On the Bottom Half

Time flies

2009-09-20T22:58:00.002-06:00

Although I'm certain to have alienated most of my readers by now, I assure you that the reports of my death have been highly exaggerated.

In the last three months, much in life has changed. I completed and handed in my thesis, mannied for a good friend, caught some sunshine, lazed about, moved to Calgary, set up house with Louise, and started to turn the next page of my life.

We have a lovely little town house in Calgary and managed to set up home by the generosity of family and friends.

I'm not yet sure how to continue this blog, but I will find a way. Louise and I have set ourselves a special challenge this winter, which will likely form the next focus. More on that later (once the snow gives a hint that it is about to fly).

Anyway, just a shot update to let you know that I haven't forgot about you.

I think I'll start going through the back catalogue of photos from the past few years. There's much yet to share.

Mostly Hadrian's Wall

2009-06-27T05:34:00.008-06:00

So, a few days after arriving back from France, we made a quick trip to Bristol to visit Louise's family there, followed by a passing glance at Cardiff in the south of Wales. The next day, she and I shot off to Newcastle, which is clear across the country, almost at the Scottish border. It was also the first time that I was released as driver-in-command upon the roads of Britain. Now, you make think that the roads get busy in Alberta at certain times of the day, and I certainly won't deny that. But, you have never driven in traffic until you've driven in British traffic at 80 miles an hour with what seem like peak-hour traffic volumes. It doesn't really matter what time of the day it is, there are always lots of cars getting people everywhere. Not only are there are lots of cars, they are all going very fast. Anyway, the reason for the cross-country voyage was because one of her good friends was getting married and the ceremony and ceilidh (something like a barn dance) was set in an old country house (above left) in the fields near a town called Matfen, ouside of Newcastle.

Because I was a bit of a latecomer, there wasn't enough room for me at the ceremony and dinner, so I went on a little tour while Louise was enjoying the wedding. It just so happens that the ruins of Hadrian's Wall (right) are in this part of England. Hadrian's Wall was built about 2000 years ago by the Romans and mark the furtherest north that their empire got. Emperor Hadrian came for a tour, so to speak, and found that the northern frontier of the (to-be) British Isles were inhabited by the rather fierce predecessors of modern-day Scots, the Picts. Hoping to keep them out of Roman Britain and to preserve whatever peace there was to be had in that part of the Empire, the Celts were assimilated, the Picts were excluded, and 80 (Roman) miles of wall were built from east coast to west coast. There were guard fortress-turrets (big enough for 12 soldiers) built at Roman-mile intervals, with two equally spaced smaller turrets between each mile turret. A ditch was dug on the north side of the wall so that attacking Picts would always be forced to fight upward. There was also a series of forts built later to house cavalry regiments and house the bulk of the 10000 soldiers garrisoning the wall. It just so happens that one of these forts was around the corner.

Chester's Roman Fort was built to house 8 regiments of calvary and the original Roman roads and aqueduct entrances and exits are preserved. There is also a spectacularly preserved bath house down near the river the ran north-south on the east side of the fort. Those of you with in-floor heating will be pleased to know that the commandant's house and the bath house both had it, 2000 years ago.

The sophistication of the latrine is probably typically Roman. It was placed nearest the river, so that the flow of fresh water from the aqueducts passed all the way through the fort first, coming out in the bath house and passing through an extravagant latrine setup on it's final passage to the river.

After all this touring, and after getting soaked in the rain, I rejoined Louise at the wedding. The rest of the evening was danced away at a ceilidh, which is 100% pure fun (I suspect that you all will someday experience one, at which point it will be made clear).

We travelled home the following day and stopped in at the Angel of the North (left), a sculpture that towers over the motorway just south of Newcastle. This is a giant iron man meant to symbolise all sorts of idealism, in the way that most art does. Makes for a good stop (that's Louise in the green jacket at the foot of the angel).

The next stop was Durham, which is home to a spectacular cathedral. Durham cathedral has been in continuous use for the last 900 years. The city itself is home to a fairly high calibre university which has taken over the castle next to the cathedral. How would you like to live in student residence, but not just any residence, a castle residence?

That's it for this trip. I'll do my best to organise another one soon! Ciao for niao...

France, cont'd

2009-05-27T14:19:00.012-06:00

No trip to France would be complete without a visit to La Tour Eiffel. There is, however, a 2 hour long wait for the elevator to the second level. It's much faster to take the stairs, with the added exercise bonus and the extra time to take in the views. Because seemingly all the buildings are white in Paris, one understands why it was called "the city of light" in times past. This was the second and final day of our lightning trip to the big city, so we soon departed the vicinity of the Tower and hopped a boat cruise up and down the Seine (the river through Paris). That is quite possibly the most concise means of seeing the city, without actually experiencing it.

Luckily, the cruise passes Notre Dame, gargoyles, flying buttresses, and all. The French are well known for their flying buttresses, which you don't see in England. The Gothic style, pioneered, more or less, in Durham (England), had well and truly taken hold. Amazing what was done at the behest of the church. There is an endless variety of (to we Canadians) fabulously old architecture to see in Paris. Later in the day, we went up to the artsy precinct Montmartre. Fans of broadway movies may remember it from Moulin Rouge. There we listened to Evensong in the Sacre Coeur and ate a sloping, sloppy, delicious meal at a roadside cafe (the roads ain't built for Hummers, either).

The Sacre Coeur (above). The rest I leave to you.

The trip continued on its next phase the following morning when I was able to fulfill a life-long goal: riding the TGV. This is, like, the original high speed train, and high speed it certainly is. Wikipedia tells me that there are a couple of different grades of TGV lines with the highest grade of them capable of sustaining trains at 320 km/h. It just so happened that the line to where we were going, Narbonne, is one of the high grade ones. Let me tell you... 320 km/h with your eyes a couple of metres above the track feels like warp speed. But the decadence doesn't stop there, oh no, we had first class tickets, so we were at the pointy end of the train. After the trains left Paris, it was very soon at cruising speed and stayed there for about 3.5 hours of a ~4 hour trip. The track is all welded, so there's no clickety-clack of the rail joins as the wheels hurtle themselves past. There are no level crossings, either, and the stations and signs go by so fast that you can't anticipate the sign, locate it, read it, and process it before it is past you and well on it's way to the horizon. The whole thing is very elegant and soporific. Hoo-wah.

On reaching Narbonne, we were picked up, lunched, then driven to Albieres, which is where Louise's parents were holidaying. Albieres is not terribly far from the Mediterranean or the Pyrenees, which mark the Spanish border. The following morning was beautiful and sunny and the flowers outside our room in Albieres were resplendent in the low temperature morning light.

What a start to a fine day. This was the day I got see my first, proper, defensible, meant-to-keep-nasties-out castles.

We started at Peyrepertuse, which is a chateau first mentioned historically sometime around 1000 A.D. There are Roman influences in its construction, but it's not clear exactly when it was built. The most significant events in the recorded history of this area of France, called Languedoc, occurred in the 1200s with the Cathar Heresy. The Catholic Church (in those days) didn't care very much for the Cathars and over the course of ~40 years, went on a series of rather horrific, genocidal crusades to eliminate them and their beliefs. The crusades basically culminated with the initiation of the Inquisition in 1233 and what we know about Catharism is mostly through the Inquisitors own records. Poetic justice.

There are a series of such chateaux throughout Languedoc where many Cathars took refuge before they were found out, taken out, and massacred. In the distance from Peyrepertuse, you can see another one: Queribus.

Queribus is a castle that never truly fell; it was handed over because it was impregnable and it's occupiers could no longer hold out the siege. This is the obstacle facing attackers of Queribus. Eek. And it could be defended completely with 20 men.

On that note, enjoy the architecture, and the next installment will be about the rest of the trip: Bristol, Cardiff, and Hadrian's Wall in the north of England!

The times, they are a changin'

2009-04-27T09:25:00.009-06:00

I could never call anything from Bob Dylan a cliche, but my times sure have changed in the last six weeks. Apologies to anyone I haven't yet told, but I'm back in Canada.

On short notice, I left Australia for (possibly) greener pastures in early March. I wasn't yet done my thesis, but I had completed the research and was spending all my working days writing up. The possibility of a most excellent job came up, but I had to be back in Canada to carry on with the application. So, I packed up, said my goodbyes (as best I could) and moved back home. Since then, I've completed my entire thesis to draft stage and it is now awaiting what I hope will be its final revision. Later in May, revisions allowing, I'll print it, bind it, and hand it in remotely. I was reluctant to leave a very good group of people, but it was time.

I can assure you that I have an accent of some description now. Judging by the number of Australians who asked if I was Irish and the number of Canadians who ask if I'm British, I'm guessing that my linguistic pedigree has become something of a mongrel. The temperature transition was the most shocking thing, I think. Going from a month at 40 above to Calgary at -30 was a stimulating experience, to say the least. I've accepted that my blood has thinned and that I'm a disgrace to any self-respecting Canadian, but if I have to wear insulated coveralls more often to prance around in the snow again, I'm okay with that.

However, never one to let moss grow on my shoes, I completed all the revisions to my thesis that I had, submitted the new version of my thesis to my supervisors, and three weeks ago took off to visit someone special in England. I do not aspire to a career in academic geology, so spending more time making my thesis into a series of papers would only serve to cause a deep depression. Therefore, while I was waiting for corrections to come through, a trip was in order. The details of this trip are rather decadent, so I apologise to everyone who chooses to read it.

After arriving in London at the beginning of April, I went up to the north Midlands and spent the first week there experiencing the places and meeting the people who made life great for the special someone that I was there to spend time with. This first involved a 1980s Fancy Dress party for which I went dressed, rather unsurprisingly, as Maverick, but for which my date went in something a bit more saturated in 80s fluoro fabrics (only the top of which is shown at right). I've since decided that the best way to party is to party with the British. Keep that in mind if you are planning something involving fancy dress, food, and alcohol.

A few days later, we rolled eggs down the drive of a friends' house for Easter, fattened ourselves on chocolate, then got ready for a proper journey to France. We took the train to London St Pancras station, then changed to the Eurostar, which is a highspeed train to Paris. This train goes through the Chunnel, which though you hardly notice it, is an engineering marvel. For 40 minutes we were under the English Channel, which was about the only time I allowed myself to read something while on this trip. I consider it almost a sacrilege to read while travelling... there's something about the constantly changing scenery under an airplane or outside a train that begs to be watched, not ignored. As a result, I work little on long-haul flights, and trains are a write-off during the day. A couple of hours later, we were in the City of Light and navigated the metro system to find our hotel in Le Place de la Nation in east Paris. After a fine three course French meal, we wound our way back to the hotel.

In the next installment: the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, and Montmartre, followed by the south of France including 4 hours on the TGV, two 11th Century Chateaux, and a Ryanair flight back to England. I leave you with a close up of spring dew on some leaves in the back garden.

A thesising we will go...

2009-02-18T00:32:00.005-07:00

The bush fires have come and not yet really gone. Marysville and Kinglake are not anymore. You may remember a little update a while back about a trip to Marysville just before Christmas. The resort is no longer, either. It has been pretty horrific, but in typical Aussie "she'll be 'right mate" spirit, they are already getting a move on and starting to rebuild. Over $100 million has been donated by fellow Aussies.

I'm going to be madly, truly, deeply writing for the next month and a half with little to distract me from being sensible and having a life. However, it is all for a good cause. Canberra went exceedingly well. Full stop. This all means that I'm not expecting to breathe terribly often until the beginning of April. Please don't be discouraged if there is not a return to frequent updating as I'm mostly wearing my fingers to little bloody nubs on my keyboard during the day. I'll try keeping things flowing bloggerly throughout the writing up process... In the meantime:

While I was in Canberra, we celebrated Australia Day. They really put on a show with the fireworks in the nation's capitol, preceded by skydivers:

The flag was fluttering proudly:

And, did I mention that it was windy on Kosciuszko?

Beware...

2009-02-11T06:14:00.002-07:00

The world economy seems to be on a pillar of sand taller than I originally thought:

The US is gambling freedom on a risky printing press policy

Eeek.

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And in the news this week: how to defeat illegal immigration with song!

US uses songs to deter migrants

Sky diving, Canberra, and Kosciuzko

2009-01-27T18:45:00.019-07:00

Since I last blogged, I did the unthinkable... yes, I went skydiving. My flatmate decided it was time, in her words, to "lose our jump virginity", ipso facto (see picture at left)...

After so much time buzzing about the sky in impressively performing ultralights, my immediate comment upon reaching 5000' of a 10000' climb, 20 minutes after takeoff, was: "Hmm, it certainly climbs like a Cessna." However, I have to give it to the old bird. There were 6 people (including pilot) in a C185, proving my contention that sky diving pilots are just a little bit crazy. Betcha didn't think you could fit that many into a 3 passenger airplane, huh?

It's a rush! But, wow is it loud. Two hundred mph winds past your ears for 30 seconds leaves you a bit deaf when you finish. Such an odd perspective on the familiar airport hurtling deliriously, directly toward it, downward. It is nice not to have an instrument panel in front of you... I do so love airports that the view was pretty spectacular. Oh yeah (Mom avert your eyes) the parachute didn't open ... ... as quickly as my tandem diver was expecting. So, instead of losing less than 1000' on chute opening, we lost 1500' and despite being the last people out the airplane, were first on the ground.

On the way home, I had a drink that contained something called "aeromatic bitters", which I suppose have to do with being imported by airplane, but who am I to be a spelling nit-picker?

The very next day, I was off to Canberra on what will be the last research for my project. For the past two weeks, I've been working in Canberra at a high pressure experimental petrology lab using machines called piston cylinders, which I profiled briefly several months ago. Simple explanation: they squeeze small volumes to high pressure and temperature (25 kbar and 1800 degrees for those of you interested). I haven't really had any time to write blog posts as the machines here are busy and accept the smallest of available downtimes. They look like this:

They have 8 of them here, my lab in Monash has one. They almost always work here, I've never ran a successful experiment at Monash. They have really awesome techs here, at Monash I have me as engineer, experimenter, tech, and troubleshooter - a more inadequate combination I couldn't find anywhere. Hoo-ray for established laboratories! I've achieved more in the last two and a half weeks than I was able to extract from my cylinder in 9 months. Yesssss.

Last weekend, I was taken by a friend to Mount Kosciuzko, which is Australia's highest, ahem, mountain. If you can guess which of the peaks in this picture is Kozi, then you're doing well. All jokes aside, it is a beautiful place. It is unfair to judge Australia's hillocks based on cragginess or sheer height because they are all on a very tall alpine plain. We summited the peak at 2228 metres and lorded our lofty position over all of majestic Australia before eating lunch and leaning on the 90 km/h gusts of wind! It was a beautiful spot. Yes, yes... look at me there, the highest person in Australia (not on drugs), sitting guru-like on the survey cairn atop Kozi... I unfortunately have little useful knowledge for the masses of wishful pilgrims, my brain mostly a gelatinous ooze of useless facts with the consistency of pear puree. You used to be able to drive right to the top of the mountain, but more for shame's sake than anything I think, the road is now blocked to vehicles and you must walk.

We stayed in a lovely skiing (!) town called Thredbo, which was marvellous. Thredbo is situated at the base of an unexpectedly impressive ski hill. It is used as a sweet, sweet downhill biking run in the summer, which considering that this is Australia, the hill is actually a downhill biking track that serves as a ski hill in the winter. The picture to the left is basically the back wall of the headwaters of the Snowy River. The very same Snowy River of "The Man From Snowy River" fame.

The wildflowers were out and blooming, lizards were sunbaking, and wild rasperries were ripe and sweet. All is well with the world, right?

And the vistas are superb. Yes, all is well.

The trip finished off with a float down the Murray River, which is one-half of the Murray-Darling River system that basically feeds Australia. It starts off up in the Kozi highlands and continues west to the ocean at Adelaide. We floated at gloriously named "Tom Groggin", a rest area, camping zone, and cattle station, which, by the way, is a little north of Suggan Buggan. Thought you'd like to know the two coolest-named places in Australia. Ciao...

Quick! Behind you!

2009-01-04T00:51:00.008-07:00

First, a challenge... there're cookies (Queen's English translation: biscuits) in it for the winner:

What's this?

What's that, that thing behind you, that thing you spent the last 366 days with? It's 2008! What a year that one was. I hope that a philosophy closely resembling carpe diem led you on your way through Anno Domini 2008.

This is going to be another whopper of a year. But, rather than speculate, for this post I'm going to cop out on the writing and cop in on the pictures. Forthwith...

I was invited to go up to a place called Lake Glenmaggie on the weekend and Georgina and I were only too happy to go. Our hosts treated us far too well at their permanent spot in a nearby campground; in return we ate their food and drank their booze. Luckily for you, dear readers, I have a camera now and can show you some shenanigans. Said shenanigans involved jetskis, water, and biscuits (North American translation: tubes). Lake Glenmaggie provides water for irrigation, which means that people can use it for fun because plants don't care what the water tastes like. Thank goodness. Anyway, the lake is emphatically full, as you can see by the size of the submerged gum trees. I'm told we owe the hydrological surfeit to a good snow season this year. Jetskis pull biscuits quite well and after a few attempts, I was thrown from one. The water was so warm that it wasn't unpleasant at all. I especially liked the delirious skid out to either side of the wake when the driver flings you during turns. Fantastic.

