Geoverse

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!

…and a happy new year to everyone! 😀

I’ll be heading to Sydney on the 31st to celebrate new year with one of my housemates. Maybe you’ll see me on the telly packed between millions of people ha ha. The fireworks and the beer should be good. 😛 We’re going to crash through the night because all accomodation has been booked full months in ahead. I’ll have my mobile with me, but I don’t know if I will be able to send any messages. We’ll be back on the bus to Canberra the next morning.

In the meantime my supervisors gave me some presents as well… a deadline for a paper for a conference, a deadline for a poster of my research, a deadline for the midterm examination, a deadline for processing results of recent experiments. Hurrah! >_< So yeah I’ll take this weekend off but I think I can really use the upcoming week to start getting things done.

Today the weather is just awful too. Rain, wind, more rain, thunder… I took some pics and videos with my camera. It’s been rainy lately (see prev post) on and off which kinda sucks… Just go to my picasa web album on the sidebar on the right to see the photos >>>>

Also you’ll find some photos there of a xmas football match of staff vs students. It was great fun. I decided to be goalie in the second half when my Chinese officemate Qing came around with his camera. These are his photos. I blocked every ball in the second round which allowed us to forgo shame and we tied with the staff 4-4. After the match we had a delicious BBQ with plenty of drinks. It was also raining that day a bit but the tarp saved the BBQ 🙂

Again the best of holidays to everyone! Expect another post here before new year. Cheers all!

I recently bought the game Supreme Commander with 50% discount so I thought “Why the heck not!” 🙂 The game is a Real Time Strategy game, a genre I truely exhausted when playing Empire Earth. Keeping the economy running during gameplay is a huge effort in Empire Earth since you can harvest wood, gold, iron, stone and there is farming. Supcom is different. You only have to worry about energy and mass. I only takes a minute to get your economy set up and you can already focus on building an army. Also if you do run out of mass and/or energy your production slows but doesn’t halt. Much better imo. Creating and expanding your sphere of influence by creating bases is pretty straightforward as well as commanding your army. The one difference is though that your army can be MASSIVE! There is no upper limit. As a result you’re looking at the world at a zoomed out level more than zoomed in and every unit becomes an icon since otherwise you would not even see your units so small they become! While the more advanced units are somewhat bigger like your commander, the basic units are tiny which is a shame. Realistic but less interesting. You can create naval units, land and air based units. Especially areal units I find i can only handle in icon mode since they are so hard to keep track of. Also when managing a huge army, the units are equally spaced from each other instead just cluttered into one area. I find this annoying because then the units at the back of the formation do not joint the fight until later when the units in the front have already been destroyed. It kind of ruins the strategy of a surge attack because everything is moving too slow. Once the fight really sets off though, the war is amazing to behold and the special effects rule. It also kills the framerate so zooming out a little is better. The game is pretty demanding so I cannot play it on my laptop at a higher resolution than 1024*768, but for some reason I can have everything on high and 2x AA. Modern games really seem to suffer on my laptop only when increasing the resolution of the game but not when increasing the texture details etc. I’m currently trying out all three factions in the game Supcom but I think I’ll do the 3rd faction first. The three factions are: humans, cyborgs and humans following”The way” set out by an extinct alien race (annihilated by the humans in the first place which strikes me as somewhat funny).

I’ve just handed in my annual plan and thesis proposal review with signatures and all. So overall i’m making good progress which is always nice to hear. I also carried out my first real experiment that lasted for about a week. The deformed olivine specimen was finally loaded into the seismic wave attenuation apparatus and all the gas leaks were fixed.

The experiment consisted of numerous runs starting at the highest temperature of 1100C and ramping down by 25C with every new set of experimental runs. Basically the first run takes 5 hours or 9 hours depending on the time of the day. A 9 hour run is more thorough. This is the forced torsional oscillation run whereby the olivine specimen gets twisted on the micrometer scale at fixed seismic frequencies. If the specimen is fully elastic, an immediate response is recorded at the displacement transducers. However, under higher temperatures there is a visco-elastic component and therefore the material exhibits a phaselag and a change in the shear modulus over longer timescales.

In addition, microcreep test runs were performed for 10,000s and later 5,000s. These tests show in more detail at what temperature olivine becomes elastic in response. They also provide a check on the creep function fitted to the data during data processing.

All in all, it was pretty intensive. Before and after each experiment run I had to do calibrations. I had to come in at 8 am, keep an eye on the experiments/start new ones and each evening I had to come in to get an overnight experiment going. So that meant staying in the lab until midnight! As a result I was a bit sad that I couldn’t stay long at a farewell party of a graduating phd student at RSES.

Anyways, I now have to way clear to process the data from this other side project i’ve been working on, on dislocation annealing kinetics in synth olivine. Then from there I can write a draft paper maybe by the end of this year but that depends on me working through the Christmas holidays.