This is my favourite pic, the second of the suicidal echidnas. After I took this shot, it curled up in a ball because it didn't like the flash.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
animal picture 2
This is my favourite pic, the second of the suicidal echidnas. After I took this shot, it curled up in a ball because it didn't like the flash.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
what kind of fencer are you
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Animals I saw on my holiday
lots of wallabies
two echidnas - both suicidally crossing roads, confident in their ability to take out the tyres of anyone foolish enough not to swerve
multiple birds
bumblebees
a snake crossing my path that turned and reared at me as though to strike as I moved away from it. Discussion with a Tasmanian has resulted in a probable identification as a tiger snake, aggressive and quite venomous. That could have been the end of my holiday then and there.
sheep
cows
marsupial mice
ducks
a skink
hmm there were probably more but they elude me
two echidnas - both suicidally crossing roads, confident in their ability to take out the tyres of anyone foolish enough not to swerve
multiple birds
bumblebees
a snake crossing my path that turned and reared at me as though to strike as I moved away from it. Discussion with a Tasmanian has resulted in a probable identification as a tiger snake, aggressive and quite venomous. That could have been the end of my holiday then and there.
sheep
cows
marsupial mice
ducks
a skink
hmm there were probably more but they elude me
Monday, January 23, 2006
been on Holidays
Back. many pictures (1.6Gb worth). lots done. write soon.
I'm now updating my exit seminar (or pre-completion seminar as it is now called) and making a decision about whether I want to say I'd be willing to do full time job for first semester to teach some of 2nd year micro. I would, I've just never lectured before. I will sleep on it. If I say yes, it will then have to go higher to be approved anyway.
I'm now updating my exit seminar (or pre-completion seminar as it is now called) and making a decision about whether I want to say I'd be willing to do full time job for first semester to teach some of 2nd year micro. I would, I've just never lectured before. I will sleep on it. If I say yes, it will then have to go higher to be approved anyway.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Goodies, goody goody yum yum
Can't write long, doing killer hours to finish PhD thesis, just had to say...The Goodies Rock!
I went to the last Goodies live on stage show in Australia last Sunday, thanks to a birthday gift voucher from Dot. It was hilarious. Graham hasn't changed at all...except for the increasing girth and lack of hair. Actually he looks quite different, but he sounds and acts the same. He alsways was my favourite Goodie. I think because he was the scientist.
They sang Wild Thing to close off and said that we could ignore the no camera bit during that and just flash away. Of course I'd left my camera at home since the ticket said no cameras to be taken into the auditorium...lawful-good alignment. An awful lot of people pulled out cameras though. Shame on them. I'm so jealous of their happy snaps :(
I went to the last Goodies live on stage show in Australia last Sunday, thanks to a birthday gift voucher from Dot. It was hilarious. Graham hasn't changed at all...except for the increasing girth and lack of hair. Actually he looks quite different, but he sounds and acts the same. He alsways was my favourite Goodie. I think because he was the scientist.
They sang Wild Thing to close off and said that we could ignore the no camera bit during that and just flash away. Of course I'd left my camera at home since the ticket said no cameras to be taken into the auditorium...lawful-good alignment. An awful lot of people pulled out cameras though. Shame on them. I'm so jealous of their happy snaps :(
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Twinsen!
After about two years of trying to get the old classic Twinsen to play on multiple versions of windows, I sat down and did a web search to see if anyone else had a solution. Apparently I am not alone in my love of Twinsens Adventure. There are whole chat sites devoted to it....and you can't get it to play under windows (its a DOS game). Unless of course you get the patch someone has written just so you can play it on the more advanced computers. They've even put a maximum speed limiter on it so the faster processors don't make it run too fast. Last night I played it for a whole hour (after reading some papers for my thesis).
The only issue I have is the very weird save game system that I'd forgotten about. Its very easy to screw something up and not be able to go back to an earlier version. You have to save a copy and then you play the original. If you screw up, make a copy of the copy before you play it or you could end up screwing up again and the original copy will be updated with the screw up.