Our hosts had their dog Scooter with them. He's a short-haired border collie and he's very well behaved. He doesn't like the water any further up than his belly, though, so this is as far into the drink as we could get him. The weather was a nice temperature, not stinking hot like it's been every other New Year's I've been in Australia, so he didn't feel any particular need to go in any deeper. Good dog. He even crosses his legs when he's lying down. The rest of the time was spent as it always is spent when at a lake... doing as little as possible, emphasis on sitting in front of the fire.

In the Australiana column, I have to share Ralph Magazine's January cover offer of free inflatable boobs (an astutely named "Ralph Rack") to every reader. Honestly, I don't know of what the rest out there think when buying magazines, but I think: buy book, get booklight. I guess for some it's buy book, get boobs. Mind you, for those who remember Christmas of 2006, Centrum Vitamins had "buy vitamins, get booklight" as well, so perhaps I have a warped perspective on things.

Wishing everyone the best for the coming year and, divine forces willing, my homecoming. That may chase some of you away, so consider yourself fairly warned. In the meantime, make like a lumberjack and take life by the chains!

Just like my flatmate did!

New pixel-filling device.

2008-12-28T06:00:00.005-07:00

I'll christen it a bit more thoroughly over the next week or so, but thanks to a rather large donation to the Camera Fund of Southeast Melbourne, I am back on the photography radar with some much improved hardware.

Though I apologise to all non-Collingwood fans, this is an Australian Magpie. They have a particularly beautiful warble in the mornings. Glorious bird, photographed in the grass around the Emu Flats embankment in Sunbury.

The second is of the Rupertswood Mansion, also in Sunbury. Though improperly exposed, it claims to be the birthplace of the Ashes, a cricket tournament between Australia and England where the teams vie for ownership of a small pot of ashes from a burned set of cricket wickets. Big deal, no mistake!

Thanks very much to the much-valued contributors to the camera fund!

A goings' on...

2008-12-08T00:23:00.002-07:00

This past weekend, my Aussie family donated a weekend at a place called Marysville, which is in the Yarra Valley to the northeast of Melbourne. Someone special and I stayed in a really great resort tucked into the hillsides above the town. We mostly walked, ran, drank wine, cooked dinner, and ate posh chocolate (a little). In fact, we almost never go out for dinner because we like cooking in so much. It's quite nice, I have to say.

We even had a car, which is to say, we drove everywhere. We shirked work on Friday morning and went to the Healesville Sanctuary, which is probably the best Aussie wildlife park around if you want to check out all the cool Aussie fauna. We got out to the resort for dinner time. Saturday morning we drank tea on the veranda overlooking a spectacular bit of bushland, walked into town to buy posh jam and lollies, had second breakfast, then zoomed back in toward the Yarra Valley wine region to find the most remote vineyard possible. That turned out to be Long Gully Estate, which though nice, made wines that were substandard. We swung around the zone and sampled posh goat's cheese at the Yarra Valley Dairy before ending up at Badger's Brook Estate to eat posh sour dough bread and posh cheese on a Qantas blanket amongst the vines. If we got any more mature, we'd be talking about "the good old days", but thankfully those didn't come up in conversation. The evening was spent with a trail run to Stevenson Falls and dinner of wholegrain ravioli with homemade basil pesto. Yum.

Sunday morning went swimmingly in the resort pool, then Bruce and Helen caught up with us in time for lunch and to drop us off for the bus heading back home. A very tranquil weekend all around.

The rest of my life is filled with a burning hurry to finish that is continually starved of oxygen by the wet blanket of demotivation. However, I've laid down the structure of my thesis and am madly writing to that schedule. There will be a stint in Canberra in the new year as I've officially given up with the piston cylinder at Monash. Canberra hosts some far more established apparatuses that hopefully will provide for my requirements. The first few months of the new year will be full of nothing but writing and revision after that with a submission date precisely on XX XXXXXXXX 2009.

Madness.

Blah.

2008-11-09T19:15:00.004-07:00

My camera is pretty much cooked and therefore will no longer be taking significant pictures. My income has also returned to its normal and slightly deflated size and therefore a new one of acceptable quality is out of the question. My prose will have to paint pictures instead. Forthwith...

Right, well, I spent Thursday through Saturday last week with a special someone in Sydney, with an ocean-view room, at a Bondi Beach Hostel. I met with some new family for the first time and bummed around the city for a couple of days. My productivity at work has ground to quite a spectacular halt, so it was nothing to disappear for a few days with some happiness. I've started the cross-country checkout on my Aussie ultralight flying licence, but at $212/hour plus other living and entertaining expenses, I haven't done much more. As far as this project goes, I've been pissing around with the piston cylinder manufacturing anger. That's about it.

Randomness...

2008-10-20T19:32:00.006-06:00

The most random that I could possibly be at this point is to show everyone this photo...

In keeping with the toothed theme of the previous post, this is me being a dentist on the giant inflatable life-size plesiosaur that King Harald V of Norway ceremoniously inflated during the opening ceremony of the Oslo conference I went to in August. One could say that I'm going "dental". Paleontologists have discovered the bones of this beast on Svalbard, which are the northernmost islands of Norway lost somewhere in the Arctic Ocean where the Sun doesn't shine for fairly significant amounts of time.

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This week...

A special someone has directed me to a columnist on the guardian.co.uk website, which is a British news service akin to the BBC, but without the government funding. This columnist is a man named Charlie Brooker and he is the most hilariously cynical columnist I've ever read. He's far more so even than Heather Mallick. Brooker's article last week was called "Is this the end of the world? If so, it's a bit more boring than I'd imagined: an invisible apocalypse." It's about what else... the financial system self destruction. Have a read... you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl. I quote:
"For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact, they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream..."

Out of wit.

2008-10-14T18:05:00.003-06:00

So I seem to be out of wit and observations. Apologies. It may be a little while before there's something new to read. It was wonderful to see everyone; I'm a pretty lucky chap to have such an extraordinary group of people in my life.

However, having a root canal five times a week for three solid years sans novocain is starting to take its toll on my otherwise good-natured outlook on life. So indulge me in this weak moment, and I'll see what I can come up with over the next week or so.

Doctor Slang.

2008-09-25T20:26:00.002-06:00

BBC published an article discussing the waning usage of abbreviation slang in medical charting and doctor speak. The highlight is this one:

'DBI refers to "Dirt Bag Index", and multiplies the number of tattoos with the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed.'

Check out the article: "Doctor Slang is a Dying Art"

T.O. Touring

2008-09-09T19:58:00.001-06:00

Before we arrive in Calgary, my flatmate and I are touring Toronto for a few days. The verdict so far, after one day productively spent buying a full set of hockey gear (for less than a third of the cost if bought from BladeWorx in Melbourne), is that Toronto is a very cool city; Canadian hair products are in general vaguely sexual to Australians (Bed Head, Head Lube, Root Enhancer, Stiff, Kinky, Shag It, Uptight, and Get Results); Tim Horton’s coffee sucks (sorry), but the sandwiches and Ice Caps and Steeped Tea are fantastic; the rain is warm; the Sun doesn’t have a nasty Autralian bite and is instead rather nice; Baby GAP is cheap as; and I have a noticeable Aussie accent, mate.

Tomorrow is going to be a day full of CN Towering and bus touring before we head off on Thursday to Niagara Falls for an epic border-crossing journey below, behind, and above the majestic icon of eastern Canadian tourism.

Pictures to follow. For those in the country, I’m around home home from 14th to 22nd September. If I don’t get the chance to see you, please don’t fret. I can’t see everyone because I’m only home for a week, but I still love you!

Ciao…

Aussie Rules Footy Tipping

2008-08-31T21:35:00.002-06:00

Many of you out there will have participated in a hockey pool or something like it. I've only ever done that once in my life and I did terribly. Shift to Australia and I find out about AFL Footy Tipping Competitions. My flatmate's office runs a tipping comp during the regular season, which just ended this weekend. It turns out that emotionless, conservative tipping by a Canadian in an Australian footy tipping competition can result in a winning combination. I won the competition by 2 points.

If only I knew how to play footy...

Norgefjorden

2008-08-20T13:21:00.011-06:00

Norway's topography is, in a word, profound. I travelled by train on my last day in Norway to two fjords on the west coast, Aurlandfjorden and Naeroyfjorden. The train ride west from Oslo already travels through some astonishing countryside, which set the tone for the coming fjords. But to kick it off, this first photograph is during the bus ride on the 18% grade road up out of the fjords. Seems fair to begin the story with the last part of it.

The journey was in five parts: train from Oslo to Myrdal, Flamsbana train from Myrdal to Flam, ferry through the fjords from Flam to Gudvangen, bus from Gudvangen to Voss, and return train from Voss to Oslo. While I did this trip in about 18 solid hours of travel, it could easily be spread over a week. I wish I could share the look, feel, and ambience of the journey and the spectacular scenery in their full three dimensions. I suppose that the train trip is a little like the Rocky Mountaineer in that you feel like only the train is capable of getting you out to this particular patch of countryside. There is a road alongside the rails sometimes, but you tend not to notice. Also, the throng of Norwegians biking, hiking, walking, and playing in the outdoors along this stretch of land is remarkable. Norwegian literature would have you believe that Norwegians are an outdoor species and I would definitely agree with that.

These are the beautiful surrounds at the train station in Fjellstova, which is on the way to Myrdal:

Arriving into Myrdal train station, one sees this before starting the descent on the Flamsbana down to the fjord cruise, which starts from Flam:

Now the fjords, which speak for themselves. Very loudly.

Yes, that's a house near the top of the first fjord picture. The highest nearly vertical ascent is somewhere between 700 and 900 metres in these fjords, which is really something else. The Rockies are pretty, but Norway's fjords are truly deserving of an award. Everyone book a trip and go see them. The two fjord pictures above are in Naeroyfjorden, which is on the UN World Heritage list. For the entire length of the ferry trip, I stood on the top deck, rotated slowly to face one direction then the other, staring. Were the fjords women, I would have been slapped. I have never seen so many waterfalls in such a short span of time in my life.

Fair readership, that is Norway in a Nutshell.

Oslo Wandering...

2008-08-14T13:39:00.003-06:00

By late Saturday, everyone's brains were smoking and the brannmelder (smoke alarms) were going off all the time. The evacuations were starting to frustrate everyone, so the conference organisers called for Sunday to be a rest day. Henning, Michiel, and I formed an ad hoc Monash gathering and wandered the rain all day checking out the sights of Oslo. We toured around the centre of town, then walked to Akershus Fortress, a ~700 year old Norsk structure built on Oslo Fjord. From there we wound our way to the Henrik Ibsen Museum, which is devoted to the life and works of Norway's greatest playwright, Henrik Ibsen. He was a fierce looking man and wrote prolifically until the late 1800s when he shuffled off this mortal coil. Famous man in these parts, very famous. Following this, we went around to find a warm and dry place for coffees.

Post drink we found our way to a sculpture park where there are over 200 bronze, naked sculptures of humans. It was really quite profound. The sculptor was able to detail the musculature of the human form so convincingly that you'd swear some of the forms were simply bronzed humans. Marvellous. My favourite, a man holding a baby, is below. The picture, unfortunately, doesn't do it justice.After that we ended up back at the hostel and cooked dinner. Conferencing followed on Monday and carried on apace. Tomorrow I'm doing a lightning trip to two fjords in western Norway, which means I have to hit the train at 0635. Hopefully some stunning pictures from that... afterall, next to presenting at the conference, my goal was to see a fjord. I want to see what Slartibartfast was so proud of.

Let the kroners fly...

2008-08-09T04:15:00.009-06:00

Oslo is the most shockingly expensive city I have ever experienced. Kr (that's Norwegian Kroner) 27 for an espresso equates to about $5AUD. Eeek. However, yesterday evening was the first time that I was able to get into the city to try and experience a little of the real Oslo. In a short course I did back in February in Canberra, the one that was extravagantly funded by the EU, I met a fellow who's studying for his PhD in Tromso (northern Norway). As it turns out, he is in town for the Congress and we ran into each other. He took me off the tourist strip and into a couple of back-Oslo pubs, which made for a great night. However, the volume of the music at these pubs necessitated yelling and I woke up this morning with a case of what I'll call beerandnoise-induced laryingitis. There was finally some sun yesterday; it has been cloudy and rainy since arriving. This is not a problem, really, I like the rain.

After the days activities, a companion and I went to the supermarket to grab some Heineken cans, which grow out from the supermarket shelves in the 500 ml variety. Then, to drink them, we went to the brand spankin' new Oslo Opera House, which is made of Italian marble the colour of cosmetically-whitened teeth and Norwegian granite with green mica throughout. In this place, you can literally have a drink ON the house. It's a shame it isn't free. Take a look at left... Unfortunately at this point, the six separate pieces of my sunglasses would have been most useful as a single whole.

Probably the highlight of my morning was due to my acorn bladder, which required a stop at the WC (toilet) in the train station before heading out to the conference venue for the day. I've heard of pay toilets in Europe, but wasn't sure when I would experience them for the first time. It turns out that that time was yesterday and it costs Kr10 to answer nature's call in downtown Oslo.

The major sponsor of the Congress is the recently merged Norwegian state oil company called StatoilHydro (that's Shtat-eel-heedro). I was wandering in the corporate expo space when I stopped at the StatoilHydro booth and started flipping through an interestingly-shaped pamphlet describing the company, employees, reserves, production, and corporate values. One of the booth staff came over and started chatting to me about my history, giving the hard sell about living in Norway, the benefits of working for StatoilHydro, and that with "expertise" (a phrase I've never thought applicable to anything related to me), migration is not a problem. I was basically told to apply for one of their exploration positions by explaining my current situation in their e-mail contact form. He gave me a send off with the whole: "here's my card, if you're interested or have more questions don't hesitate to call or e-mail, and let me know if you need me to get in touch with HR for you."

Couple this with the in-class visit at Monash by Apex Minerals on Thursday 31 July asking the students to come up for a chat in the tea room if they wanted a job, and the employment picture in Earth Sciences regarding resource exploitation is very rosy indeed.

Update two...

IGC 08, Oslo

2008-08-06T02:33:00.003-06:00

Setting aside that fact that these newfangled Club lounges at all the major airports are an extravagant way to fly, what with their showers (body spray and rainfall shower heads rock!), free alcohol (it's not plonk, says the 15yr Glenlivet and 2002 Merlot), nice food, and great views of the airfields, Oslo is an adventure already. The influx of people for the International Geological Congress snowed under the customs people last night, holding up the line so long so that I didn't find my way to my hostel until 0100. Then, the hostel people didn't seem to have my booking for that night and were otherwise full. After a mildly despondent walk to a full-priced hotel and a phone call searching for me from the original hostel, it turns out that the hostel did in fact have a bed for me. I was stuffed when I fell asleep last night.

This morning I registered for the Congress and had a bit of a wander... wow are there a lot of people here. From the foreground of the picture at left to the faded distance is all conference venue stuff. Eeek. More importantly, Oslo smells of northern hemispherian trees and water. My first impressions were that it is a soft-edged land, it's corners having been worn away by relentless ice. I have yet to see some fjords, but they are certainly on the list. I like it here, but brings lots of Kroner.

Now, time to work out which talks I'm going to go to, which to slough, and to where to sneak off between times.

Ciao!

Qantas Club Lounge in Hong Kong:

2008-08-04T16:59:00.001-06:00

Total sweetness...
*****
Update:

British Airways Club Lounge in London:

Total wicked sweetness...

Trippy...

2008-08-03T23:15:00.004-06:00

Yes, believe it or not, I'm off to another far-flung part of the world. I'm going to Oslo, Norway to present at the 33rd International Geological Congress. If you wish to bludgeon yourself with what I'm talking about, you can find my abstract here: search the page for "MRD-02". My talk is titled "Magma mixing and sulphide production in the mid-crust in southeastern Hokkaido, Japan: Insights into arc metallogenesis". I leave tonight via HK and LHR, then I return via Helsinki and HK on 17th August.

I'll post while I'm away and hopefully I'll be able to fulfill promises for posts from long ago... This was up at the train stop a few months ago; I doubt such an advertisement would escape prudish North American censors, which is why we love Australia:

TTFN!

Broken Hill Round 2

2008-07-12T22:22:00.006-06:00

Broken Hill was a three week camp last year but for time and budgetary reasons, it was shortened to two weeks this year. It turns out that almost the same amount of work was done, but with less time to faff about.

A different generation of student seems to have found its way to university. All the experienced lecturers tell me that there used to be a lot more drinking involved, but this year a surprising number of students were up past 0000 every night working on their maps and other assignments. Maps are largely supposed to be done while in the field, but there seemed to be a lot of erasing and re-drawing going on back at camp. Eeek. They teach mapping differently here in that they don't have the field/office map combination that I was taught. They use mylar on top of aerial photos and use the field map as the good copy. There is a lot of structural geology that the students have to assimilate and this is probably the hardest part of the course. Structural geology is a bit more art than science, really, and I'm a bit ambivalent towards it.

The highlight for me had to be the stars at night, which are uniquely bright in places like Eldee Station. We also stayed in Silverton, which is where they filmed a lot of Mad Max and Mad Max 2. There was 5.3 mm of rain on Monday, which is always an experience in the desert. It was so green this year. But, zen-like, one has to step back and observe from a distance to see the life brought by the rains. Walking over the land would belie its vibrancy, appearing as so much red sand and isolated patches of growth.

