Cutting it Fine

Photos below

Weird transition photo in the middle

Had a photo of me with the middle shaved but got some of the children at work in the photo so can't post it. Ask me to see it if I have my camera.

Top is first try and bottom second try. Came out well.

On Top

Been awhile.

Been busy sort of ...

But here's the latest Vlog.

It's something different.

Enjoy

Screening

Hope this works. The first video got flagged for copyright because I used a few minutes of a licensed anime. Figures as I have been reading up on game copyright for streaming and putting up game videos and I had a curious thought about anime. But I thought a few minutes could be okay but I guess its not. I've cut it down to a few seconds ... 10ish seconds ... They were pretty prompt to inform me that it got blocked. There was some things on YouTube that I've been disabled for but nothing I was going to use (well hopefully). So if there's anything wrong with this one it''ll be blocked soon. But hopefully not. Enjoy. 

Curiouser and curiouser

So the night continued. We lost the late comers because they had dinner plans and another joined us. The plan was escape room. Many people assume that I have done escape room before because I'm quite into puzzles and the like. However this was actually my first time. I had expectations but also knew that I could easily go bust as this was the point of many of these escape rooms. To no spoil anything I won't go into specifics if you had ever planned on going to the same escape room.

The blindfolding was interesting. But once the blindfolds came off I didn't see why they needed to give us blindfolds. Probably a immersion thing. As we started working out clues I had no idea where to start. I've been known as an overthinker and it didn't help here. Any extra information just made me confused what it was for. Let's just say I found myself pretty useless and didn't manage to help at all to get us out of the first room. However even after didn't work out from the person who got us through how they did it ... apparently guessed their way through ... The second room started no better. I managed to find some clues but were unable to use them. To help with rooms they left QR codes which could be scanned to get extra clues. Got to the point where we used one to find out how to proceed. This was when I was better. The clue didn't give us the answer but it did narrow down what we needed to do. So I was some help here. So onto the third room. As the room numbers increased, so did the number of clues needed. My overthinking helped from this point on. I had information from all the previous rooms but didn't know where they went but because now there was more places to use these clues and some had already been used, we were able to breeze through the last part.

The room had a time limit of 45 minutes. Using clues penalized 5 minutes. Even though we used a clue we kept under the 45 minutes so were pretty happy with the results. Hope to be able to more escape rooms in the future. Maybe not organize them.

Just to end the day here's a picture of me shamelessly promoting to get a free soft serve.

 

In the Jungle

Finally it was zoo time. Last time I came it was 2014 so decently recent. Once again organizing the trip was difficult. Almost ended up being just three people even though so quite a few people were invited but couldn't come. Picking a public holiday is a good choice because people have the day off. However this also means that people probably have their own things on. Also if the public holiday is on a Monday or Friday it means long weekend. That means possible trips away. So many people had to turn down coming. And this is why I usually just ask one person and only ask another if that person can't turn up. Easier to work out. Anyhow by some situation in the end there were six people who ended up coming. However they came at very differing times ...

Original plan was to meet at 11:00, having had an early lunch, at the front gate of Melbourne Zoo, four of us. This was not the case. Me and another friend wanted to go earlier so we planned on meeting up earlier at my house. However late the previous night we got a message from the other two that they were going to meet at 12:00 instead. Because the message was sent late and the other friend I was going with was an early sleeper I thought we would work it out the in the morning. In the morning we worked out that we would go just slightly earlier so we can see more. Because of the later meeting time we instead turned up at 11:15. A tad later than initially planned because of ANZAC day parade and time grabbing lunch. So we drifted around waiting for the other. We then get the message that they would arrive closer to 1:00 ... With just two of us we got to move through many of the animals quite quickly so wasn't too bad. We went through the smaller enclosures first just in case we didn't have time to go through later. Skipped some gimmicky stuff just in case we came back so would be funnier, however we didn't. I'll try find the turtle shell photo. It will be posted below if otherwise.

