So I haven't been able to say anything further regarding the big secret because it hasn't gone anywhere yet. While those involved have been assured that something will happen, at some point, the current status is "give me ambiguity or give me something else." *sigh*

In an unrelated topic, honest *casual whistle*, my new style for my home site has gone up to absolutely no fanfare. Budget cuts, don't you know. While you can still access the site from lapse.nerdvana.org.au I'm now the proud owner of http://vonexplaino.com/ — huzzah!

I've got a journal over there where I'm posting Steampulp shenanigans with hopeful regularity. While I do have code links under "Experiments" and a code post in the blog, I'm probably going to remove those and have the only experiments shown Steampulp related ones (direct links to devices, the cog application, the jaeger application etc.). I'm not entirely sure, though, as I have had some of my applications discovered and used by google-hunters — the GURPS lite character generator and life-path generators to name a couple.

Oh, and mandatory Connie update. I had the door closed to my room this evening so I could work without hearing Master Chef, but as soon as Jos opened the door to ask me a question Connie ran in, jumped on my lap, and decided I wasn't paying immediate attention to her so forepaws walked up my chest until she could face rub against my cheek and chin.

Cute kitty is cute.

No, it's not the naked prof, thank goodness. Although that would make for an interesting series. "Let's see what death dealing devices I can make with simple ingredients."

Nope, the Professor's new vest has been photographed with goggles, hat, official badge and your choice of either Love-o-meter or Adventure bag.

So recently I've

• Eaten chicken's feet, on purpose.  Like quail, it's too bony and a lot of effort for not much gain.
• Predicted doom, how accurate that is remains to be seen.
• Run around madly trying to prevent, or at least prepare emergency plans should doom arrive.
• Gained a specific purpose waistcoat personally tailored for Professor von Explaino by a seemstress who creates professional movie costumery.
• Gone squee over the above, loudly and often.
• Bachelored it up while Jocelyn was away at a training course.  This involved me eating prepared meals she left me, and cleaning the house.  I think I may have forgotten how to do that properly.
• Not minded forgetting how to bachelor properly.
• Come closer to having my iPhone application actually released unbuggilly.
• Found out that it likely wasn't bugger code, rather unexpected quirks in the input that was my downfall.  Stupid downfall.
• Ninja-delivered chocolate twice.  Once the recipient wasn't there and that was easy.  The second time I delivered it into their intray while they were at their desk and wasn't noticed.
• Re-ordered my comic collection to make some room for new comics.  Anyone want my PVP collection?  I've got issue 0 up to thirty something.
• Put on weight.  Damn you, weight.
• Gotten my arse handed to me in online Left 4 Dead but had fun regardless.
• Discovered I may be getting bored with Fallout 3.  Looks like my attention span for long-reaching games has dimmed, I think the last game I actually finished was Penny Arcade's game - and that was because it was a tailored interactive and personalised* novel
• * by personalised, read the same sort of personalisation you get out of those Christmas books you can buy that have your child's name in it - only this time it also has a close approximation of your face**
• ** by close approximation, read as good as you can get from predrawn Penny-Arcade style person parts***
• *** by that, read the game kicks butt and if you don't own it you should.

Quick prop-check before work this morning reveals the Love-o-Meter is broken.  Hopefully I'll have enough time/ skill/ equipment to enact repairs tonight.

Last night Jos, Jolyon, Kane, Susan, Haikal and Karin went to Alchemy, a very expensive restaraunt in Brisbane. Why? SCIENCE!

The meals themselves were great, and the cocktails were tasty and the conversations were fun. My highlight, and the reason for picking Alchemy, is because they do Liquid Nitrogen desserts. They freeze them in front of you and then you eat them. Typically, while I was eating the treats and blowing jets of mist from my mouth the only photo I've got is me with twin jets of mist bursting from my nose. Thanks Kane ( ;) )

COLD!!!!!

Quick pic links of Rompness.

