Procrastination Page: 2005

I had a go at this after checking out Dave's site and rather than write up all the details, I'm using their coding....more on the video recording epic later

the Cutting Edge
(61% dark, 46% spontaneous, 5% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | DARK

Your humor's mostly innocent and off-the-cuff, but somehow there's
something slightly menacing about you. Part of your humor is making
people a little uncomfortable, even if the things you say aren't
themselves confrontational. You probably have a very dry delivery, or
are seriously over-the-top.

Your type is the most likely to appreciate a good insult and/or broken bone and/or very very fat person dancing.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: David Letterman - John Belushi

The 3-Variable Funny Test!

- it rules -

If you're interested, try my latest:
The Terrorism Test

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 77% on darkness
You scored higher than 50% on spontaneity
You scored higher than 0% on vulgarity

Monday, September 12, 2005

I take it back

I just commented on http://evildrclam.blogspot.com/ that I was still anonymous enough not to get spam....3 spams later....must get comment screener like accidental blog has.

The new toy

As part of my tax return, I got myself a TV tuner card for my computer (AVERTV 303 from memory). It can pick up FM radio, TV and, my prime reason for buying, copy my old VHS videos so I can put them on DVD and get rid of the 1/2 cubic meter of VHS tapes. Just what I need, another task involving hours of fiddling with computers.

The FM radio works great. I have a remote and can switch FM/TV channels while lying in bed.

On Saturday I bought a new aerial so that I could actually pick up channels. Then I found that the reception sucked for everything except channel ten and the cable was too short to shift the aerial round. So I swapped it with my parents 20 year old aerial with 2 meters of cable. This worked better for both of us, I got better reception, as strangely enough so did they. They also got an aerial that doesn't fall off the tv everytime the wind blows the curtain - the new one has sucker pads. Of course the reception is still not great for non ten channels. I suspect I should have spent more than $10 and got an aerial that actually advertised that it worked for UHF - I think 10 is VHF and the others aren't. This is pure guesswork on my part though.

Once the TV was ok - sort of -, I tested that it would record TV channels and it seemed to record onto my computer at the same resolution I was seeing on the live feed. So I attached my video and an old copy of Star trek the next generation. The one where Data gets a girlfriend. After much hassle, I discovered that TV channel 68 picked up the video. The TV sound wasn't great but picture was ok. From the help menu, it seemed that video should have been picked up by composite or Svideo - I think the former rather than the latter as the cabel attachment diagram for Svideo was different. Neither worked though.

Then came the real hassle. After recording to computer in DVD format (which seems to be a DVD compatable version of MPEG-II), I tried recording to DVD. Four frizbees and three different software programs later, I still can't get my DVD player to identify the DVD. It will work with VCD versions I burned with ROXIO videowave though.
Part of the problem is that I have light versions of my burning software and they cunningly leave out DVD parts. The other part is the bits of them I can use to record TV/video seem to want to record channel 4 - which is a blue screen, and I'm having trouble changing that and getting them to pick up video anyway. Nero says it will burn to DVD but that function only picks up *.ivo, *.vob and some other non-recognisable file format. None of which are files I seem to be able to make. Power DVD seemed happy to make a DVD from mpeg, but my DVD player just didn't recognise it. I may actually have to buy some proper software and get rid of all the others.

Even if I get that working, as I suspected from when I played the files on my computer, video playback sound is atrocious. I played the VCD on my DVD player and the old VHS tape. The image quality is identical but the sound went to pot. I may have to get different sound cabling. Apparently you can get a cable that has separate left and right cables (or was it sound and audio) from the video and then a single other end to plug into the card (rather than the old aerial type connection).

I am so going to understand this by the time I get it working - aren't computers fun.

Feel free to add comments/advice containing weird acronyms and high tech geeky mumbo jumbo.

Monday, August 22, 2005

The fellowship of the extended version

On my trip to Ayr to scrapbook last weekend my cousin and I decided to watch all three extended versions of LOTR...in one day. Twelve hours later, at 1am, I was thinking - even more than I did when I saw it at the cinema - hurry up and get on the ship and finish this thing! I must say I liked the extra scenes with the hobbits and Frodo still annoyed my with his constant worried eyebrow look. But now I've done it. I too have seen the the entire extended epic. The next day I was violently ill in the evening. I'm blaming too much TV - maybe I should have slowly become aclimatised to LOTR by watching the short verions one at a time again...maybe eating sugary stuff all day didn't help either.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

a new internet game

I've been going to pubmed ( a medical/health data base)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
and doing searches on the words NASA And "word of interest" and seeing how many research papers turn up. 19 for bacteriophage. Its amazing what NASA is involved with. I got interested because a woman here is looking at a protein in crustaceans and she found they have been taking crabs up into space to look at muscle wastage (craaaabs in spaaaace). Then someone else piped up with the research done on gut flora to try to avoid methane built up in spacesuits...faaarts in spaaace! heh.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

