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Ok, I don’t normally resort to posting youtube videos on my blog but I simply couldn’t resist.  This had me in fits of laughter today. Enjoy.

I remember a big old oak tree where I lived as a kid, next to an historic mansion just out of town that was used as a “boy’s home” for a while (the mansion not the tree!) anyhow, I remember one day, I must have been about 7 at the time, my brother and sister and mum and I were walking to the scary old concrete swimming pool on the property and we were stopped by a photographer who asked if we’d like to be in a photograph she wanted to take under the oak tree.  On further questioning it was revealed the photo was to be given to the Duke & Dutchess of Kent because his father, King George V had planted the old oak tree back in 1901.  It’s known as the “Federation Oak Tree”.  The most crazy thing about the whole experience is that my family are acutally from (and I was actually born) in Kent!

I’ve been meaning to write this story up for ages…. and finally, here it is…

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Two weeks before heading off on my 6 week USA trip I had the opportunity to go to an event in Melbourne where Alan Tudyk was a last minute guest.  This was my first “con” type experience so I jumped at the chance to go.

After some major problems getting to the venue, my brother and I decided to head straight over to the area where Alan’s Q&A would be and hopefully be early enough to get good seats – we underestimated the situation however and there was already a very long line!  After a long wait we managed to get seats near the back but others had to be turned away at the door – I don’t think anyone had expected such a turnout but it was great to see so much support for Alan.

The Q&A was awesome and Alan was the best.  He started off his session by sharing with us something very special.  A home video that he and Nathan had recorded during the filming of Jaynestown which they had recorded to introduce Alan’s family to this new show they were doing.  Alan told us while he didn’t mind us filming him, that he wouldn’t allow anyone to record the video and proceeded to tell us that we may be the only people to ever get to see it, and while he hoped that some day Joss would be able to use it on something, there was a lot of red tape they’d have to go through to get permission from people on camera and they didn’t even know who half of the people were so it may just never happen – it felt pretty good to be part of the group who got to see it – and it was hi-larious!

Lots of questions from the audience followed, some of the usual including the “what kind of practical jokes did Nathan play”.  Alan told a story of how Nathan is “sadistic”, how he’d hand him a lighter which would “shock the hell out of me” and then “he did it again… I fell for it twice… different lighter!” While Nathan was shooting Slither, Alan was taking care of his house and his cat.  When Nathan was due home Alan decided to leave him a note.  On the coffee table was a pad of paper and pen, so Alan picks up the pen to write the note and ZAP!!  Alan said, “It was a good joke, I laughed so hard, and there was no-one else in the house”. He said he still hasn’t got him back for that and someone yelled out “give out his phone number” which Alan thought was an hilarious suggestion and said “oh wow… boy would I … that would come back to me 50-fold, no way… I like where your head is though”.

I stood in line for well over a hour, waiting….waiting…waiting to get an autograph from Alan. Because I was going to the convention in LA I decided not to worry about getting mine at the expo because I could get it in a couple of weeks time, I had however promised to get one for a friend (a friend in the US ironically) so here I was…waiting.   Eventually it was my turn and I asked Alan to sign the CD cover for my friend and while he was signing I told him how I’d bought one of the pens that zaps you like the one Nathan tricked him with, and that my friend (whose birthday I bought it for,  she collects pens) wasn’t impressed but that I found it funny and had thought at the time how funny it would be to hand Nathan a pen like that in the autograph line but that I would never do it because I didn’t think that kind of thing coming from a fan would go down well. Alan thought it was a great idea and said that I should definitely do it, that I had to be really, really careful not to tip him off before hand, but that it was ok to mention his name afterwards.  He assured me that it would be ok when I expressed my concern that Nathan wouldn’t appreciate it so I planned to get another pen and take with me to the convention in Burbank. As I was about to leave the autograph line I said to Alan “see you in two weeks” to which he looked confused and I clarified that I was going to be at the Creation convention.  He said, “oh…the one in Burbank? I won’t be there!  I forgot to tell them.  I won’t be able to make it, I’ll be in New York”.  I told him I was sorry I wouldn’t see him there and he gave me a smile as I left.  It wasn’t until after I left the autograph line that I realised I wasn’t going to be able to get an autograph or a photo op but thankfully he was going to be there again the following day so I made plans to go show up again so I wouldn’t miss out.

