masques and other social events

Today I nipped out at lunch and bought a mask and trimmings to make up a fancy doohicky for the Melbourne cup. We're having competitions for the best dress, hat or mask. I'll put pictures up when I've made it.

I also slipped into dymocks and bought a book of short stories. Now that I've had a flick through, I recognise at least some of the stories. I've either bought it before or read some of them in another collection. I will check my database. Stay tuned. If it turns out I already have "Dark Alchemy" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (with stories by Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman), I'd be happy to pass it on.

After lunch I went to a biosciences trade display and spent 2 hours just going round the tables...I think the bags of freebies and catalogues weighs about 15kilos. The Biorad guys took advantage of both my hands being full to drape about 6 lanyards around my neck. There was also cake :) Then there were draws from all the trade displays where you had left your details to get them to send you information. I missed out on the bubbly, chocolate and giant teddy bear, but I did win a roche bag with a hat, pen, scribble pad and a book of lab FAQ's - really handy for new students.

are zombies a good model of infectious disease?

The other night I dreamt about zombies. In this dream the previous zombie outbreak had been contained and a large wall built to stop any future infestation. But there was a break in the wall and one small zombie rose from under the ground and shambled in my direction. I realized we could stop this quickly if we could contain it, destroy it & reseal the wall. As is usually the case in dreams, no-one else seemed as concerned to act quickly. By the time I got people moving, the numbers had increased. They continued to increase logarithmically and we were too slow to enact the required responses at each stage. The responses changed based on the numbers you had to oppose. Before I was rudely awakened by a phone call, I was at the stage of locking up the non-zombified in a fortress to keep them alive and worrying that one of them would have been bit before getting in, thus infecting the others.
During the dream I was thinking how interesting it was that zombie numbers were increasing on a standard logarithmic curve...afterwards it occured to me that it looked just like a disease outbreak where no-one had immunity or recovered even down to quarantines and other outbreak control techniques.

high tech..er

I'm now running off two monitors at work. I got a new computer to replace the loud, DVD drive is dodgy, USB drives don't work, blue screen of death computer I've had for 5 or 6 years. The new computer came with a new monitor. I kept the old still working monitor and can now have files I need to look at open in one window and files I'm typing into on the other. I feel very techy. Its brain-numbingly simple to set up. I've even got them at different resolutions as they are different shapes.

:D

High school? Really?

Movie Reviews

I was sorta expecting primary school given the usual level of brain-dead free association typing that goes on when I write this.

Two new budgies, two new brake pads

Completely unrelated but at the same time.

One is a latino (pure yellow with white cheeks). The other is white and grey.

The brake pads are a greyish colour too.

I found out that the squealing of brakes when they wear out is intentional, and if you buy cheap brake pads they won't do it. Its to warn you that your brake pads need replacing soonish...or now.

The squeal is caused by a folded strip of metal (P shaped) that vibrates if the brake pads are worn to the point where the stem of the metal strip rubs on the disk. Clever, no? This P shaped piece of metal serves no other purpose but to warn you so you don't crash through a barrier going 100km/hr down a windy hill when the brakes finally fail.

my second chuckle of the afternoon

was a link to this comic

Fellowshipping is fun :)

Good game of LOTRO last night. We got through some stuff that took Bindy ages to do on his own...plus some things I had overlooked, so Bindy is going to trot off and have another go at them - hopefully tonight. I am reenergised to play. So I must Level Bindy up to 40+ so that he can go off adventuring in the frozen north with Aspy.

In other news, my electrical whizz brother fixed my networking problems. He brought his gear around and tested stuff. Apparently, when we got the house cabled for networking (you just plug in via the wall sockets now) they left the underhouse cabling a little loose. The network cables, if you cut the wire, can untwist a bit and the wires inside start to electrically interfere with each other and mess up the signals. Since it was loose, it untwisted a bit before they wired it to the wall. He trimmed it, twisted it, wired it back up and tested it. All is now groovy. I've been blaming my computers for being incompatible. Good thing I didn't return anything to the store :D

misc bits...while we're all waiting on confirmation

...which could be some time, since they don't commit on things round here..

I spontaneously bought a new laptop/notebook on the weekend. I had been thinking about it for a while...but as a long term thought...then there was a sale and a nifty computer.

I have a white Eee PC (1000H version) Its almost as powerful (and has more RAM) than the toshiba laptop I bought 2-3 years ago for over $2300. The new one cost me $560

Also, see below for bird pics - I've updated finally

Things change

My job just changed..probably. I will not be doing next year what I expected to do..probably.

Watch this space & I'll let you know when it becomes official....or not

mysterious enough? :D

nine, count em, nine

I now have 9 baby budgies out of their nests and flying round...well, the last one is still hanging on the wall, clutching a crossbeam for grim death, looking like it very much wants to go back inside. 5 of the babies look like clones. Yellow heads, blue green bodies, turquoise butts and iridescent blue tails. Photos will follow when they sit still long enough.