The big weekend

This has been something of an event filled weekend for me. I went to Gem club on Friday night and sawed a couple of rocks in half for my nephew, then after a late night, I had a very full Saturday. My cousin and I went to Creative Memories Scrapbooking day and scrapbooked all day, with a break for lunch - caesar salad at the Blue Bottle cafe - yum. Afterwards we walked down Gregory street to the Strand and watched the "Living Heroes" parade for VP60 day. Lots of veterans in very nice old cars, plus some very large pieces of current military equipment and people..the machines were large, not the people. After that we went down to the beach with the old picnic blanket and ate beef in lime and coriander with noodles (using chopsticks - in the dark) and waited for the fireworks display - we had a ring side seat. A jet went by at the end and hit the afterburners so we had a very impressive show.
Today I went to the memorial for the Battle of Porton (1945). My Cousin Bill (or rather my dads cousin), fought in it and was one of four survivors to unveil the plinth commemorating those who fought and those who died there. The death toll was pretty shocking and all who spoke said something about the tactical decision making to send the men in being badly flawed. The battle had been swept under the carpet until the daughter of one of the commanders wrote a book this year which brought it to the attention of those who make decisions about such things as memorials. Since Townsville was having VP60 this year, and most of the men at Porton came from Townsville regiments, they made a memorial at Anzac park. As my cousin Bill said, "about bally time".
Now I'm at uni setting up the freeze drier to refresh some silica beads. Speaking of which....

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Sick of Pink

I have backslidden (is that a word even?) and am playing with my blog instead of getting to grips with rewriting a chapter, as I should be doing this morning. Having finally had my eyeballs peeled away enough by the colour of my blog so that I can't stand the pink anymore, I'm going green...but only in a colourific way. Hmm, as I glance down at myself, I realise I am also dressed completely in green - except the red socks. I wonder if there is a subconcious reason for all the green?

Monday, August 08, 2005

Finally waking up

I was tired all week last week. I even went home early and had a nap on Monday. Then last night I had broken sleep so I'm tired again this morning. I've been grumpy and short with people and part of my broken sleep is from waking up with adrenaline surges from dreaming about being grumpy and short with people. I'm now on my second cup of strong black Redback percolated coffee (from malanda) and I'm waking up. I may actually get some productive work done today.
I resent being dependant on "drugs" to function though. I should be alert even when coffee free. I just know if I go cold turkey off the coffee it will be futile in the long run because I'm hooked on the whole coffee culture, Gloria Jeans white chocolate Mochas. I'll just end up needing it again after a week of suffering through withdrawal fatigue.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Too many people with the same name

I got an email this morning entitled "Daves Food Joke" so I clicked on it and was terribly confused. "When did Dave join Dietpower?" I wondered..."and why?" Then I realised it was a different Dave. There should only be one. Didn't they watch Highlander?

Monday, August 01, 2005

So tired after a week off

I spent most of last week in Cairns at Ridges on the Esplanade at a conference on aquatic animal health. I had a really good time, made contacts, met up with people, discussed my thesis and a kit I'm designing for Tropbio and ate lots and lots. Ryutaro took us to a Japanese cafteria behind the night markets the first night - big yummy servings. The second night he took Kerry and I to Shamogen (I think). It was a more formal Japanese restaurant and was absolutely delicious. I ate japanese dishes I hadn't heard of and was taught how to eat them properly. Shibu shibu is my favourite. I also found a custard I actually like instead of despise. Its a savoury egg custard and tastes nothing like custard :) We topped off the night, after two hours of eating, with green tea icecream and bean paste.
I still haven't quite recovered. I'm very tired at the moment so I think I'll go home early. I've finished evaporating paraformaldehyde to sterilise the PC3 lab, so I don't have to be here till 9am tomorrow - nap time I think. Its not like I'm getting anything else of value done. I thought of going to chat to a bank and a medical insurance company about changing to them, but it just seems too difficult. Not to mention its cool and rainy here and great weather to be in bed.

Monday, July 11, 2005

after the weekend...

I have to start eating sensibly now...I tried to write sensibly 3 times before I got it right, is my subconcious fighting me? On Friday night I went to Sizzlers and had pork spare ribs. There were a lot more ribs than I thought there would be. Juicy, tender, not fatty, lots of meat. mmmm. On Saturday I went out to "The Point" on the Strand to eat. Also very Yummy. Sunday I was quite restrained. Mum is going back to Target today to return the toaster I bought on Saturday and get another one. The one we bought browns well on one side and not at all on the other. I'm told this is a reasonably common toaster problem. Surely it would be easy to get toast to cook on both sides?

