Harry Potter Exhibition

When I told some friends I would be flying into Sydney for the Harry Potter Exhibition, I was met with 'nerd' taunts, ridicule and laughter.  I pity these people because they clearly do not know what they're missing out on.  *shakes head*  I could have been a much crazier fan - once, I contemplated taking a day off work to line up at Leicester Square for a premiere - but I have my limits.

When I found out that the exhibition featuring the props used in the movie series was leaving USA shores and landing in Sydney, I put it high on my to-do list.  I was hoping that it would travel around Australia but the website made it clear this was a Sydney only venture.  Boo.  But you know what?  That isn't really a problem because I "need" to collect frequent flyer points and what better way to do it than by flying in for the weekend and seeing some friends while I'm at it?  It's not preposterous at all!!

Despite the ridicule, I did manage to find some fellow appreciators of the wizarding world.  We found solace in each other.  JD's husband had refused to go with her when she wanted to attend a few months ago!

Look, I know deep down all you HP-haters are jealous of this souvenir photo ($20 wtf!!).  It's taken at the start of the tour and is waiting for you at the end.  All for your tourist rort pleasure.  

It was a good thing that we pre-booked tickets because today's session was sold out.  As we joined the line for our allocated timeslot, us girlies quickly noticed that we were pretty much the only adults in the queue without children hanging off our legs.  Pffft... Harry Potter is not for children!!

Anyway, no photography is allowed inside the exhibit (poo) but to give you a run down, we were first ushered into a room where the Sorting Hat welcomed us.  A few kids got sorted (as if they had time to sort all of us) and then the side doors were magically opened... by people.  We were then free to wander around and look at Harry's bed, Hermione's purple Yule Ball dress (she's my size I think!), Ron's shoes (big), Hagrid's hut (big chair inside) and of course Voldemort related stuff.  It was really well set up.  So much effort went into the costumes!  We spent about 90 minutes inside all up.

I "think" the exhibit prevented us from making our own souvenirs (photos) because they generously wanted to give us the opportunity to BUY our own souvenirs.  Oh yes please!  Rip me off, please!  Take my money, please!!  There was heaps of stuff to buy (gold plated Time Turner necklace for $100 anyone?) and after scouring the shelves, I limited my purchase to just two things.

Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans ($5 for a total of 34 grams.  Wtf!!!).  

I have not opened these yet to try but this will be an interesting exercise.  Vomit and booger flavoured jellybeans!

Yep my other souvenir. 

A muggle mug!!  ($20.  Wtf!!!)  Admittedly, I did want to buy much more but just could not bring myself to do it. 

On our exit, we were allowed to take pics next to the Hogwarts Express.  I wasn't too excited about that - I've already ridden it!  

For anyone interested in going (I know you all are), adult tickets are $32 a pop but hurry because it closes on 9 April!

McDonalds in Asia Rocks

A shout out to SuBoo for showering me with some gifts from McDonalds.  SuBoo just happened to be flying in from Hong Kong for the weekend and these toys were just released before her arrival so I think that it's fate that I should be the recipient. 

 Hello Kitty on the side. 

McDonald characters on the other side.  What the hell is Grimace anyway?  

The back of the boxes.  So much effort.   

Hello Kitty dressed up as the McDonaldland characters.

These 'toys' are just too good to unwrap so I am going to be a Comic Book/Star Trek/Star Wars nerd and leave them in their original packaging, never to be opened.  Fanks SuBoo!

Not Much Happening (except for some template issues)

Yeah.  Nothing much is happening in Pooeytown.  I am counting down the work days until this stint in Rad-City ends.  Just five more days to go.  Only five.  But the last two weeks have really been dragging on....  Boooo

On the blogging front, I've had a problem with my template for a few months now and it is really bringing out the OCD, anal retentive side of me.  As loyal readers (I like to call them fans) of this blog will know, I changed my template almost two years ago.  I thought I was pretty smart because I managed to tweak to the HTML code of my chosen base template.  It wasn't very fun.  I also managed to modify the HTML codes for the 'Recent Comments' and 'Label Cloud' widgets.  The 'Recent Comment' widget supplied by Blogger does something weird and doesn't colour co-ordinate the font colours (very important for aesthetics!) and the standard Blogger 'Label Cloud' widget wasn't 'cloudy' enough  for me.  Compare my cloud with Mooey's and Kahoon's cloud - you'll see what I mean. Anal, indeed.

