Because I always wanted badges

For some reason many of the badges on this site made me think of Chris. ...and I think I'll leave it to you to find out what these all mean. I may not quite qualify for "I blog about science" but I put it there anyway.

time is an illusion

I was just thinking about time-zones and daylight savings & how to find out what time it is somewhere now you need to find an online map. Then my mind moved to how people used to determined the day from when dawn was. Then I thought, since we know the rotation of the earth round the sun, we can work out dawn for all longitudes and latitudes, so we should now be able to make clocks where we just type in our long and lat and then it could give us our day based on dawn and sunset D:0:00 would be dawn, D:1:00 would be one hour after dawn N:0:00 would be sunset, and so on...the number of hours etc for each would vary over the year, but you could always start work x hours after sunrise and work for y hours. No more need for daylight saving.
Since we have online maps telling us the what time it is everywhere else, we could still use these to tell us whether we could contact people easily. Or even better, instead of standard clocks, we'd have plasma display screens showing us our daylight time with a list down the side of other places we were interested in for quick reference.

This can't be an original idea, off to google.

regrets

I bought an oil painting...it needed framing...it was big

I regret the framing cost for matting the painting like a tryptich and putting it behind glass was $170 more than just framing it. As it is, its costing twice what I paid for it to frame it - not unusual.

I regret that doing this would also have increased the weight to in excess of 20kg, requiring hanging on a wall stud rather than just plaster...as well as increasing the size to something that wouldn't fit on any eligable wall in my home.

....beacause it looked so very, very cool.

Double matting; thin strip of chocolate brown covered by top wide strip of cream coffee colour, in a dark wood frame, three tall strips of faces with lots of primary colour over creams and browns....sigh

At least I got the names of the matting colours so when I am rich and buy a home of my own with plenty of sturdy presentation walls, I can spend the $500 to reframe it.

I'll put in a shot of the standard oil-painting framing when I get it back.

heh...

I'd play this too.

In other news, the people I have coffee with in the morning didn't turn up, so I had to use my own coffee machine..Its been so long I don't know if the beans I had in a moccona jar were decaf or not. I guess my level of alertness today will tell me. On an up side, my office now smells of coffee...grinders do that

The big Wetter

or should that be the bigger wet? The causeway to the vet school is now under by 6 inches.

The Big Wet

8 inches of rain last night.
My feet are damp.
I forgot to bring in my camera.

I'll have to borrow the department one. Theres a really cool cluster of bright yellow mushrooms with red centres over near the micro building. They look quite Fairylandish. I'd probably die in agonised convulsions if I tried to eat them. I've also taken photos of the rushing creek. Nice department 10megapixel camera.

There is a walk bridge across the normally (but not anymore) dry creek

And if you thought that was flooded...try the main causeway we drive over to get in. It was over this morning. But possibly the weirdest bit was the electrical cable access cover that was on quite high ground...bubbling water through the leverage holes

Edited because I got hold of the camera.

ooh...cool

http://neilgaiman.com/stardust/

BTW I've just finished reading The Pinhoe Egg (Diana Wynne Jones), that I only knew was out because it was mentioned on Neil Gaimans blog The Pinhoe egg was also cool. Part of the Chrestomanci series.

well, that was weird

Being at a university with large mailing list setups, you get used to the hackers who use the mass mailouts to send you pharmaceutical crap emails, usually with the name of someone from the list on top. Today I got one from me.

Outlook lets you look at the internet headers under options (something I see the NCIS guys going on TV...and any other cop show for that matter), so I did, feeling all investigative. And lo and behold, one of the lines says "recieved from localhost (local host [series of numbers] (may be forged))"...I sent an email from myself and this line said "recieved from my computer name, mycomputer .proper university address"...no may be forged thing. There's also another line where message ID clashes with recieved from ID.

Now, what I'd like to know is, if the header can identify possible forgeries, why can't the university system flag these, stop them getting through and require a manual check from a wetware technical person to see if it can legitimately be passed on?

I can see why a fake outside name might not be picked up, but with internal people, the email addresses are known. Maybe its because so many people have multiple addresses, with setups to get return addresses to their alternative address.

I'd do without all that flash if it meant I didn't get so many viagra commercials.

