Adam Searle » Blog

After a seemingly eternal wait, I’m happy to annouce I’ve now begun my research break. I’ve stepped down from day to day duties as a developer at Subversive for the time being, and am generally on a hiatus from freelance work. Additionally this semester I’m not teaching. I’ll be free to give my undivided attention to new and exciting things that I’ve been waiting to look into.

First thing on the cards is to brush up on my PHP and back-end coding. My experiences in working over the last year have highlighted how valuable it would be to have flash dev + php dev knowledge; providing a rounded web app development skillset. After that, I can finally dive into the world of Actionscript 3. Collin Moock’s Essential Actionscript 3.0 is finally shipping from Amazon, and I got my copy the other week, horrah! The possibilities in Actionscript are extremely interesting - when you combine a collosal installed userbase (85%+ of users online have Flash 9 so far), with a huge advance in code execution speed and capabilities, there is huge potential.

I look forward to posting about my research!

2 weeks until I wrap up work at my current location, subversive games. I’ll most likely stay on as a consultant afterwards, however no day to day and coding duties. Looking forward to some time off, we’ve been pushing really hard lately, but it has been paying off. On tuesday we’ll cross another deadline milestone so things will be sweet!

A shout out to adelaine for her birthday! We all did dinner at the observer hotel on friday night. Nice ambience there, and the food wasn’t too bad. They somehow forgot to put our ice cream cake in the fridge, so it came out quite melted. Adelaine is usually one to want to leave a generous tip but not in this case haha! The weather was shocking, heavy rain (catch phrase - that’s climate change for you), just bleh. We went to the summit after, which was a hike and a half in the weather. On a plus side, moving from undercover area to undercover area really felt like it was a stealth mission in a game - except we were hiding from the weather rather than.. snake’s adversaries (metal gear solid heh). So I cabbed it part the way, bugger the rain. The summit was fun - but I’m getting over those caffeine addicts! Back to the bourbon for me. After that some of us went back to jasons, and I totally anti-socialed it up and got back into desktop tower defence, really it was quite lame, I should have tried the wii game going heh. Anyhow regrets aside, fun night

Yesterday/today I was up in the blue mountains for a one night retreat hah. Awesome night out really, amazing how many different threads played into it. The drive up there was bugger difficult in the heavy heavy fog and rain, but debs and I survived! Stayed at the YHA in Katoombah; we had a rockin 8 bunk room that we were able to fit 9 into in the end. Lots of booze purchased before nightfell. The town itself is really nice - small, can walk where ever, and the mountain air is so super crisp and fresh! Awesome kind of get-a-way feel. For dinner we went to a local thai place that was super elegant with its live jazz music playing. Yeah, interesting mix.. jazz and thai! Went back to the hostel and hit up the drinks, fun times chilling and drinking. A few went off to see the game at a nearby pub, so the remainder of us hit up some pool downstairs in the common room, which was nicely empty for us to take over and make lots of noise haha. Only 2 noise complaints - not too shabby! Met some randoms also from out of town - so hi to Mim and Bron haha! Sleep was nigh on impossible with all the interruptions we had Thankfully everyone was alive, however perhaps not well, by the time we got up.. several hours later haha. Breakfast at a cafe, and I’d have to say probably the most I’ve ever eaten for breakfast. It was a shame we had to leave but alas, a nice break away. The drive home was chilled with mark, and only one wrong turn when dealing with the M7 heh. All in all a fun night off!

Life resumes soon, only a little more go go go left!

Just a quick hi. Been uber busy with work every night (till 8am the other night, ick). Had a status update meeting friday which went well. Now its all guns blazing for a client presentation on tuesday. Still got a lot to get through, but somewhat running to time. Bang bang!

Tonight was Jo’s farewell, and we shall miss her! Keep up the blogging, I’m a super keen reader! Ducked out tonight for a little while away from work to say hi and bye to the gang. Good couple of hours of drinks, nice place too! Then hit up the old maisys, where our ever friendly waitress Winnie was once again (thanks to ladan for confirming the name there!)

Sleep time now. Uber busy next 2.5 days. Go go go!

