Elaborate Slang Photos Now On Flickr

Photos of my mates band: Elaborate Slang have been uploaded to my flickr site.

Yac-it-up festival photos now on flickr

You can check out my photos of Birds Of Tokyo playing at Yac-it-up festival now on flickr

Good Vibrations

Photos from Good Vibrations are now available at flickr

New Quickflix Office & Project Phoenix

Today marks the end of our first week in the new Quickflix Office. We've finally settled in, I've got myself a bonsai tree and a wall to utilise and everything seems to be going pretty well.

The bonsai on my desk.

For those who aren't familiar with my job I am a senior developer and graphic designer at Quickflix, the biggest independant DVD rental company in Australia. I have been working for Quickflix since its inception, and have been involved with its development from prototype to full blown business.

As with most companies where their entire existance revolves around our technology we've reached a point where we've out grown our current IT offering. We're wanting to do things now to enhance our members experience that are just not feasible in our current environment.

Enter Project Phoenix. This project is about two things. Providing our subscribers with the best possible online DVD rental service through both efficient fulfilment and delivery and becoming the household name in home entertainment by having the best most engaging service available.

I am fortunate enough to be leading the redevelopment of our website from the ground up. In the next couple of months I will be blogging about our progress and you should see notes and info on the development of a new beautiful and dynamic interface, new exciting features and tools to make the Quickflix experience amazing, and ideas I will be using to help my team turn flashes of inspiration into full blown features.

I will be taking photos through the entire process and you can see these and more photos on my flickr page under the "Pix from the 'flix" set.

If you are a Quickflix member and have had some ideas about how you would like to make your Quickflix experience even better please don't hesitate to post a comment on any of posts I make. The more suggestions and ideas you provide the better we can make the service.

Please note: This blog is in no way affliated with Quickflix. I mearly work for them. As part of my contract and NDA, I will not be able to directly comment on new features and things that have not been yet released to public. I cannot comment on the inner workings of Quickflix so don't expect special insights that have not been made public to our users or the market.

EDIT: Fixed Typo

Australia Day Photos Are Up

Photos from the Australia Day Celebrations are now available on my flickr page

Rie

I made many friends in Japan. Here I am with Rie, who I met out during my last night of drinking in Osaka.

Shrine Abstraction

Part of a shrine at the Ryoanji Temple

Musical Intersections

I love the musical intersections of Japan. Too wicked.

Final night of drinking

A couple of regulars Shoko and Hironi that I had a great time with at the Club House.

Lost In Translation Update : SNOW BABY, SNOW!

It's been a couple of days since my last actual update and I have done a heap of things since Mondays entry.

Starting with Monday I did end up going to Ueno, and checked out a large park and temples there. I did manage to get to the Royal Museum, which was quite small, and they were showing a Calligraphy Exhibition. Check this wicked calligraphy of some lyrics from John Lennons "Imagine".

From there I tried to go to the National museum but unfortunately most things are closed on the Third Monday of the Month. I don't know why. I was standing there reading the sign when I heard an Aussie accent behind me. A couple was visiting from Melbourne, taking a three week trip around Japan, and they had just landed. Their names were Antony and Leanna. The informed me they had just been to the Imperial Palace and were off to Asakusa. They were kind enough to let me go along with them.

A FOOD UPDATE FOR SOPHIA! With Antony and Leanna we had lunch at a stand up diner thing under some train tracks, Leanna and I had a Udon noodle soup while Antony had something that was like a soup but ICE COLD. Weird. He said it was terrible.

In Asakusa I saw a massive shrine and it was pretty cool. Photos are on flickr. With the aussie couple I had a beer in the Asahi building. It was great.

After the beer we headed to Ginza and I showed Ant and Leanna some of the placed I had been a few days before, and helped them with the trains. We got dinner at a Curry place where we made Gaijin arses of ourselves and walked into the dining area with shoes on, which the Japanese found hilarious. We sat a low tables on the floor, but the legs went down into a hole in the ground. I had a "Black Curry" with pork. At the end of dinner I said goodbye to my new friends and headed home. I tried to find a pub to drink at in Shinjuku but with most things on Monday most of the places I wanted to go were closed, so I decided to have a quiet night in.

After a good sleep I headed out on Tuesday to get to Kawguchiko, which is at the base of Mt Fuji. After spending about an hour trying to find the bus port I got a seat on a coach and sat back for about an hour and a half into the mountains. It was beautiful seeing the suburbs of Japan roll past me.

As we got further away from Tokyo and when Mt Fuji suddenly loomed into sight I started noticing weird white stuff on the ground. IT WAS SNOOOOOOOOW!!! I was over joyed.

In Kawaguchiko I jumped the historical bus which did a round trip past the Lake and I got orientated. I then walked through town, checking out the snow and went up the Cable car to get some shots of Mt Fuji. It was soooo cold but beautiful. Very beautiful. I will definately be back there again.

After a burger from "MOS BURGER" I walked through the twilight back to the station and got a bus home. I decided to check out a pub I found in the morning called "MUB" which was supposedly an english pub. They had typical English stuff on the wall and the soccer on, but that was about as english as it got. I then made it back to the Club House, saw one of the guys I met the first night here and had a drink. One of the locals took me to another pub where I drank with them discussing Japan until about 12, then I had a drink with a guy from Melbourne who I also randomly saw in that Curry Place at Ginza. I then went home about 1am. It was a pretty big day and I slept pretty soundly.

Today I went to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and it was just beautiful. Again: photos on flickr. I spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens. It was very relaxing. I would love to see it in spring, but it was very interesting seeing some very old bits of Japanese history.

Tonight I am packing my stuff and getting ready to check out tomorrow morning. Once done I am heading back to the club house where the guys there are buying me a farewell drink.

Don't forget to check out the photos.

Kusunoki-Masashige Statue

A statue at the beautiful Imperial Palace

People watching

Shibuya. Home to the Youth of Japan.

Champions

A great night of drinking in Shinjuku

couch-review.com is back baby!

After quite the extended hiatus I am pleased to announce the return of couch-review. Sporting a new design and running off blogger the new couch is going to be a dedicated trove of info on what has been going on lately with me.

I managed to get my flickr account hooked in with this puppy too, so blogging of some of the better photos of my holiday should be easy.

I was quite surprised how flexible the Blogger API is, and over time I will create some of the cool ideas I had planned writing in my own blogging tool using this API.

Anyways enjoy and keep coming back for updates on my trip to Japan.

My Mazda Mx5

A great photo of my car as it appears on flickr

Test blog to see if I am really not crazy

I am having trouble hooking flickr into my blogger account. The flickr guys are being very helpful, but I am pretty confused. Annoyingly I had to great a Yahoo!ID which means creating a Yahoo Account. I am not a big fan of Yahoo, but flickr is such a great service I did it anyways. So now I have accounts and usernames and passwords all over the shop. I hope they can help me fix up my problem