Belated news

If you look over to my "People with blogs I know", you will see that my beloved has caved in and now has her own MySpace.

When she can actually get the posts to work (issues with servers or post lists? We're not sure), you can have a look-in at her view on life and stuff.

Euan's Special Punch

Thought it'd be fun to put this recipe up here, given the popularity of the drink;

1 750ml white rum (Bacardi for pref)
1 750ml coconut rum (Malibu if ye've got it, but Grunters' Wipeout is good enough, 'cause it's just a punch)
1 500ml Triple Sec
1 Bottle Passion Pop
2 Ltrs Tropical Fruit Juice
2 Ltrs Coconut & Pineapple Juice
1 Ltr Lemonade
Juice of 4 limes

Mix all of the above in a large punch bowl and add the following fruit, all chopped up;

3 Oranges (Blood oranges for pref, cause their colour is better and they off-set the sweetness)
2 punnets of strawberries
1 half pinapple

And anything else you want, really.

It's best to make sure all of the liquids are as cold as possible, so you don't need to add too much ice and risk watering it down.

Also, taste as you go, too. It shoudln't get too meths-tasting, but depending on the strength of your coconut rum or triple sec, it might.

Drink in moderation, just BTW, cause it is very strong.

Pesents, food, presents, alcohol and presents... and Jesus and stuff too...

Christmas has come and gone again, and once more there was waaaay too much fantastic food, lots of time with family and friends and probably more alcohol consumed than is good for us.

We managed a record 4 Christmases this year, with the first being the Spanish Christmas Eve celebrated with Carmen's folks. Her bro was still in WA (having recently started working in a copper mine somewhere called "Nifty"), so it was her folks, myself, Carms (duh), her grandparents and a couple of friends of the family. The food was great as always (both Carms' folks are awesome cooks) and everyone got as good as they gave. We scored a couple of very pretty glass vases, some soft-but-itchy throw rugs for our new sofas and a 24 bottle wine fridge/cooler thing.

Then it was on to my Mum and Dad's for Christmas Day. There we had my folks, my grandpa and Cal. We also had a drop-in from Anne (Cal's new girlfriend [also my workmate, about more later]) and Carmen's folks again. The fine food theme was repeated, with Mum making the best Christmas pudding she has in ages. It was phenomenal. Also repeated was the getting as good as giving theme. Mum loved her froggy brooch, Grandpa loved his DVDs, Dad loved his books and Cal played with his steering-wheel-and-pedals thing and his Xbox wasn't even there.

As for Boxing Day, many wonderful friends came over to our house and we had a great deal of fun. Again, there was a large amount of alcohol, including my "Special Punch". By "Special", you can of course read "really strong but doesn't taste that alcoholic". There was laughter and friendly and not-so-friendly (but still very funny) ribbing and generally the day/night (started at 1100 and wnet through til around 2230) was a great success. It was one of those gatherings that reminds me that Carms and I have some of the best friends in the world. It was awesome!

Finally, Carm's bro returned to Canberra and so we had a special Michael Christmas (not to be confused with Michaelmas, which I thought was around this time of year, but I was wrong). He was sooooo very tired when we came, as he'd been awake for about 36 hours at the time. He gave me the Scarface, Carmen a great deal of "Northern Exposure" on DVD and was given by his folks a freakin' cool portable DVD player. More great food. More alcohol (tho not drunk by me 'cause I was driving).

I'd like to thank everyone who helped make this Christmas so wonderful, and I hope that everyone out there had a fantastic, culturally-appropriate end of year break and gathering(s).

There's a PC upgrade on my horizon...

I'll try not to gush, 'cause there's absolutely no detail about the game itself, but Firefly has been licensed to become an MMORPG.

I'm still trying not to gush but, really, this has freakin' awesome written all over it.

End of an era

Let it be known, and let it be sounded to the Heavens, that euanbowen@hotmail.com is no longer an active address for me. I've finally let the damnable thing lapse to the point where it goes away.

