Oh hello thar. Apologies for the huge gap between posts; I somehow lost the battery charger for my camera, and for a while I held out hope that I’d find the damn thing again. After two months of that, I caved in and bought a new one.

So, here’s some shots from a weekend away in Daylesford, in Victoria’s north-west. It’s a sleepy little town known largely for its seemingly endless supply of day spas and massage houses, but it’s also home to the beautiful Lake House restaurant, where we dined last night.

Sault also comes quite highly recommended, though we didn’t manage to make time for that one. Next time.

There’s only a few shots here, I’m sorry to say. It was a fairly dreary weekend as far as the weather goes, so I was hesitant to pull the camera out too often. Also, I was drunk a lot of the time.

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Despite being the Easter weekend, Friedel and I both had some work to get through while we were visiting her family in Tasmania this week. With just the one laptop between us, I took off for a few hours on Monday while she knocked over a few design tasks.

Half an hour into my drive, a roadside sign told me I was a mere 19km from the summit of Mount Wellington. Well, hell. Off I went.

Above, the view of Hobart from atop the mountain.

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Still full on memories of the feast that greeted us at the family Christmas last year, we headed down to Tasmania this past weekend for an extra-long Easter holiday with Friedel’s family.

Here’s a few shots from the veritable buffet that awaited us, and a couple of other shots under the rule of ‘just because’. Above are my four eggs from the massive batch of hard-boiled eggs we had to get painted before the guests arrived.

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Here’s a little ‘toy’ statuette that arrived in the mail last week. And it’s the weirdest experience I’ve had in so long.

What you’re looking at is ‘The Shirt Ninja,’ a pseudonym for the main character of a popular webcomic called Real Life.

I actually stopped reading Real Life about a year ago. Not because of anything to do with the comic though. I simply dropped off the face of the internets for a while and never got around to returning to my old reads when I finally found more time to be online.

So when I got a phone call from my dad last week to tell me that “some package is here for you mate, it’s got ‘real life’ or something like that on the box.” My brain broke. I had no idea what he was talking about.

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Will you just look at this, ain’t she a beauty? This is my ‘new’ 1996 Trek 470 Fast Track.

It was a fairly basic rig when it hit the market 15 years ago, and it’s nothing special today either – but compared to my generally beloved Shogun ‘Extreme’ (oh save me), it feels like I’m riding on Goku’s Flying Nimbus.

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Winter is on its way back into the Melbourne lifestyle, but a few pleasant days remain and I made the most of Saturday’s warmth by having a few friends over for a barbeque.

I also bought myself a ‘new’ bicycle, which you can just make out in the background of the below photo (after the split). It’s a 1996 Trek 470 Fast Track, and I bought it off a friend who picked it up for a song and restored it over the course of a few weeks.

I’ll take some nice photos of the bike when I get a chance this week, but for now, some barbeque shots. I really do love this camera o’ mine.

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The franchise from which I pulled this blog’s name, Street Fighter II, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year.

I’m not much of a gamer these days,but like most kids, there was a time when I lived for that shit.

Did SF II actually come out in Australia in 1991? Regardless, whether I was 11 or 12 makes no difference to the story. I remember my friends and I, back in primary school, would forego the usual lunchtime treat from the canteen, saving that money for a few games of SF II. It was tough watching the other kids chomp on their ice creams and twinkies, but we knew it was worth it.

After school, we’d march up to the local video store – even run, if we were desperate for the first game, and Tim always kicked our arses anyway and held the damn machine for half an hour – and spend the next couple of hours arguing over which character was better. Hell, we didn’t know. I guess you had to have the magazines to get the details on each character’s strengths and weaknesses, or you had to simply be better at the game than we were, whatever.

We all loved Ryu of course (we pronounced it “rye-u” back then), but sometimes you’d pick Guile or Blanka just to look tough, or Chun Li to watch her bouncing around the screen.

Oh, Dhalsim – sit in the corner and just do those stretching kick and punch moves all day. Really piss your opponent off.

Honestly, good times. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult now, or because I don’t make the time to get into games anymore (they seem to demand so much more of your time now for you to get any real fulfilment out of them), but I always feel as though that was the end of a golden era. Crowding around a machine in a public venue, watching friends and strangers take victory or get demolished, laughing at them either way, occasionally packing your pants when one big dude doesn’t take a loss well. Those were the days.

Hell, it was only a little while until I had the game on SNES anyway, and I rarely played it at the arcade after that. My dad and I would sit there whipping each other’s arses, the huge age gap seemingly giving him no advantage – and that was a welcome first when you’re a kid!

Honestly, good times.

v.

Curse and confound it.

I threw my bike into the back of this week’s test car – the Hyundai i45 – so that I could ride home after returning the car to Hyundai’s office in the outer ‘burbs of Melbourne.

On the ride home, I had to brake hard to avoid colliding with a motorist that didn’t bother to make a headcheck before changing lanes.

Annoyingly, it was a wet day, so my braking also caused me to swerve into some bricks, which nice and cleanly sliced my shoe open. Thankfully, and more importantly, my toes escaped unharmed.

Ah well, I was thinking about some new shoes, but I didn’t necessarily want to replace these ones. Maybe I’ll just stitch the cut back together. It was a pretty clean cut, so it should be doable.

v.

What’s the collective noun for ninja? Is it ninjas, or does it remain ninja? Perhaps it’s ninjai…

I caught up with some car-loving friends for lunch today, with the main focus (see what I did there) being the Ford Focus RS that I picked up for work this week.

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Popped into the National Gallery of Victoria at Federation Square yesterday morning. Photography was allowed, so here’s a few of my faves from the exhibitions we hit.

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