We're arrived in Uluwatu today which means new scooter day. I've been driving a Honda Vario for 2 months and whilst it's a nice little scooter it's not too powerful especially with 2 people on the bike.

Today I've upgraded to Yamaha XMAX which is a slightly more powerful and larger bike than the Vario. It feels like a nicer more high quality bike; from the brakes being a lot stiffer to the suspension actually doing something compared to the Vario.

I've loved driving scooters so much in Bali that I'm considering getting a motorbike license when I get back to Australia. There is nothing like cruising along a beautiful driving road with the wind in your face; especially when it's warm everyday like it is in Bali. The Top Gear guys were on to something.

Having a full motorbike license is beneficial when travelling for a few reasons:

1. I'm fully insured and covered if anything (touch wood) happens
2. Me and Emma would love to go to Italy or France one day and having a scooter there would be an awesome way to get around the country side
3. It's a cheap second vehicle which on the odd occasion we do need back home

Ubud had a wet afternoon.

I added cover art to my games page today and I have to say I'm rather happy with how it turned out.

I'd like to think someone will look at all this stuff one day and find it interesting.

I agree with Gruber's takes here. I gave it a demo and it wasn't a great experience. Maybe it works for some people though.

On the weekend we rode the scooter up to the Kintamani region. We took some beautiful photos of Mount Batur, went to some hot springs and had a nice lunch overlooking the mountain.

This morning when me and Emma were getting coffee there was a fair bit of commotion around our villa. It turned out it was a festival day for the village and many locals were gathering.

What was a bit sad and confronting was that the locals were engaging in cock fighting. There were maybe 20+ chickens either being held by a man or stuffed into a bag in the area. There was a small cage and the 2 chickens at a time were stuffed in and had a fight... I guess?

It was quite sad seeing how distressed the chickens were and there was a lot of blood all over the ground.

Cool that we witnessed a local tradition but also sad seeing the animal cruelty. I didn't take any photos.

I listened to this episode of Syntax and gave Zed a quick try (after updating) in the last 20 minutes. I've improved a lot since I last used it. I feel like this is pretty much usable out of the box for the large majority of the projects I work on. Could be something I use for work next week just as an experiment.

This combo of Jason Day and the Bryon Bros is so good. Once again Bryan Bros produce fantastic golf content.

The whole story of the Silksong's release is fascinating from a business perspective.

Here's a collection of photos from the past weekend in Ubud. I'm going to do a bit of a dump.

We went to:

• Pyramids of Chi for an excellent Yin Yoga session, it was really mindful and relaxing doing some stretches and listening to the sounds of the farm animals and running water around the property
• Jungle Fish, one of the best day clubs we've been to, I had a really nice lunch (duck) and the view/pool experience was outstanding, it also wasn't too far from where we're staying
• A temple to have our most spiritual experience of the trip, we had a Melukat (cleansing ritual) where we went to a temple and (with an english speaking guide and a local priest) did some meditating and praying, before being cleansed by holy water, this was basically having a bucket of water tipped onto your head, we then had a massage, we did all of this at Plataran Ubud
• Cretya and went for a quick swim before having breakfast, it was nice and quiet so we could take some cool photos in the pool with the rice fields in the background
• Tegallalang Rice Terrace, just an absolutely stunning place, some of the coolest natural sights I've ever seen
• Waroeng Bernadette, the best Indonesian food we've had on the trip so far, the Rendang was absolutely banging

A couple more pictures from the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and the Water Palace.

On Sunday last weekend we visited two waterfalls to the east of Ubud. They were both stunning.

We firstly went to the Suwat Waterfall which was ~30 minutes from where our villa is.

About a 10 minute drive from there was the Taman Sari Waterfall & Natural pool.

We've had some really good food in Ubud these past couple of days. Some notes:

• The parma I had at Suka was fantastic
• I had an amazing Katsu Curry at KATSU•SAN and the owner randomly lived in Malvern East (we still need to find out his full story), we also had the whole venue to ourselves this night as it was flooding outside
• The pasta at Nusa By/Suka - Ubud was phenomenal
• The thai food at 2 BULAN was spicy but really nice

I'm still playing Hollow Knight: Silksong and having an absolute ball with it.

I just conquered Mount Fay and it was an enthralling experience. I now have double jump! It really was a throwback to the mountain climb I experienced in Celeste which is surely where the devs got some inspiration from. The game is really a mis-mash of lots of other games and is a massive proponent of the everything is a remix idea.

Some other inspiration would come from:

• The souls like genre in terms of bosses
• Obviously the metroidvania genre in terms of exploration and levelling up of abilities to open up the map
• There's a hint of Zelda in this game as well in terms of collecting items and doing tasks

We're thinking about checking out Mount Butur in a couple of weeks.

There's a couple of options we're thinking around tackling it.

You can take a Jeep up the mountain which would be pretty fun driving across the volcanic rock. There's an Airbnb experience or a Seek Sophie option.

You can do it at sunrise or sunset. With sunrise you probably get a slightly better experience but it means a ~2.30AM wake up which is pretty brutal as it's around an hour drive to Kintamani which is where the mountain is. I'm not sure if I want to mess with my sleep schedule that much but it might be worth it for a 1 time experience.

You can also hike up the mountain which also looks pretty cool but would just be a different kind of experience. It seems like you hike up in a big group which I guess could be interesting.

I've been testing Helium browser over the past few weeks. It's a great option when I need something Chromium for whatever reason.

I always love looking at old Melbourne historical things.

The 1966 Melways has to rank as one of the coolest old Melbourne based resources you can find online.

It's fascinating looking at the map and seeing how much my local area (Bonbeach and Chelsea) has changed over the last almost 60 years. It's Map 97 for those interested.

You also can't go past this 1945 visual of Melbourne but in my opinion the Melways trumps this.

Not too much to report from Bali this week. I worked all week and then we moved to Ubud on Saturday afternoon.

We love our new place it has a nice big pool and stronger air con in our bedroom.

As I write this we're about to head out on a scooter chasing some waterfalls. I'll likely post those pictures next week.

There's an annoying bug with Google Maps that I've encountered a few times whilst being in Indonesia.

You need scooter directions in places like Canggu and Ubud. They differ greatly from car directions.

When I have a VPN on (set to Australia) Google Maps defaults to the Australian settings which I guess is fine in and of itself. However, for some reason scooter directions are not enabled by Australian Google Maps. So I get car directions which often take double the amount of travel time.

The only way to turn this no scooter setting off is to switch the VPN off and clear the app cache (or delete the app) which is very annoying. I just don't understand why Google can't just offer scooter directions when it knows I'm in Bali based on my long and lat (even if my IP is in an Australian location).

I watched Godfather 2 earlier this week and my goodness it is a good movie. Can't believe I hadn't seen it until now. The whole switching timeline thing is perfect and the drama and music is as good as the first movie.

I also watched a little bit of Godfather 3 and it stinks. It's a terrible movie and was clearly just a cash grab.