Geoverse

Bleh, I haven’t posted anything in a long while. Funny how even dedicating 10 minutes to write a blog post can be so unappealing.

Right. To get you back on track here is a little summary again of what I’ve been doing.

9 Feb – Iron Maiden. Photos here. It was the most amazing gig i’ve ever been to and probably ever will. The ACER arena is huge! It was also filled with more people than you’d find at a casual football game. I was at the top row because I waited like 12 hours before buying a ticket (that was back in october 07). Didnt matter. There were two huge plasma screens on either side of the stage where i could see the performers up close. The show was more than metal music, it was a musical. Great sound and great visuals. Also a point worth of note was the giant demon robot on stage later on.

Rest of Feb – I’m not sure if I did anything special during this time except work on my Masters manuscript (Yes still!) and my PhD project. I’ve had a couple of meetings with my supervisors and things are going quite well. I’ve been processing the last batch of results but now i’ll need to get cracking on getting some new samples prepared for new experiments. Summer’s been hot and cold. Some rain. Actually mostly cooler than normal down to just 20C. I got my new Dutch passport after a few trials of getting the photo right. First too big, then too small. Then when i got it right, they transformed it black and white! O_o. Madness i tell you! No digital fingerprint required just yet. Saved me some more hassles i bet. I also had bought a new desktop computer during this time. More in the next section.

March til today – Right so I bought my computer in parts from an online webstore in Batemans bay (1.5 hours drive). I got the bits soon enough, however my enthusiasm dampened when i found out the motherboard didn’t work. So after a lot of troubleshooting it was declared faulty. I contacted the store and asked if they could arrange a replacement for me. But they insisted I send it to a repairshop first with the address they gave me. So I did that but did get a refund for the postage. About 1.5 weeks later i did get a replacement because, behold! It was broken. So last week i build my uber rig and the new games I can play on it are amazing! Some titles: Crysis and Bioshock. Here are photos of my new computer.

Specs:

Intel Q6600 quad core 2.4GHz OC 3.2GHz
Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB OC 760/972
4GB DDR2 RAM
OC 848MHz
nforce 870i SLI Mainboard
Onboard 24bit sound
500GB hdd SATA II

Now – Well not doing much at the moment. Had a BBQ in the weekend with roo steak, marinated, from a Kangaroo my housemate shot. (PS Kangaroos are a pest, so they are not protected). Roo meat is delicious and very lean. Weather is horribly hot this start of Autumn over 30C everyday. Not going to change too as far as the Bureau of Meteology is concerned. I just hope there’ll be some rawkus thunderstorms later. A heatwave going out with a dud is just for the lose.

That’s it for now. Do keep checking for I haven’t abandoned posting. Not something I plan to do 🙂

I got back from Wagga Wagga on Friday. The 3 day conference was a blast!
We stayed at the Charles Sturt uni so I didn’t really get to see Wagga.
I was incredibly nervous before I had to do my presentation in front of
about 100 top ranking professors and officials. Luckily I was the third
candidate to give a presentation on the first day. Thanks to some
rehearsals I did with my supervisors it went pretty well. Still, I was
talking quite fast which led to a question on something I though I
explained quite clearly. But that was alright because that meant I
scored that one 😛 . The other question was more about the general
context of my research which wasn’t too hard to explain either. I
suppose that since the conference was really a physics one, no one could
really challenge me. Other talks were about superconductivity, carbon
nanotubes, thermoelectric/ magnetic materials and quantum computing.
Waaay above my intelligence ha ha. Nonetheless, after a while the talks
that were on the same subject, I could at least make some sense of.
Besides listening to presentations, the first night we had a conference
dinner and the second a trivia quiz. The trivia quiz night was crazy! By
then I had acquainted with the students there (just a handful), most who
just finished their honours. So we were at one table. Knowing that we
had no chance of winning we called ourselves the Naieve Stoodunts. In
the end though, surprisingly we came third last and not last! The trivia
questions were pretty general in categories like sports, geography,
politics and history. Three groups tried in first place which caused
some commotion but in the end all three would receive a plaque on the
winners cup. I bought some nice wine from the winery on the campus as we
left. Apparently if you want to learn to make wine, that’s the place to
go! Here are the photos of the uni at Wagga Wagga and the convention centre. The town/ railway in the photos is Wagga Wagga itself.

The following night (Saturday) I went to a cool pool party with my German housemate. It was good fun. I stayed until 2 am by which time I got bored / tired so I cycled back home.

I don’t have anything special planned in the next month or so except a gig in Sydney next week where I’ll go and see Iron Maiden live! That’s next Saturday. More on that later.

I’ve had a pretty eventful long weekend. Saturday was Australia day and i’ve been at a party socializing, drinking beer and playing some backyard cricket.