1:00 came and still they weren't here. It was only round 1:35 when the other two arrived. We backtracked a bit through some things we saw bit it was still fun. A maybe was coming ended up coming at 2:25 dragging another friend so we ended up in a group of 6. Because during grouping up times some of us saw different things the choice of what to see next was just what everyone hadn't seen yet. Because there was 6 people now, often the group ended up detached. Wasn't as bad as last time where we were completely split up but we had to wait for stragglers. Problem was 4:30 coming up fast. 4:30 was when they started closing the enclosure areas. The last area we were going to was just about to close. Me and early comer were just in as they closed the front entrance. The middle comers had really wanted to come in however had been shut out. We had no idea where they were so we planned on taking photos for them. We found out once in they came in from the exit side ... so in the end it worked out.

What I looked forward to seeing was the lions and lemurs. When I last came the lion exhibit was still in construction and the lemurs had not arrived even though their pen had been completed. It was good to see both these two were finally set up. However the big cats and bears enclosures were in construction ... for another trip I guess. I finally used my SLR that I've had around for like years. I've lent it out a couple of times but never really used it myself. We were talking about how you can never capture a picture as high quality as the one they put on advertising for the Melbourne Zoo. I don't really mess around with my camera so I wasn't planning on capturing anything like that. However in the bird cage I managed to get the camera to focus really well ... but as I was pressing the button the bird flew away. Here is the failed photo that I will always cherish ...
 

It was a fun time looking at the animals and taking photos, maybe next time we do the other zoos or even go interstate. But that wasn't the end of the day ... but I'll post the rest in the next blog post. 

Under the Sea

After a two year break it was off to the aquarium again on Easter Monday. Seeing as in the past years I had only ever asked one person to go with, it was the same plan for this trip. However the person I asked me to invite others and make it a proper event ... which I was not so keen as I am never good at it. Weeks before the event I'd invited one person here and later there. By the Sunday it was two yes (me and original ask), one maybe, one last minute pike, and two unconfirmed. See terrible at organizing events ... So to not totally fail with just the original two I asked someone else so at least it would be three people. Before the night ends the maybe and both unconfirmed jump on board so now it's six people going. 


Morning of the day the original ask ends up sick so is out so interesting enough the one that wanted to meet others couldn't go. The meeting time ended up having everyone in different part of the city so an undecided lunch location was suppose to be decided ... by me. This is the sort of thing I stress about. Choosing things that make everyone happy. I'd rather have group consensus but everyone was everywhere else. With my limited experience of eating in the city I was able to remember Merrywell which was right near the aquarium. Success. Unsuccessful was it wasn't opened for another hour. So we went round the corner to Galactic Circus to kill some time. Shot some hoops, played some air hockey and was about to go but there was a dollar to burn. One of the others tried out a random game and without knowing it won 100 tickets. However the tickets got stuck so had to get it fixed. So lunch at Merryland was great. The red-eye is great with so many chilli :D. Yum. Finally it was time for the aquarium.

Seeing as I had been to the aquarium so many times I knew where to go to see the cool stuff however they had removed a lot of the things that I had enjoyed. We still had fun taking photos, playing in the crawling spaces, and stamping our maps. Two of us got separated when we spent time in the kids corner. Met back up at the croc. The others thought the croc was fake because it didn't move but eventually we saw it had closed it mouth Something different this time was the 4D cinema they had. 15 minute video with 3d glasses, fans, sprays, and vibrating chairs was predictable but still fun. Backtracked to see a few more things. Back to the kids corner and lost another person. Kids corner was fun because you get to color in pictures which are scanned with QR codes. These are then projected on the wall and move around. Pushing the things to do I scanned my iPhone onto a fish ... iFish. Finally we met up at the gift store to finish up.

After we hung out at Emporium and Melbourne Central playing some games I brought with me. Good day overall. Just through talking it sounds like I need to organize a Melbourne Zoo trip ... but I'm looking forward to it.