Been a while since I posted and a lots happend since.  Life's been quite feature packed.  
The wife is up the duff, we've bought a new house and we're selling the old house!  That's right, 
we're moving out of Fitzroy and headed east to Blackburn south.  No more pumping beats, 
happening streets and cheap eats on Brunswick St.  Instead, we're trading it all in for 
subdued beats, neighbourly streets and home cooked eats.  Kind of a sideways movement I guess.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy about it all - especially the baby bit.  Mega mega excited.  
I call him / her my 'little shuffler'.  He / She (we don't know) wiggles and shuffles away in 
mummies tummy with an occasional kick to remind her that they're awake.  The little tacker 
is due in April.  I'll post a mug shot when it's time.

One of the highlights of the last couple of months (other than Xmas and my Xbox 360 - 
GoW wooo hooo) has been my friend's wedding.  I took heaps of photos, but here's the only 3 
that were any good.  I'm shit house behind a lens.  Anyway, here they are:

 

Trip down memory lane

Spent most of tonight cruising Youtube for some old favourite video clips. Here's a few of the gems which I found:

Jackson 5 - Can you feel it



Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby



MC Hammer - Can't touch this



Escape club - Wild Wild West

Let's see the flop

Well the poker bug has bitten my circle of friends hard. Work mates, high school mates, uni mates - we're all busy staring at each over a pile of chips, trying to figure out if our opponent is bluffing or not.

Last week I hosted a poker night - some of us decided to get into the mood by dressing up. Here's what I came up with:

image removed to protect the daggy.

I call this "Straight off the boat". You guys can call me Wayne.

Or how about this one. He's "New York meets Hawaii". Quite fetching really.



Over 5 or so hours, we battled it out - Texas Holdem no limit style. It got hot, it got steamy. I got drunk. But at the end of game I came third and walked away with 100 dollars. Not bad ey? Here's an action shot of all of us playing :

.

Note the stupid head ware that I'm wearing. Denotes chip leader it does.

Ta da!

Todays the day that I mount my 24" beast to my office wall! Frist of all, I spent the morning buying all the pieces I would need:

1 Wall mount bracket for $19.95 from Radio Parts
2 Packets of Buildex Super Wall Mate Plasterboard Anchors for $10.90 from Bunnings.

Then I laid out all my parts for everyone to see. Here's the wall mount :


The first piece is the wall bracket and the other large piece is the plate which attaches to the back of the monitor.

After affixing the mount with the standard 10 x 10 VESA slots I got this :


The wall bracket is attached for reference.

Next came the 'hard' part. Screwing the bracket to the wall. Using my stud finder and a measureing tape, I lined up the bracket to where I wanted the monitor be. Then I was a case of using the stud finder to see if there was a stud I could use. Luckily, I found a stud and figured out that the right hand side screws of the bracket would be in a stud. The other 2 left hand screws would need the Buildex mounts.

With my wife watching me carefully like a hawk I screwed in the 2 right ones with self taping screws and then manually screwed the plasterboard anchors into the 2 left. This is the result:



I gave it a bit of a jiggle with my hand and it felt pretty solid. There was no movement which was reassuring.

Now came the moment of truth - mounting the 24 lb monitor to bracket. Ever so slowly, I lowered the monitor into the bracket. As you can see below, the bracket held!



How cool does that look! After hooking up the power, USB and DVI cables, the end result is this:



I'm pretty happy with the result, especially since it only cost me $31 dollars. Next step will be to hide the cables away to get a cleaner finish.

Here's a disaster which I prepared earlier

For those who are unaware of my handyman abilities, witness this little disaster :



That was the result of Operation 'Exhaust Fan Swapout'. Another finely planned and executed nez production.

So you see, my plans to mount a 10 kg monitor to a plasterboard wall with little to no care has the potential to end in tears. But what the hell. It's only a wall. I'll keep a photo diary of how things go this weekend so check back here next week.

Receipe for disaster?

Alright, before I say anymore, here's what my home Mac setup looks like now:



It's an Apple Macbook connected to a 24" Dell monitor with wireless keyboard and mouse. Pretty neat ey? Well guess what, IT'S MAKING ME GO FREAKEN BLIND!!! The Dell is just too big. That's right, too big. Notice the small desk it's on? Notice how close the screen is to the keyboard? I'm sitting too close to the damn thing. Also, the Dell is also too damn bright and I can't turn it down. Imagine staring at a flurosecent lamp for 30 minutes. That's what it like.

So ... here's the plan:

I buy one of those VESA monitor mounts (another) from here :

Radio parts

I drill some holes in the wall, mount the screen to it and move my desk back a few meters or so. Voila! Piece of cake.

The plan is rock solid. What could wrong??!?! Watch this space......

Home sweet home

Got home Saturday night after a relatively uneventful flight.  I'm never flying economy again if I can help it.

Spent our last full day shopping in Hong Kong with my good friend Kevin and his lovely girlfriend Cathy.
Finally picked up my new mobile phone.  Samsung E908 / E900.  It's nice to have a phone which I'm not embarrassed to own!!  All up, I bought one suit, one phone, one pair of shoes and a 1 gig flash drive.  All the trappings of a modern man.

Took the missus to Aqua Spirit on Wednesday night.  It's reputedly got the best view in Hong Kong - level 29 views from Kowloon over the Hong Kong skyline.  Quite a sight.  Pity the food is shit.  Get a drink, eat somewhere else.  Did manage to snaffle my first bite of raw prawn though which wasn't so bad.



Here's a photo of the strawberry moquito with mint I had there.  I love the gurly drinks.

Hotpot

You can eat some pretty weird stuff over here if you want. Last night I had hotpot with some local friends. For those who aren't familiar with this culinary delight, hotpot lets you cook your own food in a big boiling pot of broth. There's an electric hot plate in the middle of the table and that's where your broth sits, bubbling away. We ordered slices of rare beef, shitake mushrooms, dumplings, tofu and prawns. Now. Here's the cool part. The prawns were ALLLIVVEEE!!!!!! Yep, they were had been skewered from head to toe, but were still flapping away on the table!! It does not get any fresher than that. Dunking them in the broth didn't kill them straight away either, they'd continue to wriggle for a bit in the boiling hot water. I felt a bit guilty when I did that. Tasted great though.

Spent most Sunday shoppping, looking for a hard bargin. It's sale season over here - everything is 20 - 50 % off which is a pretty good. I managed to pick up a suit for half price and a pair of shoes which were nice. I'm on the hunt for a mobile phone at the moment. The Samsung E908 has caught my eye. Check it out here:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/samsung-sghe908-cellphone-with-touchsensitive-buttons-190619.php