Photos

    Seeing these river tour boats moored like this reminds me of the UK, and all the narrowboats in the canals.

    Boats are docked along a river beside a row of buildings with trees and outdoor seating.

    Gallery: Morning In Sherbrooke

    A visit to Sherbrooke in the Dandenong Ranges on Easter Monday included a walk along the falls track, a sighting of a Superb Lyrebird, and a brief exploration of Alfred Nicholas Memorial Garden.

    Hanging with Rico. He’s got a habit of overpreening, which is why he looks a little shabby.

    Auto-generated description: A person is sitting on a couch with a cockatiel perched on their shoulder.

    Some more #big-spending going on around here with the arrival of my brand new TV… remote control. 🤑

    Auto-generated description: Two black TV remote controls with various buttons and labels are placed side by side on a textured surface.

    Yeah, I finally got a replacement remote control for my TV. And honestly, doing so was a long time in coming. The old one (right) has been failing over the last few years: with certain buttons, particularly Power and Enter, requiring significantly more force that others before responding. About a month or so ago, the Power button stopped functioning completely, and the only way I could turn the TV on was to use the Netflix button (making that button useful for the first time in years) and quickly switching to AV 2. That, plus the volume, were the only buttons working by the end.

    On time arrival at Albury, NSW.

    A modern blue and yellow train is stationed at a covered platform on a sunny day.

    At “Broady 3,” waiting for the XPT to Albury. 🚂

    A railway track curves away from a deserted platform with an amber signal light and surrounding greenery.

    The weather is stubbornly refusing to turn autumnal. Fortunately the trees are happy to oblige.

    Trees with vibrant red and green foliage are illuminated by sunlight against a clear blue sky, with a blue container and a white structure partially visible.

    That small lizard that occasionally gets inside my house is back. Got a bit of a surprise when I saw it in the hallway today. It ran as I reached for my phone to take this picture.

    Auto-generated description: A small lizard is lying on a carpeted floor near a wall.

    New Desk Chair Day

    About the new desk chair I bought that arrived today.

    Added a few final things to my Godot game, such as a really boring title and end-title screen, before preparing a release for play testers (or play tester, I’ve got exactly one lined up). I think we’re ready.

    Auto-generated description: A game welcome screen introduces Princess Real-estate, instructing players to collect coins and avoid hazards to reach a castle.

    Do you POSSE? I POSSE. You’re seeing me POSSE right now. POSSE!!1!

    A wooden fence is spray-painted with graffiti reading "POSSE1" in white.

    Two awesome vessels: a water bottle I got from AWS reInvent, and a keepcup I bought at Coles. What makes them awesome is that they’re double-layered, so my coffee stays hot and my water stays cool.

    A blue insulated bottle with the "aws" logo stands beside a smaller blue-capped container on a wooden table.

    Here’s a useful Obsidian plugin. It allows you to use emoji short-codes in your notes, just like Slack and I think some flavours of Markdown. Good for todo lists where emojis could be used to highlight questions or priority items.

    Auto-generated description: A checklist features tasks with varying levels of importance and uncertainty, including a starred item and one with a question mark.

    Stunning day for bocce today. Finally nice to get some autumnal weather. Tournament ended with a draw, so no definitive winner for the 2024 season.

    Sunlight filters through the leaves of tall trees casting shadows on a lush green lawn in a park.

    This week’s earworm: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair (Original Game Soundtrack). Might be all the Godot stuff I’m doing at the moment. 🎵

    Quick review of Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, by Wise, Kirkhope, Griffin and Murdoch. Release 2019. Rating: good. Review text as follows: It's a game soundtrack by David Wise: what more needs to be said? I've not actually played the game yet. Looks to be quite fun, and the music fits the theme quite well. I'm just happy to listen to the soundtrack. It's that good.

    Can definitely recommend Aseprite for making simple pixel artwork. I’m using it now for making some sprites for my Godot game I’m working on. Reminds me of the time I used MS Paint for this during the 90’s era, back when it was closer to this than what it is now.

    Auto-generated description: A pixel art editing program is displayed, showcasing a sequence of animated golden goblet images.

    After the last peanut incident, I added a rule to mark emails with the lunch menu red when the word satay or nut appears in the body. It’s been working pretty well so far. There is the occasional false positive — “coconut” is a common one — but it’s doing it’s job in alerting me to be careful.

    An email filter setup specifies that if a message containing "satay" comes from a specific sender, the text colour is set to red and the message is marked with an alert.

    Got caught in heavy rain while on my walk this morning. About effin’ time! 🌧️

    Auto-generated description: A winding path cuts through a park-like setting with trees and rain falling.

    Replacing A Side Mirror Of A Toyota Echo

    Replacing a broken car mirror myself.

    Was looking at how I could add hazards to my Godot project, such as spikes. My first idea was to find a way to detect collisions with tiles in a TileMap in Godot. But there was no real obvious way to do so, suggesting to me that this was not the way I should be going about this. Many suggested simply using an Area2D node to detect when a play touches a hazard.

    I was hesitant to copy and paste the scene node I had which handled the collision signal and kill the player — the so-called “kill zone” scene —but today I learnt that it’s possible to add multiple CollisionShape2D nodes to an Area2D node. This meant I needed only a single “kill zone” scene node, and just draw out the kill zones over the spikes as children. The TileMap simply provides the graphics.

    Auto-generated description: A game development interface displaying level design with a grid layout, tiles, and collision shapes is shown.

    This discovery may seem a little trivial, but I’d prefer to duplicate as few nodes as a can, just so I’ve got less to touch when I want to change something.

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