I love experiencing the authenticity that comes out of the demonstrators when in the field. Once the normal and bothersome city life social filters go down, you get to know some pretty interesting people. I shared my room with my office mate and a new guy from Melbourne University and everyone really turned out to be very saturated with good humour and stories. I've also found that good scotch (Johnnie Walker Green in this case) brings together the select group of scotch people and makes for warm coversational glow in the after hours. Corruption, yes bloody corruption.

Staying so far from major cities has another interesting effect. It seems to reset expectations and arriving back in the city, one sees clearly what has become the modern human condition as an independent observer. Couple that with the complaints from students about what they miss while away and a fairly complete picture is formed. My do we all live in glorious times.

Pictures: (top) the dust storm during the first week, (middle) Ben with vehicles on a frosty morning, (bottom) gnarly mulga in the desert hills.

----------

"Billy lids" are kids in general and Woodstock Bourbon and cola has the advertising phrase "Crack a big woody" on bumper stickers.

Broken Hill

2008-06-30T04:14:00.002-06:00

Wireless broadband internet has hit the Outback. I'm sitting under what are quite possibly the most spectacular stars on the planet while I write this. It is so dark at Eldee Station that last night I saw the Zodiacal Light for the first time in my life.

The soil is brown and and eucalypts are green following what may be a 100-year flood! I just realised that the sand storm that blew through tonight is stored on my camera and not on my memory card, so you'll have to wait for those pictures, but I still love you all and I'm on expensive internet time at the moment so I have to prepare off line for my next post.

Ciao for now...

A trip away...

2008-06-26T14:39:00.003-06:00

While you may have thought that I've already been on a trip to another planet... I haven't yet achieved that feat. However, I will be on the closest thing to one until 11 July.

I'm off to Broken Hill for the third year field course. There's only patchy internet out there, so if you don't get responses or think that I may in fact be dead, I'm not.

If you GoogleEarth, see if you can find "Mundi Mundi Man" on the Eldee plain northwest of Broken Hill, NSW. Anyone heard of BHP Billiton? They're are one of the world's largest resources companies - BHP standing for Broken Hill Proprietary... Signing off.

Anchor Away

2008-05-29T18:44:00.003-06:00

I'll be out this weekend in a place called Eildon - a popular Australian holiday spot on a reservoir. I'll hopefully have a story or two from flying over the past couple of weekends and some photos and woo-hah from this weekend. Thanks for your patience.

Now, to keep you entertained and mystified for the weekend, another Australian language brain twister for you to decode:

"Crack a big woody."

I'll give you a hint, it's an advertising slogan, get your minds out of the gutter. And a second for good measure:

"I've got the billy lids this weekend."

A Really Big Microscope

2008-05-25T04:50:00.007-06:00

On Monday this week, I was indoctrinated in the operation of the new Electron Microscopy Centre building, which is across the nature strip from the Geosciences building. I use their baby scanning electron microscope (SEM), but since they have moved to their new $10 million building, everyone needs to be told how best not to break the new pad.

As the flat, square little building was taking shape over the past year, everyone has had a comment or two, usually disparaging, about this odd, squat little place with big poles positioned at two of its corners. To wit: "It looks bent." "Are those lightning attractors?" " What's with all the 60s-esque glass panels and crappy brown wood everywhere?" "Boy, that's a lot of cement trucks." "Why is it taking so long?" "Surely it doesn't take that long just to pour the foundation for a single story building." ...

Well, for all that name calling, everything, oddly, is odd for a reason.

First, a primer on electron microscopy: take a sample of just about anything and shave it down to about 1 or 2 square cm in size. If it's hard, like metal (not the music), or rock (also not the music), polish it to a mirror finish. Coat the item in an almost atomically thin layer of somthing conductive like gold, carbon, or chromium. Insert the item into the microscope sample chamber, which is kept at vacuum, and turn off the lights. Turn on the microscope and watch its TV. The microscope fires a stream of energised electrons at the sample through an electron gun, which stimulate the emission of secondary electrons when they smash into the surface of the sample. A CCD, very much like the one in your digital camera, picks up these secondary electrons and a computer interprets them into an image. Rather than optical contrast, what you see is contrast based on charge density. There are other modes that give images based on back-scattered electrons, not secondary electrons. Back-scattered electrons bounce off your sample, typically have higher energies, and hit a different sensor. The rate that these are produced is related to the atomic density of the sample. There are different types of electron guns, too, with different advantages. Thermal emission filaments are just like elements in your oven, but better. The best are cold-filaments, which are caused to release streams of electrons by using really high voltages.

Just like a normal microscope, you see an image on a screen, which is magnified anywhere from a few times to a few million, or billion times. For my purposes, I use a sturdy, old, well functioning SEM that can zoom up to about 10000 times magnification. For basic chemical composition, an SEM can be configured to collect X-ray emission from your sample. X-rays are produced by atoms in your sample absorbing some of the electrons from the gun and then re-emitting the absorbed energy as an X-ray. The energy of these emitted X-rays is proportional to the element which emitted them and therefore can be used to determine elemental composition. This is known to industry wonks as "energy dispersive spectroscopy" or EDS. EDS gives you a general, but not precise, idea about the elements that make up the material under the electron gun. There is a more precise version of this method called "wavelength dispersive spectroscopy" which measures the emitted energy a mite more precisely and is therefore quantitative (don't you just love the jargon?), meaning that you can publish the data as established elemental compositional fact. I call this "zapping" the sample.

There are two general methods of electron microscopy: scanning and transmission. Scanning is what I just described, where energy is measured as it bounces off or is re-emitted from the sample, hence SEM. Transmission is where the electrons fired from the gun are transmitted through the sample and measured on the other side, hence TEM. Samples for this method must be polished very thinly. Primer complete.

On with the building. This building is so impressive. They have built three different classes of labs: A, B, and C. C-class microscope labs house the non-flashy workhorses like my little SEM. They have thin concrete slabs for floors, aren't as precisely temperature controlled, and are less impressive to talk about. Moving on. B-class labs are something. They have 60-cm thick concrete slab floors separated not only from the main building's foundation, but also separated from the lab's surrounding blockwork walls. The block work walls, in turn, are on separate footings and so are isolated from the rest of the building. The lab roofs sit on the block work walls and are independent of the main building roof which is itself supported separately. The walls are lined with acoustic dampening sheets. To minimise mechanical disturbance from air-conditioning airflows, room temperature is controlled using water-cooled radiative panels on the ceiling, rather than air exchange systems. Airlocks have been used to minimise pressure gradients when doors into the lab are opened and for acoustic isolation.

The A-class labs, in addition to the above features, have 1m thick slab floors, stainless-steel doors grounded to their door frames with copper bushings, double-thick acoustic linings, and operator stations placed outside the microscope room. Temperature stability is managed to less than 0.1°c/30min and less than 0.005°c/sec. The building is made out of wood and glass whereever possible to stop currents from flowing through the structure. No elevators are present in or near the building, because electric motors in elevators are a large source of stray electromagnetic field. To allow access for those less fortunate, there is a wild and crazy wheelchair ramp that goes all the way around the outside of the building. They don't use any fluorescent lighting because the ballasts required for these create stray fields.

More features: they rewired 6 electrical substations in and around the university to reduce currents grounding into the Earth; shielded, twisted pair cables are used throughout to minimise stray fields generated by power services within the building; wiring to earth is in a star configuration to minimise risk of ground loops; the path of cables into the building is designed to maximise the distance of cable bundles from the main instrument labs and minimise the number of cables into the labs; chairs made from non-magnetic materials are used in front of instrument columns; the main switchboard and power supplies are located in a separate plant building several metres from the main building; any structural steel is earthed to a common point; items such as airconditioning duct work has non-conducting spacers at frequent intervals to block current formation.

The prize microscope under installation right now is a 300,000 volt FEG TEM. That means that the electron gun is a field emission gun (FEG) type and that the microscope is a transmission type: it's electron stream is caused to flow by charging the tip of the electron gun up to 300,000 volts and these electrons are transmitted through the sample before analysing them. This is a 3 or 4 week installation job: the microscope came in about a dozen wooden crates, cost more than a million dollars, and gets an (A-class) room to itself. Much like a moody teenager. There are maybe 2 or 3 of them in the world including this one. When it's running, it will be able to image things down to a couple of Angstroms, with is on the scale that lets you see how individual atoms in the atomic lattice of a substance organise themselves and form the material. This is important in the study of alloys and new composites. You will soon be flying, driving, doing, and living with materials built >50% from composites and understanding how these substances construct themselves, with inhomogeneities at the nano-scale, is fundamentally important.

This microscope place is overwhelmingly cool. I wish I had a reason to use the million-dollar baby.

Not forgotten

2008-05-20T01:01:00.002-06:00

I haven't forgotten you, just away for a time. Should have something of interest soon.

Sorry for the tumbleweeds.

Auslang.

2008-05-04T20:58:00.003-06:00

I've seen this phrase on several signs around Melbourne recently. Your mission should you choose to accept, translate:

"Dob in a hoon."

I'll offer a cookie to the first correct answer from a non-Aussie.

Stupid Ideas to Reduce Fuel Prices

2008-04-30T18:53:00.008-06:00

*rant* I've been hit lately with a number of stupid ideas presented by people hoping to reduce their fuel bills. Besides the utter and obvious ridiculousness of having a "let's not buy fuel day", another one that has been passed my way is, and I'm quoting:

"Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies, ESSO and Shell."

To which I reply: "No, let's buy fuel from all those small, family run operations that presumably have their own condensate pipelines and refineries in their back rooms." Yes, that will definitely give the LARGEST OIL COMPANY IN THE WORLD (ExxonMobil), the second largest corporation in the world (ExxonMobil), and THE MOST PROFITABLE corporation in the world (ExxonMobil), pause for thought. It will also give the second largest oil company in the world (Shell), the THIRD LARGEST corporation in the world (Shell), and the second most profitable corporation in the world (Shell) that same pause. After all, they make all their money from you buying their gasoline... NOT.

Just where, exactly, do these people think non-ExxonMobil and non-Shell branded fuel stations buy their fuel from? Well, besides from ExxonMobil and Shell? Probably from that third most evil and trampling global death walker - BP, you guessed it, the THIRD LARGEST OIL COMPANY IN THE WORLD and FOURTH MOST PROFITABLE CORPORATION IN THE WORLD.

Any idea to reduce fuel prices by sabre-rattling in front of the juggernauts of global wealth is stupid. This is not a David and Goliath fight. The basic argument is flawed. Once everyone empties out the tanks of the Mom-and-Pop fuel stations, who are those fuel stations going to go to for their fuel stock, that is if they aren't already buying it from Exxon or Shell? It is not possible to reduce the demand for a product by not reducing demand. This is basic capitalist economics. Compound that with the fact that Mom-and-Pop fuel stops, regardless of any increase in demand, aren't going to get any volume discounts from the Big 3. Single operations can't bargin with Exxon, Shell, or BP. Nope, you're better off buying form a large chain with the bargaining power to get a volume discount.

Truck drivers and farmers aside, to pay less for fuel, use less. That's it. If that's not possible and nothing can be changed, pony up and pay. Scrape back money from all those other necessities like iPods, $8 lattes, and disposable clothes from Le Chateau, buy stock in Exxon, Shell, or BP, and reinvest the dividends in the fuel bill.

In the meantime, whomever it is that comes up with these ideas, please stop trying to dupe everyone into thinking demand reduces demand. Otherwise, I've got a bridge to sell you, cheap...*/rant*

Fulfilling promises.

2008-04-28T06:20:00.023-06:00

I said I'd tell you about the Liptrap trip that I was on a few weekends ago, and it's been almost a month. So, without further ado, I've started this article with the daggiest photo of me ever (that's me on the RIGHT, in case you're wondering). There's no mistaking a demonstrator on school fieldtrips these days. I think it's funny that digital camera image sensors overload with the new high vis colours.

The Monash School of Geosciences runs a number of fieldtrips to familiarise its students with the practical aspects of geology. As a field of study, there's probably little that needs to be taught at the university level to make useful geologists in the real world, but such is life nowadays that everyone and his or her respective dog must attend university for increasingly less apparent reasons.

Anyway, the lesser (in length only) of two second year fieldtrips is to Cape Liptrap, which is on the southwest coast of Wilson's Promontory in the Gippsland area of Victoria (map coming if I remember). They go there to learn about structural geology, about which I have some fairly misinformed opinions that no one would really like to read at this point.

The day starts at a coastal cliff in which there are lots of folds and faults and rock fouled to buggary. The students slowly pace along the cliff and make a schematic cross section detailing the major features, which they later find out comprise a shear zone. A shear zone is a region of highly smooshed rock that are so stretched out and faulted that there's no original textures left, just a erosionally vulnerable set of what appear to be layered rocks. This cliff is in a place called Waratah Bay, which you can see on this Google Map near the town of Walkerville.

We next go to Cape Liptrap proper, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Waratah Bay. From there, we scare all the faint-hearted city slickers and lash them down a cliff - look for the little people on the beach below. I took this picture from about half way down the cliff walk. Once down at the beach level, we teach them about strike and dip, which is a way of graphically representing the orientation of layered rocks and other planar and linear features. This beach is particularly good for teaching strike and dip because there are a ton of really good surfaces to use for measure-ments, thus:

After getting a handle on strike and dip, which is a challenge for some, we walk for about 20 minutes, at low tide, along the beach to the next stop, which is a mound at an otherwise inaccessible area of the Cape. It has been named Fold Stack for the trip. At Fold Stack, the students fan out and begin sketching the stack and noting all its major features. Sketching in geology is probably one of the only bastions of elementary art class that is elevated to professional status. If you like using pencil crayons, sketching, and drawing, geology may be the "science" for you. Fold Stack looks a little something like this (left). There's big folds here that make teaching all the structural malarky related to folding easy to visualise. We were lucky with the weather this trip and only had enough drizzle on Saturday to completely disintegrate everyone's first drafts. Heh. Sunday was, well, sunny. Off on another field trip this and next weekend. I'll post about that later.

TTFN

Oh to be suspended...

2008-04-14T05:11:00.013-06:00

At first I thought that using the opening lines of High Flight would have been a rather appropriate title for this post, but this post isn't about that sort of surly bond, it's about an altogether different one and if it's done right, there won't be any slipping going on. I had this piercing urge to see what my flatmate was talking about when she said that she was going to watch a suspension. A couple of weekends ago, I got my opportunity. Ergo...

The Hanged Man is a suspension team based in Melbourne. They suspend people on marlin hooks. Marlin hooks put through skin. Marlin hooks that are, in fact, flown in from the United States.

You would expect that the overwhelming majority of people who are drawn to this sort of recreation are those who are inked (permanently), sometimes in many places, and pierced, also sometimes in many places. Piercings and tattoos are probably one of those polarising features of humans: you are either pierced or you are not; you are either pregnant or you are not; you have been suspended or you have not; and so on. Those not pierced or tattooed are, perhaps affectionately, known as "cleanskins." I was searching for another cleanie in the crowd of about 100 in which I felt very much a loner for a completely non-emotional reason, but was unsuccessful (they tell me there was another, though). You would expect that this is an exclusive club of pain junkies, but they're not. They're just people with an unexpected penchant for piercing, that's all.

The basics of the night involve a clean area where only begloved piercing staff are allowed and where the sharp end of the operation is conducted very professionally with antiseptic, skill, and a few gasps. Those of you who've been pierced would know best what that is like, just scale it up a bit. The hooks are "placed" through enough skin and in great enough numbers so that your entire body weight can be supported by your body's biggest organ - the skin. When done correctly and with sufficient hooks, skin tearing is very rare. Risky suspensions involve places like knee and calf suspensions (yes, knee and calves), where the skin isn't thick enough. It's rare though and a piercer worth his or her respective salt knows what will work and what won't. Nylon line is strung between the hooks and a block attached through a pulley system to the roof. A very intimidating chap who turns out be surprisingly gentle hoists the lucky meat into the air. Once air borne, you're free to float, meditate, swing, or just... well, hang out... as you do.

Probably the most common layout (or should that be hanging) is called the "suicide," which is four hooks through the skin of the upper back in the scapula area. In this configuration, almost anyone of any weight can suspend.

Now, with a large group at a suspension event hosted by a group of keen piercers, are there any guesses what you'd do to occupy the WHOLE group at once? How about a "pull"? Think tug-of-war, extreme edition. Like Extreme Makeover, but with hooks and metal rings. At this event, called "X" (check out the gallery at the website), there were about 22 people who wanted to play. Duly lined up and sent through the clean area, they were mostly hooked through the skin fold above the elbow. One fool, if I could be so bold, got it through that really sensitive area at the top of your butt crack whence the cheeks separate distinctly. He was the only one who yelled loud enough to be heard. Fool. Again with the nylon line, each person was attached to the same 3" metal ring and when ready, the pull started. Talk about going to extremes to release tension and stretch out your back... I left during the pull, but those attached to the ring left much more slowly... It went for a long time and eventually ended with two people giving it all they could.