So, when Blogger introduced their template designer about a year later, I pretty annoyed.  About frigging time!  I had a play around with the new feature and saw that it very user-friendly.  Excellent for non-IT folk like me.  Where were you 12 months ago?  I was so impressed with the designer, I told Moo to change her template.

Anyway, so the problem with my template now lies in the blog archive.  See those little triangles?  When you click on them, they're meant to expand and list the titles of my previous posts.  I noticed they stopped working on my blog sometime last year.   I thought it was a Blogger issue, but nope, the archive expands on other people's blogs.

So I googled for an answer.  It seems I'm not the only one with the problem but I can't seem to find a way to rectify it.  I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the widget.  I've tried altering the style of widget to drop-down and flatlist, saving it, republishing, exiting and then going back to change it to the original hierarchy style.  Nup, didn't work.  I tried finding a new HTML code.  Gave up cos I couldn't be arsed reading all that technical stuff.

I think it's got something to do with the Blogger Template Designer and the new templates having different basic HTML design to their predecessors.  Of course, my template would have been based on the older format.  Who bloody knows, I am not a programmer, IT person, computer script writing person.

If I can't find a way to fix it soon, I might have to use the template designer to change the look of the blog again.  That should fix it!

We Doodle

When I was little, one of the careers I contemplated was 'artist'.  That innocent childhood dream died a long while back when I realised it wasn't a viable career.  However I will say that I am quite a deft hand at drawing crap and this skill has been reignited by the game We Doodle.  It's a Pictionary of sorts but for the Iphone.

Drawing with a mouse is hard enough and drawing on an Iphone is probably only slightly easier.  Either way, the precision of a pencil or a paintbrush is just not there.  But that just all adds to the fun and you get the hang of it!

The We Doodle app is somewhat annoying.  Lately it has been constantly crashing, generally quite slow and it frustratingly forces me to turn my phone off and on to reset it.  Normally, that would mean I would delete the frigging thing but alas it has me kinda hooked.

The game gives you three different inks - red, blue, black and a pencil.  As you accumulate more points, you can buy more colours, writing instruments and stencils.  I put quite a bit off effort into my pics and if I am especially proud of what I've drawn, I get a little upset if they are guessed incorrectly.  That being said, some words are a challenge and I do have to take an abstract angle.

Anyway I've created many masterpieces and now I'm going to show them off:

I personally think this was a pretty awesome drawing of 'soul'.  How else would you draw it?!?!  Also, I know I am cheating by using letter/symbols of any kind but no one here is judging me.  

Another favourite.  How else would you draw a pole?!?!?!  Sure I could have drawn a thin cylinder but no one would guess that.  It's gotta be in context people!!  What better context than a pole dancer complete with boobs?  

One of my utmost favourite doodles.  The symbolism!  The stereotype!  Of course, it's a terrorist! 

The above three I thought were just plain cute.  

How awesome is the dead husband!?!

Superb detail.  I even drew a Tarzan.

Well it was either going to be a frog or a toad. 

I even drew a little bow on the bra. 

Yes, cheating again using words.  But he's quite obviously beastly.  

The poor amputee. 

This is how I feel after I burn myself on the iron. 

Part of my earliest collection.  Ok, I admit, I googled to find a picture of sphinx to help me draw.  Yeah I cheated when I wrote Kikkoman.

More of my early collection. 

Once again, I emphasise the importance of context.  You can't just draw 'dip'.  What is a dip without chips and other party food?  A noodle is just a squiggly line when it's not in a bowl being held up by chopsticks.

