VirtualWolf @virtualwolf@aus.social

Hi everyone! I've moved over here from mastodon.art, since my enthusiasm far outstripped any sort of actual talent I had, haha.

I live in Western Sydney with my lovely wife Kristina and our half dachshund/half Maltese dog Beanie, and am a hobbyist coder and photographer, Apple enthusiast, and general all-round geek.

#introductions

We're at Coles and our local one often plays actually decent music, unlike the Woolies next to it which seems to play the most depressing crap.

We walked in and Final Countdown was playing, and one of the staff was walking along putting things on the shelves and whistling it to himself, haha.

There we go, one fully restrung and intonated guitar! (I haven't chopped the overhang fully off the top of the strings yet because I'm not convinced I wound them around the tuning pegs enough. Going to give it a couple of days and make sure it's not slipping out of tune.)

I can definitely tell how much brighter the sound is with the new strings, even without having plugged it into the amp yet.

After Featherdale, we went into the city for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called "Lotus". It was definitely tasty, but WAY overpriced, next time we'd just as soon go to Chatswood and get the same food for about a third to half the price.

After that we did a brief wander around Barangaroo, and while this photo isn't the world's best quality (it wasn't even night mode, just the ultra-wide angle lens on my iPhone so it struggled a bit with the low light), I REALLY love the feel of it. Gives me very Bladerunner-esque vibes.

Proper DSLR photos from Featherdale are up! https://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualwolf/albums/72177720301383405

(Image descriptions: photos of wombats, koalas, goats, various birds, a pony, some penguins, a dingo, a frill-necked lizard, and a bilby.)

Update: the brownies were EXCELLENT. You couldn't tell they were gluten-free! They were maybe a little bit too sweet, next time we'll tone down the sugar a touch (and the original recipe said to put icing on top of them, which would have made them INEDIBLE), but overall I'm thoroughly impressed. They were all fudgy and chewy exactly as a brownie should be.

Also my next batch of guitar-related bits and bobs arrived. Looking forward to getting the new strings onto my guitar, I realised it's sounding pretty muddy at this point given I haven't changed them since I bought it two years ago. 😬

Then we went to Featherdale and saw animals! We brought the DSLR and took lots of photos, I'll link them once I've processed and uploaded them.

I made gluten-free brownies for Kristina's birthday! It's a new recipe we haven't tried before so it's possible it'll be awful, but we'll find out this afternoon when we have it.