When you finish yourself off, there's more to it than simply removing the hooks. Air has been pulled under the skin and the disturbing phrase "rice crispies" has been coined to describe both the verbal state of being and removal of this air. Gives a whole new meaning to giving off gas. From what I understand, suspension is an outlet for people looking for an adrenaline pump; those looking to push a pain barrier and in my opinion completely smash it to lumps of grout and bits of dusty brick; those for whom skydiving, cliff hanging, and driving fast just don't qualify... I found it interesting, but as Ed said, Kuriousity killed the Kyle.

I'll stick to jets.

PhD - The Series

2008-04-10T22:48:00.004-06:00

No, I have no plans to bore you with the ongoings of academia, I'll hopefully entertain you with my "above average" turn of phrase discussing the mechanically engaging bits of my PhD research. Hopefully, this will turn into a multipart series where I can address questions you have after each video segment.

The first segment is covering the experimental apparatus, called a piston cylinder. A piston cylinder is used to simulate very high pressures and temperatures. The essence of such a device is basically this: a sample charge is prepared in a precious metal capsule, then that charge is encased in a small graphite furnace and compressed inside a tungsten steel cylinder up to very high pressure. Current is fed through the entire apparatus, and graphite being an excellent resistor, much like your oven element, heats up and glows white hot, providing the necessary temperature for the experiment.

The basic components of a piston cylinder are an hydraulic ram, a pressure jacket, a piston, and an experiment charge including a small cylindrical graphite furnace. You place the experiment between the top and bottom of the hydraulic ram inside the pressure jacket and squish the piston into the pressure jacket, via the ram, where it compresses the experiment. Passing current through the entire apparatus, the graphite heats up. The elevated pressure and temperature are used to simulate, in very small volumes, the conditions found deeper in the Earth's crust. Exotic setups can simulate conditions in the very deep Earth - say 700 km, but they require double rams where a much larger ram squishes a smaller ram, which squishes the experiment. These can take up an entire room and require diamonds to actually transmit the pressure to the experiment.

Cooling water is needed to flow through the pressure jacket so that it does not melt, and large gauge cabling is used to transmit the power required through the experiment.

The setup here is small and can simulate up to 25 kbar, which is approximately the pressure you would experience at 80 km depth.

On to the video...

Questions?

P.S. I hope to have rehearsed a little more for the next one... maybe I'll even get creative and see what I can achieve with iMovie. More to follow. I know, I know... promises, promises...

Weekend Preview.

2008-04-06T05:35:00.009-06:00

We were teaching second years how to look at rocks this weekend at a place called Cape Liptrapp. More on this later because I'm too tired to write tonight.

Oh, and then, if you can stand it, I'll take you on a journey into a curious segment of alternative Melbourne society, of which I am generally an accepting observer; one of those mysterious events that belong to the wonders of those who wonder as the sunlight begins to fade above the rooftops of a large cosmopolitan city if there must be unexpected things going on in places you know not where; someplace where "cleanskins" are considered weird; something that makes it on to the Showtime network after 2200 hrs... I'll tell you a little about this:

And no Mum, it has nothing to do with my body.

A world without worries.

2008-03-28T05:44:00.007-06:00

Seemingly all the major issues of the world are coming to a head (don't they always?): the US is very nearly ready to vote for a new pair of candidates for whom to vote for in November, climate change is apparently shattering one of the few remaining Antarctic ice shelves, Zimbabwe continues its long inexorable march to utter socio-political illegitimacy, the MRSA superbug is beginning to populate Calgary hospitals, credit markets are still evaporating as the US convinces itself that it is in a recession, Indonesian peat bogs vomit CO2 uncontrollably as they offgas while being cultured into palm plantations for "green" biofuel, China still can't do anything about those persistent Tibetan monks flagrantly flouting Communist control, North Korea is testing missiles, Iraq insurgents are refusing Nouri al-Maliki's ultimatum, gold is fooling around at $1000/ounce, oil is breaking all time records...

In this swirling miasma of global crises, at least we still have that bastion of Canadian-ness, those annually recurring weeks of caffeine-induced anticipatory cardiac palpitations, those hedonistic mornings, afternoons, and evenings of coffee and steeped tea in paper cups... yes, ladies and gentlemen, I speak of the Roll up the Rim to Win campaign taking over your local Tim Hortons.

Bernard Delaney is so wound up in the irrefusable contest of wits offered by buying his daily grind from Timmy Ho's that the loss of one holy cupful of rim-rolling glory has caused him to forever sever his Horton-bilical. It's dis-guustin', I tell ya, just dis-guustin'

Was Timmy's cup pre-rolled?

Dearest God above, what is this world coming to when you can't get a cup that was left the hell alone by the thieving thumbs of minimum wage?

Arya-what?

2008-03-22T06:11:00.002-06:00

Aryan rally provokes clash - Calgary Herald

Huh? In Calgary... Let alone in Canada? (Spluttering while trying to come up with something to say... but left speechless.)

In Memoriam.

2008-03-19T19:11:00.002-06:00

Arthur C. Clarke, visionary and author, died in Colombo, Sri Lanka, yesterday. He had an astonishingly large impact on modern technological society will be sorely missed. He was aged 90.

Jeff Greenwald, Wired Magazine, has this to say: Sundown with Arthur.

Cells or bugs?

2008-03-17T17:54:00.003-06:00

So of what do you think there are more in your body:

Individual cells making up your entire body or microscopic bugs in your digestive tract? By how much does the greater of the two exceed the smaller?

-----

Right for the first two (so far)! There's about 1.5 kg of microorganisms inhabiting your body and they number about 100 trillion, whereas there are about 10 trillion cells that make you. So, bugs literally outnumber us internally 10 to 1! Probiotics here we come...

Canberra and a fellow Canuck

2008-02-25T19:34:00.018-07:00

All right, so it's not that interesting, but I spent the first part of February in Canberra on an isotopes course learning about how to apply isotopes to petrological problems (petros = rock; logos = study of; at least, that's my sort-of-Latin translation).

Thirty-five+ students and ~15 lecturers were flown in from several corners of the world, but mostly from Europe, to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra (it's pronounced "Can-bra", not "Can-bear-a"). There was a local student/lecturer contingent from ANU, who also hosted the conference. My verdict is that the European Union, who funded the conference, must have lots of money for this sort of thing because, first of all, the bulk of the attendees were flown from halfway across the world, second, the catered food was excellent, third, we ate out at restaurants every night, and fourth, we stayed in the university hotel for the entire week. The first picture is showing what interested geologists do, which is ignoring the scenery and instead obsessing over a single rock in an otherwise grass-covered field. This one rock is all there is of this formation that is accessible. One rock 1 square meter of outcrop.

The first few days of the course were spent on a tour to the coast south of Sydney. One of the graduating PhD students from ANU did his research on the area and toured the group through the geology, which apparently represents an island arc that mashed onto eastern Australia in the distant past. We overnighted in a town called Bermagui and ate a stylishly Australian pub meal of steak or grilled chicken, veggies, and chips. Then, a large group bought a case of beer with most standing on the beach drinking. I laid out on my back and watched the stars because the sky was crystalline in its clarity. A Belgian girl had been stargazing for a while and had a few "what's thats" and "where's this's". I happen to know a thing or two about the stars. The water was fabulous and the beaches superb.

The rest of the week was a series of lectures about isotopes and what one can do with them in rocks. There was a lot of talk about radiometric dating, which is every creation scientist's worst enemy, a tour through the extensive analytical facilities that ANU owns, and some information on new analytical techniques and so on.

One of the more elegant evenings was hosted by the Italian Embassy and there I met a couple, Pete and Teresa, who live in Canberra. We got to talking about Geelong's thumping of Port Adelaide in the Footy Grand Final last year and it ended in an invite to be toured around Canberra after the isotopes course ended. This tour turned out to be the juiciest bit: Pete took me around the mountains surrounding Canberra to see Mt Stromlo Observatory, which in 2003 was tragically destroyed in bush fires that swept through some of the surrounding communities. Five-hundred houses were burned and most of the telescopes were melted. There's been some reconstruction with the installation of a satellite laser range finding observatory (shown in picture above) and a few minor optical telescopes restored. The picture from the previous post is of Pete in the husk of what was a telescope building. He said that they had a Christmas party hosted by the university under that very telescope only a year or so before the fire went through and gutted the facility.

After that, Pete took me to the Tidbinbilla Tracking Station, which is one of the three main sites in NASA's Deep Space Network. The other two stations are in California and Spain with the set of three placed such that one is always facing the array of interplanetary satellites and probes currently exploring the solar system and universe on our behalf. These stations have large and sensitive transmitting/receiving dishes that NASA uses to contact and receive data from the likes of the Mars Rovers and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (to name two), to the Messenger spacecraft currently starting its observations of Mercury, to Voyager 2 (the one launched in the 70s), to Cassini around Saturn, and SOHO around the Sun. Pretty nifty technology there. They also have a great Visitor's Centre with a display of space relics, shuttle tiles, space suits, Moon relics, including the EKG readouts from the astronauts on Apollo 11, Mars Rover displays, satellite models, and a little coffee/gift shop. The picture to the left is of the big dish (74 m) which does a lot of sensitive and presumably high data rate communications. The picture on the right is of a smaller dish from the 60s that was actually the very dish that received the first few minutes of video transmission from the Moon during Apollo 11. The dish in Parkes, NSW later took over, but this one did the job when the Eagle landed and changed human perception of the Moon forevermore.

After all this spacey stuff, Pete took me to his place to pick up his wife and kid and we went into the city for lunch, more touring to the many vista locations around Canberra, and finally to the airport where I saw one of Virgin Blue's brand new Embraer E-170s come in to land. Canada has our embassy right next to one of the main access roads to Parliament House and you'll be pleased to know that the Maple Leaf is one of the few visible from Parliament House besides the Aussie flag atop the House. Below: the view from Mt Ainslie looking down ANZAC Parade with the Australian War Memorial in the foreground and Parliament House in the middle ground just across the lake; the Aussie flag flies over Parliament House.

I like Canberra. Many Aussies will think I'm nuts, but I really do. The War Memorial is there, national galleries, libraries, Parliament, and the embassies are all there. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly for a traveller, almost all of it is free. You don't need a car to completely circumnavigate the main part of the city in a day, the streets are safe, if a little quiet after 1700, and the whole place has this industrious , well organised sort of feel about it. I suppose it's also the government there that I like, too. Everyone makes a big deal about all the hot air that comes out of Parliament towns, but really, while we all like to think we hate government and that we can do without them, we can't and it's damn good that there are people out there willing to bluster, bother, and theatricalise the leadership of the country.

With that in mind, I should mention that I met, very briefly, Dr Brendon Nelson, the leader of the opposition, when I was walking through Melbourne the following weekend. I was in a the Crown Casino lobby on my way across the city when I saw this man that looked a lot like Brendon Nelson, but no one was noticing him or anything, which I thought was odd. But first, some current affairs: You may or may not have heard that Australia just formally apologised to the Stolen Generations. The Stolen Generations are Aborigines that were forcibly removed from their families under government policy right up until the 1970s. It was a program akin to the residential schools for Native Americans in Canada. While rightly rescuing many from the clutches of abuse and poverty, many also were wrongly torn from their families in a calculated plan earlier meant to breed out the Aborigines in a form of cultural genocide, but later meant to assimilate them into Australian society. Anyway, it didn't work and lots of people were displaced. Current PM Kevin Rudd made a very well considered apology from Parliament on the first day of sitting after the summer break, which was widely lauded by the Aboriginal community. Brendon Nelson made his parliamentary reply which was jeered, wrongly in my opinion, for reasons that are a bit mysterious. People turned their backs on him while he was speaking, booed so loudly that the broadcast was cut at some locations, and generally made ungracious fools of themselves for no good reason. It was with this in mind that I thought he could use a smile and some goodwill, so as he passed me, I thought, surely that's Brendon Nelson, which caused me to smile at him. It's would be like meeting Stephane Dion or Paul Martin or Joe Clark! How cool! He saw me doing this, stopped as he passed offered his hand, I shook it, said "Hi Mr Nelson!" and carried on. I should have said something about his speech, but I couldn't really think of anything worth while.

The same weekend, I met a fellow Canadian traveller fresh in from Fiji. Heidi and I spent a couple of days together touring around the city and I took her out to Mt Dandenong, which involved a massive train trip to the end of the Belgrave Line, consequently not very far from my supervisor's house out in the "mountains" east of Melbourne.

In Australia, one should always listen to the advice of locals. Knowledgeable camping ones will let you know that you should never sleep under a gum tree because gum trees spontaneously drop their limbs. Some of those limbs are several hundred kilos and no matter how much you spent on your tent, it will be crushed. Some of the warning posts around Mt Dandenong do the job in case there aren't any knowledgeable locals around to assist.

Update Coming.

2008-02-17T22:27:00.004-07:00

Something this way interesting comes...

In search of sense...

2008-02-14T22:24:00.002-07:00

Found this today from the National Post and thought it worth sharing:

A modest proposal for curing a whiny nation - Catherine McMillian

I would think this article isn't strictly applicable to Canada either.

While I'm not so sure about the number of lazy twentysomethings that Catherine alludes to near the bottom, requiring helmets on toboggans is going to far. We aren't so good at discomfort any more are we?

Though I have to say, I like the standard of living we all enjoy and do not wish for any "good old days" of diphtheria, polio, or typhoid. At least with a famine, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic anymore.

Anyone for KFC?

A full weekend.

2008-01-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-01-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

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

2008-01-17T22:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-01-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-01-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-01-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-01-05T05:50:00.000-07:00

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!

Floods and Pizza Knee

2007-12-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

The last week of "work" was going uneventfully with the University winding up on Thursday at 1700hrs for the next couple of weeks. Mother nature had other things in mind...

Planning to stock up on lollies in preparation for Star Gate marathon #2, I checked the doppler radar just before leaving to see if the yucky looking weather outside was going to deliver anything interesting. I had to leave early to get to the lolly shop before it closed and on the weather radar, the dark maroon blob crossing the city looked to be moving slowly enough for me to beat it home. Maroon means ludicrously heavy rain rate.

Anyway, I got about 2 km along my ride (I bike everywhere, no car) when the familiar feeling of a gust front caressed my bare face. I thought that it felt portentious enough to take cover and it's a good thing that I did. Ducking around a corner, I found a factory with an overhang deep enough to keep the worst of the weather off.

The torrent commenced and deluged the streets. Within 5 minutes, the street was starting to back up with water and the spray whipping around the building was soaking me. Sheets of rain tracked across the water-coated road and pea-sized hail splashed in the puddles ominously slithering around the edges of the building, encroaching on my dry space. Then, the centre of the storm passed and the wind changed, necessitating a crossing of the street to keep out of the worst of the weather. In the twenty seconds required to cross the street, everything I was wearing was dripping with water and I'd puddled (pun intended) through ankle deep water (that's ankle deep on my bike) to the cover of another factory overhang. There I rode out the rest of the storm.

When the torrent subsided to a trickle, I ventured back out into the street and found the cars at the nearby train station submerged to mid-way up their windscreens, emergency personnel chest deep rescuing people from their stricken cars, and employees from nearby factories sweeping water out onto the street. A lady was taking photos of the flood looking up toward the university. Pointing in the other direction I said,

"You should check out the cars at the station, they're submerged up to their windscreens!"

She replied, "Yeah, those are our cars."

"Oh, damn," I said.

24 mm (1 inch) of rain fell in about 30 minutes. I seem to have escaped the university just at the right time... the ground floor of the Earth Science building flooded and the few who were remaining when the storm blew through stayed another hour and a half sweeping water from the hallways. In a follow-up e-mail from administration yesterday, something like 25 of 100 buildings on campus weren't flooded.

My shoes got wet.

Fast forward to Friday morning: I went to the gym before heading south to commence two solid and glorious days of Star Gating to various planets in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. After finishing my workout, I headed off and heard the train announcement voice, which meant that my train was coming sooner than expected. In my rush for the momentarily departing train, I tripped over my shoe laces and left behind a lump of skin on the train platform. My left knee was the worst for the encounter. To be fair, I had my bike, bag, and helmet all in various locations surrounding me.

It was one of those scrapes that stays bloodless for a while... it must be that your body is in shock trying to work out how to punish you enough for such a transgression on the vanity of its largest organ. It bled and leaked a lot and with antiseptic powder and vitamin E oil covering it, it now looks a lot like a margherita (tomato sauce and cheese with spices) pizza. Now I'll have matching knees... I did my right knee scree skiing in a gravel pit when I was 15 or something and now the left one will have some scrabbly scar tissue. Yeah!

Merry Christmas! Love you all.

New Zealand Revisited

2007-12-11T06:15:00.000-07:00

In the absence of something more present and immediate, I'm resorting to some highlights from my skiing trip to New Zealand in September.

The first is a series covering a uniquely kiwi, alpine bird called the "kea". If you have an astonishingly acute memory, you'll remember that invertedonwinch.blogspot.com did a short feature on these inquisitive birds. They get into everything and will steal/tear/shred anything they find particularly interesting: wiper blades, ski racks, rings, necklaces, watches, bright and sparklies...

Normally they are verdant green with a sharply hooked beak and into everything:

We named this one Freaky Beak for obvious reasons. He's obviously survived on the backs of generous skiers/snowboarders:

Next is a shameless study of the wonderfully different climo-geography of south island New Zealand. (I must really be suffering the inexorable march toward academicky-ness, I've just created my own hyphenated compound noun.) If you ever needed a picture defining the term "snow line", NZ is the country in which to get it.

