Mike’s Blog

My parents (of all people) got me on to this new Facebook application called Farm Town (made by SlashKey). Normally I don’t add these kinds of applications because they’re generally time wasters, but since my parents were spending so much time on it (and had roped in my sister) I gave in.

Ploughing fields with onions growing in the background.

You basically have your own farm where you can plough fields, plant crops, harvest crops, sell crops (the main source of income), plant fruit trees, sell fruit, buy animals, houses, barns, fences, paths and even increasing the size of your land.

It also keeps track of various achievements and awards trophies based on that, which can unlock new abilities. For example, if you get enough neighbours (other Facebook friends playing the game who agree to be your neighbour) you will be able to sell items you’ve purchased instead of just deleting them.

If you’re short on funds you can go to the Market Place to ask for work harvesting other people’s crops. People have incentive to hire people because it doesn’t actually cost anything and the resulting crops sell for more than if they did it themselves.

It’s quite addictive when you start out but now that I’ve hit level 24 it’s starting to lose its appeal. There’s simply too much land to deal with and it’s not challenging to get large sums of money with valuable crops like onions and pumpkins.

I don’t really know why I’m posting about this game. Maybe I just feel it desrves it because of how long it has kept me entertained for

As a big fan of both Steven Colbert and Harvey Birdman, I was pleasantly surprised to come across this striking similarity between Colbert and the character he voices. Check out these two screen grabs:

The resemblance is uncanny.

Apparently Phil Ken Sebben’s twin brother (Bill) looks just like Phil, except that he wore his patch on the other eye

Yesterday I finished up working at Interspire. It was sad because I have made a lot of friends there and I really enjoyed working with them. It’s a really good place to work with all sorts of perks and cool projects. I had spent the last year with them working on Email Marketer. I know it’s really busy and me leaving will really increase my team mates’ work load – sorry about that guys!

I’m taking the rest of this week off and then starting at Morgan Creative on Monday. This is a company started by a couple of friends of mine which has started to really take off. It’s similar kind of work but more contract-based with clients rather than product-based with customers. They head-hunted me around Easter and managed to make me an offer good enough to get me to join. It’s going to be great working with them again!

Since I’m finishing up at my current job I didn’t need my usual weekly train ticket. I figured it would be cheaper just to purchase a return ticket each day for the few days I had left.

One particular morning I handed over a $20 note and asked for one of these tickets (which costs about $7) and the man behind the counter gave me the ticket with $3 change. I mentioned this to him expecting him to remember what I gave him, but he said “Well I believe you gave me $10, so I’d have to do a full cash count”. It was a couple of minutes before the train came and there was a huge line behind me, so there was no way I was going to make a huge scene and inconvenience everyone because of this guy’s mistake. I just went down to the platform, fuming that my $7 ticket had cost $17.

I may have doubted what note I gave him except for the fact that I had recently been to an ATM and all the notes in my wallet were from that (which doesn’t dispense $10 notes). I was fuming

I went back that night on my way home where there was a different person staffing the booth. After explaining the situation she said they mentioned the till was $10 and to come back tomorrow morning.

I followed her advice and when I got to the ticket booth I mentioned to the (different) man what happened yesterday. He immediately recognised me and kept saying repeatedly “You were right mate,” and headed off to the safe at the back of the room. As he pulled some money out of the safe, the man responsible for giving me incorrect change popped his head into view from behind somewhere else and apologised profusely.

I used the $10 they returned to buy a return ticket for that day. I was happy to get the money back but the fact that I got an apology too was really great. While CityRail services and trains are quite horrible, I have generally found the staff to be good.

I went to see Wolverine tonight. I had heard mixed reviews but I’m a big fan of

• Wolverine,
• Hugh Jackman, and
• action movies

so there was no real danger of disappointment. I’m giving it 7.5/10. It departed from true X-Men canon a fair bit (as expected), but the action scenes and special effects were very good. Well, there were one or two special effects that weren’t quite up to par but I think this was because the technology used to do them is very new.

It’s well worth seeing, although X-Men fans will be frustrated by the deviation from the comics (just like in the previous X-Men movies).

It seems hard to believe, but until now I have not yet  had a general-purpose public blog. I’m starting one now because my memory can be rather sketchy at times and it would be good to have a few things written down