A full weekend.
What a fascinating modern age we live in…
This past weekend was the Australia Day long weekend. And I’d like to think that it was served out pretty well. First of all, my wonder at what happens in this age continues ceaselessly… in three short days, I’ve travelled by automobiles, both standard and automatic, airplanes, boats, and trains. All four modes of modern transportation in as little as 72 hours! Not to mention bicycles and feet!
It started off on Friday night when many gathered at the home of an Argentinian student from uni for his birthday bbq down by the sea. The Australian Open tennis tournament was in semi-finals at the time as well, so coupled with the Argentinian sides of cow and pig available for consumption, eye candy of the sporting variety was on the TV. There was alcohol, as there always seems to be alcohol where humans gather in sufficient numbers of legal age and constitution. The evening went late, so I stayed over at a friend’s place. On Saturday, a couple of episodes of Firefly went down nicely in the morning, then two of us departed for the Far Side of the City, going so far as to cross The Bridge, whence come dragons and wither go no sane and courageous knights.
That is to say, we went to the airport in Sunbury for a fly. After a glorious hour of Rotax-propelled Texan-licious play in the approaching frontal turbulence, in which we were at 4000’ above sea level, we turned around Mt Macedon and made a break for home. (Picture is the FlySynthesis Storch I flew in December; we were in the Texan this time). Stopping for a refuel of Powerade in town, we fought the Northron dragons on the freeway back to my friend’s place, ate potato cakes,
dim sims, and chips while watching Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 13.
On Sunday, we zoomed off down the Mornington Peninsula in the direction of Portsea for a SCUBA dive outside The Rip at a place called Castle Reef. Andy, Adele, Pat, Yusen, and I, all of Monash, partially filled a dive boat and briefly sank to 17 metres looking for fish and other wet beasts. The water is very nice now at 23 degrees. After the dive, and a crash through some massive waves in The Rip, we were back in Portsea for lunch, which was firther indulgence in transfatty goodness with fish and chips. Following lunch, we loaded up the gear and went to a nearby pier for a shore dive. This dive got spectacular near the end with the graceful glidings of a bull ray, probably around a metre in diameter, swimming around underneath us. There were decorator crabs, cleaner crabs (think the French cleaning crab in Finding Nemo), porcupine fish, sea horses, and hermit crabs aplenty. The cleaner crabs are most fun to play with if you are calm enough. They approach anything living that sits still enough and pick off any danging bits of skin on your hands/nails… kind of weird but definitely unique.
The dinner invite for the evening came by text message in the early part of the day, so Adele and Luke (her fiance) and I went to her parent’s place for roast chicken with smashingly good carrots, pumpkin, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings (!), and ice cream. Yum! The tennis final was on, so we started watching that, but left to go home about halfway through the match.
After some more Firefly this morning, I took the train back to my place and I’m now on the way to Sunbury to make some more Nutella somethings with Bruce and Helen before I head off to Canberra on Wednesday for a 10 day Isotope Chemistry course.
What a weekend!
Update.
Update coming... a fabulous weekend has just past. Hopefully crack on about it tonight!
In the meantime, I hear that there has been a rather cool weekend around the home parts. Here's some heat from my office balcony this morning to warm you up:
Cheers.
And a (warm) laugh... this has to take the best title in scientific literature for 2007:
"When Goats Go Whoof: The Hardest Fireproofing Problem Ever"
The tale of a town, its firebugs, a straw goat and its saviour.
'Late in the evening on 3 Dec 2005, police in the Swedish city of Gavle, 170 km north of Stockholm, were called to the scene of an assault. They were responding to reports that two miscreants, Santa Claus and his accomplice, the gingerbread man, were shooting flaming arrows at a giant straw goat. The police probably sighed as they sped to the scene: apart from the cheery outfits, this kind of thing had become depressingly familiar.'
From: Ben Crystall, NewScientist December 2007, pp. 38-39
Jetstream
Every single person I know has told me to watch "Jetstream" on Discovery.
I take it that's a hint?
A mouthful of sciencey-ness.
Today I did something that was kind of cool: I laser-ablated some very scientific holes into two fusion discs!
Just kidding, but really, I used a machine called a Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer, or LA-ICPMS for short. The essence of the machine is that a moderately powerful laser beam is focused on a substrate where the laser energy then vapourises whatever is under the beam spot. Fusion discs are a leftover product from another analysis that determines the composition of a rock after first melting a small amount of rock powder, then fusing that melt onto a glass disc.
The idea behind the LA-ICPMS is that the sample material is vapourised in an inert gas environment (helium), which is then flushed into an analyser. You can control the width, energy, and pulse frequency of the laser beam. The ICPMS part is the analyser... if you really are still reading at this point, I'll explain it some other time if you are interested.
