The first thing to be aware of, is that housing in Sydney can be expensive. You typically pay every other week, and if you need space be prepared to pay for it. I looked at many bachelor apartments (here referred to as studios) which had no space for a fridge or oven in the kitchen, and otherwise was effectively enough room for a bed for as much as $400 a week. That said, I wound up getting a place only slightly more a week with much larger space that included dishwasher, oven, and laundry. The key is be prepared to look at as many places in a day as you can, and be prepared to fill out your forms and submit them on the spot. Unlike in Toronto, when you view an apartment here it will most likely be shown by a real estate agent at a half hour scheduled time with about 15-20 other people. The best deals seems to come when you find a landlord that cuts out the middle man and skips the real estate agent. The best tools I found for house hunting were realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. To counter the expensive rent (at least for us foreigners on long term visas) you will be eligible for the Living Away From Home Allowance. Now while more than one of the ads I responded to on GumTree for apartments appeared to be scams, it can be a great place to find used crap. The 106cm LG TV I got for $300 for example. On the note of ads, one thing that I find a little confusing is the way phone numbers are listed. I’m used to the North American way. All numbers are (xxx) xxx-xxxx. In Sydney however, it seems that there is a different format that is expected between the listing of mobiles and landlines despite the fact that they both have the same number of digits. Lets say you’re listing your landline for someone, the format for this would be: 02 xxxx xxxx. Conversely, a listing for a mobile phone would be: 04xx xxx xxx.

Now that I’m started on small silly things, lets mention that the city is filled with wandering spiders and large flying roaches, yet there are no screens on any of the windows. “Get used to the roaches.” I’ve been told, “When Summer hits, they just fly into your apartment”. It seems to me that they’d have much more difficulty “just” flying into my apartment if there were screens on the window to keep them out. That said, Summer hasn’t hit yet, and from what I understand the missing screens are meant to improve the ability to channel the wind through one’s unit to help cool it off. Maybe I’ll happily trade roaches for a good strong breeze when it’s 40° on Christmas Day. Also be aware that your neighbours will most likely leave their shoes in the hallway. And that sandals are known as thongs. And that raisens are known as sultanas.

When looking to get your phone and or internet (naked DSL is certainly an option) hooked up, be aware that it will most likely take a while. There are a couple of folk I work with who have been in the country a few weeks longer than me, and are still trying to get their interwebs weaved into a working state. I was luck in that it only took a month and three technician visits to get it working. The last technician that visited told me that while my Main Distribution Frame (MDF) is not even close to the worst he’s seen, but I should be considered lucky that he didn’t do the the same as the previous technicians and simply leave since it was unsafe to work on it. You see, the “box” portion of the MDF was non-existent. The wires were just kind of poking out of the wall in the emergency exit stairwell, precariously placed over the stairs themselves so that the way to get at them was by climbing onto the mysterious stairwell mattress and leaning over the precipice. Now that my internet is working however, I am getting roughly 8 times the download speed that I had in Toronto. This means that my lag during Left4Dead is roughly identical on North American servers, and practically non-existent on Australian servers.

What’s the worst part about flying halfway around the world? Well, for me it was taking inventory so that if my crap burned down while in storage I’d have an iota of a clue what to claim and all the stuff that I used to have. But for everyone else, ostentatiously, it’s flying halfway around the world. All that tedious boring sitting, lack of leg room, and jet lag I gather is not terribly fun. Well minions, if anything a life invested in video gaming and digi-computer-stuff has given me, it’s the ability to sit still for long periods of time. Pish-posh I say to you athletes out there, you may live longer than me: but I can and will sit longer than you. I also made it considerably less boring on myself with three core strategies. Gaming, reading, and more gaming. Never go anywhere where you will have to sit still for hours on end without a copy of Civilizations. It’s a game that normally takes hours to play… but somehow I managed to finish up a game within 30 minutes of turning on my laptop. So for the rest of the flight from Toronto to Vancouver, I read up on some of Sun Tsu’s Art of War. In Vancouver, I had a brief moment to stretch my legs while the plane refueled, and then having left my PS3 (and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) back in Toronto hopped back on for some River City Ransom using (and I have no qualms pimping this thing two posts in a row) GameEx.

Now as to the latter of the two demons: lack of leg room and jet lag. Well… when you’re 180+ cm tall like me, leg room can indeed be an issue. But showing up early and getting yourself a decent seat can go a long way toward alleviating such worries. Sit behind a bulkhead, or near an emergency exit if you need to sprawl. And jet lag? Took the advice here for sleeping as though I were already at my destination and experienced absolutely no jet lag when I arrived down under.

