Well so far 2009 is turning out pretty well :D

As promised a couple of photos from the midnight fireworks here in Sydney!



We could see all the way down the harbour, the 4 mirrored sets of fireworks!



The bridge was so beautiful!



At the end I couldn't take photos because I was just so stunned at the amazing display they put on. It really was the most awesome fireworks I've seen in Sydney yet. The finale with the whole city almost exploding with fireworks (all the fireworks coming off the buildings and all up and down the harbour and all along the road leading up to the bridge and all off the bridge) literally had the crowd where we were awestruck. Best spending of tax payer money ever!

Anyway hope you all have a wonderful New Year and that 2009 brings you much joy!

Nicholas and I just rushed down the end of the road to watch the fireworks at 9pm! Here are some photos (more to come from the midnight ones too, since I love fireworks!).



All the boats were twinkling prettily on the harbour, waiting!



Pretty!



Yay, Sydney's the best for New Years. A balmy 25degC and beautiful clear weather, and a wonderful view!

See you in the new year, Happy New Year people! Much <3 to you all :D

The other day I received an Ashford student spindle in the mail. It came with a "greasy sliver" of merino wool, which I taught myself to spin with. Today I spun some lovely merino tops in carmine and cream, from "Ewe Give Me The Knits". This is my first real attempt, I plied it and everything -- it's so soft and yummy. There's enough for probably a shortish scarf or a silly hat. I'm not sure what I'll make with it though, suggestions? :) 

Anyway I just wanted to brag a bit. I'm pretty pleased with my effort! 

And they're off! Yum yum. :)

Hey Fafnir! How do you like your new enclosure, huh?

( Read more... )

Just testing my phone's picture blog capability! Here's a bad pic from the super awesome Dragonforce concert I went to last night. \m/

wzdd and I have been enjoying watching Season 2 of House, and we've developed a drinking game based on the events that inevitably occur during each episode.

Have a drink:

* for each procedure, e.g. lumbar puncture, MRI, CAT scan, etc.

* each time the patient has a seizure. Have another drink if the seizure is during a procedure. 2 if in the MRI

* each time the diagnosis changes

* each time House manages to get Wilson to pay for him. Have another if House keeps the change

* each time Cuddy is snarky at House with underlying sexual tension

* each time House is right after everyone else is wrong ("I told you so" moments)

* every time there's a computer generated scene

* whenever there is sexual tension between House & his ex-wife

* every time they break into someone's house

* every time House blatantly ignores informed consent rules (this one was for me!)



This was enough to get us good and solidly drunk over 2 episodes (well, 1.5, we only decided to start playing half way through the first). Suggestions welcome! (no spoilers for other seasons though thanks!)

can anyone give me (or point me to online) a simple to understand explanation of why the US financial system went kaboom? Surely there must be some sort of actual money somewhere, right? I mean, I may be really stupid here, but surely the whole system wasn't just built on shoddy promises, right? Or did everyone suddenly decide to call people/companies in on debt that they owed and turned around and realised that noone actually had the money to pay it anywhere?

Note: I am almost completely share market illiterate. But I want to learn!

So I found out today while the cleaners were here that our fire alarm works. Steam from the bathroom while they were cleaning it (omg so much steam, wtf were they doing?) set it off and WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPs were interspersed with BEEPBEEPBEEPs and after frantic requests to them to close the door I fanned the internal alarm with a trusty copy of Roger Brownsword's "The Cult of Consent" paper and the BEEPBEEPBEEPs stopped but still there were WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPs coming from the security system external alarm. Argh! So I was running around trying to work out how to turn it off and phones were ringing and panic argh! and I had to call my brother to see if he knew how to turn it off and he didn't and I was pressing buttons on the thing and it wasn't working and more phones ringing and cleaners running all over the place (for some reason) and more WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPs and my ears splitting from the noise and I finally turn the bloody thing off and call the neighbours back and apologise and then the police show up and I apologise and then I find 3 missed calls from security so I call them back and apologise and the security people chastised me for waiting (waiting?! I was apologising to half the neighbourhood!) for 15 mins before I called them back and all in all what a morning! Also I can only partly hear from my right ear, from when I was investigating the security box to see if there was a convenient FIRE ALARM TURN OFF NOW button (there wasn't) which was conveniently situated right near the actual WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPing box.

So that was my excitement for today :)

I'm feeling pretty good right now, busy stuck in my thesis, and I've been doing some good writing. One of my supervisors (yes I know you all read this so let's just say it made me feel good, thank you!) said my writing was 'terrific', which brought out the warm & fuzzies and made me feel even more motivated to get this rather annoying section out of the way. I suspect I wrote around 1k words today so far which although isn't huge is pretty good by my standards, especially since I have been finding this a tricky section to do. As it is I suspect I still need to write a lot more on this section, but even getting a few thoughts down has been quite pleasing.

I've also been lusting after a number of different knitting patterns (and had several people put in orders for birthday & Christmas!) so I'm going to be busy on that front, too. I'm considering possibly attending a couple of the Thursday night SnB at Tapestry Craft in the city but I suspect that could be bad because I'll be so tempted to buy lots of yarn :( I have a rather large stash as it is already!

On the knitting front, I've also mastered the Magic Loop method for knitting small circumference things, instead of using DPNs, which is great because of my crazy phobia for things pointing at my face, which was triggered almost continuously by the constantly moving DPNs pointing at my face... argh :( So using one long circular needle makes me a lot happier. Does anyone know much about weird phobias like that? I'd really like to get over it, but even thinking of having something pointing at my face makes me extremely agitated. I have no idea what triggered it, but I've had it since I can remember. I suspect it could be linked to the old game that we used to play in primary school where one person stands against the wall then the other person raises their hands and puts them together in front of them (like a prayer style), then falls toward the person with the tips of their fingers pointing at their face until the last second before they part their hands and catch themselves on the wall. Of course, this could have just been one of the first memories I have of noticing the phobia, but yeah. I dunno. :(

This is for all the people who wanted to see what Fafnir is like now -- I haven't taken many photos of him in the last couple of years so I got my brother to take a crappy one on my mobile phone camera while I took him for a walk today. So there you go :) The vaguely crazed look on my face is because I wasn't sure exactly when Andy was going to take the photo so I was trying to hold him still!