Last is me standing over Lake Ohau beside Queenstown atop one of The Remarkables in the rather un-remarkable The Remarkables ski area (heh). It was icy, icy, icy, which normally doesn't bother me, but the lack of snow make it difficult to ski on.

Dichotomous Temperature

2007-12-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

As I lie on my bed tonight at 0002 and look at the temperature reading 23 degrees, I can't help but feel a twinge of longing for the bundle of clothing that I would otherwise be wearing, were I home in Canada. The Internet tells me that it is currently -24 degrees at Red Deer airport and all the news that I follow is saying that Environment Canada is predicting the coldest winter in 13 years.

Those who know me well would know that I'm honest in my longing for frigidity, and I would gladly trade the last couple of week's worth of 30 degree scorchers for the comfort of my insulated coveralls. Alas, the glass of 2005 Ridells Creek shiraz in the late afternoon heat today did help to cool off my heat-frazzled nerves, as it hit 33 degrees in Melbourne at 1524 today. Thank goodness there isn't much humidity, and thank doubly-goodness that my new place has air conditioning. I think it is interesting that Australia would be one of the few places where the hardy could build a house without a heater, but where the hardy would rather choose a cooling device. We have evaporative cooling in the house, which is an interesting take on cooling... There's no refrigeration, just a unit that evaporates water to steal heat from the air. You have to keep windows open to allow the highly humidified air out, else you face a wet and sticky house. But, it is more energy efficient than a compressor driven air conditioning system that we are all used to and that so few of us need in Canada.

The flies are a bit nuts, comparatively, this year. There have been a few wind storms so far this summer, which bring not only the heat from the Outback, but also the flies. There's nothing quite like them in Canada, but to have a small idea, replace all the mosquitoes buzzing about in early evening during a wet summer with buzzing black flies and that would be pretty close. There are mozzies, but much smaller in the typically drier parts of Australia, like Victoria. But flies, flies, flies... whewpf. The Australian salute is like a swiping swat meant to tackle a fly. Beware the bloody flies mate. However, they are better than mozzies... they go to bed at sundown, they don't bite, and they don't carry malaria. All hail the Australian fly.

Speaking of flying, I tried to go yesterday, but the winds were from the north and furious. Gusting over 25 knots and hitting 38 knots aloft. That's not weather for an ultralight to grace the air, and it didn't cease all day. There's a nifty new Texan on the line at FlySports... it's an updated model with counterbalances on its already light pitch controls, a sliding manual trim system, the beautiful bubble canopy, and a Dynon EFIS D100 instrument package.

The EFIS (electronic flight information system) is a non-certified system (in GA airplanes) for flight information. The D100 is multifunction capable, giving everything in one 7 inch panel: attitude, altitude, airspeed, vertical speed, directional gyro, set headings, waypoints, drift, winds aloft, etc. It's marvellous. The only clue that you aren't working with a normal, albeit extraordinary, EFIS panel is the lack of gyro whine when you turn it on.

There are no gyros in it. It's all solid state sensors: 3 solid-state magnetometers on mutually perpendicular axes, 3 solid-state (huh?) accelerometers on mutually perpendicular axes, pitot static and dynamic air sources. It didn't occur to me until I'd finished the flight that the odd thing about it was the lack of instrument noise before I started up.

The instrument reads direction just like a directional gyro, but once you calibrate it on the ground to the compass and input the variation, the instrument maintains that setting, doesn't precess like gyro instruments do, and only needs to be re-set on a scheduled instrument maintenance schedule. After power failure, the instrument can do a full reset and give attitude information within 2 seconds of turning on. It maintains a backup battery that will last 1.5 to 2 hours following full power loss even so. Wow! This type of solid-state technology is surely the future of GA and commercial avionics.

It demands precision though... there's no slop like pressure-driven analog instruments have. What a trip.

Good night! Glad I finally found something at least a bit interesting to write to you about. Thanks for tuning in.

Oh, if you have never watched Stargate SG-1, do. Now.

New Adjective

2007-11-14T04:21:00.000-07:00

What adjective does one use for a really bad movie with a really big star, but which now is really extinct?

'stinkasaurus'

Context:

"The Postman" (1997)
I've never heard a theater full of people howl like they did after watching the trailer for this Kevin Costner stinkasaurus. Coming soon: "The Meter Reader. "
- Sean Nelson, Worst. Titles. Ever.

End of STS-120

2007-11-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

Everything went well for STS-120 and they've landed safely at Kennedy. The first landing window was taken and they landed pretty much right on time at 1301 EST.

The crew was ecstatic of their mission and the post landing chat on the landing strip was good.

-----

I heard this on the news today and I'd like to know if you guys hear the oxymoron, too:

President GW Bush to President P Musharaff: "You can't be the President and the head of the military at the same time."

Hmmm...

Mission update.

2007-11-06T17:30:00.001-07:00

STS-120 marched steadily along and all docked operations were completed with undocking occurring Monday morning. The crew are now preparing for landing by re-installing seats, testing thrusters, making orbital adjustments, and other general prep tasks for landing. The weather is forecast to be good at Kennedy, so they are calling for landing to take place there on Wednesday afternoon around 1300 EST.

4 of 5 scheduled spacewalks were completed. Scott Parazynski was able to jury-rig the torn P6 array section allowing it to be fully extended. It turns out that it is a problem to have the array partially extended - if not fully out, it is not properly tensioned to withstand the forces put on the station during docking of the Orbiter. But, that problem is solved and they are able to generate sufficient power to sustain the station while the other significant snafu - the SARJ (joint) on the other set of arrays - is dealt with.

Mission managers have elected to save the repairs until later while they work out exactly how to solve the problem with the S3/4 SARJ. All the moving parts - bearings, rings, gears, etc., are replaceable, so if that's what it comes to, a later mission will rebuild the main bearings, if you like. The other trick is to clean up the shavings already accumulated in the bearing housing. The obvious thing to do is vacuum up the bits, but Mike Suffredini, ISS Program Manager, has this to say on the clean up: "Let's talk about vacuum cleaners in a vacuum later". In the meantime, the P3/4/6 array setup can sustain the station, allowing a minimisation of the sun-tracking movement of the other array.

So, all eyes to landing on Wednesday! The Mission Management Team gave the all clear to the thermal protection system on mission day 3 or so, so there aren't any problems expected there.

-----

Stargazers... look up! There's another comet visible in the night sky: 17P/Holmes in the constellation Perseus. It orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter and usually isn't visible to the naked eye, but on 23 October, it suffered an eruption of gas and has since gained a large fuzzy cloud surrounding its icy core. It hasn't developed into the usual tail, but retains a fuzzy circular shape.

It is visible with the naked eye, but grab some binoculars or a telescope to resolve it a bit better in the sky. It's not visible in the southern hemisphere, so enjoy it for me and take a picture if you have a tripod.

All kinds of unexpected goings-on...

2007-10-30T18:12:00.001-06:00

Things on STS-120 were going smoothly until the redeploy of the P6 solar arrays after their repositioning during the most recent spacewalk. One of the sets of arrays was at about 80% deployed when this was noticed:

That's ugly and bad. The brown honeycomb-like sheet across the bottom 1/2 of the picture is the array, which folds accordion-like (concertina-like for Aussie readers) to be retracted. The scaffolding across the top of the picture is indeed scaffolding which supports the array when it is extended. The tear and buckling is not good. I'm sure the arrays have been engineered with bypass circuitry to limit the effect of this sort of damage, but I doubt that they can trust the array to hold together under stress at full deployment.

Following the third spacewalk during cleanup activities onboard the orbiter/station complex Doug Wheelock found a hole in one of his spacesuit gloves. Pictures of that have been sent down for closer inspection by the experts, presumably the folks at Hamilton-Sundstrand - the makers of the spacesuits - if the damage looks severe enough.

Rewinding a little, the inspection work performed in the first spacewalk of the dicky array rotary joint found metal filings and excessive wear in the joint. Managers have decided to limit the motion of that particular array to prevent total failure while they try to find a fix.

Other than those three little problems, everything else is going off without a hitch.

*Update*

It turns out that even with the torn array at 80% of its total possible extension, it is still producing 95% of the power that it would be producing were it fully extended. So long as they can stabilise the tear and be reasonably sure that it won't propagate or cause long-term power problems, I'm thinking... she'll be right mate! The most pressing issue is definitely the filings/drag on the rotary joint. No words on what to do about that yet.

Skype and format notes...

2007-10-29T06:10:00.000-06:00

Just a quick one 'cause it's late: anyone on Skype? For those of you unfamiliar with it, Skype is a way of voice calling over the internet for free (if you have a microphone for your computer). I just started using it a little because my brother is in Mexico and he uses it from there. Works a treat.

If you sign up or already use it, my Skype ID is my: first name.last name. Hope we can connect.

-----

I'm hopefully starting and seeing to completion a bit of an overhaul in the design of my blog. I know it's nothing special anyway, but it might be time for a bit of an update. It remains to be seen how far this update gets, but I've started by cleaning up the 'Blogs I Watch' section because most of the blogs haven't been updated for several months, verging on a year. I'll continue to check them once in a while for renewed life, but many of their owners have ported permanently to Facebook, so I'll only re-link to them if they do become active again.

If there are any suggestions that you'd like to see or things you'd like me to stop doing (besides writing about nothing at all, I'm getting rather good at that), please pass on a comment or e-mail.

-----

Also, I've thought of a few Jeff Foxworthy-like jokes about academics, here's the first couple:

If you use or have ever used the word 'constrained' in a sentence and in context, you might be an academic.

If you routinely use the phrase, or have the phrase applied to you, 'in the real world' and it doesn't mean your job, you might be an academic.

Mission Update

2007-10-27T19:20:00.000-06:00

The first spacewalk is complete, Harmony has been attached to it's temporary location on the Unity node and the hatch has been opened! It's final position will be at the end of the US Destiny Laboratory, but Discovery is in the way at the moment, so the move will come after Discovery departs.

After attaching Harmony, the ventilation system was activated and the module opened for speeches and ceremony to commission the new 'space'. The press conference was interesting: Harmony looks surprisingly voluminous and the 7 members of the STS-120 crew arrayed themselves like wheel spokes around the entrance corridor. What a sweet way to talk to the press! Check it out at NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Today's spacewalk (starring Dan Tani and Scott Parazynski) focuses on the repositioning of the P6 truss element, which supports one of the solar arrays; in fact it's the oldest of the solar array segments having been in space somewhere around 7 years. Both robotic arms will be used for the operation, which will take place over two space walks. The Station's CanadArm2, after the spacewalkers have completely removed the remaining connections to the P6 element, will remove the element from it's current position. Tomorrow, it will hand it off to the Shuttle's CanadArm, roll along the truss on it's little rail car system, then take the P6 back from the Shuttle arm and install it in its permanent position at the end of the P5 segment. Then, the spacewalkers get to do some inspection work.

There appears to be some damage to some handrails on the outside of the station which are thought to be the result of space debris. That needs to be looked at. The starboard (solar alpha) rotary joint or SARJ, which controls the major directional pointing capability of the S3/4 array section seems to be experiencing higher than expected friction, indicated by small current spikes in the motor during motion. That also needs to be checked. I'm not sure if it's in this coming spacewalk, but they are also extending the remaining 4 radiators on the Z1 truss segment as the addition of new modules over the next couple of months is going to increase the cooling needs of the Station quite a bit. There's a slew of other stuff to be done, but those are the major highlights.

Nothing has come up on the thermal protection system (TPS) picture analysis from launch or the rendezvous pitch manoeuver, so everything is good on that aspect of the mission.

Whew!

The Last Lecture.

2007-10-25T23:28:00.000-06:00

Randy Pausch lectures at Carnegie-Mellon University in computer science and virtual reality. He also has a liver full of cancer and 4 months to live.

It's a long watch, but if you've got a while, I suggest giving this a watch. There are four parts to the lecture and they're all good.

The Last Lecture

WSC 2007

2007-10-24T19:43:00.000-06:00

I almost forgot to tell you... my alma mater is racing again in the World Solar Challenge, 2007 edition.

Go here for their blog... Calgary Solar Team

Not bad as they're in the top 10 currently!

Oh, and Discovery is up on the most complicated Shuttle mission ever, STS-120. In true NASA fashion, however, everyone has stepped up and the mission proceeds smoothly so far. Launch was good, and the chase to the ISS is on. They are expected to dock on Thursday morning at 0833 CDT.

Major objectives this mission are to install the Harmony node, which will complete the American backbone of components to the station. Harmony will be the linking module for the Italian- and Japanese-built research laboratories to come up later and will be the permanent location for the Pressurised Mating Adapter that the Orbiter uses to dock with the station. They also must relocate the P6 truss section which contains the first set of solar arrays to be installed when the station was just getting going. It will be permanently relocated to its rightful spot outboard of the P3/4/5 sections already installed. There is one more set of arrays yet to come up. Five spacewalks, yes five, are scheduled to wire and prepare the new and newly moved modules for permanent operation. More to come!

Wow, what a mission!

'Heralding' the entrance of roundabouts.

2007-10-19T11:20:00.000-06:00

After another inexplicable pile of drivel extruded from the mouth of a roundabout skeptic, this time in Bragg Creek, I've been formally motivated to write a Letter to the Editor of the Calgary Herald.

Here's the full text I sent. It's more than 250 words and the Editor has rights to edit it to fit into the paper. You'll have to let me know if it turns up in print.

_____

Re: Roundabouts in Alberta

Two recent articles discussing the fears of implementation of roundabouts, one near Sylvan Lake and now one near Bragg Creek, have frankly befuddled me. As an expat student adjusted to life in Australia and the prolific usage of roundabouts here I can't comprehend the inflexibility of Albertan drivers, seemingly incapable of learning the mechanics of a new traffic control device. When did we leave our brains, organs so fantastically, indeed, so staggeringly capable of learning, behind? If you've become divorced of your ability to learn something new since Registries issued you the licence in your wallet, get off the roads and preserve us from your ineptitude. Or, pay attention because here's your lesson: Yield to the left and to cars already in the roundabout. Whew, I'm exhausted after that.

Swollen Ego...

2007-10-11T17:49:00.000-06:00

Quick, somebody... I need an insult. I just had my IQ compared favourably with Einstein.

My head swelled so fast that my skull hurts.

***Update***

It turns out that he was referring to Alberto E. Steine, a drifter emigrant janitor from Ashgabat. Darn...

Thanks for the insults, though. Did I mention that I miss everyone?

Channel 9 Morning Show.

2007-10-09T19:26:00.000-06:00

A bothersome comment was made by Channel 9's morning show yesterday.

*rant*

As you may or not may not know, Australia suffered it's first combat death in Afghanistan on 8 October. According to Today host Lisa Wilkinson, the apparent lack of combat casualties for Australian troops is due to the superior training and preparation of Australian troops compared to nations such as Canada, who have suffered far greater losses in the same combat theatre.

If I'm to believe a morning show host, apparently we and the rest of the NATO coalition offer our troops substandard training and preparation for their jobs on deployment, which accounts for the 71 Canadian deaths in Afghanistan since the start of the mission in 2001.

What she didn't comment about is that fact that though it was an IED that did the damage, the convincing majority of the loses to all nations in Afghanistan is due to IEDs and the last time I checked everyone was still trying to figure out how to mediate this threat. Also, set aside the fact that Canada was responsible for leading the operation for 18 months of the total deployment (so far), that we have 2.5 times the number of troops on deployment than Operation Slipper (the Aussie codename for the Afghan deployment), and that 6 of our deaths are due to friendly fire.

The news article read by Ms Wilkinson is demeaning to Australian, Canadian, and the rest of the NATO contingent of troops serving in Afghanistan. They are all doing a very dangerous, challenging, and in some cases disillusioning job. It does not do to invoke differences in the training regimes of the defence forces of Australia and Canada to account for the disparity in combat losses. Nor does it imply that any one country is doing a harder job than any other.

This sort of reporting drives me up the wall. Ignorant comments by uninformed newsreaders have to be one of my pet peeves. Stop with this buddy-buddy faux 'I'm your friend' newsreader rubbish and give me the news without the misinformed personal perspective.

Gahhh!

I'm not done yet... There's several other nations, and one in particular, who are for some completely, bewilderingly, unsensibly obtuse reason trying to assert that Canada doesn't, all of the sudden, have sovereignty over the Northwest Passage. Pardon me for noticing, but a strip of water far less than 200 nm wide, bordered on all sides by land and sea of unquestionably Canadian control, ownership, and heritage is still Canadian.

There is no question of sovereignty here. I implore our government to firmly and vigorously sever all the grubby, scrounging diplomatic tendrils dendritising their way across Canadian High Arctic sovereignty. Assert our ownership. The governance of the sea of this passage is Canada's and Canada's alone.

Picture this - climate change unexpectedly causes a massive change in rainfall patterns over central Australia and the Outback becomes one of the most fertile breadbaskets of the world. Then, given this new and proximal source of future wealth and prosperity, Indonesia and New Zealand crow loudly that they have territorial ownership of Outback Australia. Absurd. Just as is this issue of control of the Northwest Passage.