Speaking of my thesis, I'm currently enjoying writing lit review and feeling frustrated if I have to go do something else....weird...must take advantage of this aberation and go write some more :)
The only issue I have is the very weird save game system that I'd forgotten about. Its very easy to screw something up and not be able to go back to an earlier version. You have to save a copy and then you play the original. If you screw up, make a copy of the copy before you play it or you could end up screwing up again and the original copy will be updated with the screw up.
Speaking of my thesis, I'm currently enjoying writing lit review and feeling frustrated if I have to go do something else....weird...must take advantage of this aberation and go write some more :)
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
As I write....
As I write my thesis, I find more and more papers that cover more and more stuff, and reference more and more papers I have not come across yet. How can this be? Before I was seriously writing and was only looking for general reviews and specific stuff regarding what I wanted to experiment on, I couldn't find 1/2 of what I wanted, let alone all this extra stuff.
I remember saying, this will be an easy subject to literature review, there's not much literature....ha ha ha ha.
Was it just that my searches were too finely focussed? As I recall, I was searching for "bacteriophage". Maybe I was just blind to things that didn't sound, in my ignorance, to be relevant to my subject...sigh. I have 4 inches of papers to go through at the moment (just my A priority ones) and I can't get through more than 2 per day as I keep zooming off finding more related to them, then more related to those. And now that the 45 page review I just found has finished printing. I think I'll take it home to read.
I remember saying, this will be an easy subject to literature review, there's not much literature....ha ha ha ha.
Was it just that my searches were too finely focussed? As I recall, I was searching for "bacteriophage". Maybe I was just blind to things that didn't sound, in my ignorance, to be relevant to my subject...sigh. I have 4 inches of papers to go through at the moment (just my A priority ones) and I can't get through more than 2 per day as I keep zooming off finding more related to them, then more related to those. And now that the 45 page review I just found has finished printing. I think I'll take it home to read.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
I'd put it up as an ID pic if I could figure out how in 5 minutes
This is the hat that won me a bottle of champers yesterday.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
I win alcohol - ironic.
Twice in the last six months I have won alcohol...and I don't drink. Why oh why does this not transfer to winning flights to Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane that are being drawn every day in the local bulletin?
First it was a bottle of 20yr old 100pipers scotch whiskey (now in my cupboard for my brother for Christmas) and today at the Melbourne cup luncheon I won the best hat competition. I raided my herb garden this morning and covered my brown straw hat with all the flowering herbs - fennel, chives, thyme - and then added roses and grandfathers whiskers and a few other odds and sods. I now am the possessor of a bottle of Killawarra brut. It may end up my contribution to the christmas hamper.
First it was a bottle of 20yr old 100pipers scotch whiskey (now in my cupboard for my brother for Christmas) and today at the Melbourne cup luncheon I won the best hat competition. I raided my herb garden this morning and covered my brown straw hat with all the flowering herbs - fennel, chives, thyme - and then added roses and grandfathers whiskers and a few other odds and sods. I now am the possessor of a bottle of Killawarra brut. It may end up my contribution to the christmas hamper.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Dim and Damp Mothership
http://www.corknut.org/toys/levelname/
Apparently A good name for a level of an alien game is as above...It seems now you don't have to be creative at any sort of RPG naming..
And another;
doom doom doom
Apparently A good name for a level of an alien game is as above...It seems now you don't have to be creative at any sort of RPG naming..
And another;
In the Construct of Decay
doom doom doom
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
mine is bigger than yours
I have a new computer at uni. It took the computer guy about 3.5 hours to get all my data and settings onto it. I can now do things at a reasonable speed and all my software works again. (This is the important part). It is also sleek and black and shiny and slender with a 19 inch, skinny, flat screen monitor (This is the fun part). Stats are as below. For some reason it seems to have three video cards - according to the computer guy. No idea why.