Friday, July 08, 2005

busy, busy, busy

I have been meaning to write my blog for about a week and a half..I've just been so busy..lets see if I can remember what I was going to write.
The reason I've been busy.
I went on a "Finishing your thesis - defeating self sabotage" course at the beginning of last week. It was enlightening and was run by a couple of clinical psychologists from Flinders Uni. They run it down there regularly and have seen all personality types and self defeating behaviours and thought patterns. Your mind can be very sneaky. It was possibly the best course I've been on with respect to getting personalised training. They didn't lecture on general types, they asked specific questions and gave specific advice.
Anyway, thats why I've been busy. Having realised how I was mentally shooting myself in the foot, I am now writing from 9am to 12pm Monday through Wednesday, and doing anything else after that (Thursday and Friday I'm employed to do something else). It has to be real writing too, not fantasy writing. The definition of fantasy writing here is tidying tables and formatting things, changing fonts etc. Real writing puts down actual sentences that move you forward. I wrote 8 pages on Monday. Now of course I've caught up to my lab work so my real writing time is spent analysing all the sequence data I have produced, and writing down the results :)
Doing all this work in the am means that I then have lots of small, but not mentally taking, tasks to do in the afternoon - hence no time to blog.
The show/s
Its show time again and there were two this year. For those who haven't kept up on the Townsville gossip, there was a disagreement between the show organisers and the sideshow people as to the rental cost of space at the show this year, so the sideshow people had their own show elsewhere. I won't go into the various gossip and slander about what went on behind the scenes/who's at fault, as thats all it is and I really don't know for sure, but I went to the real show, being more interested in displays and competitions than in rides. It only cost $5 this year and felt much more like a country show that the Townsville one. Not crowded, fewer rides etc. I liked it but even the displays were fewer in number. There had been a lot of furor before the show and I think a lot of people were'nt sure what would be happening so they didn't enter this year. I think next year I might enter the cooking section. I did the usual look at the winning entries and think "I'm sure I could do better than that"...so next year I'll put my cake were the judges mouth is and know for sure.
Birfday...or Brithday as I usually type
On Sunday I will be exactly half way through my alloted years. Mum and Dad and I are going out tonight to Sizzlers to celebrate. Tomorrow My cousin and her mum and I will go somewhere else to celebrate. Sunday I'll be all eaten out and will give it a miss :)
Speaking of food
My diet finishes tonight. I should actually do another week for the few times I broke it for special occasions, but I also broke it almost everyday this week - and especially after the show.:S I think overall I lost 3kg. I had gotten down to 4kg off, but I was naughty too often. Now my plan is to eat reasonably sensibly for a month or so but increase my excersize (from almost none to the advised amount). If that doesn't lose a bit more, I'm going on the 7 day diet again. If I can get down to 70kg and stay there I'll be quite happy, and healthy enough to avoid diet induced diabetes. I have, over the last 3 weeks, ridden my bike to uni once a week - twice last week. This may not sound like much but is a huge improvement on not at all. I also mowed on Saturday - which I consider the equivalent of walking up castle hill, only with a benefit to other people as well. I also dipped my toe in the water with respect to castle hill climbing. Last week I parked at the top of Gregory street and walked up to the first castle hill park, where I used to leave the road and go up the goat track. Then I turned round and walked back down. I broke a sweat and felt my leg muscles working, just by doing the bit I used to do as a warm up/down. ZSigh, some way to go in the fitness stakes.
Vouchers
Tomorrow I will take my mother out to the Willows and buy her a new toaster with some of my shopping vouchers. The pop up part of hers has broken and the toast will keep cooking unless you manually remove it. There's almost a tradition in my family of giving my mother white goods as presents. She seems to appreciate them a lot more than flowers, though not as much as chocolates.

Monday, June 27, 2005

I was having a good weekend...

