This week we flew as a family to Queensland to spend time with family up in Brisbane.

We had a lot of fun as a family and done quite a few activities during the week. It was very humid, but we managed to push through and get the most out of the trip.

I also did some self-learning of Blender where I made a few models for our #SLColonies community and used AI to generate me some seamless textures to use in modelling.

I think next I will dabble with learning how to sculpt on a high poly model and then bake the normals in to get detail without the use of the extra polygons.

Ariyah’s 10th Birthday

Ariyah got to spend her 10th Birthday up in Queensland with her cousins which she loved very much.

Really she got to have three birthdays all up, because one was celebrated up in Queensland, and then when we got home in Melbourne, she got more gifts from Grandma which were some #Aphmeow surprise toys she’s really into - and then another Birthday cake at with the other Grandparents!

Speaking of Aphmeow. Ariyah is very much into surprise based toys. Part of the whole #Gacha or #Gachapon movement where you get a surprise and there is are chances of getting Common, Uncommon and Rare items from the collection.

I think those are legal again in #SecondLife, so I may need to create a cool #SLColonies based Gacha collection?

Australia Zoo

Every time we go to Queensland, we can’t go without visiting the #AustraliaZoo, and this year was no exception.

We love visiting the local lizards that come out to the back. We always bring cut-up apples and feed them to them as we browse the other enclosed animals.

And of course there’s the #Crocoseum show that has a bird show followed by the famous crocodile show where they get the crocodile to come out to the water’s edge and strike for food. But this year, we got extremely lucky on two occasions during this show.

Firstly, we decided to sit next to a barrier which kind of blocks your view down below at times, but I knew when the bird show comes along, that some of the birds like to land on the barrier - which they did!

On this occasion, this cockatoo didn’t want to leave! The other five birds flew back to their keepers, but this one was stubborn and stayed out to watch the show for at least another half hour, just sitting there in front of us as one of the keepers tried to coax it to come back.

I guess it wanted to enjoy the show for a bit before deciding it had enough and wanted to head back in with the rest of its family.

We also got extremely lucky when #RobertIrwin showed up and was the host of the crocodile portion of the show!

He put on a great show, much longer than the previous years I had seen and much more detailed. You can really see his father, #SteveIrwin, in him.

Robert educated the crowd about crocodile safety along the water’s edges. Describing how these animals strike fastest in the water or straight out at the edge, but once on land, they will quickly determine that you are not worth the energy and are much too quick for them on land on your two feet.

Just after taking this photo, there were two #Ibis birds, which we also call Bin Chickens, that decided it was a good idea to walk out by the pool directly in front of the crocodile by the edge. The audience, as well as Robert, were watching in awe, hoping that the croc would not decide to strike at the bird for an extra free feed.

Luckily, the crocodile did not decide to strike, and a live meal was not had. It would have been a little traumatic for the younger kids in the audience, but also quite fascinating to see. I had the camera in hand and ready to click the shutter in burst; however, due to the crocodile not striking, I did not end up getting a shot. Thinking back now, though, I should have taken a photo as it would have told a nice story in this article.

Finally, Robert also got out a long rope and fed the crocodile while still tethered, so that he could showcase how dangerous crocodiles are in the water once they have food in their mouths.

The crocodile instinctively rolls itself in the water in order to break its food from its limbs and have a feed. Usually, that’s enough to end an animal’s (or human’s) struggles in pain as the limb gets torn from the flesh, leaving them to be eaten further and likely bleed out and pass out whilst being consumed.

All in all, a great trip out at the Australia Zoo, and already can’t wait to return again the next time we are up in the beautiful state of #Queensland.

Here’s a photo of a cheeky koala to end this section.

Blender Self-Learning

During downtime, thanks to bringing my #Macbook along (oh boy, buying a good laptop has changed everything I do. This is much better than having a PC stuck at a desk that you can’t work with when out and about!), I logged into #Udemy and followed along to some courses on #Blender to get a grasp of things.

One of my goals this year is to be able to produce assets for our #IndieGame, #SLColonies.

After quite a few hours of following along, I was ready to work on my own assets. Not the best work yet as my first attempts, and I am still learning how to get the details out with proper texturing - you know, AO Baking, Normal Baking and so forth.

The above is a cherry tree which I ended up finishing off later in the week for our community. It is scripted so that when a player clicks on it, they will harvest anywhere from one to four cherries at a time.

This is a pot plant system I completed. For now, it will be a chilli plant, which will grow over time, and players will be able to obtain chilies from it in order to use them in cooking recipes. It will be expanded to allow many more plant variations to be grown from it.

I learned how to use roughness textures to get the cherries reflecting on the cherry tree and some shininess on the chillies, while the rest of the plant looks more rough and doesn’t reflect the light— pretty cool if you don’t mind me saying.

Dinner at Felons

We also had dinner out at #FelonsBrewingCo in Brisbane, which sits below the Story Bridge.

We had the Thai Salad, which for some reason was overly spicy. So much so that my Vietnamese wife couldn’t even eat it. Both our plates were packed with chilli. Not sure if the chef is over that dish and trying to get people off it, but if so, they are going about it the right way. Thought I was in for something cool in the heat and boy was I wrong.

The star of the night however, was the Story Bridge. I brought my camera along and tried a hand held longer exposure shot to capture all the colours in the water ripples.

Excuse the slight blurriness, as I was not using a stand for starters, and I was on a moving platform on the waters edge!

I wasn’t far enough away to capture the full bridge and was limited to a 24mm lens. It was a spare of the moment photograph to see what a longer exposure could do. Pretty happy with the outcome!

Hike & Breakfast at Lovewell, Mount Gravatt

My wife and I woke up early on one of our final days in Brisbane, at around 6:00 AM, in order to go for a small 40-minute hike up Mount Gravatt from our location, to also pay a visit to the Lovewell Cafe for scones up the top.

We were not acclimatised to the humidity and heat of Brisbane, coming from Melbourne, so I was sweating quite a bit by the time I got to the top.

I snapped some photos with my phone on the day.

We saw this cool little door on a tree on the way up to the café. Guessing it’s for the local gnome residents.

We saw this sleepy koala up the top just by the car park. They are beautiful creatures.

We were also greeted with this beautiful view of Brisbane City once inside the air-conditioned #LovewellCafe.

The scones and the coffee were wonderful. We got jealous when we saw the guy behind us get some Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, so we actually ended up coming back the next day with the rest of the family for a bigger meal!

Lately, I have been very much into drinking my espresso coffees instead of coffee with milk. I’ve been on a calorie deficit diet, and this has helped me cut down on total calorie intake throughout the day, as most coffee is a shot of coffee and a full cup of milk on top. I’ve come to enjoy the taste of pure black coffee these days.

On the way down, we spotted these cheeky buggers being curious while going about their daily routine. Beautiful rainbow lorikeets.

Conclusion

A wonderful week was had.

As usual, I hope that you enjoyed reading this Weekly Recap. Feel free to leave your comments, as I love reading them and replying.

Look out for more to come!