So this weekend was the Brisbane Romp. The Royal Omnitological Society for Electrodyne Adventurers was there, and we have photographic proof of this. You can see us at the official page for now, but we are slowly collating and uploading our own photographs, including close-ups of all the devices our crew has accumulated so far. I saw a few friends at the Romp - Tori and Bec, plus Heidi and family. That was always nice. For the first time I was also asked to be in a few photographs and spoke to people - normally Scott and Martins' fabulous personalities and outfits wow all the crowds. I like to think the combined effort on the Clueometer helped this.

This culminated in winning the costume contest! Huzzah for R.O.S.E.A!

I have to write a game for Friday and I have limited ideas. Looks like it's going to be an off-the-cuff one. Comedy ahoy.

Jos is back soon. Now that's something that makes me smile :)

Just got back from MC-ing the ICTS Rewards and Recognition event for our department at the Gold Coast Campus.  Professor von Explaino introduced the Periodic Table of Excellents with elements such as Client Servicide, Initiativium, Teamogen and Dengatium - Geoffrey Dengate is our Director, the last one was to describe the director's choice award.  It resulted in quite a lot of laughs, it all motored along quite smoothly and the Professor has given me the box of chocolates he got as a thank you for introducing him to our Director.

I got to have a few lighthearted digs (Talking about Acting-in-ides and the popular Theoretical Positions that only exist for a few seconds in org charts), but mostly it was just keeping things moving, making science based humorous references and remaining upbeat.  I wonder if the Professor will be invited back again next year?

Photos when someone gets their photos developed.

Man my throat is sore, stupid science accent.

Three posts in a month, glee!

This weekend was fun. Bit of food markets with Jos (with the obligatory German sausages for lunch), a lot of coding on one of my projects for Saturday afternoon and evening, then a bit of lab work and house work on Sunday. I've also finally repaired my BootCamp+VMWare doohickey at home, so now I can print to my Windows-only printer from OS X. In celebration, I redownloaded Portal and played that again. That game needs to be longer. Release expansion packs!

I'm looking forward to the Penny Arcade game, a genre right in my style with the promise of wacky hijynx. Anyone else going to get that when it comes out?

Oh, and I'm going to the WWDC. Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. I arrive the Friday beforehand, any locals want to say hi?

With the lab work on Sunday, I've got a few more panels to stick to walls, and then a bunch of painting, and then the walls are done. That means I can get a few rugs and _FINALLY_ move on to the furniture and decorating. Heaven knows I have enough stuff thank to generous friends and good finds, are people interested in a lab day of furnituring and decoration?

This is prompting me (along with the steamfashion group) to really knuckle down and decide on the Professor's appearance — so I can finally go to a high tea and feel comfortable. The homburg is a must, I think, as are googles. I'm pondering if his current white-vest-on-black-shirt is a little too modern and if I should go white-shirt-dark-vest. It also needs more science, maybe get an old vest from somewhere I can uber-pocket with science. Anyone got any good suggestions on steampulp professor inspiration sites?

My postings here have really died down since I got into Twitter. I feel less guilting posting crap when I'm limited to Twitter's word count compared to here. Ah well, I'm also not been doing much I've felt like writing up for a while, I suppose. Lessee, what's stuff-worthy?

The trip down to Coolloongatta for Jos and Amy's birthday was neat. Did some more in-the-sea swimming, bleached some pants in a highly chlorinated spa, saw Horton Hears A Who (great fun) and other such things. I could get used to extended weekends away like that, I'll have to save up some leave time to do that more often. Great company and a great time had.

Last Saturday was Dracula's for Amy's birthday party. Costumed up in my rather weak Professor von Explaino outfit and joined the group for some silliness. There are photos available to see how awesomely dressed everyone was. This weekend is Supanova, the Anime and Comic convention - the guys are trying to convince me to come along as the Prof while they all come along in their steampunk outfits. Unfortunately I'm getting a big case of the over-shadoweds, so I'm uncertain if I'll go along or not. Currently, I'm still leaning towards not.

Connie has settled in nicely now. She's a complete madcat most of the time, but recently when Jos and I have sat down to watch Heroes she's lap-catted which has been awesome. Something really comforting about a lap-cat. Except when she decides it's time to attack the hand that pets it.