Then my budgie made a mad dash for freedom. I was cleaning out the cage and while my back was turned Marc Antony slipped under the gap and vanished. When I turned back he was gone. My father thaought he'd seen something out the front and sure enough I saw the budgie fly onto a palm tree across the road. When I went over he wouldn't come down to me. We tried bringing the other budgie cage over and me eating a piece of bread (which usually results in budgie feet all over my toast in the moring if I'm not careful). Nothing worked. Then the wind blew, the palm frond fluttered, he slipped off and flew off into the sunset.
He hasn't come back. I'm told they don't if they get out, but he was so tame I was hoping when he got hungry he'd come home to eat. I left out cages with the door open and food inside, nothing so far. It's pretty cold and wet out today though. If he hasn't been eaten by a hawk and he isn't completely lost by now (a distinct possibility) he might come home. It's not like he'll find a mate, there aren't budgies around Townsville at the moment. Mum says I should ring up 4TO and put in a lost pet advert.
I'm also looking after a baby chicken right now - I'm calling him/her Solo, as she/he was the only one to hatch out of a batch in the incubator at uni. When it's big enough it will join the flock out here - or be lunch, depending on whether its a boy or a girl.
the big prize spending
I've spent more of my prize money. I ate $20 worth of salmon steaks over the weekend mmmmm yum. I had about 4 meals out of it. I also got myself a new pair of knee high leather boots. My old vinyl boots are dead and these are very nice corelli boots which were on a 50% off sale too :)

So some of my weekend was great and some was just a fizzer. I'm so conflicted.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

My shopping list

Given that I probably won't be able to get a car CD player from Target, I have developed something of a list of options, in no particular order they are;

Deluxe facial from Elle Bache
MP3 player with voice record function
cappuccino maker - one of the girls at uni got a sunbeam one for ~$160 from target that got a big thumbs up from her barista friend
salmon fillets
swanky dress from one of the expensive shops I usually just look in from the outside
leather knee high boots (I'm partial to boots and my last pair self destructed this year)
the biggest box of chocolates from Darryl Lea :)....

How much did I get again? Thats at least $500 worth to pick from and I got $300. Feel free to add to my list if you think of something cool that the Willows will sell.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

It was a good weekend while it lasted

In spite of having to come out to uni on Monday to set up some experiments, I had a good long weekend. It started with a hens night on Friday involving much gourmand pizza making. I have discovered that artichoke hearts on pizza is yummy and calabrese salami really is the best pizza salami. I also made dessert pizza (or desert pizza as I mentioned to Amanda). You get a base, pour chocolate sauce over it then jelly lollies and marshmallows, then cook till marshmallows are brown and spread over pizza. There were many complements.
The weekend continued with me winning $300 worth of shopping vouchers at the Willows cent sale. I will go out today and pick them up. I still haven't decided what to buy, I do need a new CD player in the car, but I don't know if they have such things at the Willows. What I will be buying are some salmon fillets to celebrate..yum yum.
Then my parents came home form their overseas trip and I have been feeding them while they are jet lagged. Last night I cooked a whole barramundi that I had in the freezer. Delicious, melt in your mouth mmmm. I think theres enough for two more meals :). They also brought me home thorntons chocolates, my favourite brand.
Hmm, I think my whole weekend was food related. No wonder it was great :D

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Chapter 5

The latest chapter I handed my supervisor has been handed back with a "please sit down, think about what it is you want to acheive with this and try to rewrite, possibly with flow charts" comment. Apparently I managed to write a chapter that even the supervisor, who knows what I'm doing, couldn't follow. He said he tried his best but it was beyond him. Oh well, more work to do I guess. On an up note, I just counted my sequencing and I have a total of 38 000 bases of DNA sequenced for my next chapter...almost done there :)

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A week later....

It took me a whole week to get over the bleary, tired phase of no coffee. If it weren't for the fact I enjoy my cappuccinos so much, I'd seriously consider not starting drinking again when the diet is off. Strangely I have had no actual coffee cravings, or any other cravings for that matter. I went off the idea of chocolate in a matter of days, in spite of the lindt chocolates sitting on the bench. This is the only diet I've been on where I've had a whole week without feeling deprived in some way, I hope that doesn't mean I'm not going to lose any weight. "No pain no loss" sort of thing.

On related news, I set the kitchen on fire on Sunday....or at least a pan, but with great presence of mind, and thinking about how badly I could splash burning oil round the kitchen if I was foolish enough to pick up the pan, I picked up the lid and dropped it over the top, thus putting it out. Then I spent ten minutes with windows and doors open, fanning the fire alarm to stop it beeping. Nice to know it works.

I'm now at stage two of my "while my parents are away I'm going to clean up the house" plan. I've tidied up the kitchen and done the household tasks that needed doing before my parents left. Now under the house. I'm going to haul out everything beside where the car is parked and repack it in some form of order with shelving involved. It doesn't help that most of this is bits of wood and metal my dad thinks will come in handy someday. I expect it will take all weekend.

