Taupo!

To take a break, I spent a few days up in Taupo! Found a place with a thermal bath (feed from an underground hot spring) and booked a few activities, and la!

One place: Lake Taupo on Ernest Kemp. Cruise the lake and see the Maori carvings. In our case, get to the carvings and then bounce around and barely be to stand let alone take a good photo. But the rest of the trip was a gentle cruise over the waters.

Also: Huka River Cruise. Gentle cruise the river (as opposed to spinning and bouncing around the place on a jet boat) and get right up close to the falls, as well as enjoy commentary on the local scenery.

Then: Craters of the Moon. The surface of the earth at Taupo is very thin (so expect Primords). As such, the bubbling lava is close to the surface, leading to a volcano (now Lake Taupo) but also steam and other vapours leaking through. You can walk around and admire large sunken areas but be careful how you breathe.

Full photo album here.

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Tourist Trap!

There are lots of adventures happening (generally three or four sessions a week), and due to time zones, I'm only in a few. So, some time later, I was in this!

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Shield Heist!

Do you recall back in the day I posted links to my RPGing of Heroic Cthulhu? Well, those links are long dead. And so is that game. But the GM eventually got pulled in to doing another series called "Any Time, Any Where", which is using the same system, only using the Amber Universe.

However, he is now based in Europe, so this involves me getting up for 3am start time! Ouch!

This is the first one I was a part of. This has been going for six seasons, so there is a LOT of background information before all this. However, I didn't care, and just wanted to get on with whatever they were doing, so dive in!

(This is hopefully a full playlist?)

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Lonley Assassans

It's a new Doctor Who game! I've done most of the others (the really old games I haven't), so of course I had to give this a try. It's a mobile game... so of course I played it on a PC. Moreover, I paid for it on PC when it's free on mobile!

The idea is that you find a phone, and from there are caught up in an adventure! There is Petronella Osgood as your main contact, and the phone belongs to Lawrence Nightingale... so there are definitely links there! Ingrid Oliver and Finlay Robertson return to play their parts (in either voice or actual video!), and a few other characters are here as well. There's even a Doctor!

The plot involves the Weeping Angels, so about those new characters... yeah, well, don't get too attached.

The game isn't that hard. You look at bits on the phone (eg email, chats, etc), and get pieces to unlock the next part. There's a wee challenge of sort of mini-games, but you can't really fail. There is, however, a "best outcome", so... well... don't suck.

Around two hours to play, it's not a bad game, and certainly I'm sure this was easy enough for Maze Theory to do, so... here's hoping they put more out!

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Wack Blidow

Yes, because a) NZ isn't rubbish, and b) time zones are a thing, I saw this movie before most people... in fact before it even releases.

I could talk about plot but since people try to avoid spoilers, I'm gonna skip that part. Besides, it's not like you need my opinion of how the story unfolds before if you are going to see it. I will say that the tone is rather straight. It's like they were trying for a Captain America level seriousness, but couldn't quite get it working properly. Which isn't saying there isn't comedy, but it's sprinkled in and just happens, as opposed to rising naturally out what is happening. Especially around Red Guardian. But it mostly comes across as awkward. (Although this didn't stop the audience in the theater from tittering at the less than slightest provocation.)

A point of this movie is to give ScarJo her own movie, now they can no longer fit it into the ongoing series (although complaining about it taking place pre Infinity War would be like complaining that Captain Marvel is pre Iron Man... hey, is putting female led movies into the past a common theme we'll be getting?). So ScarJo gets a lot to do, but is largely giving the same performance as in her other movies, so can't really say the character is getting a lot of stretching.

Still it's nice to see Rachel Weisz and David Harbour having fun. And, of course, we get more Florence Pugh. But, uh, those accents... I'm sure they had coaches and all, but...

The "big bad" of the movie is Taskmaster, and I didn't see any correct predictions about who it was. Although they seem to also co-opt some of DC's Prometheus where moves could be programmed in? But this did raise the question in my mind: could Taskmaster give a great speech?

There are a fair few explosions for those that want some, but this is a more "grounded" story, as Natasha doesn't really have powers other than "can pose well". I have no idea who came up with the big end sequence, but it's certainly impressive.

And of course there is a post credit scene - why are you even asking??

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Timothy Minchinothy

So, last week, I went to a concert... a Tim Minchin concert! If you haven't heard of him, well... you have some great songs to catch up on! One such song is below, and yes, that was part of his concert.

Most of his songs were recent ones, where he talks a lot about how he moved from LA to Aussie...and yes, he was very self-deprecating about the fact that he was rich enough to do that. And so we get a range of songs from maudlin to his more jocular efforts, including a rather great piece about "CHEESE!" As he put it, there was Old Songs, New Songs, Fuck You Songs.

This concert was called "Back" as he was Back, back in Aussie, back to touring, even more poignant after the recent years. I have no idea where he's going, I only happen to spot this concert was even happening when looking at the ticketing website, but I'm glad I went. So check out, and see if he's coming Back near you!

And bonus fact: He has a Glossary!!!

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Eff Nien

This time it's about family! Also, physics takes a holiday!

When you look at Vin Diesel you think "he's clearly related to John Cena", and so this movie. It's brother versus brother as they hunt down another mcguffin that does a thing that isn't possible, but we'll buy into it because it's fun. There are lots of car stunts, although there could be more. There are also plenty of people, and they all come together for the big set piece, and then there's the final scene where we even see...

First of all, I do want to point out that this is a fun dumb movie. I'm about to critique points, but I still enjoyed watching it.

Point one: there are a lot of main cast to get through. As these films have expanded and taken on more characters, and not killed them off (and killed some of them off, but it didn't stick), there are a lot of characters to cameo. And so we get a lot of quick random scenes of "hey, it's that person" as the plot tries to shoehorn them in, some more successful than others. Which means a lot more talking sequences, which is of course what brings people to these movies.

Another point is about physics. And metaphysics. They have the comedy black duo point out how lucky they are to get away with what they do, but they don't really do anything with that. Set up the lampshade, but don't follow through. And even have the gall to have the line "trust the physics" at one point! There is nothing in this movie that obeys the laws of physics! Ropes, magnets, dna, all sorts of things just do whatever the plot wants, not what any principles of reality have to do with it.

Still, the main thing is heart, and this movie has tons of that. So enjoy!

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