TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

W riting this blog is largely both a labor of love and a discipline. Since about 2006 (the blog started in 2004) I have written a minimum of two posts per month. Sometimes I've posted more, particularly in the last 4-5 years, where I've tried to write and post at least one article a week without fail. Unfortunately it's not a niche blog, unless the niche is things that interest me. Which means my blog is either too broad to have regular readers or too niche to have anyone other than my mum reading it. Which she does (hi Mum) as we established back in January of 2014 in the post Ya Mum Reads it... That said, this blog overall regularly gets 6-7k views every month, mostly through people finding various articles through search engines. By far the largest traffic source is 'Other' which is basically unknown sources. I'm willing to bet a large percentage of that is the dead internet. Bots testing my comments to see if they're spamable or Illuminati spammers. Whil...

F rom the moment it was announced, I knew I was probably not going to see Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in cinemas. The Mandalorian Disney+ Series finished it's story with no real pointers towards where a future story might go, beyond 'the further adventures of...' There was nothing to really hook me in. I did enjoy the series but it never got me invested in the title character or his cute prodigy so much that I wanted to see more.  Unlike the original Mandalorian, Boba Fett, who I was eager to see more of, until he got his own spin off series. Then I just wondered who wanted this particular story, that clarified everything about such a cool and mysterious character until there was no mystery left? Then we got the trailers for The Mandalorian and Grogu which  confirmed it was just a new adventure as a standalone film, with the purpose of introducing the characters to people who hadn't watched the series. I don't regret not seeing this in cinemas. It's a ...

Mattias playing the Ukulele that turns into a guitar in ukulele mode. Y ouTuber,  Mattias Krantz , set out to solve one of the biggest problems with ukuleles, and that is, they are ukuleles. As he points out in his video they're one of the only instruments that people respect you less for the better you get at playing them. As someone who bought a ukulele because I wanted to learn an instrument, and I couldn't really afford a guitar (plus I found a ukulele that I think is pretty cool, but only in comparison to other ukuleles) you can imagine my interest would be really piqued by a ukulele that transforms into a guitar. Anyway, there is not much that needs to be said other than, a ukulele that transforms into a guitar isn't a thing you can just buy off the shelf, which is why Mattias set out to invent one. Nothing I say will be more interesting than just sitting back and watching his video below. It's a fascinating journey that I wanted to share and, maybe one day, eith...

B ack in the 1990s I was a big fan of the Tomb Raider computer games. Aside from the obvious drawcard of the games female lead, Lara Croft, it was the only game back in the day that was a true 3D, third person shooter/adventure game. I wasn't a fan of first person shooters (though I played Dark Forces a lot at the time), I've always preferred computer games where you control a character on screen. Sadly I haven't kept up with the rebooted Tomb Raider games with more realistic graphics and game engine. While I did like Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider movies, she did make the character lean a little too much like a female James Bond, with her own tech guru who gave her wonderful toys. Recently I renewed my HBOMax subscription, and saw that the 2018 Tomb Raider movie, with Alicia Vikander in the title role, was soon to be leaving the platform, so I decided to watch it before it did. Obviously intended to reboot the franchise, in this film Lara goes on her first quest to dete...

My skateboarding time is often limited to short solo sessions in my driveway and I wanted to make that a little more fun. O ne thing I've wanted for a long time is a solo version of Game of S.K.A.T.E.  As someone who mostly skateboards in my driveway, by myself, it can be a bit tedious to run through the tricks you know every session, then maybe spend time learning something new. I've often thought, what might make a solo session more fun is an app that gamifies practicing the tricks you know, and allows you to add tricks as you learn them, or encourages you to try tricks that are pretty much skateboarding basics any skateboarder would aspire to learn. The idea has been in my head for more than half a decade at this point. While I was a computer programmer back in the day (we're talking late 1980s) I haven't kept up with coding. At least nothing more complex than HTML and Java script bashing. I did try to learn one of the many game creators ( Construct for a different ...

T his is the first time in quite a while we've seen a live action Spider-Man that is, essentially, a fully formed, grown up superhero, fighting crime on his own terms rather than looking to mentors to guide him.  In  Spider-Man: Brand New Day  it's four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home . No one knows who Peter Parker is but Spider-Man has become a local legend, helping to keep New York free of crime. Personally, Peter is still struggling with not reconnecting with his former friends, whose lives are again put at risk when a new foe crosses his path. If you're a fan of Tom Holland's Spider-Man films, and the MCU in general this film should not only not disappoint, you may even consider it to be one of the best MCU films you've seen in a while. I really enjoyed all the quick cameos by small time Spider-Man villains even though I don't know many of them. Their inclusion really started to broaden the scope of the character, despite this installment ...