The laser is probably a second hand unit from a laser eye clinic that upgraded... see some science is environmentally friendly... we reuse!
Anyway, it is cool using expensive hardware that harnesses lasers and plasma arcs at several thousand degrees C. No sharks were harmed in the operation of this machine.
Home.
Not sure if anyone is really interested as this video is not particularly exciting, but I've had the occasional question about what it looks like around my house. So, without too much fanfare, enjoy the clip I recorded from my camera:
Whistle a little tune...
Recently, things have returned well and truly back to the grind, the weather has become alarmingly summer-like, and the water in the Bay is very nice. The evenings and nights are a little balmy, occasionally a lot balmy when the days are hot.
At work, I've finished revisions on the second draft of what may one day be a published paper, have just barely started preparing a poster for a course in isotopes I'm attending in Canberra at the end of January, ready to run through a practice talk for some Grade 9/10 kiddies at university this week for the "
Siemens Science Experience", etc., etc...
Anyway, with three or four 40 degree days in the last week, I've gone to the beach a few times and worked on my tan, which for a Canadian in Australia, requires about two 1 hour sessions.
Charlie has been luxuriating in his low-stress life as a cat. He likes getting up at 0530 whether you want to get up or not, though, which is a bit of a problem. Now for first time on Blogger, I introduce you to HRH King Charles I, Duke of Carnegie, or as we like to call him, "Charlie", "goof ball", "fluffy", "his nibs", "chief", "damned fool" - especially at 0530, etc.
I've been carrying on with wonderful flying, though I haven't spread my cross-country wings very much. I've been playing a bit of 'musical Texans' lately as there are now two on line at Sunbury: one with the sweet EFIS system in it and one with the standard instrument layout. A few weeks ago there was a
Storch hereabout, which is somewhat like the Texan, but a high wing. I went for a rip with Rod and I was honestly expecting the airplane to be just that, a Texan with a high wing, but the Storch is its own airplane. Funny instrument panels in these ultralights, but c'est la vie en volant (someone will have to tell me if that's proper French) - check out the photo gallery on the website. It was cool to fly an airplane with only 10 hours on it, though. Smells like new car, except that it's new airplane. This is a photo just before I started getting my butt kicked by turbulence on the lee side (I know, it's my own darn fault) of Mt Macedon last weekend...
G'Day mates...
A tray of Nutella.
Oh, what is one to do with 12 jars of Christmas-present Nutella? (Note: not actually Nutella, but a reasonable facsimile.)
Make a song about 12 days of Nutella? 12 months of Nutella?
No and no, though the supply is more than adequate.
How about giving away a jar here and there? Yes, but mostly...
Bake!
Nutella 'kisses' biscuits on the left, Nutella cheesecake on the right. One finished jar, one opened for toast, one donated to adoptive family and the rest yet to be dealt with.
Happy New Year!
This past weekend was the Australia Day long weekend. And I’d like to think that it was served out pretty well. First of all, my wonder at what happens in this age continues ceaselessly… in three short days, I’ve travelled by automobiles, both standard and automatic, airplanes, boats, and trains. All four modes of modern transportation in as little as 72 hours! Not to mention bicycles and feet!
That is to say, we went to the airport in Sunbury for a fly. After a glorious hour of Rotax-propelled Texan-licious play in the approaching frontal turbulence, in which we were at 4000’ above sea level, we turned around Mt Macedon and made a break for home. (Picture is the FlySynthesis Storch I flew in December; we were in the Texan this time). Stopping for a refuel of Powerade in town, we fought the Northron dragons on the freeway back to my friend’s place, ate potato cakes, dim sims, and chips while watching Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 13.
On Sunday, we zoomed off down the Mornington Peninsula in the direction of Portsea for a SCUBA dive outside The Rip at a place called Castle Reef. Andy, Adele, Pat, Yusen, and I, all of Monash, partially filled a dive boat and briefly sank to 17 metres looking for fish and other wet beasts. The water is very nice now at 23 degrees. After the dive, and a crash through some massive waves in The Rip, we were back in Portsea for lunch, which was firther indulgence in transfatty goodness with fish and chips. Following lunch, we loaded up the gear and went to a nearby pier for a shore dive. This dive got spectacular near the end with the graceful glidings of a bull ray, probably around a metre in diameter, swimming around underneath us. There were decorator crabs, cleaner crabs (think the French cleaning crab in Finding Nemo), porcupine fish, sea horses, and hermit crabs aplenty. The cleaner crabs are most fun to play with if you are calm enough. They approach anything living that sits still enough and pick off any danging bits of skin on your hands/nails… kind of weird but definitely unique.
After some more Firefly this morning, I took the train back to my place and I’m now on the way to Sunbury to make some more Nutella somethings with Bruce and Helen before I head off to Canberra on Wednesday for a 10 day Isotope Chemistry course.