LCD monitor AL1912BM 19" black
Veriton 3700G computer
microsoft XP prof
CPU : p4 550 w/ HT technology (3.4GHz 1MB L2 cache 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 1024MB 3200 DDR-SDRAM
hard drive: 120GB S-ATA hard drive (7200rpm)
16x dual layer DVD burner
floppy drive
Graphics ATI Radeon X300se 128MB VGA TV out PAL graphics card
integrated 10/100/1000 LAN
LCD monitor AL1912BM 19" black
Veriton 3700G computer
microsoft XP prof
CPU : p4 550 w/ HT technology (3.4GHz 1MB L2 cache 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 1024MB 3200 DDR-SDRAM
hard drive: 120GB S-ATA hard drive (7200rpm)
16x dual layer DVD burner
floppy drive
Graphics ATI Radeon X300se 128MB VGA TV out PAL graphics card
integrated 10/100/1000 LAN
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
milestones
Woo-hoo, chapter 7 is written...except for the results of the experiment I need to repeat once I get the equipment back from being fixed...but that won't take too long. Woo-hoo
Monday, September 26, 2005
the copying VHS saga
Having had no-one reply to my blog about my new tv tuner card with high tech geeky mumbo jumbo, I have been forced to slave along alone. This is what I have found;
After giving my frizbees to someone else to check on their DVD player, four of the eight variations I did have worked....but they won't play on mine. My DVD player won't play things other people have burned either, unless they have been burned on DVD-. So I tried that and lo and behold it worked. I have a DVD- player...I didn't think that players were that specific
I also bought a new aerial with FM/UHF/VHF/Digital TV compatable/adjustable gain. I opened the box and it was sitting loose and had no instructions. I couldn't get it to give me reception anywhere near as good as my 30yr old VHF aerial, so I took it back. I'll try another brand when I get over the trauma of that episode.
I also bought a set of swanky, gold covered video and audio cables so I'm not using the aerial cable to connect the video. This reduces the static but the noice is still cloudy, like my ears are blocked a little, though very loud. I found a site on the web talking about sound recording problems in general and how to fix them. Unfortunately most of the things they suggest, like setting the gain to 1x instead of 2-4x I can't even get access to. I don't seem to have the settings. (SoundMAX audio card)
I don't have an S-video video player, so I can't do that (apparently the audio is better on them)
I've checked the capture rates I'm using and they are better than the suggested ones.
I've tried turning down as much sound as I can find - apparently if the sound is set on max, the sound card can't cope. If the different parts are set on different sound settings, it can't cope.
So far this hasn't helped. I may try putting them just above zero, though it said signal to noise got crappy if sound was too low as well.
The last thing I still have to try is to look for ground loops - but I need to look up how to do that. The page I found had lots of stereo system stuff that I have to sort through to find sound card stuff.
Stay tuned. Heh.
After giving my frizbees to someone else to check on their DVD player, four of the eight variations I did have worked....but they won't play on mine. My DVD player won't play things other people have burned either, unless they have been burned on DVD-. So I tried that and lo and behold it worked. I have a DVD- player...I didn't think that players were that specific
I also bought a new aerial with FM/UHF/VHF/Digital TV compatable/adjustable gain. I opened the box and it was sitting loose and had no instructions. I couldn't get it to give me reception anywhere near as good as my 30yr old VHF aerial, so I took it back. I'll try another brand when I get over the trauma of that episode.
I also bought a set of swanky, gold covered video and audio cables so I'm not using the aerial cable to connect the video. This reduces the static but the noice is still cloudy, like my ears are blocked a little, though very loud. I found a site on the web talking about sound recording problems in general and how to fix them. Unfortunately most of the things they suggest, like setting the gain to 1x instead of 2-4x I can't even get access to. I don't seem to have the settings. (SoundMAX audio card)
I don't have an S-video video player, so I can't do that (apparently the audio is better on them)
I've checked the capture rates I'm using and they are better than the suggested ones.
I've tried turning down as much sound as I can find - apparently if the sound is set on max, the sound card can't cope. If the different parts are set on different sound settings, it can't cope.
So far this hasn't helped. I may try putting them just above zero, though it said signal to noise got crappy if sound was too low as well.
The last thing I still have to try is to look for ground loops - but I need to look up how to do that. The page I found had lots of stereo system stuff that I have to sort through to find sound card stuff.
Stay tuned. Heh.
what sort of humour?
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 |
| 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:
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Monday, September 12, 2005I 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, 2005The 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, 2005a 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.
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