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache   Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon  penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

T his was a movie that I was always interested in but was never going to see in theatres. I think that's the same for a lot of people judging by how well Masters of the Universe didn't do at the box office, while, as I write this, it is the number two most popular new release on Amazon Prime Video in Australia. In cinemas the reception seemed mixed but generally positive. The movie didn't seem to get bad reviews, rather reviewers said overall it was quite fun but flawed in what it was trying to be. I would agree. It's very much a movie that doesn't really know its audience, and is really trying to have something for all ages while simultaneously not delivering fully for any age group. It's too violent and adult for younger audiences (the ones that would play with the toys now) but not grown up and adult enough for older audiences (the ones who used to play with the toys back in the 80s). It comes off as trying to be a family film, with things that a younger aud...

Australian PM, Anthony Albanese. A midst growing concerns by Australian artists, specifically musicians most recently, about AI being trained on their work, on July 15 the world's most boring PM, Anthony Albanese delivered a keynote address from the University of Sydney on AI in Australia . I'm not going to pick apart the entire speech. Generally, it focused on the opportunities AI and its continued development in this country could bring to Australians, while assuring everyone the Government will be looking at (and possibly regulating) the negative aspects of the technology, such AI being trained with copyrighted data, and the environmental nightmare that data centres present with their excessive need for water and power. To that end the PM is setting up The Office of AI, within his own department and cabinet, that will spend, the rest of this year looking into all the issues and likely working towards building a framework for how we can benefit from AI technologies moving for...

T his wasn't a movie I particularly wanted to see even though it's right in my wheelhouse, realistic Sci-fi. However, after Project Hail Mary did so well in theatres it became a movie I wanted to check out once it reached streaming. In this case I watched it on Amazon Prime Video. It wasn't really on my radar because, on the surface, it's not anything I haven't seen before, even quite recently. Lone astronaut goes on some kind of mission, mission fails, astronaut tries to salvage the mission and somehow finds a way home. However, in my opinion, what makes this film different is in the detail. There are a lot of often seen tropes here presented in new ways, that may capture your imagination. The movie opens with science teacher, Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), waking up from deep sleep on a spaceship, far from Earth, with no memory of why he is there. Presumably a side effect of basically being put in storage while the spaceship travels across vast distances. From the...

LEO Coupe Flying Car. Fully electric jet lift system. Image: LeoFlight website . O f the things we were promised for the future by movies, the dream of real flying cars, is right up there for me with autonomous humanoid robots.  I've actually written several articles about the development of flying cars concluding, most notably, that most working prototypes, and proof of concept flying cars, are really just compact aeroplanes or oversized drones. They don't look anything like actual cars.  Which is understandable given that, so far, no one has developed any kind of anti-gravity engine capable of  lifting the weight of your average family car with the family, probably a couple of dogs, and a picnic lunch all on board.  Are We Any Closer to Flying Cars? While I haven't done a deep dive researching the full state of play, I did fall down the rabbit hole enough to see some promising projects, including one that may just be the front runner to a mass produced flying car ...

I 've never read 'Woman of Tomorrow', the Tom King comic book miniseries that  Supergirl  is supposed to be inspired by. In fact I've never read a Supergirl comic at all. Which means I have no expectations for this movie to live up to. Much like all the comic book characters I love on the big and small screens - I've barely read any of their comics (even when I was in my prime comic book years of my youth. I read more Archie comics than anything because I could get their book collections for free - and my comic of choice was Mad Magazine so... there's that). All this to say, I can only judge these comic book characters from what I've seen before on screens. I've seen the original 80's Supergirl movie with Helen Slater (she's fine, the movie not so much). I've watched at least the first season of the CW Supergirl show with Melissa Benoist (Melissa's awesome in the role - she really commits to it, easily going from sweet to I'll burn...

