Last night I finally finished The Handmaid's Tale. I don't remember the ending from year 12 - I think I might have skipped it to be honest. It was good to finish it though because it's taken a few weeks (months?) it had started to become a burden. Regardless, I like the story and enjoyed the read, even though I'm glad to have finished it.

We're currently working our way through Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus in our book club. I refer to it as Men Are From Mars, Women Love The Penis. That shouldn't surprise any of you.

The first few images of Ray Park dressed in costume as Snake-Eyes for the coming G.I. Joe feature film have surfaced.

Ray played Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace so we know he's got the mad ninja skills. You might recall the final fight scene where Darth Maul takes on two jedis at once. Ahh yeah.

I'm keen to see how the costuming looks for Storm Shadow and the rest of the characters too, especially Scarlett and Baroness.

Larry Hama, who's famous in the G.I. Joe universe for his involvement in the comic books (amongst other things x3) has hinted that there'll be replica swords available in his release to Ain't It Cool News. Considering that two of the main characters are ninjas, this is both sensible and cool.

The fact that Larry's involved in this movie is great. Taken from his IMDB profile page:

Larry Hama is known as the "father" of the 3 3/4" Gi Joe figures (he had nothing to do with the 12" Gi Joe of the 1960-70s). Larry came up with the names for the figures, vehicles and wrote the filecards that came on the back of the cards. He also wrote all 155 issues of the Gi Joe comic book which spanned from June 1982 to December 1994.

... so as you can see, it would have been sacrilegious to not have Larry involved.

The movie is scheduled for release in August 2009 and filming is currently in progress. In the meantime you can use this high-res version as your background:

On Thursday Luke and myself played 18 holes of golf at the Burswood Park Golf Course. It was the first time since Wallsy's 18th birthday (in November 1997) that I'd played so we were a bit rusty.

Caddies don't just carry your golf clubs for you; they recommend the club to use based on the conditions and yardage.

At the 9.5th hole Luke and I fleshed out an idea for a digital caddy. You could track a player's location with a GPS receiver in the digital caddy device, and from that you'd know the distance to the pin for each hole. With this, the digital caddy could recommend a club to use as well as angles or tips. You could even have a weather station on each golf cart and connect wireless back to them to get the absolute latest in wind conditions.

It seems we're not the first to think of this idea.

After the flight we all jumped in the Tarago and Aaron drove us up the hill. My stomach was still unsettled when we got to my parent's place, but a few beers fixed that.

Over the course of a few hours everyone had showers and by 8:00PM we were ready to get into it.

Some female entertainment arrived at 9:30PM and helped serve drinks and provide something nice to look at. I don't think Aaron uploaded any photos of her... yet.

There was a mixd group of about 30 people there, with my close friends, jiu jitsu mates and family friends. We smashed the keg and there was stacks of food, and I think everyone had a good time.

Fitzy also helped entertain everyone when he borrowed the waitress' high heels and pranced around for a while. We had a boat-race too and I know Hale and Luke were in it, though I can't remember if they held onto the reputations, which they gained at last years TFG Christmas party. I have a feeling Harry beat Luke, though I'm not certain :)

At midnight some people left and some people jumped on a bus for more fun. We went down the hill and hit Shape. Michael works security and knew the guys on the door, so even though there was a significant (200 people?) line we were all in within 15 minutes. We lost some guys to tiredness and some to... over exertion, but it was a good effort all round. Van She smashed out a wicked set and at 3:30AM the final 8 headed to Ambar for even more punishment.

Hale, Tony and Fitzy walked with Mark, Jacob, Michael, Harry and myself to Ambar but didn't come in. Steve was apparently there already (when did he leave Shape? Nobody knows) but had been kicked out after some confusion. Apparently a guy wearing the same shirt was weeing on the dancefloor and Steve was the victim of a mistaken identity. If you know Steve then you'll know that weeing on a dancefloor is even too much for him, and when Ambar security asked Harry to leave for "his own safety" (though they wouldn't say much about why and we were minding our own business - dickheads) it was clear that the night was over. We had about an hour and a half there in total and the music was OK, but not superb.

The five of us that still remained walked home over the Causeway. We dropped Mark on the way and grabbed some breakfast at McDonald's before heading back to my place for about 6:00AM. The brothers called a taxi, Harry crashed on a mattress in my living room and we both slept for a few hours until Maggie and her alcohol-induced illness woke us up at 8:00AM.

I had a great night and whilst there were ups and downs, I think it was a "great success." The people that organised it should be very happy because I was very happy, and after all, that was the point :)

Last weekend I had my buck's party. I was waiting until some photos emerged before I wrote about it so that there was some accompanying evidence, and with Aaron uploading some snaps earlier in the week it's probably time for me to do that. You can check out the rest of his (safe for work) photos in Facebook.

The day started at around 12:30PM when the groomsmen and my dad came past and collected me. We went to the Balmoral Hotel in Vic Park for some lunch and a few beers. The beers took ages to come but that wasn't a massive problem. It was great knowing that we didn't have something else that we should be doing.

Towards the end of lunch a few of the guys took off and I figured something else was going down. They returned and lassoed me before dressing me down in a bunch of pink things and bundling me into the car. Blindfolded, I had a bit of a hard time working out where we were, until we hit the freeway. I put two-and-two together when we went over the railway lines near Jandakot Airport, but didn't know the exact details.

It turned out that they had arranged for me to spend 30 minutes in a fighter plane doing acrobatics and dogfighting.

We were at Fighter Combat International. The whole event laster for a few hours and included a pre-flight briefing.

The pilots were great. My pilot is a helicopter pilot with the NZ airforce, in Perth on an exchange program with the RAF and training pilots at Pierce. Our opposition pilot flies large reconnaissance aircraft for the RAF.

We were in CJ-6A Nanchangs, which interestingly are still used in China to this day.

We took off in formation which was cool. We were the lead aircraft and our wingman took off to the rear, right of us, about 10m distance. We flew out to Safety Bay and parted ways, each to do some acrobatics individually. After some loops, barrel rolls, aileron rolls and stall turns, the pilots turned and flew head-to-head. We had a closing speed of about 750km/hr, and there was approximately one airplane's width between us, so it was close. After a short "dogfight" (we got "shot down") the pilots chased each other through the sky for a few minutes. That was fun, and I got the feeling that each pilot was trying to make the other pilot's passenger sick, hoping that they'd call "KIO" (knock it off).

But neither of us did, and after the chase we did some low-flying along the coast and checked out the reefs before turning around and heading for home. We took up the rear formation and flew behind "Red Dragon 2" all the way into landing.

For about an hour afterards my stomach was turning, but I was glad that the guys didn't let me drink any beers on the journey to the hanger or I'd have been in even worse shape.

I was really happy with the flight and the team at FCI were very professional yet friendly and accommodating - they suggested the best place for the guys to drink their beers, which was cool. Normally these kinds of places are super-safety-conscious, which gets in the way of a good time :)