Next weekend I have to have the kitchen cleared out as the renovators (read my uncle and aunt who have a house repair/renovation company) will be coming to gut the kitchen to build our new one. After all my efforts to clean, the house will be in disaster phase at just about the time my parents get back....of course.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Very Sleepy

I'm very sleepy. This is not a good way to start what will be a very busy week. I think part of it is that we are having a cold snap here and I just want to curl up in my nice warm bed. The other part is that my parents went to Scotland on Saturday, so I have the house to myself which is a little out of my normal habits. Not to mention I took them to the airport on Saturday morning and had to get up at 4:20am to do it. They will be tireder than me though. I calculated they were travelling for 38 hours to get to Edinborough. I also started a diet on Saturday so there may be toxins releasing from my liver as I type.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

A chapter!!!

I have finally handed in chapter 5 of my thesis to my supervisor. Now I'm working on materials and methods - for a quickie hand in to make it look like I've done more work :) I'd be writing it now, but I'm getting bleary and I'm filling in time till the tangential flow cell is finished and I can go home.

Monday, May 09, 2005

Juicer

I have a new juicer and went to the markets yesterday to buy some fruit and veg. So far I've tried apple and carrot and apple carrot and rockmelon - yum, also easy to clean. I was going to try beetroot in there too and ginger, but I forgot to buy ginger and I've missplaced the beetroot. The juicer can also make sorbet, mince meat, make pasta and shave ice (though I think you need another attachment for that). I'm going to freeze some apple and make apple sorbet this week. I also saw a pizza maker which makes pizza in 5 minutes. I tried it - crispy on the bottom, golden on the top, gourmet style - amazing...If I had a couple of hundred dollars free I might be eating a lot of pizza.

Pink nails

I am currently typing this with nails almost 2cm long - plastic, pink nails. I thought I'd try the technology and see if it had improved since the last time I tried. It has. The nails look very realistic, are glued on with an instant set very strong glue (don't glue your fingers together - or worse, your eyelids) and seem able to weather the pounding I'm giving them. Most people think they are acrylic, professionally attached nails, so I must have done a good job.
Downside; typing is hard, doing up buttons is really hard and there are some other things that you have to pay a lot of attention to so you don't injure yourself while doing them.
Upside; I have long pink nails :) ..... Usually my nails are short, bitten and broken. And the fingernail polish is chipped within 5 minutes of application.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

as promised, I'm writing more

I said I'd write more and so I am. That chapter I was talking about last month is three paper references away from handing to my supervisor. I found that I'd made an erroneous assumption in my discussion and had to edit, but on the up side, I found a paper discussing something I'd given up on finding an example of.

I spent last long weekend house sitting - air conditioning, 1m wide flat screen tv, extensive cable channels, evening strolls round the hills of Yarrawonga, looking at houses I'll never be able to afford...I didn't get very much work done. Maybe next long weekend I'll clean out under the house :)

In two weeks my parents are going on holidays for a month to Scotland. I'm taking this opportunity to go on the liver cleansing diet, as I've gained a lot of weight and this is a good way to clean out all the garbage in my system prior to seriously not eating junk food. I've done it before and know that there's no way I'll do it if there are other people in the house wanting to use the kitchen. You actually have to do proper meal preparation for it and it's too complicated doing that if my mother is cooking for other people at the same time.

My mum is buying a juicer - just in time - fresh vegetable juice is on the diet list. (I just skipped that part last time). And before you wrinkle your nose up, the next door neighbours have let us sample some of their vegetable juices and they are really lovely. The trick is to put a bit of fruit in to sweeten it.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Anzac day long weekend

Apart from shopping for a pair of shorts on Saturday and coming in to uni on Sunday and Monday to work - a PhD is never done - the only stuff I did was some scanning of my mothers old documents on the weekend.
Appropriately I found a picture of my great uncle Arthur in WW2 uniform - he survived. Of more interest was the photocopy of an original letter sent by my great uncle Victor to his mother (my great grandmother) at the end of WW2 from Singapore. He had been a POW and talked about building a railway line in thailand and Burma and being in Changi. Also about who had died there that his mother would have known and about what Singapore was like after being freed. I'll have to figure out how to attach it to this site. Lastly I found postcards from my great-great uncle William who went to Canada, enlisted for the great war from there and died in France. I think he's buried at the Somme - but I'd have to look that up.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

my head, my aching head

I've had splitting eyestrain induced headaches and shoulder and back aches on and off for almost a week, held at bay only by wearing my glasses constantly and sleeping...and one night even that didn't help - with an early morning wakeup followed by vomitting. On Friday I had a massage and was told I was completely locked up. I was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel this week with conciencious glasses wearing and I decided to ride to work today...and left them at home in my purse. This wouldn't be too disastrous if I had lab work to do today, but all I have to do till 12:45pm is writing on the computer and reading - sigh - and I'm not riding home to get them. I might set my timer to ten minutes and do infinite distance staring every 10 minutes to change focus. How I suffer for my PhD.

