Media - Page 1 | virtualwolf.org

A product shot of the Roland A-49 MIDI keyboard in white. As the name suggests it has 49 keys and has a number of buttons and knobs on the left hand side.

I've decided to continue my musical journey and get a MIDI keyboard and actually learn how to play it! 😁 I actually had an M-Audio something-or-other keyboard ages ago (nearly twenty years in fact: https://virtualwolf.org/media/posts/1423) but in a similar story to my guitar from 2007, due to the lack of decent learning resources I never actually stuck with it. It turns out that the "Melodics" app I use for learning drums _also_ includes a whole course for keyboard as well so I'm going to take full advantage of it! I did a bunch of looking around and settled on this, the Roland A-49. The reviews are all glowing and apparently the key feel is very good as well. I could have gotten the black version and probably had it in my hands this week because the white one doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere, but I think the white looks far cleaner and sleeker.

music new toys midi keyboard

Posted on 2 October 2023, 19:42

A photo of our dining table with a Warhammer Quest game set up on it. There's lots of cards and dice everywhere, and in middle are a bunch of variously-shaped tiles connected together that look like the inside of a set of buildings. There's four hero miniatures at the right (one heavily-armoured warrior woman with a sword, a vampire hunter with a long leather coat and a big hat, a steampunk dwarf, and a priest with a rich red robe and a big staff) plus four groups of hostile miniatures at various points on the board (three zombies, three skeletons, three bat swarms, and a very large Mongolian-dress zombie thing with a huge axe).

We had @wobin over for #WarhammerQuest and a barbecue today! The Warhammer Quest journey type was "Scavenge" so we could get some gear and currency to level up, it was a similar kind of deal to the others where the map is pre-made, but oh my god I don't think I've EVER seen as poor rolling as @wobin had today. At one point he spent all four of his activation dice making attacks without hitting a single thing, and that was rolling the equivalent of a 3+. 😫 I think he made one single attack successfully, and ended up getting wailed upon by a Kosargi Night Guard which mean he had three grevious wound counters and so had to rely on one activation dice and whatever spare Destiny dice we had left. In the previous game we'd upgraded his character with a piece of equipment that let him attempt to recover wounds on a 4+ instead of a 5+, and literally every single role he made for this he failed. We had @yayKM roll two of them, and she made one success and failed the other. Thankfully, nobody ended up dying and we did actually get a good stash of stuff and have some good upgrades for the next game, but oh man.

our house darkroom gaming games workshop warhammer quest

Posted on 1 October 2023, 22:25

A screenshot taken from person-level at the entrance of Akila City, during the night. It's got a very wild west sort of feel to it, the ground is dirt and the buildings are cobbled together out of a combination of wood and futuristic-looking metal. It's not very well lit and the lights are quite yellow-coloured. In the centre of the frame is an imposing-looking multi-storey mostly built out of stone, with more yellow lights lighting it up from below.

A wide-angle screenshot taken from above the other end of Akila City at sunrise right before the sun is visible above the horizon. There's a solid wall running around a set of closely-packed metal buildings that look a bit more futuristic than in the previous screenshot, but they're still decidedly not pristine and clean. There's some wispy clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance, and a very yellow glow from where the sun is about to rise.

Another wide-angle screenshot of the main bar in Akila City. It's all rough wooden tables and stone walls, with a set of wooden stairs at the right going up to a second level. A handful of patrons are sitting around, the bartender is behind the bar, and suspending from the ceiling is the skeleton of an ashta, a huge predator native to the planet.

Almost 24 hours into Starfield so far and I'm still enjoying the hell out of it. I know I keep harping on about it, but the amount of detail and care in the environments is so good, it feels like a fully-realised world that you want to spend a bunch of time in. Most of my recent time has been spent in Akila City doing various side-quests and helping out the Freestar Rangers.

screenshot gaming xbox starfield

Posted on 30 September 2023, 18:49

A photo of our back yard, covered in calf-high long grass and weeds. Part of the patio is visible also has a bunch of weeds growing from in between the bricks.