True, it means that my Pimpin' Down Under and Urban Dead accounts may be in limbo, but it also means that I don't have to wade through 8 metric craploads of span to get the one message I actually give a crap about.

I am getting more and more spam on Gmail, but at least they've stopped accusing me of having a sm4ll p3n15.

There's a silver lining there.

Totally Awesome!

Some of you are no doubt aware that since 2003 the guys at Penny Arcade have been holding an annual charity event called Child's Play that takes donations of toys (and money to buy toys) to give to children's hospitals in the the United States.

Only now, it's not just in the United States but also in Canada, the UK, Egypt and, fanfare please, Australia! Yup, the Sydney Children's Hospital and the Brisbane's Mater Children's Hospital have joined the fun.

In the past they have had entire pallets of Gamecubes donated (would that I had the cash to do that), and lots of other things.

The PA guys looks to be aiming for $500K in donations and, although it appears they only started at the beginning of November, they're already up to $260,000.

Great work, guys!

Home and Homebake

I'm home from work, after heading into work, 'cause I'm feeling a wee bit crook. Not sick, per se, but sort of floaty and tingly. If getting wet, then getting hot, then getting wet again at Homebake has given me the 'flu... well, it was worth it really.

Carms and I, as well as our friend Louise, headed up to Sydney on the Friday for the festival, and after a bracing brekky at a backpacker/cafe near central, we made our way to the Domain.

The highlight of the day for me was the Hilltop Hoods. They ramped up the crowd, blasted out a selection of old classics and stuff from their new(ish) album and were just frickin' awesome!

Little Birdy were also pretty damn cool, and Eskimo were awesome too. And very humble, thanking the crowd and their fans many times during their set (between pretty much every song :) ).

I mostly enjoyed the Silverchair set, although my back was getting quite sore by then, and I was totally over being jostled by people pushing back and forth through the crowd. Also, he may be an incredibly talented guitarist (and I mean incredibly talented), but he struck as being kind of a dick. Nothing specific I can put my finger on, but just a general "dick"-ness coming across.

A pleasant surprise was seeing Toni Collette and the Finish. Yes, it's that Toni Collette and she and her band gave us some great folk-y rock. Or possibly rock-y folk. Either way, it was a great set that saw Ms. Collette firmly smack down a heckler who felt that "you're terrible, Muriel" was something that needed to be called out between songs.

Rain or no rain, it was a great day with only a couple of drunken eejits gratuitously bumping into us, and that out of excess exubrance, rather than agression. I did see a couple of almost-fights, but they were defused quickly and it would seem that the NSW Police were also pleased with how things went.

And to cap it off, we were able to catch up with Unky Gra Gra on the day after. Yay!

Dipping a toe in the pop culture pool

From what I've picked up talking to various people, I may be about to reveal a dark secret, but I like Jericho. I know that the acting isn't exactly top-notch, and maybe it does slip into naffness from time to time (thanks for confirming that in my brain, Gra), but the premise is intriguing and I'm currently half-way through the mid-season cliff-hanger and it's just working for me.

The characters have sucked me in, the "what's going on? who's on whose side?" thing is awesome. I loved American Gothic and I love Lost. It can get frustrating, but like the mytharc in X-Files, I don't hate getting little tidbits of info here and there. And all the stand-offs and stand-downs are just plain cool!

Another show I've fallen for is Entourage. A bit like Spaced, describing the premise of this one doesn't do it justice. True, it could essentially be a pretty banal tale of a young up-and-comer in Hollywood and his mates and brother hanging out and enjoying the high life, but the acting and writing are top-notch and something about the series just sets it apart.

There are celebrity cameos a-plenty, with standouts being Richard Schiff playing himself and telling his agent he wants to be an action hero and Seth Green also playing himself, only I hope he's not such a dick. It's sort of based on Mark Wahlberg's experiences as the young up-and-comer (he's an executive producer on the show) and includes such weak-sounding story arcs as "Will Vince get the Aquaman film?" and "will Drama get to the audition on time". But don't let the basic storylines fool you. This is cutting satire as well as a fun romp rolled into a slick, HBO-produced bundle.