evening routine when the mother type person called, so that took half an hour out of things so was a bit of a stretch to get everything done.  Just made it.. dinner time!!

Sunday.  3rd. 

Flowers

We got another rump cap beef roast to cook.  I didn't realise how expensive it was - 1.8kg was like $50!!  eeep!!  This one wasn't as epic awesome as the last time we got one.  It was cooked nicely to medium rare but it was a lot tougher than last time. 

Rump cap roast

Watched The Entire History of You on Black Mirror. 

Speaking of Black Mirror.  The other night's episode Fifteen Million Merits had a scene in it where the dude literally couldn't even close his eyes to block out ads.  This is disturbingly close to being a thing in real life.  The only time I ever have to sit through ads on my phone is when I'm playing Candy Crush.  Yeah, still playing it.  But only when I have the spare 45-50 minutes to play an entire episode of 15 levels.  And I only do that so I can "win" the round against other people and get the 40 gold (it used to be 45).  Point is, when you don't finish in the requisite moves you can watch ads to get more moves and a bonus.  I don't watch the ads.  I literally just lay the phone down and count down the number of seconds until it's due to be finished.  Most of the time I have no idea what the ad is even for.  The point is, apparently Apple are thinking about monitoring eye contact during ads.  This could either be a good thing - they'll see that I'm not watching the ads and so not bother to give me such long ones, or they'll figure out a way to force you to watch them.  At that point I'll quit once and for all.

Monday.  Awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night.  Hurray.  Meh day.  Cooked lemon pepper chicken for dinner.  With maybe like 0.3% of the lemon juice I have in the house.  I think I'd keep the veggies separate next time.

Lemon pepper chicken

Did some catchup blogging in the evening.  Watched Be Right Back on Black Mirror.  I reckon some of that sort of thing is really not that far off (apparently in the decade since the episode has aired there's been a few apps out there that have tried).

Tuesday.  Remember remember the 5th of November.  I always do cause it's the day I started at my current job.  17 years ago.  Eep!  Meanwhile, Neil has been there 49 years.   !!!!!!  Did some futzing around with powershell scripts.  Even managed to get something to work in our new environment which was pretty exciting.  Leftover beef with salad for dinner, photo picking and White Bear on Black Mirror.  

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Frustrating day with scripting at work - not nearly as successful as yesterday.  Late home, late dinner, then sorting files, backing up computer, washed hair, bed.

Twenty or so years ago when I was still living in Sydney there were the first mumblings of a plastic bag ban.  As such I started keeping all my plastic bags so that I would be able to have bin liners for years to come.  Then I moved to Canberra (brought all those bags with me!) and continued until we got supermarket green bags.  Even using those we still managed to accumulate plastic bags, except they were thicker (hurray!).  Except now our supply is dwindling.  We still only put out a bag or so of rubbish a week, but they're not being replenished.  I've got very few bags left now.  This was a bag from Sydney from 17-20 years ago.

Franklins shopping bag

The lake is very very low at the moment.

Lake is low

Thursday.  Oh the humidity!!  Juiced twenty lemons for Jim - like 1.8 litres worth!! 

Lemons

Clouds were a little ominous.  Barely any rain though :(

Mammatus clouds

Mammatus clouds

Had some success with scripting which was cool.  Drinks, pizza, Death in Paradise 10.3.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Went to the doctor late morning.  Had a list of 11 things to talk about (booked a long appointment).  Getting old sux donkey balls.  Just saying.  Decided to drop into Herbert's to have the very last of the TRBC beers (the blood orange sour).  Messaged Tony to see if he'd want to join me, so he did.  Even ran into Fred and family who'd come for lunch which was pretty funny.  Had some tenderloins with mustard sauce which were quite nice, but quite small for $21 and did end up hungry later.

Herbert's tenderloins

Stu also bought a new toy...

Ryobi lawnmower

Only cause our old one, which we've been using for like fifteen years since Grant sold it to us, died when the rip cord.. ripped off.. hmmmm.  Frustration with scripting at work.  Mostly cause I'm dumb.  But in the end cause the API I'm working with is crap and to do what I need to do I'd need to make like 3000 api calls.  Hurray.  Think I'll wait to see if powercli updates will be any good.  Kievs and veggies for dinner.  