Monday, April 18, 2005

googling et al

Thanks to Marco's gratuitous addition of links to this page on all the blogs he's commented on, googling "Jenny's Procrasrination page" now pops up Otherblog as the first hit...with the ability to then find my page. Strangely enough, lexifab didn't come up (on the first page of hits anyway).

Anyhoo, I now feel obliged to write my blog more often than once every two or three weeks. I'm writing now while I wait for the bacticinerator to heat up. Guess what that does :)

On the weekend I went with my mother to a cooking demonstration on preparing low GI meals - which is useful for diabetics as my mother is - and I came to the conclusion that if I don't lose 10kg I gained over the last year and keep it off, I'll probably end up diabetic myself. So I had fish and chips for lunch today. I think my subconcious goes "quick, she's about to cut back on the junk, lets get one last feed in".

Must go, bacticinerator awaits.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

sigh

I had a depressing talk with my supervisor yesterday. We were trying to see how much more I needed to do on my PhD by seeing how many papers I could write from it as an estimate of whether an examiner would pass it. The problem is, all of the "lets find something new" aspects of my work have given me lots of information - but nothing new. So I have lots to write up, but nothing to really write a good paper on. My paid research work however has a world first paper I have to write up - shame it doesn't count toward the PhD. I'm going to try two more things now, once again, if nothing else they'll give me more to write up - hopefully they'll work well enough though to be the breakthrough.
On an up note I've filed away the just over a foot of papers I had piled up for chapter 5 - so my office is cleaner looking. I've finished the referencing. Now I have to rewrite so someone other than myself can follow the logic of it all. :) . This chapter will be shorter than the last (at about 7000 words instead of 10000) and I may send a copy to Chris to look at. If I'm really good I'll burn him a copy of both of the research chapters I've written.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I can't find me!

While sitting at another computer I decided to look up my page (among others) and did a google search on procrastination page - lots of hits, none me. I did find Magicdog vs tokyo though... and this Procrastination Creed on someone elses site.

The original author of The Procrastinator's Creed is unknown, but hey, whoever you are, you've got a true believer here!!!

I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.
I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.
I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.
I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.
I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.
I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.
I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitely small, is not exactly zero.
If at first I don't succeed, there is always next year.
I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.
I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.
I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.
I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/plan/plan.
I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.
I will become a member of the ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator's Society) if they ever get it organized.

Then I came back to my computer and, using terms I had written on my blog, I did another search - still no me. I did find this interesting site though.

http://www.robsevilmindcontrolcult.org/

So, how do I get my blog site to come up on Google...any ideas?

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

babel fish

I had a student in my class this afternoon for whom English was her second language, so I found the bablfish translator on the web for her. She tested it out and indicated that it wasn't really that great at translating english to chinese...so i thought I'd try english to japanese and back. See below the original paragraph and then the reverse translated one.

http://world.altavista.com/

James Cook University will advance the economic, social, and

environmental well-being of tropical Queensland, the nation

and the world by delivering world-class education and

research outcomes across a range of disciplines, with

particular emphasis on subjects of special relevance to the

tropics and our location in Australia and the Asian-Pacific

region.

To the world where the cock university of (something untranslatable)
crosses the range of training the specific importance of special

connection subject to tropical district and our positions of

the Australian and the Asia Pacific area and transfers the

tropical queen's land, nation and economic of the world,

society, welfare of environment, is advanced to the result of

noted education and research.

She may have been right. Apparently I go to Cock University now :S

My list of 10 things

OK, bowing to pressure from other bloggers....10 things I’ve done that I don’t think anyone reading has done

1. Scrap booked my entire primary and highschool education into one chunky book

2. Been customer of the month 3 times running from my Avon lady due to large purchases

3. Done a silver smithing course and made novel silver jewellery

4. Managed to stretch out a PhD to five plus years without finishing

5. Won a skateboard in a road safety drawing competition (and for the first time in my life, this seems ironic)

6. Acted in a liberal party campaign advert. (Which never made the air)

7. Spent so much on molecular biology supplies that I won a coffee machine

8. Survived three computer deaths in less than a year, including the first one which lost me 6 months worth of data - backup, backup, backup.