-4 weeks of teaching left. Its been great
-Maybe teaching next sem. MMA2?
-Motivation presentation thing by matt church soon!
-Thought leaders, july retreat, again a matt church thing
-Cofa annual torch has been passed on. I’m now course writer and tech director and student overseer
-Rendering of the home extension occurs tomorrow, w00t, I love seeing building progress. Its a lot like coding really
-Guitar hero may have been an unsound investment
-Speaking of investments, I really need to invoice for the bling
-Heaps of freelance jobs cropping up now that word on the street is that I’ll be back to it soon. Alas, not just yet sonny
-Next friday will be rockin! Yay cant wait
-Bought a new phone for my sister today. SE Z310i. Looks hot in pink, alas she hinted black was the colour choice
-Adz has her bday coming up soon, I propose strippers and a visit to the cross. Those who agree say I!
-Ninjaman has recorded 22 million plays. Samurai sam (rebranded ninjaman to miniclip.com) counted 10 million before their counter died. Estimated to be ~20 million now. >40 million plays globally!
-I would love to do another ninjaman-esk team effort down the track. Good times
-Ninjaman was the most important thing I’ve done in my working life, and it’ll be hard to top it over the next few years
-I love cashing google cheques, it feels so good. “wow, why are google paying you?”. Still need to read the FAQ on how to use this to get the hunnies however
-I love the gym, and my trainer is awesome

-When someone says ‘whats up’ and you say ‘not much’, its not really true is it? See the above points.

So the next few weeks will be uber uber busy with work. Then I’m taking some time off! About a month or so until I go into my ‘next phase’ (research / ‘back to the lab’)

So time off. Things I want to do…

TV related
-OC marathons in the day. Damnit, someone has been recording OC episodes on our foxtel dvr and I have a craving to watch. Old skool ryan and marissa!
-24 marathons. I’ve been deliberately not watching season 5 as I want to see it all in one hit. I really want to do 24 in 24! Well more like 24 in 18hrs. But yeah, 24 marathons - maybe all 5 seasons in a week. How uber..
-More seinfeld! I’ve now seen seasons 6 7 8 9. 1-5 to go
Games related
-Buy a 360!!! I’m going to cave. So yep, 360, graw2, and exploitation of eb ‘rentals’ I think
-Half want to play more online pc games but really cant be arsed. Since julian stole my steam account (I kid, I kid) I’ve wanted to play some CS:S again heh

Travel
-Wanna get out of town for a bit. Might stay with some family out in orange at the farm! Yes, a real farm (well more about trees and fruit, than livestock). It rocks. Country air > city air. So remote however there is no broadband (other than next-g), which suits me fine! 3 will rape me with roaming fees if I even consider hitting up the mobile internet
-The shepard might return to his duties and try and get the bdm folk out one weekend, yehaw!

Time to like stop and think!

Oh, and I want to hit the gym like.. lots. I had to skip the gym last night and I am craving it. Blah!

So thats my time off idea for now. Fighting the desire of the oc right this minute!!

Edit: OK lets add in play some old dreamcast games (all I want by the offspring is playaing atm - reminds me of crazy taxi! time to revisit that and the sonic adventure series! SHEN MUE FOR JULIAN!!), and deus ex (in my top 5 games of all time, for sure - just announced they are working on a third, excellent!)

At some point in time, you work out to whom your allegiance lies. You work out its not to work, or to commitment, but to those who are close to you. I’ve known this, but recently it has become more true. Ultimately, my allegiance lies with my friends and family. Really, I need to honour that, and carry forth. It’s a matter of priorities. Tonight was a night of harsh words to a few people - as much as I hate burning bridges tonight the flavour was letting my vision be known.

So in this rut that I’m in, the life lesson is to work out who I need to continue to trust and rely on, and get shit done for them. Without this, what are we?

Don’t we all love long weekends. Bloody oath! Being a working man now, with the joys of super long uni holidays every few months past me, long weekends are greatly looked forward. To have some time away from it all is awesome. The last long holiday I took (only 10 days), I came back with a completely new outlook on life, and a new set of priorities. I took up a health craze, somewhat resigned, and planned how I’d get overseas next year. Yes, a lot can change after a holiday haha!

Easter was great. Thursday started off as a bit of a bludge - we had a company bbq meeting in the day, then I had errands to run in the afternoon. That night I went down to coogee for my brothers bday, where he was out on the booze with his work mates at Cushion, the bar of the crown plaza coogee. After that made a quick stop over in town to say hi to Ben, it being his bday the day before! Drinking and driving dont mix so that was a light night on the booze..