That said, as I write this, tonight was supposed to have been the last night before my wife arrived in Sydney. So my freshest tips for the travel inclined? For starters, if you’ve got a long haul flight like this I heavily recommend trying to ensure that you have no connecting flights. For me it was a quick get off for the plane to refuel, and then back on the exact same plane. No rushing through the airport to find my connection, and minimal time waiting around going nowhere. Failing that, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got a good cushion of time between your connections so that you don’t miss said connection. My wife’s Los Angeles bound flight on United Airlines was an hour late due to strong headwinds. That had her landing at the same time that the connection was boarding. Now for some reason, UA decided that even though both flights were UA, there was no need to give her both boarding passes. After deplaning, she had to wait in a line to get her next boarding pass. She was directed to the wrong line. Twice. She missed her connection. Note that airlines will sometimes try to avoid taking credit for their tom foolery. Give them credit. Give them credit, and then take their credit: in the form of vouchers for accommodations.

I’ve been living down under since the 3rd of September now, and have had a number of experiences, both good and bad. This is where I shall spew some of the tidbits that have stuck in my brain thus far. May you benefit from my ways and see the light; for “many wild monsters are said to be lying in wait in the dark below, but remember! The magic of the Southern Cross is always on your side“.

The first thing to note, is that the flight to Australia is a long one. The second thing to note, is that there is a lot involved in moving: the fewer the items you can bring, and the smaller those items are, the better. I made an executive decision not to bring my workstation with me as it’s large and I’d still need to buy a monitor when I got here. This means that I had to find a computer that would suit my vfx, demo reel editing, photography and entertainment needs. Due to the vfx needs this meant I needed nvidia, lots of ram, 64 bits of processing, and a good solid processor. I definitely wanted blu-ray as it would mean I could continue to watch movies in Oz (DVD’s have regions, Blu-Ray doesn’t) and could get away with leaving the PS3 in Canada. I also wanted bluetooth and hdmi so that I could easily use this thing as an entertainment system in conjunction with a tv. I’m addicted to the numpad so I wanted one of those on the keyboard too… and since I’d be doing a lot of work on this thing I needed a decent sized screen too… no smaller than 16 inches. Surprisingly finding a system that could suit my needs was pretty tricky, especially if I wanted to get the system without it costing an absolute fortune.

It grits on me to admit it… I had a little bit of resentment toward Sony after they decided that their customers are not allowed to use Linux on their PS3’s anymore, but I just couldn’t find a system that had a decent price and all my specs without turning to Sony. I ended up getting a Sony Vaio: i7-740QM (1.73GHz), 16.4 inch Display (1920×1080), GeForce 330M GPU (1GB VRAM), Blu-ray Read and Write, Windows 7 Professional x64, 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3. Came to just over $1800 w/ tax and shipping. I have to also admit that so far the system has served me well. So glad that I got Windows 7 instead of Vista too. My only complaints? Well, Windows has some issues still. At first I couldn’t get my computer to shut down. Additionally, after spending mucho amount of time on this one, it seems like Windows 7 is shit when it comes to sound recording. You cannot use external usb interfaces with Win 7 at the moment. Basically, there is no way to do a hardware loopback so that you can hear yourself/record at the same time because the default driver (which 99% of interfaces use) doesn’t expose this option.

You can do this with *some* sound cards, but it is obfuscated with an option called “listen to this device” that is in the sound options for your recorder. This “listen to device” is a red herring and should *NOT* be used. It does not monitor in realtime, and was not designed to do this. Instead, you need to go into the speaker options, and unmute your microphone there. This option may need to be revealed either by editing the windows registry…. or through your audio drivers. On laptops, this is of NO use if you are using the onboard mic. You HAVE to use a plugged in mic, and it CANNOT be via a USB/firewire soundcard but rather through the line in or mic jacks. I cannot verify if this is true for pc based usb mics, or bluetooth mics. For more info, go here. Also, before I go on, I want to mention that the program you see on the monitor of that laptop there is GameEx. A fucking awesome front end for running emulated games on your computer. I consider it to be particularly ace for those times you plan to be on an airplane so long that multiple dates will pass between the start and end of your flight, but altogether lovely for just kickin’ back at home with your pc connected to a big screen tv. With this program I was able to substantially calm my nerves in regard to getting rid of linux on the ps3.