I need to get more Fog Ring guns so I can take them apart to use their bits in devices downstairs. Took the guns into work today, the key-ring sized one appears dead but the larger one worked fine. I played chicken with the smoke detectors for a while, people found it amusing.

Our roleplaying game continues it slow wrap-up of loose plot-lines. We're in another pseudo-Smith arc (I like calling them Smith arcs as they're to do with a trio of magic swords that Smith has had a rather bad time with), and I've finally had a chance to use the Abigail Disabler to fantastic effect. Abigail, our mage, has become slighty... unhinged. Since the last time she tried to kill Smith and Vitess, my Kitsune has worked on a suitably Kitsune-minded Abigail counterer. When she tried it last session, Smith illusioned himself into an object-of-her-affection and then used Seduction(gift) to ensure it worked. Worked incredibly well, but unfortunately had to include her fiancee as well as he was getting violent also. Still, Smith's open minded. And disturbingly bishi. And terribly clueless about such things.

Talking with Jos, I've really decided I need to put a lot more effort into getting the lab more lab-esque before I have any more gathering days downstairs. I've been too damn lazy in not finishing the walls/ finding floor-rugs and doing anything else to actually get the lab downstairs looking anything other than a large collection of pseudo-fun stuff. That, and I need to pull the finger out and actually make a proper Professor von Explaino look. I've got the neat hat, the goggles, a decent bag (shouldn't have zips though), good boots and a nice vest with a possible overjacket. Now I need good pants, shirt, and all the trinkets/ accessories that make a man mad.

Call this a call to self-encouragement.

Short week back at work, much viva for that. I'm finding more links to my article around the internet, this makes me happy. Even if I was confusing a fellow Colin Morris when our name was popping up all over the place.

Good game on Friday night, and then Jocelyn stole me away to Kate and Alek's place for a party; as my Indian Doppleganger Colin was there. This was a Colin that Kate worked with, and claimed was my twin. We hit it off fairly well, we did seem to share veins of humour, and I drank apple schnapps so all was right in the world.

Saturday, woke up very late and painted the lab. Booya.

Sunday, visited Nan and my parents before coming back and putting on the second coat of paint. Now the lab walls are finally painted so we can start moving furniture to where they're supposed to be and work on fixing things to the walls and putting together science-y things. Should keep me in trouble for a while.

The new Mac is growing on me, slowly. I have the old HD in a cage and VMWare runs it tolerably, but there looks to be no games playing until I buy Vista and bootcamp it as the Mac refuses to boot from the drive. Very vexing, but no matter. The fact I can't use my upgrade versions of Windows to install to bootcamp is frustrating. Still, I'm sure everyone's done what they can.

Very tired now. On Kate's suggestion, via Jocelyn, I've downloaded BookSmart - a book making program that interfaces with iPhoto - to put together a photo book of Jocelyn and my trip overseas. If this works out, we'll scan in all our wedding photos and do the same there. I'd like to have a wedding book in the library. It'd be nice to just flick through.

Oh, and I finally found the poem about the Triantiwontigongalope that encouraged my Nan and I to play silly finger-puppter-creature-things. Yay!

Another weekend come and gone far too fast. So what did it encompass?

( When did I start becoming more verbose with my typitude? Darn you forum RPers who make me reconsider my writing structure! )

Meet 'Bob'.

My boss and I went up to HR to check about some HR-y things at work. I recognised a staff member from my "Professor von Explaino explains Blogs, RSS, Wikis and Forums" presentation. On the way out of the section I asked her whether she'd started using blogs or rss feeds more after the presentation.

She looks at me blankly for a second and I think .oO ( Oh crap, it must be someone else! )

At which point her eyes almost bug out of her head, she steps back with a big breath and says "It was YOU?!" followed by "You actually Work Here?!?" Much laughter ensued.

Apparently the Professor's outfit is very successful.

I do think that a wall covered in copper plates adds a certain something to a man's laboratory. Or a woman's for that matter. Or anything else you've got, really.