In thinking that international diplomacy is well thought and considered, I'm obviously mistaken. Even conceiving that there is a control question smacks of bare and incomprehensible farce. Get stuffed scroungers.

Gahhh!

*/rant*

A Briton in Resolute.

2007-10-08T17:07:00.000-06:00

Combing the BBC this morning for my daily dose, I had to share an excerpt from a BBC journalist tracing the Northwest Passage. You'll already know (faithful reader) that the Northwest Passage is open for the first time in recorded history. Already, journalists are going there to write articles about the event and raise awareness of our changing climate.

Anyway 'Poms', as they are affectionately known by Aussies, have this to say about boots:

The Coast Guard requires us to wear a particularly macho kind of cold-weather boot, packed with insulation and fitted with hardened protection at the toe. Only the Canadians make this kind of thing. Or NASA.

They keep your feet warm but they are not easy to walk in

The Arctic pioneers would have loved them - or maybe not. Sir John Franklin famously survived by eating his boots, which in those days were made of barely digestible leather, while ours consist of heavy duty plastic.

And wearing these vast boots feels a little like having a sizeable wooden box strapped to each foot.

So, in addition to everything else we have to prepare for, we have a new task - learning to walk.

Excerpted from: Taking the Northwest Passage - BBC, D. Shukman

Bent in Bendigo.

2007-10-06T04:18:00.000-06:00

So an innocent trip to Bendigo started with a bang! Literally...

This weekend's adventure is taking third year students to a town called Bendigo to look at the Central Deborah Gold Mine and some surface workings for another mine. Arriving early into town, we stopped at Macca's (Australian for McDonald's) for a refresher.

After leaving Macca's, we trundled in our two mini buses up High Street through town, but came upon a guy with his trailer sticking out into the lane. Naturally, we stopped. Perhaps just as naturally, somebody else didn't.

Well, one thing led to another and I felt one of those irritating thumps that car owners so little like to feel.

It turns out that the red Holden Commodore played pinball with the red Mitsubishi Lancer, which passed on the experience (in strict Newtonian fashion) to the red VW Beetle, which stuck with the preceding pattern and played bumps with my white 12 seater Toyota minibus.

My first 4 car pile up... in Bendigo! Not much damage to the minibus but a warped bumper guard, dented bumper and a bent rear door. The beetle needs a new radiator, the Lancer:

looks like a Hyundai Excel:

and the Commodore is sporting the crushed face popular with boxers and pugs.

Sweet! But only because I'm not at fault.

-----

Oh, and I read this today from the Advocate:

Green light for green plan

Yes, LEDs are energy efficient, but I'm willing to bet that 75% or more of those intersections would be better served by roundabouts - yes, higher construction costs (maybe), but ZERO energy requirements once built. Except, of course, for all the tow trucks to clean up the confused Albertans in the first few months.

And just to nail home the case:

Traffic roundabout safer, experts say

My sources say that people are resisting these little traffic delights because they are afraid of them. The phrase "we don't do them in North America", or something to that effect, was bandied about. I have a word of advice for those tepid road battlers out there: you are human. Therefore (and this may be a leap of logic), you have ~10 lbs of the most awesomely malleable tissue ever devised by nature filling that cranium of yours. Stress it out a little and learn something new. It won't hurt. I promise. Sixty-five million Britans, Australians, and New Zealanders do it every day, I'm sure you can, too.

Better yet, I suggest a fact finding mission to England, Australia, or New Zealand. Rent a car and give them a go. Just remember to look right first.

Climate Triad.

2007-09-30T21:03:00.000-06:00

Just to warm up your week, here's the most alarming trio of climate articles that I've ever come across in such a short amount of time:

1. Warming 'opens Northwest Passage' - BBC

2. NASA finds Greenland Snow Melting Hit Record High - NASA

3. Remarkable Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions - NASA

And for my next performance... the cessation of the Gulf Stream! I'm thinking of planning a ski trip to Scotland in two years... anyone in? There will be lots of snow and even more bewildered Europeans. If you thought Canadian winters were cold, just wait for London with 20' of snow and -30 in November.

Buchan Off.

2007-09-21T15:47:00.000-06:00

In a surprise move, I'm buggin' out to Buchan for the week. I leave this morning and get back on Friday afternoon next week.

This is just a warning. You do not have to adjust your computer sets.

A Most 'Exeloo'-ent Loo...

2007-09-16T00:32:00.000-06:00

I have to give it to Australians for having the most fascinating and unerringly interesting array of domestic machinery. First washing machines storing pink thongs and now the Exeloo.

I've recently discovered this one just down the road, in a sport complex next to the cricket ovals. I went for a run this morning, but had to use the facilities before I got going. You know what happens with impact exercise and bladders.

What did I find, but this... the Exeloo! (Sorry Mom! Broadband required, it's 75 MB.)

Automatic doors, automatic toilet paper, automatic soap, automatic handwash, automatic air dry, and automatic flushing! It's just so damn hard to remember to flush the toilet when finished.

Wait! There's more... the loo cleans itself! I wonder if there are any implementations of this technology coming to home bathrooms...

Apologies for the dirty bowl, but that's the worst of Joe Public for ya. What a fascinating modern age we live in. Fighter jets, space shuttles, commercial airliners that fly themselves, smart houses, mass spectrometers, refrigerators, breathable waterproof clothing, computer designed baseball bats, bottled water, mass produced golf pencils, and fully-automatic, music-playing, self-flushing wonderloos.

Hi-Fi

2007-09-13T17:44:00.000-06:00

"Hi, I was wondering if you could check for a specific CD in your stock." This was going to be an interesting evening. I'd been into three different music stores in the shopping centre and had been wholly unsuccessful in each.

"Yeah mate, no problem," replied the slightly harried looking shop assistant. It has been a few months since I've been in a major shopping centre. The car park was alarmingly full for a Thursday evening and the thought that this scene was being repeated at all shopping centres across the city and around the western world weighed heavily on my consumerism.

"I'm looking for the Thin Red Line Soundtrack."

"Okay, let me check," his words trailing behind him down the organised aisles of entertainment.

I don't think I've ever experienced such overstimulation in a retail environment before. It occurred to me that I rarely go shopping for anything these days, and the harsh, blue-tinged, overhead fluorescent lighting made my head feel a bit funny. It's not even Christmas and everyone's buying everything in sight. And, everyone is just so... so fashionable. When did he fashion train arrive in station and how did I miss it?

"Sorry mate, but the computer is showing 'deleted' which is a bad thing. I've checked all our other stores and none have it in stock and the supplier is showing as 'deleted'. It's not looking good. You might have to wait until some other manufacturer picks up the album and publishes it again."

"Oh, thanks. That's interesting," I reply. You know that you're maturing when your music tastes are firstly not in stock, and secondly when they aren't manufactured any more.

Treble Cone

2007-09-09T21:57:00.000-06:00

New Zealand went wonderfully... as if I could have expected anything less. I deeply love NZ and Wanaka was nothing less than spectacular. Yes, the South Island is amazing, but I can safely say that no less so is the North Island. A wonderful and unique place from top to bottom.

My skiing just was not, really, compared to what it was when I was training with Kananaskis, but that's just impetus to get back into it when I can.

(Taken from near the top of Treble Cone looking back on to Lake Wanaka)

As for flying at Omarama (of 'Inverted on Winch' fame), I dropped in on Thursday last week and said hi to Mandy, but they weren't operating yet - they don't start until beginning of October. Gavin was out with the birds taking pictures in his Cub... and they call it work!

Go here!

Kudzu could...

2007-09-09T18:54:00.000-06:00

'What would you call a plant that may be mankind's next great source of renewable biofuels?

That can leech the noxious chemicals out of contaminated soils?

That is an essential component of Chinese traditional medicines; a potential control drug for an alcoholic's cravings; a plant whose starch makes pies and gravies light and delicious; not to mention a plant that can prevent stream banks from eroding, naturally increase the fertility of depleted farmers' fields; can be ground up to produce fine paper and is beloved by goats as forage?'

Interested? The preceding I excerpted from Science Friction, a weekly CBC column. Read the full article:

Don't Demonise Kudzu

It even makes Julien fries...

=====

In other news, a solar powered plane! Though unofficial, it has broken the record for longest-duration unmanned flight - 54 hours! Now, if only we can stop them from making airplanes unmanned. It's called 'Zephyr', it runs on solar panels and Li-S batteries, cruises at 58,000', and weighs in at just 31 kg.

Read more: Solar plane flies into the night

Wonder if they need any pilots for that one...

Travel.

2007-09-01T08:49:00.001-06:00

I'm off to New Zealand for a snow-filled break full of contemplation and broken bones. I'll be in Wanaka if anyone is able to join.

Be back on 9th September with prose, pictures, and a plan.

Monkies!

2007-08-30T19:24:00.000-06:00

Bloody Monkies...

BBC Article: Monkey misery for Kenyan women villagers

Cheeky little buggers, though.

Total Lunar Eclipse!

2007-08-28T04:18:00.000-06:00

If you're crazy enough to be up at this hour and are reading my blog (for an even more inexplicable reason), go outside right now! There's a total lunar eclipse on at the moment and it's glowing red...

The Moon is passing in Earth's shadow - Earth is directly between it and the sun - this is the second one in 2007, which is a bit of an exceptional occurrence. Sorry for the lack of warning, I'm usually more forthcoming with spacey stuff, but I realise I've been derelict in my duties to you fine folk.

Marvel at this amazing cosmic event!

Mysterious Universe.

2007-08-24T08:15:00.000-06:00

I've upgraded my listening experience recently, officially joining the ranks of the digeratti with the purchase of an MP4 player. MP4 is, for the non-tech types among us, the shorthand for a new level of portable media. Rather than just music, for example, MP4 players can do videos and pictures, etc.

It's the Cowon D2, and it's a gem. One of the reasons I got it was for podcasts, which are basically MP3 files of radio shows, but with a wrinkle. There are thousands of produced shows that are only on podcast, and they are interest specific.

I mention this because my standout favourite is one called Mysterious Universe, and I'd like to share it with my readership. It's released on the website (linked) but if you are an iTunes type, you can also subscribe to it there. It's basically a weekly news show, hosted by Australian Benjamin Grundy, which covers the weird and the thought provoking, the 'news from beyond the mainstream.' You get to hear about shadow people, UFOs, conspiracy, ghost lions, male phantom pregnancies, aliens, abductions... Totally interesting and done with tact, a good measure of scepticism, and passion. To top it all off, its production values are huge.

Anyway, in the void of shareable experiences to regale this week, perhaps a few will give MU podcasting a go. It's a rush.

Twitterpation and Astronauts.

2007-08-13T19:55:00.000-06:00

With all these e-mails and comments flying my direction containing the word 'twitterpated', I'm starting to think I'm slowly garnering a reputation, in absentia, as some sort of weird academic casanova. If so, first of all wipe that awful mental picture from your mind, consider that 'casanova' to me means 'house' in Spanish and 'a periodically exploding star', and read on.

My screaming hordes have not managed to get past the security fence and I'm still single.

There are some interesting developments with this most recent Shuttle mission: there is confirmed damage from cascading foam during launch on the underside of Endeavour. It punctured completely through the 2.5 cm-thick Thermal Protection System tiles arrayed on the bottom surface of the Orbiter and has exposed the underlying layers between the TPS and the aluminium skin.

The mission has been extended 3 days with the successful initiation of a new Station-to-Shuttle Power Transfer System, allowing the Orbiter to conserve it's hydrogen fuel for later use, drawing instead from the solar array electricity of the Station.

Two spacewalks, starring Canadian Dave Williams, have been completed successfully, having installed the S5 truss segment and now replaced a faulty control gyroscope - one of four which help to stabilise and orientate the Station.

Spring hasn't formally sprung yet, though it is nearing. I was flying (!) Sunday morning and everything is delectably green. It's really wonderful to see everything so richly verdant, while still cool and wet. I'm a bit concerned that Northern Hemisphere summer is a harbinger of what we're in for. 'Yikes' sums up my feelings succinctly. I think the official first day of spring is 1 September, which is interesting because they don't tie their seasons to celestial markers, instead declaring them at the beginning of the month in which the celestial event occurs.
Spring = 1 Sept
Spring Equinox = 21/22 Sept

Summer = 1 Dec
Summer Solstice = 21/22 Dec

And so on...

In other news, I spotted this one on the CBC today:

25-pound chunk of airplane debris, mistaken for UFO, lands in Maryland park

From which I gleaned these little gems:

" 'The landing gear door is not necessary to land the plane,' United Airlines spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said." and

" 'Various things fall off airplanes from time to time, but it's fairly unusual to have one of these landing-gear doors fall off,' Brown said. 'Airplanes are designed not to shed parts.' "

The next step in Solar Cells.

2007-08-05T21:04:00.001-06:00

Just found this on BBC News:

The new wave of Silicon Valley start-ups

But, the important part, which I've excerpted from that article, is this:

Green machines

It is not just computer technology that folks in the valley are working on. Green technology is winning investors too, said Drew Clark from IBM Capital Ventures.

"I think [one of] the major drivers in today's buzz in Silicon valley is clean tech or energy tech or energy 2.0, whatever we are calling it these days," said Mr Clark.

"If you look at venture capital statistics it is now the third highest place that money is going into.

One of the green innovations dreamed up is a highly efficient solar panel.

The curved panels use 1/1000th of the area needed by traditional ones

The panels produced by SolFocus reflect sunlight to a central point to harness the energy.

Unlike flat panels it means the expensive materials used to convert the energy to electricity are concentrated in one place. SolFocus claims to use 1/1000th of the area needed by flat panels, which keeps the manufacturing costs low.

Gary Conley, SolFocus explained: "These cells have efficiency over double that of the best silicon today. We concentrate the sun 500 times on that small amount of cell, hence the 1000th of the amount of material used, or the expensive part.

"When there is no sun, or you can't see the solar disc, our panels produce zero power. They only produce power in bright sunny locations or when the sun is out."

Contracts have already been signed with the Spanish government for a large scale solar farm in Southern Spain.

From discussions with some of the engineers on the solar car trip, I found out that the way to get close to the maximum theoretical efficiency of monocrystalline silicon solar cells (which is >70%) is to increase the magnitude or brightness of the light hitting them.

This is it people! This is the next stepping stone to high-power, high-volume solar energy generation. Granted you need bright sunshine, but that's the case with all solar cells. Put a field of these in outback Australia or the Mohave Desert and you've got a hell of the lot of power generating capacity. Solar radiation is about 600-700 watts / square metre at Red Deer latitude and even higher in places like Australia and the U.S. The SolFocus people say their panels are more than double the efficiency of the best silicon available today, which means their getting about 300+ watts per square metre of panel, which is a lot. Invest in this idea...

Elevating.

2007-08-03T02:40:00.000-06:00

This one wanders a bit, but remember that 'not all those who wander are lost'.

Once a long time ago, I worked as a surveyor with a very interesting man named Tim. Tim was, among other things, a windmill artist with his own exhibition, an American Scientist-Discover-NewScientist-Nature-Science magazine reading part-time scientist, deaf in one ear from a dynamite explosion, and a surveyor.

He told me that to really succeed I needed to find my question, my one question, which would become a singular underpinning zeal fit to last an entire lifetime. I thought this was germane advice considering my status as a freshly minted first-year university student, but I unfortunately failed to learn that lesson at the time that it was given. I had my questions, but they were numerous and varied. Still, they are numerous and varied.

We spent a lot of time discussing science stuff and one topic that came up was propulsion, which I do find very interesting. I feel quite strongly that we've simply reached the limit of this idea of burning a propellant with an oxidiser out the back end of an impressive bell housing to push a craft through the air, through space, through time... There must be something more powerful, more compact, and more efficient... As a consequence, I thought about how simple a frame within which almost any action can be described, and came to the not ground-shaking conclusion that such a frame is energy. Everything is a question of energy: how to make it, how to use it, how to transport it and store it, how to conserve it. To transport oneself anywhere with a car one burns fossil fuel, which is solar energy transformed into metabolic energy stored as glucose and other carbon molecules by photosynthesis; that carbon then stored, metamorphosed through heat and pressure, later becomes wonderfully compact but high energy-yielding oil. To move one's own body, food is ingested, which is in itself solar energy in modified form - carbon compounds produced by photosynthesis; reprocessed carbon compounds originally produced by photosynthesis but secondarily modified through animal metabolism. The Space Shuttle, thrown into the sky by an 8.5 minute, spectacularly violent display of fire. From Earth, stationary at sea level to 220 miles at 17500 miles per hour in 8.5 minutes. 2045 tonnes at 28800 km/hr - that's eight km or five miles per second. The kinetic energy of which, I might add, must all be dissipated as heat on reentry - that's 6.2 x 10^13 J of energy or enough energy to continually power the average 25 year old human male for 4.9 million days or more than 13500 years (leap years not factored in).

Recently there has been much interest in the idea of a space elevator and the materials that would be required to make such a device. This idea has such an astounding potential to revolutionise orbital flight and beyond, maximising the time available for the necessary paradigm shift away from propellant/oxidiser propulsion to really powerful solutions like zero-point energy (alternatively, Arthur C Clarke's 'The Songs of Distant Earth') or something else (warp drive anyone?) - some sort of fundamental antigravitation, space warping surf propulsion - to finally make interplanetary manned exploration commonplace and at long last crystallise humanity's ultimate exploration of interstellar space and the very mysteries of the universe.

