As is typically the case with this blog, its becoming more of a ‘photo spot’. Not that its a bad thing (to me anyway) as photos are definitely a huge point of interest for me, a hobby if you will, so without further adieu - I bring you KatieWoo and ScottyB’s trip to the Hunter Valley.

It all began as an idea, Katie thought for my B’Day, she would treat me to a lovely overnighter somewhere up the Hunter, including a stay in a posh hotel, wine tours, all the fancy stuff associated with doing the ’rounds’ in the Vineyards.

Unfortunately with my input, we ended up vegging out in the hotel, watching movies on Arena and other Fox channels (in fairness, it rained most of the time on Sunday night, so going ‘out and about’ wasn’t really possible - without being silly anyway) and ended up spending most of Monday at the Hunter Valley Zoo. Yeah I know. But it was my Birthday remember? :p

The camera didn’t make much of an appearance on Sunday. We took it easy on the way up, had a nice drive, a stop at Maccas for lunch and a Mint McFlurry (Kate’s new favourite thing) before checking into the Hotel at a little before 2pm. We got some supplies, cheese, crackers, dip etc. And headed out to Peterson House wineries for Kate’s sparkling pink Champagne. We weren’t long back to the Hotel before Kate was into the Champerz, so we watched some of the Wrong Man on TV and then US Marshalls. Awesome.

Dinner fast approaching, we pulled ourselves from the comfy bed and got ready. Lazzarini’s at the Hunter Valley Gardens.

Now I’ll be the first to say I wasn’t truly into the idea of one of these ‘flowery menu item’ restaurants. An Agnello, Herb and Parmesan scented Lamb rack with sweet potato Gratinato, young basil and black olive paint. I mean - WTF. I can’t pronounce most of it, surely its just lamb with herbs, Parmesan and some toppings right?

Wrong. Sensationally good food - I was uneducated and a skeptic before. I was an appreciating believer as I left satisfied.

After finally dropping off to sleep, an annoying Mosquito at bay thanks to a Mosquito net over the bed, a snorer at bay thanks to my constant pushing and tickling her nose, it was smooth sailing ’till the morning.

We had a gorgeous breakfast at the Hotel, eggs, bacon, toast and a roasted tomato for me, Pancakes with strawberries and banana for Katie, then set off for the Hunter Valley Zoo.

The weather wasn’t perfect, drizzly rain for much of the day with the occasional heavy shower, but it didn’t dampen our spirits. We were two of about 10 people who were at the Zoo that day and looking about, the experience we got and the lovely people there, you’d have to wonder why the place wasn;t packed to the brim - especially in School Holidays.

Nonetheless, we had a ball. Almost lost an Umbrella along the way and left with plenty of smiles, great memories and hopefully some really cool photos.

We had a late lunch at Harrigans Irish Pub before heading home.

All in all a fantastic weekend. Can’t wait for the next one - thanks Katie x

Didn’t get wet at all, it passed right by the little viewing spot and headed on its merry way.

Photos were taken over the period of an hour or so from ~7pm to 8pm. Then it started raining, so I had to pack up.

Look, its been a while since I’ve rambled on about the PS3 and its myriad of awesome, awesome games, so gimme a break okay?! Right.. with that out of the way…

Burnout Paradise on the PS3, its not hard to come up with a few lovely words to describe this title. Brilliant, awesome, fantastic, excellent, all come to mind. This really is the coolest racing title I’ve probably ever played on any system. There’s loads of cars, plenty of events but the highlight is definitely the city. Paradise City.

From the very beginning, as soon as you seamlessly boot up the game, you’re immersed in an entire city. Streets upon streets, filled with carparks, ramps, billboards, restaurants, stadiums.. its all there, its all a huge functioning city, filled with traffic and chaos. Basically everywhere you can see, you can drive. Nothing is off limits, nothing needs to be tediously unlocked or released.

You can drive anywhere.

Such is the size of the city, it takes hours of driving about before you’ll see everything, yet its not daunting. Criterion Games have done a fantastic job of making such a large space so ’small’ and manageable. You’re rarely lost, there’s loads to do everywhere you go and there’s countless things to find and unlock for car and completion bonuses.

After just recently getting 100% completion in the offline, I’ve broadened my outlook to the online size of Paradise. Once again, brilliant innovation - simply bring up the menu by hitting the right D-pad and select to join a game. You’re in. Playing with mates or just random peeps.

