The Extraordinary Tourist Life

Australian energy consumers are currently in a crisis, receiving some of the highest power bills in the world, making us a prime target for the nuclear energy vultures who claim their industry will bring the cost of electricity down.

It's a smoke and mirrors argument when you consider the cost of actually producing electricity isn't the main reason for Australia's ever increasing consumer electricity prices. Hypothetically, even after the cost of installing nuclear power plants, the actual cost reductions won't be as dramatic as the nuclear energy industry would have you believe.
According to this article, A high price for policy failure: the ten-year story of spiralling electricity bills by David Blowers, published in January 2018, the two biggest factors are the cost of the network (transporting electricity), and the retailer margins (cost of billing and servicing the customer). These are followed by the wholesale cost (actually generating the power), and the enviro…

For those of you who celebrate the Christmas holiday, whether it be a religious event and/or just a time to reconnect with family and swap gifts, you'll no doubt have noticed Christmas decorations starting to appear in stores.

If you're like me you probably leave all your gift buying until the last minute, making it near impossible to shop for gifts online (unless you have access to that sweet Amazon Prime two day shipping option).

So... this post is a friendly reminder to get your online shopping started NOW and save yourself the rush to find gifts, in the week before Christmas, by actually going out into retail stores.

Of course my ulterior motive is to point out that my art is available on numerous gift items in my Redbubble store... and who doesn't like receiving gifts that support independent creators to keep making cool things for you to enjoy.

Plus it makes for a cooler gift experience if your gifts come with a story about how much you enjoy a specific artist's…

As someone who really enjoys the Marvel movies, and has written about them quite extensively in previous posts, I feel I should make mention of the passing of Stan Lee last week.

I wouldn't say Stan was a hero of mine, or that I grew up with him (though unknowingly I did to a certain extent). I really only became aware of who Stan Lee was when he started making cameos in Marvel films.

Then I really got to know him through the various online web shows he had, interviews, and his own work promoting Marvel at almost any opportunity.

He seemed like a great guy, and by all accounts he was.

I never really bought comic books. Most of the ones I had were given to me. My avenue into the superhero world was Saturday morning cartoons through the 1970's and 80's. Marvel got me with reruns of their, kind of animated, more motion graphic, cartoons from the 1960's. They weren't great but boy did they have catchy theme tunes.



For me Stan serves as an inspiration somewhere along t…

Batman Ninja, the DC animated movie set in feudal Japan, written, directed and animated by respected Japanese artists, sounds like an amazing proposition.

Unfortunately, from my point of view, it follows very closely in the footsteps of most of DC's straight to video animated movies, with a poorly thought through story.

Which is a shame because the art and animation is really amazing. Seeing Batman and his rogues gallery in this anime style is something I'd watch all day, if the stories were actually good.



Initially the movie had me hooked in with not only the art and animation but also through the use of time travel, as a plot device, to send Batman back through time to feudal Japan. How could it go wrong? Batman, Anime, and Time Travel are all things that pique my interest more than most.

As well, you get a whole bunch of familiar characters redesigned for their new time and location. Which is an additional treat for the eyes.

The movie fails because the initially strong pre…

I'm, what I would describe as, a casual Doctor Who fan (the long running BBC TV series if you've somehow never heard of the character or show). I grew up with the show in the 1970s and 80's but kind of dropped away when sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, took over the role - and definitely tuned out for Sylvester McCoy's turn).

Colin was too much of a contrast to Peter Davison's fifth Doctor. I remember struggling to get used to his version of the character. Sylvester's Doctor was even harder to connect with, though looking at clips of him as the Doctor now, I can see his influence on several of the Doctors that came after him.

When the show was rebooted in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston's ninth Doctor I was back in for his entire one season run. It was kind of a shame Chris didn't stick around for long because I really liked his Doctor. As I heard Colin Baker say in some Doctor Who Reunion show at one point, Chris' Doctor was the 'cool' Doctor th…

Have you received an email with a subject line or content that contains an actual password you use either currently or at some point in time (likely it's one you've been using for a few years)?

The email claims that the sender has footage from your webcam of you visiting a porn site for some 'fun' and threatens to release that footage to all your contacts unless you pay a specified amount to a supplied Bitcoin account.

It also mentions your password was obtained by installing malware on a porn streaming site that basically gave the sender access to your keystrokes, desktop, and webcam.

I've received such an email twice now. I've posted the second below. The first email requested a deposit of US$7000 to said Bitcoin account. This time that number has gone down to $1000 (Rude! are they saying I can't afford $7000? Spoiler, I can't but, rude!).


Unfortunately I was kicking myself for deleting that first email because, shortly after, I realized it was a gre…