9. Been paid to tutor a university prac class the same year as I was doing it.

10. Successfully hidden the fact that I am, in fact, an alien from the planet Bloorg, here to do a research assignment on the humans of earth. - Or alternatively, written a complete piece of obvious fiction in my list of 10 things :)

And now...back to chapter 5...Yes Andrea, I'm still polishing it :(

Monday, February 21, 2005

Exciting times at JCU high

It was 8:45am, I'd just arrived at my building after a 30 minute bike ride. It was the first day of lectures, so I'd ridden the bike to avoid all the main road traffic jams caused by inexperienced first years going up each others rear ends. I walked into Ray's office to get a drink and was informed we'd had another break in and theft. One more lap top bites the dust. I walked out of Ray's office and Phil tells me I can't touch anything in mine as they broke in via my first floor window and the Police will want to look at the crime scene. Leigh tells me they didn't take my really old desk top...I wonder why? In my office, the window is open, the piles of junk on the window sill have been removed - either shoved to one side, shoved onto the desk or taken out onto the ledge. My coffee machine, right beside where they'd have step down, is untouched - and it was rather delicately balanced too. The police arrived, had a look round, checked that the window would lock again and decided they wouldn't take finger prints becuase the window was too grotty to hold them - and nothing was stolen from my room. Now, somehow I'm going to have to focus and get all those things done that I didn't get round to Friday. Most embarrassing moment - when I had to say, "No, nothings been disturbed, it always looks this way."

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Eggs

I've just cut a window out of my first duck egg - very strong egg smell - I'll wear gloves next time. I'm doing some faberge egg craft (or at least checking it out to decide whether I like doing it - since I like the results). I'm using a diamond drill bit to cut the shell. The tricky bit is avoiding shell dust as it is humongously toxic - somewhat like asbestos. Bet you didn't know that.
On work related stuff, I expect to have the intro to chapter 5 finished this week, and most of the discussion. Still some lab work to do to tidy it up but that's not a problem. Next week I'm starting a new part time job, which I hope will pay for a trip to Tasmania at the end of the year. Much saving will be done. I am a little concerned about the thesis writing. Its been going like a glacier when I'm doing it 5 days a week full time. Sigh, I must become more organised and waste less time on things like......umm......this actually.

Friday, February 11, 2005

yes, I was right

It's next Friday and I'm still writing chapter 5. I haven't got to the discussion yet even. On an up note I do know what I'm writing, things are accelerating and I may even get most of the intro tied up today. I'm also fiddling around with the set up of my lit review so it could take a while.
This weekend I'm going to the busy metropolis of Ayr. I'll be buying cheap craft goods, watching DVD's and pretty much lazing around. I won't even be doing any scrapbooking - except maybe to think about some of it.
I've been dreaming about my dog a lot lately. My mother thinks that means it's time to get a new dog. I did think that a month ago, but right now I'm ambivalent. I know how much time a new puppy would take up - or even an adult dog. My budgie is demanding enough and as I may have mentioned before, there's that thesis I'm trying to write.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

The limits of my iron stomach

Yesterday I had to unexpectedly gut a fish that I'd put in salt water to purge (we have fish at uni). I'd been not expecting to do it for another week but it died on me - bad fish. I took the guts up the back to throw in the industrial waste bin in the refridgerated PM room - post mortem container for animal post mortem remains. I had been feeling queezy all day but I would have been fine if I hadn't opened the door and found an entire horse in there. I couldn't walk in the door. I'm ok with small dead animals, but not those bigger than I am.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Its a pleasure to be at uni

Its stinking hot up here in Townsville. Humid and 33 degrees C. So I'm finding uni lovely with ice cold air conditioning. On the thesis front, I've pretty much written the results of chapter 5 now. I just have to check a few facts in the 5 lab log books and three years of work that it covers. Then I can do the intro and the rest of the discussion. I did some of the discussion the other day when I was creative and inspired (but not too creative - this is after all, supposed to be factual).
I have delusions of having this chapter finished by Friday. I will of course, realistically, find I have to get about 4 iterations of journal articles to reference before that is truly the case, therefore at least 4 more days after I start writing intro....and tomorrow I'm doing some lab work too.

Monday, January 24, 2005

rain drops keep falling on my head

Its been raining here since Thursday. I was house sitting and decided to water the lawn...so it started raining. The ground has finally been saturated (after three days of constant rain) and the pools are building up. On Saturday we put all the important things under the house up on bricks but we are yet to flood. I'm expecting that tonight. Everything is a little clammy, my sheets feel like they haven't dried properly even though I didn't wash them. On an up note, everything smells nice, its cool and I'm sleeping well.
I've just had two cups of coffee and a philosophical discussion. I'm all perked up and am ready to start writing chapter 5 again.

Friday, January 14, 2005

lets see if this coding really works

I found a link on Dave's blog for a japanese name translator...

