April2005Revelations, Jaguar Sharks20 April 2005 At last, a week with decent media to consume. We saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on Wednesday last week. It's an oddball look at the life of a 70s marine documentary team. I really enjoyed the manner in which lots of cliches were subtly twisted or broken and nothing ever worked out quite how one might have expected. It made the film feel very true to life despite its amusing surreal elements. Then last night we watched Star Wars: Revelations, a fan film made by Panic Struck Productions. The acting varied from quite bad (the lead Sith) to mostly decent (the 3 main Jedi). The special effects were cool and it had a decent soundtrack (although thank-allah for Last Wednesday was also our monthly-versary, on which we had an amazing sushi dinner at Hongs in Claremont. If anything, it was better than sushi we've had there previously so Hongs has confirmed it's position as our favourite sushi restaurant. The Monday before was Jason's birthday and accompanying celebration at Chai-Yo's. Arrived late because of singing but was worth it since singing turned out to be a bass only practice were we got a lot done - I think the basses are currently sounding much better than they have in a long while. Tuesday evening was bridge and V:tES with Philip and Jo. Jo and I managed to bid and make a grand slam in clubs. Wednesday last week my copy of Fluxx arrived at Outer Limits so I took Thursday morning off to pick it up (and ran in to Jo and Steve there). Thursdays Cthulhu Dark Ages roleplaying was replaced with V:tES. Somewhat surprisingly, my old Gangrel deck triumphed - being furthest from the sneak-bleed machine helped a lot. :) Friday we got together with Kevin and Neil for more V:tES, followed by some games of Nexus and then Stoner Fluxx. Stoner Fluxx, perhaps somewhat predictably, is a slower chilled-out version of Fluxx. I prefer plain Fluxx, but then I don't smoke weed. :) The evening also saw the manufacturing of much gołabki. Saturday was Candices birthday party at Primi Piatti. Cavendish on a Saturday night is scary - too many female teenagers wearing not enough clothing and too much make up. I'm glad I was never a teenage girl. :) Sunday was a semi-work day. Confluence was working over time so we can go on holiday at the end of the month and I was working on some PHP stuff for the Polish community library, although in practice I spend most of the time working on fixing the home network which mysteriously died. I eventually fixed it on Monday evening when I discovered that it was my machine which was acting up, not Confluences. Doh. Spent Monday morning running errands. Old monitor has now been fixed and collected, have shiny new drivers' license and needlessly bought a new network card but it was only R45. :) And in closing: Ra-ra-ratzinger,...? Storms!11 April 2005 The rains are apon us and there is water everywhere including in and under my work keyboard but thankfully not on the monitor or case. Lots of lightning and thunder too. V. impressive. Sleep lacking as a result of neighbours air-raid siren-like house alarm which went off at 20:30 and finally got switched off at 06:30. :| Decidedly not amused. Police and alarm company useless. Went trout fishing on Saturday with uncle, Neil, KD and Melvin at Theewaterskloof Dam. Dam quite empty. Caught nothing but have good braai. Dam probably now less empty. Played Nexus and Unexploded Cow with Neil on Friday. Also engaged in impromptu two-hour mathematics detour to show that a particular algorithm does not shuffle cards properly. Watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries last night. Pretty cool - mostly because few of the characters are nice. A lot of questions left unanswered. We will have to acquire the TV series somehow. Saw Wicked City (Philip's band) play at the Armchair Theatre on Tuesday. A tiny crowd which made for a very relaxed atmosphere. Quite enjoyed it. Got to briefly see Jo and Steve who were also there. Bridge4 April 2005 Ping. Well, this year's online April Fool's jokes were a bit of a let down. The only thing I found even vaguely funny was some guy who fell for the PostgreSQL is being GPLed gag. On Saturday evening we headed out to to Strand to visit Neil (we got in games of Illuminati, Unexploded Cow and Flux). Sunday saw the continuation of the mini Bridge revival at Jason and Colleen's. The first few hands were a bit shaky while we attempted to learn [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acol|Acol]] but things improved after that. I plan to investigate bidding systems a bit more before we play again since there were a lot of hands which Jason and I underbid because we had low points but could've taken higher if we'd been able to detemine what kind of fit we had. Bridge was accompanied by tasty sushi and tempura. Sound effects were provided by Insaniquarium. There was also some amusing Linux trouble shooting which you can read about here. Other exciting news is that Confluence is changing jobs at the end of the month and soon I will not be the primary wage earner. :) Recent acquisitions:
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