At the end of the day, Alan was really generous and though nobody had asked him to, he did a second Q&A session that he wasn’t scheduled to do and he was clearly worn out by then after spending all day signing autographs.  He was aware that some people had had to be turned away at the first session and didn’t want anyone to miss out.  What a BDH!  During this Q&A he mentioned the Burbank convention that he’d been reminded of and that he wasn’t going to be able to make it.

Next day I went back to get an auto & photo op but  I missed out on getting a photo because of some problems with volunteers giving me the wrong information and had to wait in line for more than two hours for an autograph!  I was really disappointed at missing what was probably going to be my only chance ever of having a photo taken with Alan but was pleased to have had the chance to meet him and say hello.

I checked the Creation con website for a few days to see if Alan was removed but when nothing happened I sent them an email to suggest they might want to get in touch with Alan because he’d said in Australia that he wasn’t going to be able to go.  I never heard anything back.

Fast forward two weeks, after three days with only a couple of hours sleep and a 17 hour plane ride (after somehow managing to get put on another flight when mine was cancelled) I arrived in LA, headed to Burbank, threw on some fresh clothes and headed over to the convention center.  Morena was just finishing up when I arrived and I managed to find a couple of friends I was meeting there and someone told me Alan was actually there and doing photos so I went and asked if I was too late to buy a photo op and was told they thought I was but they’d give me one and would give me a refund if I’d missed out.  I just squeezed in and was the last person in.  I walked up to Alan and said “now … you told me you weren’t going to be here!” after a brief blank look he figured out who I was and said, “Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to be, I’m supposed to be in New York”.  I told Alan that I’d brought the pen with me and I’d try to capture something on film if I was allowed, he said that’d be great.  As I was leaving, one of the convention people who’d obviously overheard our conversation said “So YOU’RE the one!  Thank you so much”.  So, it seems that if it wasn’t for me, Alan would not have been at the convention (you can all pay me later ).

Roll on to the autograph session with Nathan the next day and I’m standing in line thinking to myself, am I really brave enough to do this?   So my turn comes and I hand Nathan my White Noise 2 poster and tell him I think it was a great movie and hand him the pen.   Nathan goes to write and pushes the button on the top of the pen and ZAP!!  He threw the pen and started to yell and then in an instant he suddenly yells out ALAN!! I of course laughed and Alan wasn’t even there.  Nathan then gave the pen to his helper and asked him to write something and of course was zapped but that wasn’t enough for Nathan so he took the pen over to Sean Maher and gave him a piece of paper and said, “here, sign this for a fan”… and of course, poor Sean got zapped too and Nathan thought it was hilarious.   Meanwhile I’m standing around stunned that I actually managed to successfully pull off a practical joke on Nathan Fillion of all people.  I then handed Nathan a real pen to sign my poster with and my Firefly DVD box set and that was that.

Knowing that Nathan and Alan are friends I expected that Nathan would say something to Alan about it at some point, which was good because I didn’t think I was going to have the opportunity to tell Alan about it myself but to my surprise Alan showed up at the ME Strike day and I actually had a chance to say hi and ask him if he’d heard what happened with the pen.  Alan got excited and said “No! tell me about it”, so I relayed the story to him and Alan thought it was a great laugh and went off to find Nathan right away to tell him about it.  I was not expecting to see Alan at all that day, or ever again for that matter, so it was a really special experience for me to be able to  bring it full circle and tell Alan about it myself on the second to last day of my trip.

Oh…and my photo op with Alan turned out great!  So now I know that all I need to do to get a good photo of myself is spend three days and 17 hours on a plane without sleep and stand next to Alan Tudyk LOL.   I’ve been meaning to mail my photo to Alan’s manager to ask him to autograph it for me, I really need to bump that up on my to-do list.

I reported a couple of months ago about the new Stargate series that’s in the works called Stargate Universe.  It seems that more news is on the horizon with the network expected to make an announcement soon.

With the second SG1 movie Continuum due to be released next month there’s talk of more movies in Stargate’s future.

Unfortunately producing two television shows and an SG-1 movie all at the same time seems out of the question so either something will have to wait, or Universe won’t get started until Atlantis ends and this is aparently what’s holding up the decision by MGM and SCI FI.