I also ended up picking one of these. Took the two 1 terrabyte drives out of my workstation, and ripped apart a terrabyte western mybook drive that I had kicking around to fill it up with. I feel justified in giving these guys a little bit of grief for not labeling on the BOX that your Motherboard’s SATA port MUST support Port Multiplier in order for your computer to recognize multiple hard drive if the unit is connectd via eSATA. It’s not a concept that I was familiar with before buying this set-up, and so it took me a while to figure out. At first I could only actually make a single drive register on my computer. That said, I bought an expressport to usb3 adaptor and am now getting great use out of this RAID set-up… not quite usb 3 speeds… but still faster than usb2. I definitely recommend it.

Be aware that any electronics you take to Australia must be compatible with the voltage (240V) which most modern devices will be. I got a good scare that I’d fried my hard drives when I first plugged them in. I’d blown a fuse and saw a small wisp of smoke come from the plug for the Probox. What was the problem? I’d made sure to look at the device and make sure that it could handle the voltage. What I hadn’t paid attention to was the fact that the PLUG itself wasn’t compatible with the voltage. I luckily didn’t cause any harm to anything, but here’s a word of advice. DO NOT PLUG your devices in until you make absolute certain that not only the device, but the plugs you’re using themselves can handle the higher voltage. If the voltage all matches, and the plugs all are ok voltage wise, the only thing you’ll need is a simple plug adaptor. If the plug isn’t ok for voltage, you’ll need to buy a replacement plug if possible and use it instead. If your device cannot take the voltage? Leave it behind! Otherwise you’ll need to buy a very expensive power converter. Generally not worth it. The devices I’ve brought with me that can handle the voltage fine include: The laptop, the raid set-up, the Canon battery charger and plug to connect the 7D directly to a wall, my Zoom H4n, my wife’s Yamaha keyboard, my PSP, my Nintendo DS Lite. Oddly, Nintendo claims the DS Lite can’t accept the voltage, but someone on the net (pardon me for not keeping the link) did some extensive research on their own DS and found that the internals are identical around the world. The voltage is ok, but you do need to buy a new plug once you get here.

Despite my annoyance at the cell phone culture, and extra annoyance at the Mac Cult… I found myself looking at the benefits of getting my first cell phone plan when I got to Oz. With a smart phone, I’d be able to check maps and weather on the go. Incoming calls in Oz are free. I gotta say, I’m even more unimpressed with Apple after actually having a phone in my possession. I’m disappointed with companies that feel it’s their prerogative to tell their paying customers what they can’t do with the devices that they’ve purchased. Anyways, long story short, I jailbroke that thingamabob. Not only because it was MANDATORY to jailbreak it if I wanted it off Toronto’s Rogers network but because it meant that I’d be able to use Skype over 3G to make free calls to my wife back in Canada who won’t be here for another week as of the posting of this particular discussion. Note that Google Voice doesn’t seem to work outside of the US for cell phones…

The last big step of preparing to come to Oz for me, was figuring out what to do with my guitar. In all honesty, for this particular model of guitar it may have been more cost efficient to simply buy a new one and be prepared to leave it when I depart Oz rather than ship to and from Australia (keep in mind that moving will be expensive because you are shipping possessions TWICE!), however for sentimental reasons I wanted *this* guitar, and I wanted it to be in solid shape when I was ready to play it here. Youtube, as always, came to my aid. I also was able to get a good sized box for free thanks to the awesome folks over at Metro Sound and Music on Yonge near College in downtown Toronto. Thanks to that box, I was able to pack my mic boom, mic, guitar safely into some NOW Magazines and clothing, and everything arrived in perfect condition. I will point out that it’s key to detune a guitar when taking it on a plane if you want to make sure that there won’t be too much tension on the neck.

Wow! Here I took all this time to do a new layout for my site, and replace the Blogger format with WordPress and what do I do? I disappear for more than half a year with no explanation! Well true believers, the time has come for an update. Where do I begin? The end? The middle? Between the middle and the end? The Big Bang? Well… to be frank I don’t think I can explain the Big Bang well enough to really get into that, so perhaps I’ll skip forward a few eons to where I last left off; July, 2010: The Distant Future. What’s that you say? The post below is from April? I already said I’ve been gone for half a year? Well dear reader… I sometimes say things and then later recall that other things happened.