Friday was a bludge. I needed it to catch up on sleep. I think I’m sleep deprived. Quite possibly true actually..

Saturday was back on the booze, for it was the big city drinks night. As usual we ended up at jacksons. As usual it was pretty good. I started late that night, so an exercise in rapid consumption was required heh. Highlights of the night include a bouncer recognising me. Negatives of the night include that same point, meaning perhaps I’m there too often

Sunday was geeking it up with the boys over at Johnnys for an xbox lan. 4 xbox 360s, 4 24″ or greater lcds, and a boat load of games. I’m in love with ghost recon at lans, and we had 4 copies of ghost recon 2 to rip through. Great fun! Thanks to julian and johnny for sorting out the games and having us. And to stephen for buying those maps we’ll some day have to check out! heh

Monday was.. gems bbq. Much fun! What a pesky neighbour, considering the minimal amount of noise. But we had a great time, and it was the first time I’d played the game of life, which is pretty cool! Every now and then, board games (decidedly old/low tech) dont seem so bad eh.. that and risk, that game rocks

Tuesday was the highlight! I went out on a boat overnight! See, this is a big deal for me, cos I’ve had a bit of fun before hiring out little day boats with the guys and generally making an ass of myself/ourselves (parking the boat dramas - damage that hopefully no one noticed after..). But I’ve never slept on a boat before. Never been on a cruise, etc. Well, one of our family friends just got his hands on a beautiful 37 foot long boat, and had us over for the night! Great fun. This needs piccies, so see below..

The boat is named Paradiso II. We took it up to refuge bay for the night.

Ya kinda have 4 main areas. Up top is the flybridge - you climb a ladder to get up to it. Up there, you have the main controls for the boat if you wish to drive it from up top. Two seats, a lounge like area, and a great front row place for hooking up a laptop to watch movies at night hehe.

My bro on the booze as usual, behind the wheel (stationary

Next area you have is the deck on the back. Terrible pic, but this is where you set up a table and chairs for meals etc. Great for chilling out the back. Jump off the back to go for a swim. Boats are amazing for the little hidey holes they have for storage - all kinds of little compartments in the walls around!

When you step inside, you have an enclosed area for general entertainment, kitchenette, etc. Off to the left is a table and lounge around it, to the right you can see more controls (can drive the boat up top or from inside). Kitchen is forward to the left. Through the tiny corridor up ahead are the cabin areas. One main cabin, a second with twin bunks on the right. Everything in a boat is like living in a mini apartment. Mini rooms, mini doors, mini door handles! Storage is *everywhere*. Under the floor - heaps of storage compartments. Behind every panel is storage pretty much. Oh, plus you can see the tiny tv - haha. Yeah they need to replace that.. ‘integrated vhs’ for the win!

As I said, we took the boat up to refuge bay for the night. Absolutely stunning up there. It’s in the middle of a national park, inaccessible via road. In that particular bay there were 10 to 20 boats moored, depending on the time of day. The next bay along is Americas bay. Lots of nice little areas of land to moore up for the night. There was a little beach with a huge waterfall - very hawt. We took the little dinghy (apparently called a ‘tender’ - what an odd name for a boat!) over to it (macho rowing man here, haha).

I’ll end with a couple of extra piccies, take a look.. its beautiful up there! I’d love to go again, maybe later this year haha. Summer would be AWESOME on a boat lol

The little beach and waterfall

Midday at refuge bay

Late afternoon on the water

Awesome long weekend, bit more relaxed Back to the grind now!

In sydney a couple of weeks ago, we had earth hour. For those reading who aren’t from .au, earth hour was designed to promote awareness about energy usage. The deal was turn out your lights at 7.30pm for an hour. A lot of people I know participated - watching TV in darkness! (*true* believers would turn off everything, right Restaurants set up for candle lit dinners, pubs too. At home we killed all the lights, and I went out to Greenwich to check out how the city looked in darkness. Ryan managed to grab a couple of great before and after pics of the Sydney city in darkness!

Earth hour before (the night before, technically):

Earth hour during:

All credit to Ryan McCarthy