I think the permise of the new series is an intriguing one but I don’t want it rushed in at the expense of Atlantis, if they can find a way to do both AND the movies - now THAT would be something!

There’s more news on the GateWorld website.

I’m sure everyone loves my blog so much they want to know the minute I write a new entry….right?…. well, ok, maybe not, but I’m sure there are plenty other blogs or “feeds” that you would like to keep up with… but you never knew how…right?

Here I am to save the day and tell you how you can do it. There are infinite number of ways to get your feeds but I’ll outline a couple of simple ones for you.

1. FeedReader

FeedReader is a standalone program that you can download to manage your feeds - download here - or go to the FeedReader website to download the program or learn more about it than cover here.

Once you have downloded the program install it and then launch the program.

Unless you actually want them, don’t select any of the options you’re given to subscribe to feeds, just click cancel and move on.

Click on the File menu, and then select New Feed, paste the URL of the feed you want to add and click ok. The URL for the blog feed of this website is http://talhost.net/feed . So long as you have pasted the correct feed address you should get a list of the latest posts. Click on the title of the one you wish to view and it will magically appear in the window on the right. Clicking on the title of an article will give you an unformatted view of the post and double clicking it will show the full webpage in the window and give you an option to open the page in your browser.

You can edit options for each of your feeds to determine how often FeedReader looks for updates, how many articles are archived and so forth.

2. Thunderbird

If you use Thunderbird for email (an ever increasingly popular option and my email program of choice) it has a built in feed reader section. This is very useful if like me, you always have your email program running while working on your computer, because in addition to be notified of new emails, you’ll be notified of new posts on your feed sites as well.

First you need to add a Feed section to your account. Go to the Tools menu then Account Settings. Select the Add Account button and then select the option RSS Feeds & Blogs option. Click Next and name it whatever you like - “My Feeds”, click Next, then Finish.

Next you’ll need to start adding feeds, you should see in you side panel (where your inbox etc is) that you now have a new section named “My Feeds” (or whatever you called it). Click on this and then click on Manage Subscriptions. Click the Add button, then paste the URL of the first feed you want to add. The URL for the blog feed of this website is http://talhost.net/feed and click OK. Continue to add further feeds if you wish and close the box when you’re done - you’ll now see the new feed listed under the “My Feeds” section of Thunderbird. You’re done!

There are many other options available for viewing feeds, if you don’t like either of the options I’ve outlined above, try a google search.

I just bought some chickens….

I purchased them in the names of my nieces & nephew through TEAR Australia - a non profit organisation that created “The World’s Most Useful Gift Catalogue” - where you can buy everything from…well….chickens to toilets! It’s a great idea for buying presents for someone who has everything. You get a gift card to give that person and the donation goes to a help community where they don’t have all the daily stuff we so much take for granted.

If you feel you’d like to donate something - you can buy a gift for as little as $5 - most of us can spare that much at least - and it does give you a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that your chickens will feed people and also provide them with a source of income

How Does it Work?

TEAR Australia pioneered the idea of useful gifts for people who need them most. The concept is simple.

If you purchase a goat, for example, TEAR will allocate your $50 tax-deductible donation to one of our local partner organisations in Afghanistan (or another of the countries listed).

Our partners are grassroots Christian organisations who work alongside the poor - of many faiths and cultures - in their own communities. They will use your donation to provide a goat for a family taking part in a community development project that incorporates goat breeding.

This means that a goat isn’t just a goat; it’s part of a long-term program that helps people identify new and sustainable ways of supporting their families, and assists them to gain relevant skills and resources. The same project may incorporate a number of different gifts to address a range of problems, such as health care, income generation, education or water management.

(Please note: when programs are run in several countries, costs of items are averaged.)

• Tear Australia Useful Gifts Catalogue

Inspired by a friend’s photos from Russia (umm…yeah, so that sounds weird!) here’s a pic I took while in Shepparton (Vic) a couple of years ago. These particular cows were outside the art gallery - or museum… or something.

There are a lot more around the town now than when I was there - definately worth checking out!

Hilarious - just stumbled across some blog site that rated my blog as an 8.3 - gotta wonder if that’s purely a search engine tactic ’cause you see…now they’ve asked me to include this (below) on my website to verify I’m the owner of said blog… and of course, incoming links helps to drive a website’s search engine ranking up.. but none the less…there you go, someone rated me 8.3