BTW if you got something from me entitled "And Jerusalem, And I will not perish at noon", with a pharmaceutical advertisement in it, I didn't send it. So far as I know, I've never sent or recieved an email with those words in it either, so its not a hack into my email, just the system storing my email address.

a little hygiene experiment

I was given an Enjo face washer for Christmas. This is a soap free face washing glove, where you just wet it and wipe over your face, then rinse off the washer and squeeze it out - no soap, no soap free soap, nada. I was dubious about the value of this so I tried a two week experiment where I used only the washer or straight water on my face...no soap for cleaning my face for two weeks. Theres been no obvious detrimental effect from this. Today I wiped over my face thoroughly with a clean and clear deep action cleansing wipe (on the basis that that would pick up all the gunge and I'd be able to see it on the wipe)

Results: Face - no dirtier than you'd expect after a days worth of work grime
Back of neck (that gets shampoo on it every night) -eeuuuw must clean that more...maybe with the enjo wipe

Now my face feels tight and stripped of the protective natural oils (which it didn't before, with the glove it just felt clean and scrubbed).

So waddaya know, the enjo glove actually works.

Not thrilled

The web page inside my blogging entry thing is still there. To add to my annoyance, the new blogger is supposed to recognise me for commenting on my own blog and not ask for confirmation that I am human(with the weird coloured letters). But unlike the old blog where I was automatically recognised as being me (choose ID: blog, anonymous, other) I have to log in each time I turn on the internet and go to my comments page...so it doesn't recognise me to start off, which means I have to do the weird coloured letters AND type in my name and password. At least before all I had to do was the weird coloured letters.

Yet I was able to set it that I don't have to type in my ID on this computer to actually write a blog. Just to comment on it. Go figure.

Its raining

This is weird. The post section of blogger has the whole website inside the blog entry section...so to blog I have to get to the blog entry section inside the blog entry section. I suppose I should be glad its not infinitely doing so.

All the buttons function. It really is a web page inside another webpage.

BTW its raining up here in sunny Brownsville, cloud creeping over the hills, creeks running enthusiastically with brown rapids, gutters indicating a lack of drainage. Ah, the wet season. Frogs outside my window waking me in the morning, bedraggled birds that have never been this wet before and look rather stunned about it, people not prepared and using their windshield screens as makeshift umbrellas (very entertaining to watch)....I'm all cheerful

Happy Brithday for yesterday Andrea

or happy birthday, if your fingers don't type in a funnny order

The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/uoc-wst010907.php

heh

http://www.procrastinus.com/ link to "test your own procrastination level"

my score was 38/100. I am a moderate procrastinator...it did say I only answered 51 out of 100 possible shapes before exiting, but I didn't choose to exit...a glitch, or did my subconcious hit the exit button. Fastest reaction time 0.36 seconds. Slowest, 0.64 seconds.

and unlike most online quizzes, this is actually real research. I'm helping someones work (there is a disclaimer page you have to click on to allow them to use your results...but no ID info apart from age, gender, education level type stuff.

Finally, the PNG pics

I went to PNG in November to field test an updated kit I'd been working on. The kit is for testing for L. filariasis and the uni is involved in a monitoring program for this in PNG. So I helped with their sampling in return for using learning about field limitations. We went to Oro province. The people were lovely. These are people from Saiho. The first place we went. They fed us well and had a feast for us one night.




Here are some shots of me working...



While we were there, we went up to Kokoda. This is me on the Kokoda Trail. Now I can say I've walked (a bit of) it.


We also went to Oro bay to work....beautiful paradise, in which I unfortunately got food poisoning after finishing my work.


While this goodbye photo looks fine, I was actually feeling very queezy at the time

Once I'd recovered we went to Port Moresby and I shopped at the markets before coming home. The mesh bag is a real highland billum.

One of the authors I read

is writing an online book. For every $300 donated, they'll put a chapter online. They aren't starting for another fortnight and the first 12 chapters is paid for already. I shall keep an eye on it.

This is my new hair

It has faded a bit since the original tint...That was vibrant! ...and just to try it, I did the face recognition too. I think I liked the first one better.

lets kick off the year in the manner in which I intend to continue

A 70% match to Yasmin bleeth…bwah ha ha…bet it wouldn’t be if I had a whole body match done...btw I'll do this again tomorrow when I bring in the shot of me with new fancy hair...

don't worry, I haven't forgotten

I do remember I promised to put up piccies and a spiel about my PNG trip, but I've been busy, and disorganised, and sleepy...and the photos are at home. I will get to it...just sooo sleepy.

BTW my thesis is submitted.

one step closer

I have a second examiner...paperwork is grinding through