Back in July I posted a bunch of photos from my Canada Day holiday to Prince Edward Island. They’re over in the image gallery right now if you want to take a gander. I have to warn you though. I have taken many photos in the meantime that I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with. In the not too distant future, I’ll be uploading them and then your world will once again be confusing. Do yourself a favor and look now so that you can keep on track and not be lost in the Chronosphere. Speaking of Canada Day though, why did I make said trip to PEI? Well, it was quite a simple decision you see. I knew it would be rather expensive to fly to PEI for Christmas, and so figured that Canada Day would make a far better time to visit my folks. And just why would it be so unusually expensive to fly at the end of the year? Well… aside from the usual airline gouging, it’s because to fly to PEI for Christmas, I would no longer be flying from Toronto, but Sydney. Australia.

Ok, let’s back this gravy train up a bit. In May a few things happened. I did some outdoor rock climbing at Rattlesnake Point, had a surprise visit from my best friend from elementary school who I hadn’t seen since said school, bought the lovely Canon EFS 10-22mm USM lens which took both of the above photos, turned 26 and went to see Luke Moore’s Houdini Python Master Class the same day, had a movie night with some great friends where I watched Curse of the Golden Flower for the first time, had a great birthday dinner with my in-laws where I had an amazing Baked Alaska, went to see a roller derby game, made an amazing ostrich dinner and dove into the remainders of our wedding cake for my first anniversary, had a wonderful anniversary weekend staying at The Old Mill where we were married, were late for dinner reservations due to someone getting killed in the subway and the entire Bloor subway becoming a zoo, saw some of the most terrifying mannequins in my life at a vintage store in Queen West, and was offered a job at Dr. D in Sydney Australia. In other words, stuff happened like crazy.

June saw me doing some Urban Exploring at a park near Dundas Station. The first scouting attempt netted me some cool photos, but the actual time I went to take photos, I forgot my battery and wound up with nothing but memories. I also tried out True North Climbing Gym, which I heavily recommend for its awesome bouldering, cracks, constantly updated walls, and slack lining. Went to see some Burlesque, and wound up with a rather unfortunate knee wound at a Togakure ryu seminar. Wasn’t until the day after that I even realized I was injured. I don’t blame anyone, and would train again with Dr. Kacem Zoughari in a heartbeat.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, July saw me in Prince Edward Island for Canada Day, where I saw Bachman Turner and Great Big Sea. I also rediscovered some buried treasure. Went to my first Caribana parade too. Much more disappointing than I figured it would be. It was also at this point that my contract ended with Starz and so while I had assumed I would have more spare time than ever before, it ended up meaning that it was time to start taking inventory of possessions for insurance, and packing things to go to Australia or to go into storage. August was a maelstrom of packing, watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and getting in those last goodbyes before my departure. I got to see my Aunt and Uncle who despite living only a few hours away I had neglected to see in a good number of years, tried my hand at some timelapse videos, saw the fucking awesome Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and then flew 15849 km to Sydney.

Nature by Numbers from Cristobal Vila on Vimeo.

A SHORT MOVIE INSPIRED ON NUMBERS, GEOMETRY AND NATURE.
Go to www.etereaestudios.com if you are looking for more information: the theory behind the movie (Fibonacci, Golden Ratio, Delaunay, Voronoi), stills and screenshots showing the work in progress. There are lots of free training materials and 3D workshops, too 😉

I personally had nothing to do with this, but thought it deserves some love.

Turns out that while I was redesigning my site, I mixed up the url for my RSS feed. If you’ve attempted to subscribe, try again! The link on the sidebar has now been fixed and should be pointing here. Also, I took the above picture in October 2004 just outside the apartment building I used to live in.

Wow! It’s been over a month since my last update! It’s easy to go a long time without updating, especially when you’ve been keeping yourself busy. And busy I’ve been! As you know, I picked up a Canon 7d a while ago, but I haven’t really gotten around to doing any video with it; until now, that is! The video that you see above is my most recent play-thing: a time-lapse video of a melting ice cube. Pictures were taken every 15 seconds and there’s a little bit of color correction done in post. I look forward to more forays into this area in the future.

I’ve becoming increasingly interested in video recently, and I may just have to start coming up with some concepts for my own short film. Interestingly, though I work as a visual effects artist, I think I want to try something that has no vfx work in it. I’ve been watching more films recently too:

Avatar
Was an entertaining movie. Reminded me of the usual Dances With Wolves/Pocahontas/Last Samurai plot and carried it well I think. I would have seen it twice if I didn’t have to see it in 3D. I found the action scenes too difficult to focus on and really would have preferred to see it in 2D.