Chicken Kiev and veggies

Then watched Goodbye, Farewell and Amen on Mash.  The only thing I remembered from it was the chicken, so was watching the whole first half in light of that.  It was a pretty good ending to a tv series.  Apparently still the most watched episode of a TV series airing, like, ever.  Even after forty years.  I have all the DVDs from Dad, but I guess I'll probably never watch them now.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got some stuff done, but not nearly enough.  

My first strawberry of the season.  Photo taken in the morning.  I was going to go back in the afternoon and pick it.  I forgot.  By the next day it was GONE.

First strawberry

Stu tried out our new toy.  It's a lot quieter than the petrol one!  And a lot easier to start.  I always hated mowing the lawn as a teenager.  Our yard was huge and we had a heavy clunky lawnmower that always managed to hit me in the face with twigs even with the catcher on.  So I probably haven't mowed any lawn in thirty five years.  I might take it up again though!!

New toy!

Pretty flowers on the walk to Herbert's

Pink bottlebrush

Pink peas

In the evening was a tap takeover at Herbert's.  I was half not wanting to go (would probably end up drinking too much and spending too much).  But went along anyway with Tony, Frank and Karen (J was busy).  The takeover was from Hopsters Co-operative Brewery.  Shared some nachos with Tony to start with and had a couple of beers.

Herbert's nachos

Mitch the "only paid employee" came and sat with us for a bit which was pretty cool, and he told us about the brewery.  It's actually a democratic co-operative and they choose the best beers from their user's home brewed productions and brew them up at scale.  Very cool.

Mitch from Hopsters

The gang!

The gang at Herbert's

After that I went to get more food and that's where the wheels fell off.  I asked for the "kids gems" ($9).  And Dino was like.. oh, we try to save those for the kids.. So I looked around and I'm like, there's literally no kids here.. and he's like, oh it's cause people "take the piss" and order a kids meal between four people.. and so I'm like, well don't worry about it then (I was literally ready to just not order anything at all), but he said he'd give them to me "just this once" (never mind the time I had them at the TRBC night a few weeks back).  Anyway so I sat down again and pretty much just lost it.  Like, I could have ordered a bowl of chips for $5 or a bowl of gems for $9.  I love gems.  I'd much prefer to have gems than chips.  HOW IS THAT A PROBLEM????  I could barely finish the beer I had (and missed out on trying the last one).  I couldn't even face the gems.  Forced myself to eat a few of them.  Tony had the rest.  And then I went home.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish, except for hurty for a while in the middle.  Still upset/depressed about last night.  The whole drama, combined with a massive increase in food costs (their pea and ham croquettes were $16 the last time they had them in 2022, now they're $20; and the tenderloins I had yesterday were incredibly expensive for their size (for $5 more I could have had a burger and chips and like four or five times the amount of food)) means I probably won't be going back to Herbert's any time soon.  So didn't achieve much all day.  Did some food shopping.  Did a nice roast pork for dinner.  Fat spatter all over the oven though.. eep!

I'm just so over it all at the moment.  I'm almost at the point of giving up on everything.  If I didn't feel the need to travel I could retire now and just stay at home and do my hobbies and never go out and just have a quiet life.  

Questacon Redux

Two months after my first visit to see the Lego, I went with the little brother on my birthday.

For another quacking good time hehe.  Definitely a much nicer experience going on a weekday rather than a school holiday weekend.

Questacon

Pretty lights

Sisyphus

Me and a big minifig

Tesla coil

Tesla coil

Can you see the cat?

David trying to beat the maze

Stromatolite

Stromatolite

Stromatolite

Drip

AI room

Beef Ribs

10.6.24

Yeah, so long ago I've forgotten pretty much everything. I'm pretty sure I used this recipe from RecipeTinEats (the website not the book), but I used beef ribs instead of pork ribs.

There was a dry rub

Beef ribs ingredients

Beef ribs rub

Beef ribs coated

Then a sauce

Beef ribs ingredients

Beef ribs sauce

After being cooked for a while

Beef ribs coated

Turned over

Beef ribs cooked

And done.

Beef ribs cooked

I do remember that they definitely weren't fall off the bone tender.  Definitely would need to have cooked them a lot longer and slower.  And there was a lot of fat which wasn't super pleasant.

Not sure if I'd bother again.