Darwin commercial pilot, James Greenberger,   has fulfilled a childhood dream by building his own hovercraft in his carport.  M ost people are familiar with the concept of a hovercraft. Usually it's a vehicle of some kind that sits on a pocket of air, held underneath it via some kind of 'skirt', allowing it to travel on land or water. Typically they're mostly used on water.  While I'm late to the party, recently an ABC news report from 2019 popped up in my YouTube feed of a hovercraft that actually looks like it hovers above the ground. Designed and built by Darwin man,  James Greenberger, the commercial pilot fulfilled a childhood dream by building his own hovercraft: a ground effect vehicle, built in his carport from plans purchased on the internet. The original report is embeded below. Darwin man stuns locals with a hovercraft built in his carport | ABC News Cut to a couple of years later, and James has upgraded his hovercraft to something looking a litt...

"Who's the GOAT?" by TET 2026 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (40 x 50cm). Buy My Original Artwork or High Quality Prints (ArtPal Store) Prints Available here . (RedBubble Store) A bout a month and a half ago I first wrote about the inspiration for my latest whimsical art cat, Who is the GOAT?, in my post,  TET Artwork Diary: Cats, Goats, and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon, Number Six . That particular post covers where the idea came from and the challenges I had sketching the final composition. Worth a read, if you haven't already, to get the full story of this artwork. This post I'm mostly going to cover the behind the scenes of actually painting the artwork and, of course, give you the links to where you can buy the original or high quality prints. Rather than go into any great detail on my painting process, which I've talked about numerous times in many of my videos, I'm just going to focus on a few key highlights unique to this work. First, i...

I 'm like a lot of people whose first experience of Spider-Noir was in 2018's,  Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse animated feature film, where the character was voiced by Nicolas Cage. Prior to that I'd never heard of Spider-Noir. While the character was good in that movie I wasn't so impressed that I was clamoring for any kind of movie or TV series featuring the character. However, the moment I heard Nicolas Cage was doing a live action TV series based on Spider-Noir, I was in. Cage is one of those actors who always goes all in on a role, with interesting ideas that can be hit or miss, but you appreciate his commitment, even when it's a miss.  Thankfully in  Spider-Noir  (Amazon Prime) Cage, who is a fan of old Noir films and Comic books, doesn't disappoint. For reasons that are explained over the course of the series, this isn't Peter Parker Spider-Noir (known as just 'The Spider' in the show). Instead we get Ben Reilly (Cage), a seasoned, down-on...

Federal Liberal Party Leader, Angus Taylor, and Deputy Leader, Jane Hume. Image: Gemini and TET. G enerally I try to keep one eye on Australian politics, mainly at the Federal level because that affects the whole country. State based politics really only become interesting at state election time, as they're something of an indicator of how the various parties might fare in a Federal election. As indicated by the gains One Nation has been making at state level, with a recent Australian Financial Review/Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll suggesting the party is now the most popular party on primary support . Much of this surge has been at the expense of the Liberal Party of Australia with former supporters seemingly agreeing that you may as well be voting for Labor since the parties are so similar (they aren't but they're both close enough to the political 'middle' it can certainly seem that way). It seems the all new Liberal Leadership of Angus Taylor, and Deput...

T his is another movie that I've finally got around to seeing.  Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die  (2025) caught my attention because Sam Rockwell is in it, and it is a time travel movie. Despite not being particularly successful upon release, it's not a bad movie by any means. It can be somewhat confusing and a little disjointed with it's frequent flashbacks, but there are definitely some interesting ideas and visuals to enjoy. The film opens when a man enters a Los Angeles cafe, late one evening, claiming to be from the future. He says, within the cafe is just the right combination of people who can save humanity from  a massive technological error that will doom humanity.  He could be telling the truth, except he looks rather a lot like a crazy homeless man, and he does claim the device he's wearing is a bomb, initially, to stop patrons from just walking out. It's a great premise that easily draws you into this, possibly crazy, man's dilemma. Sam Rockwell pr...

Top: MQ-9 Reaper UAV Photo (Public Domain) by  Lt. Col. Leslie Pratt Bottom: Sypaq Corvo Cardboard Drone W hat do you think of when you hear the term 'drone warfare'? Chances are those Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) used by the United States Military come to mind because, of course, right? Drone warfare is high tech, it's the future. I'm probably one of the last people to know but Australian company Sypaq and the Ukraine Military have been changing the face of drone warfare with small cardboard (well, technically foamboard but it's a type of padded cardboard) drones that cost only a couple of thousand dollars, sold as flat packs that can be constructed in about an hour, on site. The Sypaq Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System Drones are actually intended for logistics use - which I imagine is planning and strategizing based on information collected with the difficult to detect, reusable drones.  However, the drones are also designed to be disposable and, with ...