The after photo, same view but with the grass short and neat and tidy and the patio free of weeds.

First job of the long weekend was a VERY overdue mowing of the lawn. It was so long that the bin was completely full from the clippings in the back yard and so I didn't even bother doing the front. Also mowed/whippersnipped the horrendous mess of weeds that's at the side of the house where the hot water system and air conditioning compressor are, where we never go. I started an "Outdoor Walk" workout on my Apple Watch and when I finished it had registered about 1750 active kilojoules after an hour and a half. For comparison my 45 minute workouts on the elliptical are typically around 2000 active kilojoules, so that was a decent effort. ::collapses in a heap::

our house gardening darkroom

Posted on 30 September 2023, 12:36

A photo of a sesame bagel sitting in a cardboard takeaway container with some cheese and sauce visible through the hole. It's hard to see in the photo but the piece of chorizo was nearly as large as the bagel and probably would have been close to a centimetre thick.

Today is the last day in the office, finished it off with a chorizo, cheese, and pickle bagel from the A.P. Bakery that opened up right around the corner from the office, and hot damn was it good. I got a croissant to have with my coffee and that was delicious as well.

work food portrait mode chorizo

Posted on 29 September 2023, 15:11

A photo looking down a lawn bowls green (very short, well-manicured grass, similar to a golf course), with a person bending down mid-bowl and a bunch of the balls already at the other end of the green close.

Today we went for a walk from Bondi to Clovelly and then played lawn bowls! I haven't played lawn bowls in so long, definitely well prior to COVID hitting. We were a bit iffy on the finer points of the scoring but I THINK we won. 😅 I also took a handful of "proper" photos on the walk and posted them to Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualwolf/albums/72177720311505668

lightroom work people clovelly lawn bowls

Posted on 27 September 2023, 20:31

A photo of the spiced halloumi pizza, which is actually Turkish pide with a tomato sauce inside it and strips of halloumi and what I think was sun-dried tomato.

A photo of triangular stand in the middle of the table, with three levels and little nibbly desert things on it. There's some Turkish delight, some pastry thing, a couple of little bits of cheese cake, and a piece of chocolate something or other that I had and was delicious.

Nothing exciting to report food-wise yesterday, but today's paid-for-by-work food was dinner at Meccah Bah at Darling Harbour (https://meccabah.sydney/functions-and-events/). Because there were 39 of us all up (!) we did the $79 set menu. The starters were the bread and trio of tips, falafels, lamb sigara boureks, and North African meatballs, we could choose which main we wanted (I got the spiced halloumi pizza) and then we got a selection of desserts to share. The whole meal was absolutely incredible and I am stuffed to the gills right now. I also had my first margarita because several people expressed surprised that I'd not had one before. It was... fine, but definitely reinforced my stance of not paying for cocktails if I'm paying for it because MAN are they not worth it. 😛

sydney work pizza food portrait mode

Posted on 26 September 2023, 21:08

A cropped screenshot of iOS's Fitness app, showing all three rings closed.

Bam, today is four straight years of closing the rings on my Apple Watch every single day. 💪🏻

screenshot exercise apple watch ios

Posted on 24 September 2023, 19:58

Tonight with the 16 year-old we made Nagi's satay chicken stir fry (https://www.recipetineats.com/chinese-satay-chicken-stir-fry/) and it was DELICIOUS, highly recommended. Then we watched The Lego Movie because the subject came up and I said I'd never seen it before and got a "Whaaaat?!" reaction and oh man is that a fun movie. 😂 Lando and C3PO from the original Star Wars trilogy were in it for approximately 30 seconds and they still managed to get the actual original actors to do the voices for them!

food text only lego movie

Posted on 23 September 2023, 21:55

A photo of a big lazy susan with all sorts of delicious Chinese food on it: dumplings, pork buns, noodles, chicken feet, etc. (I did not have any of the chicken feet.)

Day two lunch: work-paid-for yum cha. In related news, I am VERY full right now.

sydney work food yum cha dumplings

Posted on 22 September 2023, 15:35