Media - Page 1 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of the cover of the aforementioned Deep Space Nine Technical Manual. It has a side-on illustration of the top half of the station with one of the pylons curving over, along with the U.S.S. Defiant.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I realised I could just buy the Deep Space Nine Technical Manual book second-hand and not spend $300 on a brand-new copy. So I did! 😁 It joins the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise books already on my bookshelf.

books our house darkroom star trek: deep space nine

Posted on 23 June 2026, 18:13

A wide-angle photo looking across the lake in the middle of Nurragingy Reserve. The water is rather brown rather than blue, but there are trees surrounding the lake and a big fountain going in the distance. The sky is completely with a few scattered white clouds towards the horizon.

Another wide-angle photo, this one is looking across a natural wetland that has a bunch of low grasses interspersed with tall trees.

Today we took advantage of the off-the-charts #GloriousSydney and had a picnic lunch at Nurragingy Reserve then did a good 5km walk around the surrounding Western Sydney Parklands trails! You couldn't have asked for better weather for it.

darkroom lake trees nurragingy reserve

Posted on 21 June 2026, 14:52

A photo of two slices of rustic-looking home-made bread sitting on a white dinner plate. On top of the bread are thick slices of cooked tomatoes, then sliced up mushrooms all dark and cooked, then crumbled sharp cheddar cheese on top of that.

A photo of a whole bunch of golden-brown miso chocolate chip cookies sitting on a cooling rack.

Well, that's certainly been a delicious five-day weekend so far! On Tuesday night I got some bread going, baked it on Wednesday and had mushrooms cooked in sage, rosemary, and garlic on it for lunch, and then this afternoon I made a big batch of miso chocolate chip cookies.

I definitely have to once again thank @[email protected] for getting me onto the book Flour Water Salt Yeast, if you have any interest whatsoever in making your own bread I cannot recommend it highly enough.

...and while looking that up, I just found he's got another book out that includes making milk breads and brioche, ooooh.

our house cookies darkroom food portrait mode bread

Posted on 20 June 2026, 18:04

Power Chords in D Minor

Phew, that took a bit longer than intended because on subsequent listening I didn't like the keys instrument I was using. Also the song itself is called "Power Chords in D Minor" because that's what it is and I'm shit at coming up with cool song names. 😅

But I'm very happy with this one, I started with the drums playing along to a metronome because a couple of friends and I were doing some collaboration mucking around, but they both have small children that precluded them doing anything quickly so I decided to take the drum track and come up with a song around it while I was waiting. I played drums, guitar, and bass guitar, and the piano track on top is from Toontrack's EZKeys 2 plugin (both the actual notes being played and the sounds, though I picked out the specific grooves to use from EZKeys' big library and also came up with the chord progression), and I'm pleased to report that I once again didn't need to do any quantisation to put my drums, guitar, or bass in time. Ironically though, I needed to apply the tempo from the drums to the global tempo track and then have the piano track follow that, because while the tempo only varied by a maximum of about 2bpm across the whole song and I was playing in time with the drums for the guitar and bass, the piano track was exactly on the beat and it clearly sounded off. 😛

music drums audio bass guitar neuraldsp fender made in japan hybrid ii telecaster

Posted on 14 June 2026, 11:25

A photo of the beginning of our Away Missions game. There are a set of interlocking boards with artwork on them that looks like rooms on a Federation starship, with the rooms marked with things like "Engineering", "Bridge", "Sick Bay", etc. The Romulans are all in green plastic, and they're closest to the camera with two deployed on the bridge and the other three in Sick Bay. In the middle of the board are the four Klingons in red plastic, all holding bat'leths or various other Klingon weaponry, two are deployed on one Engineering board and the other two are on the second Engineering board (for a three player game you need two core sets, which means duplicated boards). Then lastly blue plastic of the Federation team, three deployed on the second Bridge board at the right and Dr Crusher and Wesley deployed at the far left in the Science Lab and Transporter Room. There are character boards sitting in front of each of us that have the stats of each character on them, and dice and other tokens scattered around the table.