This Sunday and Monday I’ve been at the coast (near Batemans bay) with a friend and colleague, Steve from my group (rock physics). He suggested meeting a good friend of his at the coast, Norman, who is currently spending some holidays there in their coastal house. They have an old caravan in the yard where Steve and I could spend the night. It’s about 2.5 hour drive from Canberra to Batemans bay. There we had some good ol fish and chips for lunch before we drove to the house. Once we arrived and I introduced myself to the family we headed for a beach where there is some really good snorkelling. They have two children, one boy of 7 years old and a girl of 2 years old. They were incredibly energetic but very well behaved and entertaining. After scouting the area at the beach (there were some interesting igneous rocks ;-)) I did some snorkelling with Norman and he pointed me towards some really cool fish and even a brown shark hiding under the rocks. Being a fisherman, he knew a lot of interesting stuff. We also spotted a peculiar spiral shaped shark’s egg underwater. That evening we had a lovely meal with shrimps and fish and salad. I was mildy enthused that both Norman and his wife had been following the Australian Open tennis so we watched the finals between Tsonga and Djokovic. It was just spectacular. Djokovic was my favourite and I was pretty pleased he won that battle.

The next morning we got up really early (~5am) to go fishing. Norman brought us to a secluded spot and we caught the most incredible fish. I’ve never done any fishing before but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The best fish I caught was the eastern blue groper (female). We also caught a red rockcod and the silver drummer amongst a few others. At around 10 am we headed back and decided for a last dive into the ocean. We had a couple bodyboards. I had never used one so I gave it a spin. Basically it’s all about timing. If you get off just before the wave hits, you end up riding the wave to the beach. I absolutely loved it. After that we prepared the fish we caught on the BBQ. They were really good. The different between fish from the market and freshly caught fish was really noticeable. The scraps we brought down to the beach and fed them to a couple of stingray that seemingly live in that bay. They are gorgeous creatures. One was almost a big as a car bonnet! By this time it was 2 pm and Steve and I had to leave back to Canberra. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera so no photos.

On a totally unrelated note, I will be off to Wagga Wagga for a 3 day conference from Tuesday on. The conference title is “Condensed materials and matter”. I will be one of the first to give an oral presentation which is just as well because I want to get it out of the way asap. I’m not a great speaker and in front of ~100 scientists it kinda makes me pretty nervous. First time as well! That’s it for now. 🙂

G’day everyone. Looks like I shouldn’t make deadlines to leave a post, but here we go. It’s 2008! And how to better celebrate the new year than to go to Sydney! I went with my housemate there by bus (which takes about 3.5 hours). We got there by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. After having bought a subway sandwich we headed for Hyde park with some beer and stayed there for a bit relaxing on the lawn. Thereafter we headed for the circular quay in sydney which is like a harbour where the ferries are. We had in mind to go to Manly Beach first by ferry and then come back and secure a place to see the fireworks. This was a bad idea as it turned out! When we got to the botanical gardens we heard from people that the areas where you can sit and watch the fireworks were quickly filling up with people and it was only 3 pm! The opera house area was already closed so we headed straight back to the city to buy some food and booze to get us throught the night. Bad idea again but we were ignorant of the organisation at these designated spots. Still it didn’t matter too much. By 4 pm we were at the botanical gardens where we figured we could stay and watch the fireworks. We were shocked to realise that you could not bring your own alcohol inside the fenched area. So after some thinking I suggested I’d hide our esky (= container) with beer. After that we got in alright. Because I am still 24 I had to get a silly wrist band at a stand but only after I had showed them my passport. Like they don’t trust a 24 year old with alcohol! Tsk. It was incredibly crowded there and we were soon hunting for an empty spot on the grass. I’ve not often seen so many people in one place. We did find a decent spot in the end were we stayed for most of the evening. Alcohol could be bought but the beer was shit (of course) so we ended up drinking serveral bottles of white wine that evening (which was pretty shit too ha ha). The atmosphere was awesome and it was great seeing so many people having fun. By 9 pm the first fireworks were on. This was a trial to see if it all worked. It was nonetheless a sight to behold. We didn’t have the best view because some trees were blocking our line of sight and we couldn’t get to a better spot because they were already taken by people who probably arrived early that same morning. As time moved on the moment had come. We managed to find a slightly better spot to stand and see the fireworks. I could see half the harbour bridge which was good enough. At the stoke of 12 the spectacle burst loose. The fireworks on the bridge was brilliant! Then after that everyone was forced to leave so we all went to the CBD (central business district). There wasn’t much to do in the city and the streets were filled with drunken people, some causing some havok. At around 4 i guess we went back to the park and found our esky with beer. We had a couple and then fell asleep. It wasn’t too cold ouside and in the park hardly anyone was around. We woke up full of mossie bites but the sunrise over Sydney was pleasant. After a while we took the bus back to Canberra and I had another nap. I was pretty knackered and it was really hot that day, at least 35C. The weather has been hot all around but it’s a bit more agreeable for now at around 28C. So that was it! Best new year ever! Next year I’ll be back 😛 If you want to see photos, follow the link on the sidebar to my picasa web albums.

Have a good one!