Alice in Wonderland
Knowing that Alice wasn’t real 3D, I didn’t even want to give the glasses a chance. Was sorely disappointed in the story, and looking back I remember very little aside from Depp’s Scottish accent. Why was the hatter Scottish?

The Karate Kid
I’m not sure if I have ever seen this one before! But I watched it recently and I have to say, this is part of what is inspiring me to get into doing some live action stuff right now. A film that was well done with very little budget.

The Karate Kid Part II
What can I say? Watched the first one and had to watch the second. I’ve got the third one waiting to be seen now too. I had seen the last 30 minutes of this one before… but nothing before that. I like films that aren’t driven by visual effects.

Seven Samurai
We had a bunch of people over to watch this during Kurasawa’s 100th birthday. It’s the first time I’ve seen one of his films, and I was definitely a fan. It’s a long film, but well done.

La Dolce Vita
Ok… so I’m not a fan of every film. I think this one fits into the wtf genre of films.

My first attempt at a time-lapse was actually a melting chocolate bunny. Of course silly old me accidentally melted the poor thing in the process of trying to set-up. Lessons learned. Of course, I have been busy with taking photos over the past month as well, and it’s only fair that I show off a few more of them too.

I’ve been trying to get back into doing music. Starz Animation has an event that they have called “Music Night” that they run every now and then. A bunch of employees get together, learn some music, and put on a show. This year the company decided to move off site and into a pub for music night, so if you happened to be at the Blue Moon Pub in Toronto on March 26th, you could have seen me doing a few songs with some of the gang there. If you weren’t so lucky to have found your way into said pub on said night however, here’s a video I got of one of the songs we did. That would be me in the white shirt with the set of lungs.

And finally, before your head explodes, I’m going to leave you with this: it is my birthday on May 5th. These are things I want:

Audio
Windscreen
Boss GT-10 Guitar Effects Processor

Video
Spiderbrace 2 Combo
EF-S 10-22mm 3.5-4.5 USM

I apologize for having ludicrously expensive hobbies. You could always check here for any other ideas.

I went out to run some errands this morning before I went to do some rock climbing, namely I went to the St. Lawrence Market hoping to pick up some bread and something else for dinner. I had been there on Friday and the fact that the market sells kangaroo, camel, and ostrich had my curiosity piqued. Little did I realize however that the St. Lawrence Market is not open on Sundays or Mondays. It wasn’t a complete waste of time though…

I’ve been carrying my camera around like a useful version of my appendix since I got it… (this behaviour was reinforced by my rage at having left my camera at home one day when I happened to see some Storm Troopers downtown) and was able to grab some photos of a film that is being done in the area near the market. It didn’t occur to me to find out what film (hey maybe it’s even a tv series…) it was they were shooting, but maybe some one will see these pics and be able to identify it. There’s also a couple of other random pictures here that I took today. LOOK AT THEM!

  
  
    
  

Ah that new web design smell: Only half as noxious as new car smell. I attempted to launch the new design on Thursday, but failed to test in Internet Explorer. Tisk tisk I might add. It did not bode well and there were all sorts of Errors that cropped up. Layout problems… crashing… you know… the typical. At any rate, I believe that it’s all sorted out now and working in the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. There’s one more item stricken from the to-do list. As I’m now involved in a music night with work I’ve got some songs to be doing, so I’ll be trying to get them recorded in the near future.

Speaking of which, I’ve done gone and made things a little bit harder on myself for completing the items on that list. A little more than a week ago, I broke down and bought myself a PSP. A used one that came with God of War. I’ve also broken down futher and picked up Final Fantasy Tactics, a component cable, an 8gb memory stick, and a bunch of demos from the PSNetwork. I’ve only played about an hour and a half of Tactics so far (though had played the PS1 version more than once) and I gotta say: awesome. This is what the game should have been in the first place. The translation is great, and I’m really a fan of the style used in the cut scenes. Bravo Squenix. You did some good in this world. Expect me to swoon some more when I finish the current book series I’m involved in.

And for the sake not letting this one escape… here’s a picture I took last week. Better late than never, right?

For those of you who have been here before, welcome back! As you can see, the site has undergone a transformation.  It’s taken a couple of weeks of work to get everything up and running and the only thing to beware of at this point is that in many of my older blog posts, I have linked to other blog posts.  As a result of the redesign, these links may not all be working yet.  I’ll be going through and updating these links in the near future, but in the meantime, hopefully you like the new layout as much as I do and don’t have any difficulty navigating around!

Edit: Oh Dear… Internet Explorer really hates my CSS… I’ll have to try and fix that this weekend.