We went over to @[email protected]'s this afternoon for a three-player game of Star Trek: Away Missions! I played the Romulans, @[email protected] played Chancellor Gowron's Klingons, and @[email protected] played the Federation expansion that has Captain Picard (in his non-Borg form), Geordi, Troy, and both Dr. Crusher and Wesley.

The final score was 140 to the Romulans, 130 to the Klingons, and only 65 for Picard's team, but that downplays how poorly it started out for Gowron, with him and another character being repeatedly stunned by the Federation phasers. By comparison, the other two Klingons on the other side of the board ended up making short work of both Wesley and Dr. Crusher (though in the case of the latter, only after I had grievously wounded her 😅). The Romulans are fun, they're not straightforwardly combat-ready but with the right cards and positioning you can end up rolling the maximum six dice. I had a few misplays and discarded the wrong card because I had forgotten about another card that I needed to use it with and so incorrectly discarded it, but ah well. Picard's team seems interesting, they're more about diplomacy and giving benefits to their enemies but getting a larger benefit in return as well. Very keen to play more, though we're going to see about tweaking the Gowron deck a bit because there are a lot of skill tests but the Klingons aren't very good at actually succeeding at them...

gaming arcadia halide star trek: away missions

Posted on 8 June 2026, 19:29

A selfie of four people sitting in a vintage train carriage, all smiling at the camera.

Current status: getting our train on at the ZigZag railway with @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected]!

kristina selfie me darkroom friends zigzag railway

Posted on 6 June 2026, 11:34

I really hope one of the expansions for Forza Horizon 6 is a rally one like FH5 had, that was so much fun. The rally-spec cars are such a blast to drive because they accelerate like an absolute motherfucker but don't go to absolutely ludicrous speed like supercars do so you don't end up sitting there going "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT". 😅

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 30 May 2026, 21:43

A photo of my desk setup with a big monitor in the middle, my laptop sitting on the desk in front of and underneath the big monitor, and two white Yamaha speakers on stands on either side of the big monitor. On the big screen is Logic Pro's main screen with the Superior Drummer 3's mixer window open, and on the laptop screen are three Channel EQ windows where I'm tweaking how the mix fits together, along with the Mastering Assistant window.

Current status: putting the finishing mixing touches on my song and using my fancy speaker setup for its intended purpose!

our house music logic pro halide

Posted on 30 May 2026, 17:07

A photo taken at night looking towards the end of the train platform. The roofed area ends right in front of where I'm standing so the rest of the station is covered in water and you can see the rain busily bucketing down next to the lights. Overall is just looks miserable (and basically is).

I've been in the office for the second day in a row this week, and am in again tomorrow, because we're having a team event and have flown people in from our other offices, but my god you could not have asked for worse weather. I was originally planning on being in all five days, but Thursday's forecast is for 55-70mm of rain with a chance of thunderstorm that's possibly severe "with heavy rain that may lead to flash flooding", and like fuck I'm dealing with the trains probably melting down during that.

I stayed a bit late because we had an in-office dinner and @[email protected] was also out for dinner with a friend, and we ended up catching trains only 15 minutes apart so I'm waiting at the train station so we can walk back to the car together.

schofields night rain train night mode

Posted on 26 May 2026, 20:41

A screenshot of the Subaru Vivio, it's a very small red hatchback that's been lowered and big rims put on. The design of it very much brings to mind the Mazda 121 of the 90s. It's parked in a very narrow alley in Tokyo at night, with a bunch of lit-up shop signs stretching away down the alley, and it's been raising so there are water drops on the car and reflections in the puddles on the road in front of the car.

Forza Horizon 6 is out, and as per tradition I've taken a teensy little car and turned it into an absolute pocket rocket. 😁 This is a 1994 Subaru Vivio RX-R that now weighs all of 757kg but has a 4-cylinder 2.0L naturally-aspirated engine in it and it puts out 169kW! It's AWD so you basically point it in a direction and it'll fly there. I could have gone really nuts and added a turbo and done more engine upgrades but I wanted to keep it in Class B.

screenshot gaming xbox forza horizon

Posted on 25 May 2026, 21:55