So quick, so easy and all can be done even while you’re still driving around. Online is great fun, just drive around smashing up, taking other cars down, or configure races across the city with or without checkpoints. Compete together with up to 8 mates on 350 different online challenges, or go out and set records for longest jumps, barrel rolls, drifts etc.. the possibilities are endless and even after >50 hours, its not getting old.

Played online games with my mates 666 and Smurfn.. and a few of the blokes from the PS3 Forums. It’s just awesome.

Truly one of the greatest titles on the PS3 to date.

We took a run in to King Edward Park and took a few snaps of Jill near the largest body of water we could find - the big fountain!

She wanted to take a swim but we advised her its probably not the cleanest water around! So we headed for somewhere a little nicer…

The ocean! Arrived at Nobby’s Beach and took some touristy snaps in front of Nobby’s Lighthouse.

Down by the ocean…

And one last parting photo as one of the big coal freighters left the port.

Another adventure with Jill

Seeing as the weather has been truly appalling lately and QQJ has spent most of her time indoors, or just plodding about in the pond out back, she figured it would be a great idea and a good opportunity to stretch those little webbed feet. After assuring her that she wouldn’t be in any way a burden, we packed up some gear and off we went.

Jill immediately took a liking to the Lake at the front of the Gardens, so much so that we didn’t see or hear from her for at least 20 minutes while she was off swimming with her ducky pals.

After convincing her that there was indeed, other stuff to see inside the gardens, in we went.

Straight to water, there’s no denying the instinct in this one. Up on the fountain ledge Jill went.

After taking a stroll through the Storybook Garden, QQJ decided to have some tea at the Madhatters Tea Party.

Here in the Asian gardens.

Jill! Off the grass!

Careful Jill, they may be gentle giants, but all your energy might surprise him!

As we rested, Jill took a waddle up to the big waterfall. She asked me to snap a photo of her by the Hunter Valley Gardens sign with the waterfall in the background. Obviously, I was more than happy to oblige!

Finally, a little rest for Jill after all the running about. Pictured here before some of the lovely flowers at the Garden exit.

Until the next adventure!

The Bees again at work. Can’t believe how hard these little dudes are to photograph. Constantly on the move, never stopping for a single moment in any spot. This was pretty much the regular angle you’d see them in. Buried bum deep in the Roses!

Touch of blue sky! Unbelievable. And in Australia! Who’d a thunk it!

Made our way down to the foothills and parked our cabooses by the Lake, just in front of the waterfall. Perfect time for a little rest and some photos.

After a quick stop at the food shop (and two lovely ice blocks later) I decided to strap on the Macro lens and get up close and personal with some of the Roses (and later on, some insects of course!)

We spotted these two a little later on. Now, we’re not entirely sure what they’re up to here.. I mean it looks obvious doesn’t it? But there’s no.. well.. connection. So.. I really don’t know what to say here, but because this is a ‘work safe’ blog and because I’d rather not figure I’ve just intruded and photographed an intimate and very private moment between two Ladybugs, I’ll say that they were merely giving each other piggy-backs on a leaf

This one was looking for a piggy-back partner

A nasty wasp probably hunting out a bee or something else innocent for a meal.

A nasty… oh wait.. no, its Katie! Lovely, sweet, innocent Katie who’s just had a fabulous day at the Hunter Valley Gardens.

And that concludes the coverage of this installment of the HVG tour!

Anyways, I’m happy to say, we succeeded.

No tizzes and no grumpiness! Yay! And while the weather didn’t really gift us with the fine blue skies we had hoped for, the looming black clouds did keep their promise and didn’t get a single drop of rain hit the ground. Fantastic.

We arrived early, and with a gorgeous packed picnic lunch prepared by Katie, we dined in the grass by the Lake. Spotted these guys having a swim about!

After we passed through the gates, we were immediately greeted with some beautiful flowers, lovely colours and plenty of awesome little bees buzzing about their business!

THE STORYBOOK GARDNEN! We wasted no time getting here. I figured, if it rained later, at least Kate would be happy with me and there would be no return to tizz’s (Disclaimer, I’m only teasing Katie :P)

Plenty of photos. She looks happy in this one too, we’re at the Storybook Garden after all.

One of the lovely flowers around the Storybook Garden.

Beautiful artworks, all the fairytales.. can you name them all?

A few of the little vine/creeper arts were more developed this visit. Very cool.

The Gingerbread House!!!

