New Zealand has two islands, and the ferry that crosses between them goes from Wellington (reasonably famous) to Picton (not very famous). Picton’s a touristy sort of place with parking for $2 a day and lots of nice crinkly coastline nearby.

As a result of the coastline, there are a lot of winding roads about, with 50km/h speed limits. Some people liked to sit up my arse as I traversed them. A special place in hell is reserved for these people. Hopefully, they’re stuck behind people like me there, too. Driving presented another challenge when I discovered that New Zealanders give way to right-hand turners when turning left. This at first created many awkward “you go!” “no, you go!” moments. This is nothing though, when you consider the terrible peril we’re in if any New Zealanders come to Australia and assume they have right of way turning right. What? I’m being told New Zealanders can come and go to Australia as they please. What happened to deciding who would come and the manner in which they did it? Madness.

Back to Picton. It’s a big port. It’s also a big tourist destination. Disappointingly, this means the restaurants are often over-priced and not that good. When your main consumer base keeps shifting every year, you can get away with this. If you are in Picton, I hear that Spinnaker is nice. We meant to go there, but never found it, instead opting for a few not completely impressive places. In general though, I never had a steak I didn’t like, so you can be reasonably comfortable ordering them from anywhere. Be warned; some places won’t serve you coffee unless you’re getting food. Tremendously uncivilised. We did however stop in at Alan Scott Winemakers on our Wine Tour and found the food there to be pretty awesome.

Our place of residence was A Sea View B&B. I have no idea why they called it this.

If you like amazing scenery, cooked breakfast every morning, handy local knowledge, and chickens, then A Sea View is the place for you.

The best thing about Picton is the stuff nearby. You can go kayaking, you can drink yourself silly in the Marlborough wine region, you can hike along the Queen Charlotte Track.¹ Our kayaking was with the Marlborough Sounds Adventure Company, who took us around the Kenepuru Sound, which is rather pretty. The day started off relaxing and interesting, but got a little intense at the end when we needed to do a big open sea crossing to get back in time for our co-kayakers to check out of their hotel. Pah!

I’m already getting annoyed by rating towns out of ten, but I’ll do it once more; eight peaceful tourist towns out of ten.

1. There’s more, I’m sure, but we only had four full days. ↩

“If you ever do want to kill yourself, back lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.”

John Cleese had some unkind things to say about Palmerston North.¹ I can imagine thinking along similar lines if one had to spend a sustained period of time here. However, for a quick trip, it’s not too shabby. There are more lawyers than milk bars² and more flouro tops than you can shake a stick at. It also has power lines under the ground, and a few little oddities.

The main city is arranged in a square. I like neat cities. However, they also just dump their garbage by the road rather than putting it in bins, so this neatness is somewhat undermined.³ Four sheep jokes out of ten.

1. The residents did get some revenge later. ↩
2. Or dairies, as they call them here. This unfortunately means they have to call actual dairies “those places where you squeeze the cow bits to make yummies.” ↩
3. This happens across New Zealand apparently, aside from some of the really big cities. ↩

Lame. The food court is tiny and they wouldn’t let me upgrade my regular Red Rooster meal to include iced tea. Apparently only lard-arses who aren’t on my patented “medium chips” diet are entitled to Nestea. Disgraceful. Also, the weather was too hot, and the train driver between the airports was sarcastic. 2 daylight savings time abstainers out of 10.

As our regular Who correspondent is AFK,¹ I’m stepping in to relay this important news.  Some guy called Matt Smith has been cast as the new Doctor,  replacing David Tennant whenever he decides to leave.

Having seen Tennant replace Eccleston, I think I’ve got this being a Who fan thing down.  First I’ll say that I don’t care for the new guy’s foppish hair, and that he could never replace the current Doctor.  Then perhaps I’ll moan about why Tennant has to leave and savour the last episodes with him.  Sometime next year, when I see the new guy in action, I’ll initially hate him for replacing Tennant but quickly change my tune and decide that the new guy is the best ever. ²

1. Actually he’s away from broadband at the moment, unless he’s lost his iPhone, but AFB doesn’t have the same ring. ↩
2. Especially if he brings Billie Piper back. ↩

The Internet has announced this week that a Slightly Larger iPod Touch has been cast in the role of the Mac Tablet in the iconic Apple rumour of the same name.

The Slightly Larger iPod Touch will be the 12th Mac Tablet rumour¹ and will take over from the short-lived Jason O’Grady Mac Tablet rumour which like all previous incarnations, proved to be completely full of shit.

One rumour that has caught my fancy however, is the Apple Home Server Rumour. I want it.²

In a house with three computers, and two people who have users on each one, having unified iPhoto and iTunes libraries that we can both access at the same time from any computer would be awesome.

Reading the article, the idea of having a massive media library stored on the internet sounds a bit ridiculous. Perhaps because we live in Australia – the land of crap upload speeds and data quotas – a combination which makes the whole idea working here retarded.

Anyway, expect a review this week. I would threaten to completely redesign the site to scare Tom, but since it would probably cost him $8 just to visit here from his phone I doubt he will read it.

1. I’m just guessing for comic effect here. But surely I am close. I’ve been hearing about Apple Tablets since 1995 for fucks sake. ↩
2. I would love to find a more credible source for it than Gizmodo, I really would. Sorry I linked to them, by the way. ↩

Off to New Zealand! If I find any nice wireless networks then you might even hear from me while I’m there, but otherwise, you won’t, because it’ll cost me $20 per megabyte to use data there. Yeesh.

We were told this would happen. We didn’t listen. Despite the warnings, restrictions and efforts to find alternative gaming sources. The gaming nirvana that was Daumen Oben is now a barren wasteland.

So this is it. After four years it had started to feel like home. Although you could argue a home without an xbox is hardly a home at all.

I likes me some Prince of Persia. I have a soft spot for all the parts the Sands of Time trilogy, even if they did manage to screw various things up royally in the sequels. I’m very keen to play The Sands of Time again should they ever get around to releasing it on Xbox Live. I’m nostalgic.

So, do I hate this crazy new Prince, with his illustrated body, big scarf, and strong american accent? Well, no, because Ubisoft seem to have the knack back. After two sessions I’ve been won over; mostly due to the care they’ve taken with the dialogue between the Prince and his new friend, Elika. Someone over there has clearly found wherever they wrote down the secret of charming, simple, entertaining and amusing storytelling before they lost it for Warrior Within.

The platforming is simpler in many ways, but unlike some I don’t think that necessarily translates to easy, or at least, not to bad easy. Yes, some of the obstacles are removed by having you simply jump at a wall to wall-run, rather than holding a thumbstick towards the wall. But those obstacles were the obstacles of irritation and not the obstacles of working out where the hell to go next. Meanwhile, the game takes the surprising move of having collectables which actually have a story function — meaning that when I do eventually scour the kingdom for all 1001 of them, I’ll have the dubious excuse that not all of them have been collected in the name of obsessive compulsion.

Finally, and I’m not sure it’s even necessary to point this out, it’s a beautiful game. After the gorgeous visuals of Assassin’s Creed I’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t, but it’s its own crazy kind of illustrated, fairytale beautiful, with the beautifully animated Elika the icing on the cake.¹ If you leave the game alone for a bit, it’ll even pan across some of its soothing landscapes, just to make sure you realise that it’s very, very nice indeed.

It’s kind of easy, but it’s kind of nice. Certainly, after playing Left 4 Dead and constantly being brutally slaughtered by legions of hideous zombies, this hits the spot.

1. Clearly someone’s learned the value of subtlety at some point since Warrior Within. ↩