TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Back in February of 2014 I bought myself an Orbital walker to supplement my exercise, or lack of exercise, I was getting from 'walking' my dogs for an hour each day.

I say lack of because at the time both our dogs didn't really walk fast enough for me to break any kind of sweat, they kind of 'meandered', whilst window shopping smells and places to pee.

Fast forward to now and I've pretty much exercised on my walker five days a week, every week. My sessions started out at ten minutes and increased to forty minutes for the last three years.

Consequently this machine is starting to become the Millennium Falcon of exercise machines. As Han Solo said;

She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special modifications myself.
Those 'special modifications' are ones I've made to hold this thing together rather than buy a replacement.

It's an AU$200.00 piece of equipment and, it's still good, except f…

Have you been thinking about starting a side hustle to earn a bit of extra money but haven't been able to make a start because of everything you don't know about running your side hustle yet, or because of other things you think you have to do first?

If this is you then chances are, what you're really doing is making excuses not to start. I can't start anything new until I cross a few more things off my to do list. Sound familiar?

I'm too busy to start my side hustle and don't have the time to work on it just now.
One reason you may be stalling is a perceived notion that your side hustle is actually too complicated, and is going to require a lot of research and education before you're even ready to make your first dollar.

Here are some side hustles you can start in the next hour or two for low or even no cost. You don't need to know the ins and outs of everything you just need to start, everything else is 'on the job' training. It doesn't m…

I didn't go see Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse in theatres because a) Sony, and b) Animated movie... and if there's a c) Sony + Spider-man.

Then I started hearing all this word of mouth that this movie is really good so I thought, 'yeah, still not going, I'll wait for the home release'.

Then it won all these awards including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature... so I guess this movie must be good...right?

I rarely see animated features in the cinema because I have little faith in them to deliver enough entertainment at an adult level. Especially movies like Into the Spider-verse which you know is skewing for a younger demographic (as all Spider-man films in general do due to the popularity of the character with kids).

Having bought this movie on DVD (which is why I'm reviewing it now) I don't regret not having seen it in theatres, even though it would have looked amazing on a big screen.

The animation style is what really makes this film stand out. If I…

A common problem among skaters dealing with work/life commitments (typically older skaters with families, careers, or both) is finding the time to actually spend on a skateboard. In fact, life in general getting in the way of skateboarding, is what often leads so many to drop out of the sport, only to rediscover it later, once everything else starts to even out.

I'm certainly in that category. Never really giving skateboarding away altogether but only using a skateboard to get from A to B, when I didn't have a vehicle, for many years. In the last couple of years I've been trying to get back into the sport properly, i.e. building up my trick list and skating for fun and not just to get from A to B.

The problem is I have so many interests, projects, paid work, and more, that I would often leave skateboarding to the end of my day. Kind of as something to look forward to. Except I wouldn't be that motivated to really improve because my mind would be fried from everything …

I've gotten quite behind with posting about my own art projects and skateboarding adventures so I thought I'd begin to remedy that with this one post that allows me to feature four of my related videos.

About midway through 2018 I posted a video to my TETLife Youtube channel where I randomly sketched a couple of characters. One was a skeleton wearing circle specs and a business suit which was inspired by my own avatar TET character.

That video is below.



I got a comment on the video that drawing the skeleton with a skateboard would be a 'winner'. I agreed and decided to see what that would look like. Specifically I set out to make a design that would look good as a skateboard graphic as well as being printed onto other merch, posting the video below of my process.



There was too much footage for one installment so I split the video into two parts. For the second part I donned my TET avatar grey business suit (to match the skeleton design) and tried to do a bit of skatin…

Captain Marvel is a return for the MCU to the origin story. As such, I've seen a few people say this feels more like a phase 1 film than a second to last film in a string of movies spanning ten years.

From my point of view that's not a bad thing. It's not sustainable to try and make every movie bigger than the last when you have infinite stories to tell.

With that said, this is quite an origin story, that features characters both new and old, with the old characters playing younger versions of themselves, given the film is set in the 1990s - before anyone had even heard of The Avengers.

The movie follows Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a former military pilot, as she attempts to unravel her past in order to realize her full potential as the MCU's most powerful superhero. Along the way the Earth is caught in a war between two alien races.

If you follow the MCU at all you'll be aware of the controversy surrounding this character. A certain subsection of fans are struggl…