Pluggin'

I thought I'd do a quick site plug quickly for beach-list.com. It a cool site that reviews beaches all around the world. The plug is of course because they're using one on my photos for the Brasil section :)

... in the sentance above, does the full stop (period for American of the northern persuasion) come before or after the hip, trendy, non-31yo smiley? Or should I just get with the times and stop using them all together?


Speaking of plug action, part of my electric shaver fell down the drain of the wash basin in the hostel when I was cleaning it yesterday. I wonder if that means I'll only manage to shave half of my face from now on...

And speaking of action, Brendan had some "Our left engine has died and we're making an emergency landing in Tampa, Florida" action on his way done here. He should get in tonight, just in time for a 26 hour bus trip tomorrow, lucky him.

On The Road Again

I finally left the house long enough to spend 20 hours on a bus and am currently in Santiago de Chile. I won't get much of a chance to look around, but it seems like a great city. Today I had the best sandwich I've had since I left Sydney and their national softdrink Pap is great though I can't yet put my finger on the flavour. Incidentally, stay tuned for my review of the best softdrinks in each South American country I've visited, it'll be riveting, informative and heavily carbonated.

Brendan gets in tomorrow morning and then I think it's straight to the north of Argentina and Boliviar, he doesn't know this yet of course. It would have been great to checkout the vineyards in Mendoza, but I'm on a course of strong anitbiotics at the moment, and while I'm far from a burgeoning alcholic (though that would make my sister Megan proud), what's the use of going wine tasting if you can't get loaded. That said, I think visiting the world's largest salt plains will be much cooler.

Crap!

At 8:45am on Thursday a car bomb went off in la Universidad Militar in Bogotá where Aura studies. FARC, the main guerilla group in Colombia, seem to be responsible but I just don't get why. Unfortunately two people were killed and ten hurt, but luckily none of Aura's friends.

Here's a little more information, but it's in Spanish. There are some photos down the bottom.
Article from Terra.

Getting Pushed Around By Short Girls

I've been pushed around by a lot of short girls in my life, in fact for a while there I seemed to only date short girls... who were vegetarian... and journalists or did something else interesting with words... and very, very bossy - sorry, but you know it's true. Tonight however I found myself lost in a sea of short girls at a Robbie Williams concert tossed to and fro like an old piece of wood or a message in a bottle, well the bottle. Maybe like a riddle wrapped in an enigma... well maybe not, but there were a lot of short girls.

The best thing about going to a Robbie Williams concert in Argentina, especially one where you hear most of his songs for the first time, is that no one cares if you get the words wrong when you sing along. Hell, they have no idea what they're singing but between the lines of broken english everyone was having a great time. There were a couple of moments where he yelled out, "If you blah, blah, blah... give me an Amen!", greeted by complete silence as people tried to figure out what he just said, but it was a great show nonetheless. The lighting and video show was great.

Well with that last nail in the coffin of my once proud techno heritage I'm going to have a shower, jump into bed and listen to Il Divo one more time :)

Quick BA Update

Just a quick update from a beautiful Sunday here in Buenos Aires.

I've been having lots of fun working on Elevation again and things have been progressing well. I've got simple multiplayer working with ultradumb AI and dynamically generated levels, which is nice because you can specify the number of floors and players and the building gets created on the fly rather than having to draw each combination by hand, which is what the Java version was doing. I should be able to get the current iteration done before I head to Chile on Thursday to meet Brendan and travel with him for a couple of weeks. The current plan is for us to meet in Santiago de Chile, head to Mendoza (Argentinian wine country), north to Salta, down through Cordoba and back to Buenos Aires. It'll be a tight fit to get everything into the two weeks, but it will be fun to travel again.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing after Brendan leaves at this point, but I'll be staying out here until December like I originally planned. I was thinking about going back to Colombia for a while with Aura, but money is getting pretty tight, so I think I'll stay here and work. She's coming back to Argentina and we're going to go to Australia together for a month or so which will be fun.

I rolled the digits another year on Friday and can now say I'm in my thirties rather then just thirty. I'm sure being tired the last few days is just a coincidence and has nothing to do with my being thirty one.

Like A Bat Out Of Hell...

No that's not amazing high end produced in stunning surround sound by the crappy old stereo, it's a bat flying around the shower. That's what I thought tonight when I heard high (high) pitched sounds coming from the bathroom and then saw a little black blur flying around. I tried to catch the little guy in a towel so I could pop him out the window but he somehow managed to elude me... and now I can't find him. I haven't heard any sounds for a while, so hopefully he just flew out the window by himself.

Aura and Ximena have headed south for a few days to chekout some whales. I'm obviously taking full advantage of this break to explore Buenos Aires alone, getting drunk and cruising for chicks... which is my own special way of saying it's a stunning Saturday night and I'm at home alone coding, or at least trying to code when not distracted by bats. Will this excitement never end?

Biting The Hand That Feeds You

Today Motas bit me, quite literally as I was feeding him... or at least when I was putting food in his cage. It was a very slow, deliberate bite. He lured me in by looking like he wanted to climb on my hand for a while and then SNAP! The tiny fangs of hamster fury came down on my poor little finger. I even started bleeding! He's now bitten Aura, Xime and I, everyone in the house. I'm worried he might be developing a taste for human blood. If I wake up missing a toe one morning I'll know where to look.

In other hamster related news, we put the running wheel back in the cage and Motas has been giving it a good workout. Of course, he's been running on top of the wheel rather than inside it, but I like to think that's his unique style shining through.

We also moved to the new apartment today and it's great.