Ok, I really didn't know to draw bluetooth.  In hindsight I should have just drawn the bluetooth symbol.  I wasn't thinking that day.  

Alright I was a bit upset that this was guessed wrong.  It's so obviously Godzilla!!!!!!  Look at those little stick men running away!!

Oh come on.  It's a roulette table!!!  

I had a bit of difficulty drawing just a chandelier.  It just looked so crap.  So I had to draw people dancing underneath something chandelier-esque.  I'm pretty proud of my Elvis drawing but again I did use google to get a better grasp of his jumpsuit.  

All that Harry Potter reading has paid off.  My wizard drawing skills have been refined.  My scarecrow is pretty scary and maybe even a little depressed. 

Yes I cheated by writing 'Extra! Extra!'  Clearly the man is a journalist.

Here are a few of my faves by other We Doodle players. 

Chief.  Pretty damn good!  So good that if I ever come across chief, this is how I will draw it. 

Hunt.  I felt sorry for the deer!!!  It's fate is sealed!

Snuggle.  This would be hard to draw.  But with the letter clues given towards the last 10 seconds, you could see what was being conveyed.

Now, along with the good drawings, come the errrr... not so good.  I'm not here to lambaste other people's drawings or offend them (and names have been removed to protect the innocent) but I'll acknowledge that a 'wavelength' connection between players can help considerably.  Things which are wtf to me can be crystal clear to others.  Likewise, what may be exceedingly obvious to me can be clear as mud to others.  

For example, I had to draw a picture of 'focus'.  The best way I could represent that was to draw a basic physics diagram of an optical system.  No one would guess that if they didn't do physics!  I also had to draw 'relative'.  How the hell do I do that?  So I drew a genealogy chart.  A bit difficult for those without a science background to understand and regardless, I admit it was a fairly roundabout way to draw 'relative'.  I was banking on the clues to help with the guessing.  

Here are some of the few I had difficulty guessing.  You take a guess of the following.  Like We Doodle, I'll give you 30 seconds!!!  (Answers at the bottom)

1.2.

3.4.

5.6.

7.8.

9.10.

11.12.

Answers:

1.  Safe.  All the important features are there.  

2.  Goliath.  Very obvious in hindsight.  I had guessed victim, recipient, injured.  Haha.  

3.  Tape.  Believe it or not.  This is tape.  I'm pretty sure that looks like a cheerleader and another player agreed with me.  All that effort to draw a cheerleader, so how do we get 'tape'? When we questioned the drawer we were told, 'I was drawing a cheerleader but somehow when I submitted the picture it changed to tape!'

4.  Throat.  You'd be forgiven for thinking it was a spade/shovel and that the arrow was pointing to the handle of the spade/shovel.  Some eyes to the person's head would've added more context.

5.  Headphone.  Another person actually guessed it was 'pizzaphone'.  

6.  Porch.  Pretty obvious when you break down 'pea' + 'torch' = ptorch = porch.  But with a time limit, I first had to figure out that it was a torch not a lamp or flashlight and therefore not 'plamp' or 'peaflashlight'.

7.  Board.  A basic drawing but the point is quite clear.  

8.  Sand.  Again quite basic but the important thing is that it's quite a clear point.  Some colour would be nice though.

9.  Greens.  I guessed grass.  This is hard to draw though.  I had drawn some green veggies together and it still wasn't clear.

10.  Bottle.  You can see I initially guessed spade and shovel.  

11.  Cloth.  I had guessed paper, sheet before finally with the letter clues, I got cloth.  Hard to draw but I would've drawn a kitchen with a cloth hanging from an oven door handle.

12.  Donut.  Some coloured sprinkles and pink icing would have been nice.  You could mistake it for a plate or dish though.  

Yes, I have laughed out loud at my phone many times when playing We Doodle.  The novelty is wearing off because I've had the game for over a month now but get the app if you love drawing!