And here they are...Some of them anyway. They're just getting faster. The first shot is a bit blurry but shows the colours up well.
the blue and green here are siblings
The bird at the front is the baby (sibling to the bright greeny blue clones) and unrelated to the other one. This is preening, the open beak isn't due to the baby screaming "Agh! she's eating my brain!" but rather "ah, that feels good"

Sleepy again

Semester has just started and I'm sleepy again. This time I'm blaming the fact that I'm housesitting and getting fresh sea air. Once I get used to it I should be right. The getting up 1/2 an hour earlier to get into uni at the same time probably doesn't help. zzzzzz

no time to read my email

When people say "I've had no time to read my email and its the afternoon", I generally assume they are either exaggerating or have poor time management as I can scan through a list in 5 minutes and reply in, at most, 10minutes to any reply needed stuff....then today happened. My email got looked at at 3pm. And now, back to work again.

its only a matter of time

I had yet another almost accident on the way to uni this morning. There is a roundabout (see below & ignore lane closed bits) that has had the same set of rules since it was built. Some of the locals who live in the suburb that comes out at Yolanda drive still have problems with it however. The problem is that the left lane coming out of Yolanda can turn left, go straight or turn right. The round about is designed so that if you are coming from Nathan street and want to turn right into discovery drive, you go straight ahead and when you get to the turn, you go in the left lane. You aren't allowed to cut across the solid line and go into the right lane unless you are doing a U-turn. This is set up because if you were exiting from the right lane into discovery drive and someone was turning right from the left lane from Yolanda, they'd crash into you.

If you are on the Nathan street approach and turning right and you are on the roundabout itself, everyone from Yolanda has to give way, not just the right lane (the same as if you were going straight ahead from that lane) - see below - yellow has right of way if they are on the roundabout first
The problem is that the "red" people often think that they are fine to drive into the left lane. Hence me almost hitting the car that I was assuming was turning left from Yolanda until it kept coming forward as I was turning right - he was assuming I would turn in the right lane and is still probably swearing about the driver who doesn't know the road rules (which I looked up very carefully when the roundabout first went in - the council put maps up with arrows and notes about who gave way).
The left lane at Yolanda needs to be left turn only. It might slow up exiting traffic but it will stop the idiots who don't bother to check the road rules or take note of solid line marking.

Dr Horrible

I found this on the web this weekend. Its a supervillian musical done by some american actors you may recognise - Check out Captain Hammer. You need to let it download or its very jumpy.

not writing...reading

I have been looking at blogs that people have not been updating & thinking "how lazy are they?" Then I realised I am in that number. So I'm going to write. I was making the excuse of nothing to say, but once I actually start typing I remember things

1. Birthday last week - popcorn cake was brain explodingly sweet
2. I bought myself a new digital camera Lumix TZ-15. It even has a smart photo setting for taking photos of food. I got it for $150 less then RRP. It also has a setting for 6x4 shots, so i don't have to crop when I take the jpgs to the camera place to print.
3. I have almost finished a draft for a methods paper. I will submit before the end of July I hope
4. One of the three fans in my computer is getting noisy so i'm taking it into the shop...after getting online tonight.
5. I'm turning into a grumpy old woman - small children related activities are irritating me more and more - not with my nephews and the kids of friends, but with strangers kids. I see this as the first sign of becoming one of those old cat ladies who come out of the house to yell at the neighbourhood kids. Apologies to the perfectly sane and compassionate cat people out there. I think I'm getting arthritis in a finger too.
6. My cockatiels have abandoned their eggs and are looking for a new nesting box. Obviously this lot didn't work - they would have hatched by now if so.
6. I've discovered a bunch of webcomics that I will, at some point, make links to on the side bar. PS238 is pretty fine.

Dr Who

I wonder if our local fanboy has seen this bit of unedited footage, where the Dr has to be seen talking but doesn't actually have lines. Heh.

Filing Time!

I've been writing a paper all day and have got to the point where I just can't make a rational decision about it any more. I've actually caught up with all the "must get this done stuff" - at least the stuff that doesn't require other people who aren't here - hence actually working on a paper. Its too early to go home, what to do?
Aha, I have filing that I haven't got to in the last 18 months - ie since I moved to this office! Actually its probably older than that.
Anyhoo...filing time! Spit could write a song about it.

a new record for me

I got to work this morning knowing that a meeting was scheduled for 9am...last minute thing booked yesterday. I got out of it at 5:30pm. It was still going but I just wasn't functional anymore.
It was fine tuning exam questions - they were all written but needed to be polished for grammar, intent and whether the question was really asking what we wanted the students to answer. It was commented on at one point that answering the questions was easier than writing them. The students won't appreciate it. It was alos only for one exam...there are three more :(

The birds...

I've put nesting boxes in my aviary. I've been having endless fun watching the aerial combat over the best box. The male cockatiel is making keep away noises at the budgies...who are ignoring him & disturbing his lady love. The male budgies are all sitting on top of nesting boxes looking down on the girls. There was one female budgie who chased one of the males around till he agreed to mate with her. Now he's gone off with her mother....the philanderer.

Yesterday there was a loud thump and we saw a great Goshawk on the top of the cage. It (probably she because its rather large) kept coming back to try get the birds. They were dead quiet. Apparently, Goshawks are bird eaters and can grab budgies through the cage wire and eat them by nibbling through the wire. My cage is large and solid, but I could still lose a few. It's a magnificent bird though. The Bird of Prey carer here said if I want to get it back, I should put chicken meat on the top of the cage....but I don't think I'll give it any encouragement.

warm..bah

I love winter. The curling up under blankets, the lack of sweating.
Last night I went to bed, threw the blankets over myself and felt that something was wrong. I was hot. I threw the blankets off, thinking "this is a bad idea, I'll be too cold. Its winter and all that". But I wasn't. In fact, as I lay there I thought "I'm still hot". I checked the thermometer on my clock to determine whether it was the temperature or me with a fever. The former apparently. It was 25oC at 10:45pm!
I swept with the fan on last night...in winter! Last year we had the lowest top temperature in June ever on record. This year we probably won't. I'm hoping it was just because it has been so overcast that the heat hasn't escaped. It's still warm today. I miss my winter :(