Kate again, this time having a laugh because she’d gotten us lost. Again. Left through the Grotto Kate, through the Grotto!! Not that left turn at Albuquerque!

Pretty in pink..

The walkway between the Gardens and the big waterfall!

Floating roses…

More pretty flowers in and around the Rose Garden…

It has a tremendous effect on you, only working 4 days a week and having 3 off. I think we all know that from the occasional long weekends we’re granted from the Government. You get more rest, you get more things done, you have more fun and as a result, I think you enjoy and put more into the 4 day work week right after. Its less of a load.

So how did I spent this long weekend you might ask? That’s got me so peachy and stuff?

Slept in, watched movies, played games, watched Seinfeld, spent quality time with the missus and bantered with mates.

In my defense, it hasn’t stopped raining for most of the weekend..

Perfect really. What we’d all probably do if we were to win lotto tomorrow. Well, what I’d probably do anyway. Though I imagine if I won lotto, I’d probably buy some nice cars too and I’d probably end up tracking them a fair bit - though depending on how much I won, I might even have a track built in the backyard of my mansion so I wouldn’t have to travel far to track them at least..

/sidetrack

So yeah, the long weekend. The employed persons dream. I really should save up my holidays more often - I could get used to this.

Cast your mind back to the early days of this blog and that’s pretty much all I was playing on the PC. It had consumed all my spare time - and as a Marvel fan (a big one) it was one of those time-sapping items in my game collection. So once again spotting MUA on the pre-owned shelf at EB Games today had me shaking.

I knew that firstly, I could play it on the big 40″ through the PS3. Bonus.
Secondly, it has not one, but two extra characters in the PS3 version (Moon Knight and Colossus).
Thirdly, it was only $50 odd bucks.

I said to myself I’d not pay full price for this one. I’d already bought it on sale for the PC (paid $15) and there was no way I was buying it again, on the PS3, for $119 (general asking price in the overpriced EB culture) and unfortunately, they didn’t stock it anywhere else and I’m led to believe they’ve stopped making it too.

So seeing it appear for ~$50 made it a mouth-watering option. Essentially, I’d still have paid less for the two version than if I had bought a retail PS3 version of it in the first place. I was quickly convincing myself. So quickly in fact, I jumped in the car this afternoon and picked it up. The disc is like brand new. You’d never know it was pre-owned (save for the eleventy billion excessive stickers EB have to put on a pre-owned game.. vile practice. There’s even a bloody sticker on the leaflet in the case!!).

As I played away this afternoon, I realised how ridiculous it was to essentially buy something again, just for the extra two characters and a slightly different gaming experience. But them I’m no stranger to buying duplicates. I’ve been sucked into ‘Limited edition collectors DVD sets’ after already owning the ‘One disc edition’ time and time again.

Ahh.. such is life - too short to be worrying about these things.

It’s clobberin’ time!

I am. I love ‘em. They fascinate me. Anything with more legs than I seems to intrigue me.

Though while I’ve seen a whole host and variety of creepy-crawlies, there’s no other creepy-crawly that I love watching as much as the Jumping Spider.

We seem to have a host of these little acrobats around lately - many more than I’ve seen in previous years (maybe I wasn’t looking as hard back then - I certainly wasn’t driven by the macro lens to find new shooting material anyway) and they’re coming in a whole wacky range of shapes, sizes, varying levels of hairiness and colour. One thing they all have in common though, is character.

Watching a Jumping Spider is like watching an episode of Benny Hill. If you added the music, you’d have a show, I swear it. They tip-toe around on leaves in what seems like fast-forward on Nature’s remote control. Their movements have no in between. They are facing you. Then they’re not. There’s no medium, there’s no smooth action between. They don’t try to calmly avert your view or slide out of vision, they are there and they are being noticed - and they know it.

Somehow, they manage to strike poses that would put Jim Carrey to shame, the utter slapstick comedy of their movements is divine. Magically, they’ll approach the edge of a leaf or branch and in one click of movement, they are somehow under the leaf. Again, with no in between. They just somehow defied gravity and now begin to rewrite the laws of physics.

Then to top it off, they’ll have the audacity to pop those massive googly eyes out from under said leaf and stare at you - to make sure you saw that spectacular show.

Maybe I’m imagining it all - maybe they’re only doing what comes naturally to them - evading a predator by any means necessary.

I don’t want to believe this though, its just too basic, too plain, too boring for the wonder that is nature.