The first thing to consider, however, before shucking the mantle of traditional propulsion methods and Relativity, are tethers that could tie the average ground-based human to geostationary orbit. And this is one mondo tether, too - 35,786 km long, extending straight up from the Earth's equator to some sort of anchor in geostationary orbit. There has been much chatter about using carbon nanotubes (scroll down a bit in the article) for such a tether, which I think is a great idea, as manufacturing problems are steadily being overcome. There're even prizes about to encourage this idea, sponsored by no less than NASA, which the University of Saskatchewan has won two years running.

It occurred to me today that I was wondering exactly where the sorts and quantity of energy required for orbital flight were going to come from as the hardy climbing device attached to it's amazing tether climbs into orbit - sort of redefines the idea of climbing to orbit doesn't it?

Well, NASA, as part of its Centennial Challenge Space Elevator competition, is encouraging a laser energy transmission system, which I think is altogether too complex, and which brings me to the crux of this post - energy!

Theorising assuming a carbon nanotube-like tether: a 35,700km long line of highly conductive carbon tether transgresses the Earth's magnetic field for all of that distance. A conductor immersed in a magnetic field. Is this not the world's most spectacular electricity-generating pole?

Of course, one immediate problem occurs - there's no relative motion between the rotating Earth and the geostationary orbit-anchored tether. However, the Earth's magnetic field is not a purely stationary field and only small fluctuations along a line of this length would surely generate massive current. Does any one have any in-depth knowledge of terrestrial magnetic field motion independent of planetary motion (besides the rotation of the magnetic poles)? Surely this is an elegant idea - a climb to an orbit of the explorer's choosing with the energy provided by electricity generated through the line to orbit. Only relatively small rockets are further required to complete orbital stabilisation.

Anyway, an idea to ponder.

Rhinoceri in Science.

2007-07-25T00:59:00.000-06:00

From Naldrett, A. J. : A Model for the Ni-Cu-PGE Ores of the Noril'sk Region and Its application to Other Areas of Flood Basalt (Economic Geology v. 87, no. 8) -

'Early in his play Rhinocerus, Ionescu (sic) has the Logician remark "... good logic cannot entertain the possibility that the same creature be born in two places at the same time... . Or even successively." However, geologists always count on there being more than one rhinocerus around; their main problem is to identify the habitat in which these are likely to occur.'

Oh the stuff you can find in papers...

Broken Hill, 2.0

2007-07-23T17:59:00.000-06:00

Just a few more photos from Broken Hill:

Morning 2 had this really pretty set of lens clouds everywhere! As there aren't any prominent mountain ranges parallel to the banks of cloud I'm not entirely clear why there should be lens clouds. I think there are phenomena in winds aloft that can produce lens-like clouds. Can there be wind shear conditions where, at the interaction surface between the opposing flows, small wave-like undulations can occur? An interference pattern of sorts?

This one is looking down one of the drainages coming out of the field area on to the Mundi Mundi Plain, which is that broad flat red sheet filling the horizon in the pictures from the previous post. The Mundi Mundi Plain is a very old surface in parts, which makes it exceptional hunting ground for meteorites. My supervisor has found several there, but I haven't found any. You'll notice how much green vegetation there is covering the raised ground around the creek bed. There has been much rain this season and everything flooded as recently as January.

This is what students pay to learn how to do in geology field courses. The really tricky bit is trying to teach them to lean in closer, closer, closer... They are looking at some metamorphosed sediments from 1.6 billion years ago in which you can still see the original bedding.

And this is the sort of instrument a geologist-student uses to record obervations and hands in to get marks. There is an aerial photo of the field area on which a sheet of mylar is attached. As you scour the area, you record your observations, drawing lines between different rock units, indicating changes in fracture orientations, determining bedding and fold orientations, and colouring in the various rock units that have been determined in the field. Remember all that time spent colouring in things? Time not wasted!

Back from Broken Hill

2007-07-16T17:22:00.000-06:00

Got back friday. The outback was great, green, cool overnight, windy sunny cloudy wet dry depending on the mood. Great for pictures:

Whereabouts

2007-06-24T03:32:00.001-06:00

Hello faithful readers,

I'll be in a little town called Broken Hill for the next three weeks teaching confused third years how to look at rocks. Who knew this was a skill that needed to be taught?

I leave tomorrow morning (Monday @ 0645) and I'll return 13 July sometime in the evening. I am told there will be internet out there, but who knows... If there's nothing exciting posted for the next little while, please accept my apologies. I'll have some pictures and stories when I return, if not earlier!

Stay tuned sportsfans...

And yes, I think it does concern planes and chocolate...

When 'success' isn't 'success'

2007-06-16T04:16:00.000-06:00

Kevin Spacey, the eminent two-time Academy Award-winning actor has this to say about his career:

Sympatico/MSN Article: Spacey Signing Off?

Just goes to show you that possessing self-sustaining wealth; reaching the pinnacle of one's chosen field twice over; and being generally regarded as a skilled, respectable, and worthy representative of one's profession don't result in the lasting feelings of success and happiness that we universally seek.

I suppose this counts as another vote for the idea that happiness results from choice over circumstance. Fulfillment must have another name...

Watching the Melbourne Ice!

2007-06-11T04:30:00.000-06:00

I went to my first (Australian) hockey game ever yesterday afternoon... It was the Melbourne Ice vs the Sydney Bears. They play on the same rink of which I've earlier posted pictures. No plexi and on a rink that's smaller than regulation.

You're only about 20 feet (or less) from the ice and you can hear everything going on. The penalty box is a two-seater wooden bench that takes up the first couple of spots along the bleachers and there's nothing but goodwill separating the penalty-boxed players from pounding each other. Also, because it's such a marginalised sport in this part of the world, they have some unexpected sponsors...

It's a good thing they have them as sponsors too because one fella got his noggin cranked into the ice then into the boards and play was stopped for 30 minutes while they mopped him up, called the 'ambos' and took him off the ice in a stretcher. Fun fun! It kept the figure skaters waiting and bumped everybody who was waiting to use the ice after the game by 30 minutes.

Went flying on Saturday again, which was awesome as always. The flying operation is borrowing another person's Texan while waiting for their new one to arrive from NZ. Apparently it's in the crate and waiting for the ship to take it across the Tasman. I'll be sure to post some pictures when I get some.

Isotopes: Principles and Applications

2007-06-01T03:00:00.000-06:00

After searching for something of sufficient interest for my readership, I've stumbled across a very scientific failing for a popular cliche.

One often describes the aiming ability of ones peers in reference to being able to hit a barn door (variations: broad size of a barn, etc). Implicit in such a statement is the size of the barn door, which, one would assume, is as big as your average barn door.

However, a 'barn' is a unit used in nuclear (isotopic) science equal to 1 x 10^-24 square-cm (1 x 10^-24 = 0.000000000000000000000001 square-cm). To put that into perspective, draw a box on a sheet of paper that is 1 cm by 1 cm. Now visually divide that space into a trillion trillion equally-sized smaller boxes that all fit within the 1 square-cm box you originally drew. One of those boxes is one barn. For another reference, your personal mass (in kilograms) forms the same proportion of the entire mass of the Earth as does one barn form the same proportion of area in your 1 square-cm box.

So, it is in fact very good aim indeed that could hit a 'barn-sized' door. Those who have trouble hitting 'barn doors' can now take solace in that fact.

A dwarf plethora of photos for the weekend.

2007-05-18T01:58:00.000-06:00

Thought you might like some photos to round out the week.

First, a rose that I picked from the bushes outside my unit. How about a place that produces rose blooms as the winter begins? It's interesting the convergence of seasonal differences between the southern and northern hemispheres: The months between March to June - autumn and into winter - bring rain and weather cool enough to turn everything green here. The flowers bloom, grass goes green, some trees flower, and everyone breaks out the long pants and insulated jackets. March and June in the northern hemisphere? Rain and weather warm enough to turn everything green. The flowers bloom, grass goes green, the trees bud, and everyone still hasn't packed away the insulated jackets and long pants (do you ever really?) until the last couple of snowfalls in April. Anyway, the roses, yes... wild ones are very fragrant. This is for all the Mums out there I didn't get to see and thank on Mother's Day!

The next photos are unashamedly airplanes from the recent fly-in at Sunbury airport. I did some crosswind take-offs and landings in the (finally) strong winds oriented across the runways. Had to wait many weekends for these and I didn't want to go wasting them. Light airplanes sure do feel the crosswind. The first picture here is a New Zealand creation, the Schnark, in Australia for the first time. There's only two of these in the world and this one needed some test flying before it was certified for continuing use in Aus. One of the instructor pilots took it for some high speed taxi tests, then packed it up for the night. It's powered by a Subaru automobile engine (sigh) and looks kinda neat. The main gear is moveable to permit, get this, a stable parking position. In pusher type aircraft, since so much weight is in the rear of the airplane, they often don't sit very stably without the weight of a pilot or two in the front. Anyone who's seen the Rutan beauties the EZ or Long EZ at airshows will remember how they are always parked with the nose gear retracted and the airplane resting on it's nose and rear main gear legs. Anyway, the main gear legs in the Schnark rotate forward several degrees, which allows for a sufficient rotational moment during takeoff. When you park it and get out, you first have to rotate the gear legs back so that the airplane doesn't fall back and sit on its tail.

Next up it the best registration of any airplane in Australia (;-)...

Heh, just kidding. But if I were ever to own my own airplane here, I guess I couldn't have my initials. Anyway, enjoy the weekend. Oh, two posts ago I was talking about the Sapphire - I was incorrect, it is powered by a Rotax, not a Subaru. Not that it changes anything.

Confirmation.

2007-05-14T14:55:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posting. Wow can the days go by quickly!

I'm in the middle of preparing for the 1st year 'Confirmation'. I have to give a report and seminar on what I've managed to do in the last 365 days. I'm scheduled to give that on Thursday morning, so I'll write something more interesting after that.

In other news, the Texan that I've been flying has been sold and the flying operation is waiting for delivery on two more. One from Italy and one from New Zealand. They were hoping to get one on loan from a previous buyer who has his hangared just across the river valley from Sunbury. No word on the success/failure of that request.

Hockey is going well and I've got a few comments on the speed of my progress, which is encouraging. To go with that, I move out of dragon landlady's place this Sunday and into the house of a fellow hockey-er. I'll be sure to give you the new address once I've confirmed all the details.

Happy Momma's Day to all Mums. Love you all!

P.S. I've come to realise that because of the Blogger-Google handover, many of you will have to register for a new Google account to keep commenting. I have set the comments section to allow anonymous comments if you don't want to open a Google account.

Buying airplanes...

2007-05-02T16:08:00.000-06:00

I'm realising that my last post sounded like I might be looking to buy into the Sapphire. That's not the case - it's powered by a Subaru car engine and I don't believe that car engines were designed, built, or considered even in the slightest way to be flown in an airplane. Except, of course, for the engine in the Terrafugia, but that's another conversation entirely, and I believe the design has a second engine to drive on the road.

On another note, there's finally a bit of rain cloud around thinking about ending the drought around Victoria, but they are still just thinking about it while having occasional brainstorms (heh). One such brainstorm made for a rather pretty sunrise this morning:

Is it a glider or an aeroplane...

2007-04-30T02:12:00.000-06:00

I'm seeking opinions on this question. Picture follows:

They call this a Sapphire. I remember a certain friend of mine mentioning more than once that he thought the tail boom on a Katana didn't do anything for him.

Ultralight aviation is alive and well in Australia! I didn't go flying in the Sapphire, but the owner is trying to sell his 1/2 share in it.

Warrioring some more.

2007-04-26T02:13:00.000-06:00

It was late night, well, early morning hockey on Saturday this past weekend. I've found that the midnight hockey practices completely wreck the day of Saturday, so I had the most nothingest day I've had since the glorious, now lamented, weekends at Wendy, Burt, and Chris's. I watched Star Gate SG-1, pigged out on lollies, and read Harry Potter. How's that for nothing?

Hockey was good, if tiring. I don't suppose I can call it that because it wasn't the hockey that was tiring, I was already so before I got there. It was exacerbated by the past-midnight exertion, but, oh, nevermind, it's just syntax.

The following afternoon, I went flying again! It was a great, if short flight! The clouds were low and rolling in from the Bay and as I got out to the practice area over Lancefield, I found the last remaining hole in the area. Said hole soon realised my presence and commenced closing, which, coupled with the frequent checks over my shoulder about how the weather on the route back home was going, made me quickly decide to duck back down and high-tail it for Sunbury before I couldn't get there anymore. The rule here is clear of cloud and 5 km forward visibility below 3000 ASL. Circuit at Sunbury is 800' to stay under the control area. Cloud base was about 1000' by the time I landed. Whew... Dodged that bullet! What's the phrase?

'A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that require the use of his superior skills.'

Yeah, that one. Another also comes to mind:

'There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. Except Chuck Yeager.'

Anyway, you can tell my mind is a bit stir crazy at the moment.

The next highlight of the week was ANZAC Day yesterday the 25th. I've mentioned it in the post at the same time last year, but it was just as good this year. It is a profoundly gooseflesh-encouraging mixture of reunion, comraderie, and solemn remembrance. Primarily, ANZAC Day commemorates the WWI Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915, though now is extended to all conflict involving Australian servicemen and women. Gallipoli is to Australians as Vimy Ridge is to Canadians - it was where the cornerstones of Australian nationhood were laid, as at Vimy Ridge for Canada. Over the 8 month campaign, 8000 Aussies and 2700 Kiwis died trying to take the Peninsula. There were very heavy Turkish casualties as well and the battle ended in a stalemate due to the extreme loss of life without progress on either side. It was also a foundational battle for Mustafa Kemal, later to become Ataturk, quite possibly the most charismatic person ever to walk the face of the Earth. I direct you to Wikipedia for the reader's digest version of Mustafa Kemal vice Turkish history if you wish to know more. If you ever get the chance to be here on ANZAC Day, you simply must go to a service and experience it.

I'm in the middle of preparing my 1-year (can you believe it's been that already?) Confirmation Report and Talk. So, to forget about that, here's another airplane from the airshow:

The very fine look of the Javelin Jet Traininer from behind. Those curves are almost as good as the Hornet...

Weekend warrior.

2007-04-16T21:46:00.000-06:00

That seems to be the formula for the next little while, I guess. First another highlight from the airshow! Canada's getting these now, as are England and Australia. Pretty nifty machines: the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III -

They are like a Caribou on serious steroids! Land them anywhere, put anything in them, take them off anywhere. Long range, easy upgradeability, versatile, flexible, sexy! And they're made by Boeing, what more could you want? (I was going to say 'They are like a Beaver...', but try that one in there in place of 'Caribou'; all you people with minds in the gutter... geeez.)

I went diving this weekend with a small group from the University, which was pretty wet and very scenic. First, I got together with a couple of them on Saturday night and we watched Star Trek! It is good to finally find another couple of nerds close by. Especially ones that are nerdy enough to like Star Trek! Then they introduced me to Star Gate SG-1, which is definitely a worthy series. It was really good to get away from the noise and stink of all the idiots on Blackburn Rd who like their engine brakes at 0200. I'd like to stand out with a sign reminding the drivers that these are actual houses on the sides of the road, with real people living inside them and everything! 500 m either side is industrial, slow down then or use the foot brake...

But, all that would do is encourage more engine brake use.

Anyway, the dive site was at a drop off called Lonsdale Wall and there were lots of interesting fish and sponges and kelp and sting rays and other sea-related goodness.

Back to the grind...

Easter Weekend.

2007-04-10T21:59:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay. The university was closed Good Friday, Easter Monday AND Easter Tuesday! As a result, I had even less interest than usual in attending and therefore didn't.

Instead, I played hockey on Friday. I'd say my position is now defence, which is mostly because my puck handling and shooting are substandard, but I'm good at getting in the way.

Then, I went flying on Saturday with dead batteries in my camera, followed by dinner at Bruce and Helen's. Then Bruce and I went to get all pumped up at the movie '300', which just opened on 5 April here. It's sooo gory, but soooo entertaining. Just don't walk away with a history lesson, that's all.

On Sunday we went to Marysville in the Yarra Valley. It's very green, which is refreshing. One thing about the seasons in Australia is that, excepting for snow, they produce the same endmembers during the same months of the year as in Canada. The summer months, December to March, are brown and dead from the extreme heat and low rainfall. The winter months, July to September are green and lush from the cooler temperatures and rainfall.

Anyway, Bruce and Helen's daughter and family are holidaying in Marysville for the school Easter holidays. I think all the tall gums there are Manna gums, which grow very tall and straight. We went for a little hike through some 'mountains' there called the Cathedral Ranges, then ate chocolate and had some lunch.

Monday was whiled in the city rather aimlessly. I mostly visited the ACMI (film place I've mentioned before) and went to a modern video-art feature put on by the Centre Pompideau in France. It was contemporary art, but using television and film as its commentative medium. Meh...

Tuesday was tame (sigh). I seem to have some funny crook neck for the last couple of days, so I took it easy.

Happy Easter.

A Normal Weekend.

2007-04-02T18:54:00.000-06:00

Friday night was taken up with hockey practice from 2230-0200. These late practices really mess with my head! But, I was housesitting again for my supervisor, so I had a car and a comfortable house and a cat to go home to, which made me happy.