This is what happens when you enter first name first.

My japanese name is 遠藤 Endoh (distant wisteria) 弓美 Yumi (beautiful bow, as in bow and arrow).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

When I tried putting my name in surname first , I got a different name;

My japanese name is 秋本 Akimoto (autumn book) 美晴 Miharu (beautiful clear sky).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Yesterday afternoon went well after I gave up and went home to process prictures of bacteria on a computer with reasonable computing power (1gig of ram) instead of 256meg (P4) instead of P2
This is rather bizarre. I usually can't work at home. Too much distraction in the way of TV and books. I guess having my nephews over when I got home helped. If I hadn't been doing work, I would have been expected to help babysit - no books or tv and the possibility of being bashed with a building block.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

I was going to have a good day

The first thing that happened this morning was a call from a debt collection agency. Apparently BOC gases thinks I owe them $199 from 2002 from the place I lived in Charters Towers.

I moved from Charters towers in January 1998 ( I think, I'd have to check exact details for the exact month)
I paid cash up front for my gas (which cost about $50 a bottle and I only bought one at a time).
When I arrived there were two gas bottles attached to the house. When I left there were two gas bottles attached to the house.

The debt collection agency is now getting a proper invoice from BOC as they don't know specifically what the debt is for and I will be spending my free time tonight going through my files looking for what few pieces of paper I have from 7 years ago to show I don't owe them any money. The only thing I can think of is that after I left someone took a gas cylender and it took them 4 years to figure it out. A real stretch.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Weekend lazing

Apart from one walk up castle hill...which I am now paying for in the butt department... all I did this weekend was laze around in airconditioning in front of a large screen TV and alternately read journal articles (till my eyestrain headache got too much for me) and watch movies/cartoons. Oh, and I slept a lot. I think I might get stuff done this week because my stress levels have dropped somewhat - I'm very relaxed.
Movies I watched;

The Hulk - somewhat confusing (I missed the first bit)
Terminator 3 - somewhat depressing
Spirited away - truly delightful
Signs - logically flawed

Movies I attempted to watch;

Johnny English - had to go out just after it started.
Amazon women on the Moon - very, very bad. I turned channels and watched Jimmy Neutron cartoons instead.

All in all I got a lot done - if you include catching up on movies you missed at the box office.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Day three - going down hill - the state of minimal energy

On my first day back at uni, things went well. I got lots of papers downloaded and filed in endnote. While I was doing this I also scanned about 8 boxes of slides. A good day.
On Wednesday I continued downloading papers until morning tea, when the last of my slides was scanned and I decided to burn them to CD....the CD burner was dead (did I just hear the first nail being hammered into the coffin?). I put in a work req. for it and decided to go to morning tea. When I got back the network was down...no more paper downloading for the day (my, that sounded like a second coffin nail). Well, I thought, I could go analyse some DNA sequences and determine the next step in processing them, which I did. As a result I needed to order a new primer....but we do that online and the network, as I have already established, was down (Nail 3). I went home thinking "that wasn't great, but at least I got that sequencing numbercrunched."

Today I came in and tried to order the primer. The network is up! Yay! But I find I am no longer on the books as staff so I can't get an order number to send with my online order and must get someone else to do it (they didn't get to it till 4pm and I still don't have an order number. The person who actually does that is not back at work yet - Nail 4). OK I thought, I really don't need it yet as i need to concentrate some more DNA before I can work with it, so I'll just use our brand new rotor in the ultracentrifuge. It stopped at 14600rpm (instead of 40000)...um...several phone calls, much checking of paperwork later (after we actually found the lost paperwork)...It appears we were sent the wrong rotor (a 40L instead of a 45L) The 40L isn't designed for our centrifuge - apart from that it looks physically identical. I probably should be glad nothing blew up really. It took 3 months for that rotor to arrive. I'm not expecting a quick turnaround to get the right one...Nail 5 slamming in there.

I mentioned this at smoko and was reminded that the universe is sliding towards chaos and I should just give in and accept that this will continue and get worse. It all falls apart and the centre cannot hold. Philosophical bunch in my uni department.

I think I might copy this before posting. No point in tempting fate

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Happy New Year

I'm back at uni...though I dropped in and out all last week anyway...and I'm ready to get going. Just waiting for an academic to arrive so I can access a secure room with our only copy of a vital computer program in it. We really need combination locks on those doors. Or swipe cards. Or microchips inserted under the skin of our palms, so we can wave our hands blythly over the lock and hear it disengage.....Hmm, I think the break has rejuvinated my creative glands finally.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Monday, October 24, 2005

In the Construct of Decay

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Monday, September 26, 2005