First, another sweet picture from the airshow: A Lockheed Constellation! Flying! Restored! Awesome...

Regarding some recent comments: Terrafugia! Wow! You're right Ed. As for the foggy ice. While we weren't originally sure what he was doing, the Zamboni guy was out driving furiously around the ice between periods. It dawned on me later that he was trying to stir the air a bit. It didn't work for him, and the fog seemed to get worse when there were people skating about on it. Some kind of sticky advection fog, I suppose. Night vision would have been a much better choice! It would have cut through that fog like it wasn't even there...

I wasn't at the airshow for the Friday Night Alight performance, but I'll have to put it on the list for the next one. It's such a huge show that one day simply isn't enough. Well, one day isn't enough for me anyway, but at this show even more so! They start flying at 0900 and finish about 1630 with no breaks for you to check out the static displays. There were probably hundreds of static displays. You really need two days at least.

Thanks for the Birthday wishes! It was a good day. Sorry we didn't meet up at ScienceWorks, too! I was looking forward to it. Anyway, on with the rest of the weekend...

On Saturday, after working on Flat Stanley's Adventure Book for a few hours, I took off up to Sunbury and went flying! It was wonderful again and I actually remembered to take some pictures this time! This first is an airplane hero shot of the Texan TC. Still with it's dicky flap microswitch. But, that's alright because I'm getting good practice at flapless approaches!

I then proceeded to zoom around the north practice area around a town called Lancefield to the east of a 'mountain' called Mt Macedon! Fun! Bumpy! Good! I only have bad photos of the mount, though, so I'll wait to share one of those.

I figured that since the airplane got a hero shot in this post that I might get one as well. Excuse the 4 or 5 days growth around the jaw line... It was driving me nuts. This is my happy place. And I'll have everyone know that I was not looking inside the cockpit for this picture. That's poor airmanship! The beauty of mirrored sunglasses...

Then, on the way back home, I passed Romsey Airfield. There's seems to be an excellent proliferation of small airstrips in this part of the country. The trick is to find them amongst all the greenery in the positively rain-soaked countryside! Following the road from the bottom of the picture: if you take a look across the valley to the right at the bending in the road, you might find the airstrip. It reminds me of my first few flights at Netook in the autumn when the brown airfield was hiding amongst all the other brown fields.

Lastly, one for all the 150 and 172 pilots out there. Check out that climb performance! That's the Texan under full-power climb in still air with one person in it. That's not even max performance! I've had a question or two about what I am indicating with this picture: I should have mentioned to look at the instrument closest to picture centre. It is the Vertical Speed Indicator and it shows a 1200 fpm climb. While all you people out there who fly real airplanes won't be impressed, for a little carbon fibre, rotax-powered two seater, it is a rush! Especially when your used to the 500 fpm that a Cessna 150 gives you when on climb out (with a thermal helping!). I'm hoping to top this picture one day with something indicating 40,000 fpm, and I'll be sure to let you know when that happens...

Australian International Airshow

2007-03-26T16:22:00.000-06:00

And what a show. It's probably the best airshow I've ever seen. It's not just an airshow, though, it's an industry trade show and the whole thing runs for a week!

While I'd have liked to spend the whole week there, I'm regretably not 'in' the aviation industry and thus have to wish for the time being.

So, a few pictures to whet your appetite:

The first for your viewing pleasure is a Javelin, which is a private venture twin jet 'transporter'. Well, it was originally branded as an executive transport, presumably for very fast executives, but they've since changed their sensibilities to call it an 'advanced training platform'. If it would have been sold as an executive transport, I think we'd have had the 21st Century version of the Doctor Killer. 500 KTAS, stalls 88 KCAS - wah-hoo!!

The second is the Aussie Snowbirds, called the Roulettes, returning after their flying display. There are six of them and they fly the PC-9, which is the same as our Forces' Harvard II. A very thrilling display, I must admit, but my patriotism says that the Snowbirds can't be beat. This is also a possible preview of what the Snowbirds will look like after they retire the venerable Tutor, but hopefully that won't happen for a while yet. The other choice is the Hawk, but the British already have a nine craft formation aerobatics team called the Red Arrows, which already fly the Hawk. We'll seee, I guess...

Third today is this, which requires no introduction, but it is Merlin powered(!):

And two of them taking off and flying form together look and sound, well, heavenly! Oh, and Chuck Yeager was there, too.

Lastly, but not leastly, is an Italian medium cargo transport aircraft, which looks something like a Hercules. If you click on the picture to get the bigger version, you will notice (hopefully) that you're are looking at the top side planform of this cargo aircraft as it rolls over the top inverted... I hope everything was tied down.

More next time from the wonderful land of aviation.

Sing it with me...

2007-03-21T16:35:00.000-06:00

(To the tune of Ella Fitzgerald singing:)

A foooogy daaayyy..... In London Town.
It had me lowwwww, and it haaaad me down...

A hockey grand final cancelled due to fog. Has this EVER happened in Canada?

Eventful Birthday

2007-03-18T18:57:00.000-06:00

Thanks for all the cards everyone! They were wonderful and most welcome :-)

In an effort to make up for last year's birthday, which consisted of a Mars bar and can of Solo Lemonade on a dive boat somewhere in the Coral Sea, I planned a full day to get everyone out and about. The schedule was thus:

0900-1200: Skating
1200-1300: Travel to city for lunch
1300-1400: Lunch at a Japanese place called Funa
1400-1630: Educational fun at ScienceWorks
1630-late: Dinner/movie or Dinner/St. Patrick's Day 'festivities'.

Skating was ebulliently successful and well attended. I was very pleased that so many came out and had fun on the ice. No injuries! There're 3 Canadians in the PhD 'team' here and they hadn't been on ice in a couple of years. Also, it's something out of the ordinary in a country like Australia, and therefore I thought it would be interesting. Picture below (see if you can pick out the Canadians):

I'm wearing the away jersey of the Aussie national hockey team, called the Hockeyroos (heh), which is so far proving a great talking point with almost everybody. (There are 3 or 4 people missing from the picture).

Eight people stuck around after the skate, and we went into the city for lunch. It took ages to get to the restaurant, but everyone was raving about how good the food was, so success again! Funa sells cooked Japanese dishes, which is something a little out of the ordinary nowadays with 'sushi' being so popular. I use quotations because most people like maki sushi, which is the roll variety, variously containing vegatables, cooked fish, roe, or other stuff wrapped in seaweed. Sashimi is simply sliced raw fish, which, because of my sushi snobishness after staying in Japan for a month, is what I consider 'real' sushi. Then there is aptly named sushi, which is slices of raw fish on little beds of vinegar-flavoured rice. Also acceptable as 'real' sushi. Heh :)

After that, a couple of people took off to start drinking, but four of us continued on to ScienceWorks and got to do all sorts of cool fun educational things that involved the pushing of buttons, landing of space shuttles, capturing of space telescopes, confusing of brains, and using of senses. After that, we made our way into the city for St Patrick's Day and everyone had a couple or several pints of brown to black fermented barley and hop drinks.

After hockey practice till 0230 and 5 hours of sleep the previous night, I was toast by 2300 and went home. My legs were sore and my head was having sympathy pains for my legs and the band was too loud and I'm whingeing so I'll move onto the next paragraph.

Sunday afternoon I went out to the airport and continued !flying! I've formally been granted my license now so I can take the airplane solo! I went for a rip around the training area doing careful steep turns (trying and find the slipstream), procedural stuff that I know and love, then a couple of no-flap touch and goes. The flaps are electric and apparently have a dicky microswitch that may cause them to quit working, so I didn't use them. It was great! The weather was really good too, except for the lift that had me climbing on short final with the throttle at idle and airspeed at 60 mph. In this airplane, that should mean 600-700 fpm down, but instead meant 200 fpm up!

I then visited Bruce and Helen for the balance of the day and got home late. Helen made me a birthday cake and we had yummy spaghetti bolognaise. Now I can't focus and I'm trying to find my happy place today...

A 'Kyle' Joke.

2007-03-11T17:26:00.000-06:00

What goes black, white, black, white, black, white, black, white, thump! ?

A penguin rolling down the stairs!

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In defense of the Aussies I know and love, most come from free settler background, who, in fact, made a conscious decision to turn their peaches-and-cream British complexion to the glowing brown of this wide sunburnt southern land. But it does make for good jokes, heh.

Anyone out there ever had a hockey practice that finished at 0230?

My stupid landlord...

2007-03-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

An e-mail transcript of dealings with my landlord follows, but first some background. Back on 26 January, I arrived home to discover a letter addressed to: 'The Tennants' stuffed in my door. In the letter were three separate pieces of paper, one for each tennant, telling us that our rent is going up $10/week effective 26 February. Blah, Blah, Blah, signed (unintelligible scribble), per my landlord. So, she hadn't actually signed it, it was delivered by a mystery person and scribbled on by that person. Another problem is that the rental amount to which I was being increased was what I already pay. Things just aren't making sense...

I e-mailed my landlord about two weeks later, because frankly I'm losing my capacity for niceness with this spineless, vacant, ignorant, twiddling cow (it's been more than this one problem) and mentioned that the rent increase notice wasn't valid because I hadn't got the legislated 60 days notice, nor did the letter contain a numer of bits of information that also are required to make the notice enforceable. I'd have told her this earlier, but as I said above, I'm rapidly losing my niceness for this ... woman.

She evaded the problem, as she always does when she hasn't done something right in this tenancy, so I let it slide. I'm not going to try help her get this right because she refuses to learn. I've tried before and she flat out refuses, so the onus is on her now.

Fast forward to Wednesday last week, which is the rent-pay-day when the increase is to be effective. I pay what I've always been paying and e-mail her telling her why: no valid notice to increase rent, two conflicting amounts - one in the letter, and one I'd got in an e-mail from her, none of them valid, confusion reigns. I ask for her to follow the law and just give me the proper form (available for free from and real estate agent) about the rental increase and life's good.
Some more information: my unit has a much smaller yard and an open carport, unlike the 'other unit' she mentions, which has a fully enclosed garage and a big yard. And, it is common practice to get a lower rental rate if you are a long term tennant.

Her reply (names of the unimplicated changed):

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'Kyle

First headache was Jim, I was happy that he left, next was Jerry (although Jerry became friendly and nicer later) and he left. And now you. I didn't know you can also be a headache and can be that thorough and detail.

We have evicted Max because he is a troublemaker and we don't like him. I just want you to know that that room that is similar to yours is now $160 per week (new current rate).

If I will have to give you the proper form as you would want, I would put in there $160 per week to be fair to the other unit. I thought I am giving you a nice favor with the rate you are getting, but to the contrary it's funny that you're still not contented with that favor and it looks like you are ready to spend time to argue about it.

Kyle, to be honest I have no time to go through all those details with you that you have emailed.

Ray White sent that letters to you tenants.

If you don't want to pay, do as you wish. I can wait until you are one year.

And when that time comes I would rather not renew your contract as I don't have time to deal with people like you.

Regards

C. Ow'
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(Ray White is a Real Estate Agent who owns the property and from whom my landlord sublets the house to us.)

So because I'd like to follow the law, she threatens me with even more rent, calls me a troublemaker, and compares me to an evicted 18 year-old unemployed high-school dropout (Max). Heh...

Anyway, looking for a new place because mean people suck.

The only rink in Melbourne...

2007-02-27T15:50:00.000-07:00

Hosts the only Canadian who hasn't played hockey:

Until now! Learning fast and loving every minute of it! You'll notice my Australian patriotism. Everyone else wears NHL and Team Canada jerseys, but I wear the MightyRoos home jersey - Australia's national team. A Red Deer Rebels jersey would go very well as one of my coaches wears a Kootenay Ice hat and we can't have that go unchallenged...

Oh and Bob, I can hockey stop really well now!

Reasons.

2007-02-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

The reasons for me choosing to stay aren't out of any particular passion or love for geology. I think we're all clear on where my passions lie. In fact, I don't really even understand in the end, which is fairly standard for me. I figured I was going to need more wall coverings and that parchment goes particularly well with that nifty Ralph Lauren 'Denim Paint' and Disney Yellow. heh... So, you know, since universities have a lot of parchment lying about, where else is better to get some than from a university?

Anyway, there's only two short years left and there's something of a quitting theme if I walked away... Aughh. I don't know. Lets all be confused together and drink yellow cordial in the outback while watching Sir Donald Bradman tonk another test century over the kangaroos waltzing with Matilda by the billabong under a coolabah tree holding a VB screaming 'YOU LITTLE RIPPER' as the cricket ball splashes in the Todd River for 6 after bouncing off Ayer's Rock.

I keep waiting...

2007-02-25T19:04:00.000-07:00

I keep waiting for something really special to bounce along that other people will want to read, but nothing seems to be bouncing lately. Actually, I lie, lots of special things have happened since the last post, thus:

Two weekends ago I finished some forced landing practice in the Texan at Sunbury airport and aced what ultralight people call EFOT: Engine Failure on Takeoff. I know, we do this in GA airplanes, but what we don't do is the dive-at-the-ground-trading-altitude-for-speed-reverse-winch-launch landing technique, which I hereby name DATGTAFSRWL.

The low mass condition that necessarily defines flight in an ultralight causes rapid changes in speed when the engine cuts out. So, from a climb attitude during T/O at 70 KIAS, you pretty much instantly lose about 20 KIAS as soon as the engine fails. To recover that speed and remain above stall, you stuff the nose and dive wildly at the ground reaching and maintaining about 70-80 KIAS until 50' AGL; then level out and fly the airplane to the ground, while avoiding wheelbarrowing, and roll to a stop. It's just like a winch launch, only the other way around... fun fun fun!! I love that stuff... During the week, I applied to get my pilot's permit from Recreational Aviation Australia (RAAus). It only took a couple of days to issue the permit, which comes as a nifty plastic card listing all completed quals and checkouts.

The following week (last weekend) we practiced some more circuits and I went solo!! Total sweetness! The sun was going down in the west and I couldn't figure out why it was getting so bloody dark with the sun still above the horizon. Then I took my sunglasses off. This past weekend, my instructor was in Canberra working on RAAus stuff so I didn't go flying. Hopefully pick it up again this weekend with the eventual goal of making a trip across the Bass Straight to Tasmania, if the club will let me.

A fellow student at uni had her birthday party last weekend as well, so we all went out on the town for Friday night and Saturday morning. I'm continually surprised at how loud music is played in clubs. It causes physical pain for me to stand in most clubs and be blasted with their music. I asked some of the people we were out with if they experience the same thing, but they said it doesn't hurt. Cheers to tinitus! The rest of Saturday was flying as detailed above, then I met up with Bruce and Helen and we went to the Chinese New year Celebrations in the city. Happy Year of the Pig to you all, the twelfth and final animal of the Chinese Zodiacal cycle.

I've taken on another sporting goal and have joined a development squad to play hockey! I was going to post a picture to surprise everyone, but cameras are a little hard to come by and I can tell everyone is getting bored with the Manthos picture and wanted an update. There is a very small but passionate following for our sport here and it's totally wonderful to be able to learn at the extreme age of 24. There is one rink in all of Melbourne (4 million people) with a second in another town called Bendigo, which is about 3 hours drive northwest. That's it for the entire state. Two rinks. On my 'home' rink, they somehow accomodate 23 hockey teams, figure skaters, and public skates. As you might imagine, there are some rather interesting training times, and I've been invited to train with a team that goes Friday nights from 2200-0000 and again on Saturday from 0000-0200.

It provides much needed focus during the week, allows me to pursue a long held goal, and keeps me occupied between weekends when I'm not flying. The raw physical exertion required provides an outlet for all the pent up energy and passion I'm unable to spend sitting considering rocks all week, and I think between flying, hockey, artsy stuff, and hopefully some more travel, I can stand to be at school to complete this project for another 2 short years.

Yes, I had to make a decision and I've decided to stick it out and finish the project. It would be a rather complicated explanation, but you can probably glean the most important parts from everything I've mentioned above. There's only 2 more years left in the award so it will or will not be finished more or less on time and I will move on. I know I told a few I wasn't going to stay, so sorry for that. I wanted to call most of you, but I now no longer have access to a telephone during off hours and my office mate is in my office during most of the work day and interrupting him wouldn't really be very nice. I'll call when I can because I miss you all very much.

Flat Stanley has arrived well and safe and has been on a few adventures so far. More to come.

On Friday the student gang went to Moonlight Cinema and watched Volver with Penelope Cruz. The cinema is a giant inflatable screen that is set up in the Royal Botanical Gardens and at dusk the movie starts. You bring your own food and drink and enjoy a movie under the stars. Quite nice really. Skating on Saturday morning and a bus-ridden festering infection of a commute to get my hockey pants fixed after some stitching pulled the other day. Sunday was a gallery day with Bruce and Helen and then I went to watch a Senior C hockey game at the rink. It is quite cool to see such an extreme mix of ages and sizes all playing hockey together. Everyone from a teenage stick of a girl, who looks like a stick even with full hockey gear on, to 30-something hulks all playing on the same teams. Pretty decent game really.

Anyway, got to go to some talks this afternoon, so I'd best be off. Love y'all and miss you lots!

Happy B-day to Ryan - I tried calling but the phone was off or you were screening unknown numbers!