(Via my photo blog.)

When I took up knitting again recently, I was inspired by the socks I had received for Christmas in 1995 or so from my German host sister's grandmother, who had knitted them herself. I still wear these socks now, which is pretty damn impressive for a pair of socks (they never sprang a hole, they are starting to wear thin though). Anyway, my goal was to knit socks, so I could always have some awesome coloured awesome feeling long lasting socks (I thought it might be cheaper as well, in the long run, if they lasted 13 years or so!).

So I picked up knitting, went through the scarf and hat stages, then onto a more tricky thing -- the jumper (which I've mostly branded a failure now, since it's ... not actually that nice to wear, sigh), and then finally I bit the bullet and tried my hand at the sock. I used Noro Silk Garden sock yarn, which I found in the yarn shop in the city, and it turned out really well!

I couldn't find unknownblogger's post on how unmatched socks asplode the universe, but this, as he mentioned to me last night, definitely means an end for the world. A sock with no possible mate. Yet.

This is more a note and hopefully a helpful hint to anyone wanting to install the d2pro chip on a d2e drive!

Keep your wires short!

Less than 1 inch is good, or you'll run into mysterious red glowing led of doom errors even if all your joins are perfect :)

(Thanks Nicholas!)

So last week I picked up a Wii Fit. If you've been following my Twitter feed you'll know I've been enjoying it immensely. I've done about 6 days now of 30min per day and I'm sore all over, haha. It makes doing exercise fun, partly because of the game-like feel to it, and also because, well, I can just do it at home, don't have to drive to the gym or deal with other sweaty people and gross showers and stuff, and it's so easy to fit into my routine. I am starting to feel a pang of lack-of-wii when I haven't done it too!

Anyone else out there have one? How did you find it? Did you get fit? I'm not really looking to lose much weight (my BMI is about 22.4) but I need to get stronger and, well, fitter :) Let me know! I'll be sure to give you reasonably regular updates if you're interested.

Like wzdd and penelly I read a lot of things via RSS. Here are a few of my favourites!

Cute Overload is probably the cheesiest thing I read. But it's cute! Uh, yeah. Sometimes it goes a little overboard, but Meg has a good sense of humour and manages to take the piss out of people who actually squee like that over cutesy wutesy aminals. Enh!

Passive Aggressive Notes is a source of amusement to me. I especially love their rants against clipart, haha.

Epicurious is an awesome recipe & food porn site, and all the recipes are from magazines so they're made by real chef-y people, not just the recipezaar type groups of people who use crazy American shortcuts (like biscuit mixes, hamburger helper, etc.) for every meal.

Pink Tentacle is an interesting Japanese curio site. They've done pictorial histories of Japanese monsters, and have some beautiful photoblogs of urban scenery.

Mind Hacks doesn't seem to have a lot of commenters, but I really enjoy this blog, especially as a technology ethicist, it's prompted a few discussions on my own postgraduate blog, Wigs and Pens which I co-author with some other CAPPE postgrads.

IO9 is a fairly popular sci-fi site, and since I'm especially addicted to Battlestar Galactica recently, I totally dig it.

I read a couple of comics via RSS too: Penny Arcade, VG Cats, XKCD, and a couple of Final Fantasy XI ones that most people are probably not interested in (also one of them is currently hax0red and so I don't want people getting 0wned by linking to it, the other is by the VG Cats guy so you can get to it from there if you're interested).

I also read the BBC News and Wired News and a bunch of other random things like gaming sites (PAL GN & Joystiq), and blogs related to my research. But that's pretty nerdy ;) I'm always looking out for new & interesting blogs, so if you think I'd be interested in anything you read, let me know!

The conversation went like this:

Mum: Cate, do you have the snake out?
Me: Uh, no, what do you mean?
Mum: He's not in his cage!
Me: Uh, are you sure?
Mum: Well I can't see him!
Me: Uhoh...

*goes and checks, notices the broken lamp area where he's pulled down the lamp enclosure and squeezed out the screen*

Me: Uhoh...
Mum: Do you think he's in that box? The lid was off when I came in so I just put it back on...
Me: Hmm, he's too big for that [he's about 6-7 feet long]...
Me: Oh yeah he just had a messy shed, let's follow the trails of skin!

*Mum and I do so*

Me: Oh look there he is *points up*
Mum: Oh thank goodness I didn't look up when I came in!

*I proceed to play tug of war with the snake for 20 mins after fixing the cage, get one hand on his head and start to try to unwrap him from the rail, at which point we reach a stalemate, then I call and mum comes to help me unwind him from it, and the two of us escort the 6' long snake back to his cage*

Oh yeah, and he's really really annoyed now :(

BTW mad props to my mum, who doesn't much like snakes, for coming to help me :)

This is the first jumper I've ever knitted. It took me about a month to do in my spare time. Maybe a little more. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, though it's a little, uh, roomy :) But better to be too big than too small, right? Right?

Things I learned from this jumper:
Knitting in the round
Using circular needles
Picking up stitches
Casting on stitches mid-work (for the underarms)
Raglan increases
Patience
That I suck at ribbed stitches :( How do I make these more regular? They're all over the place -- it seems when I bring the wool to the front to purl it makes it really loose or something.

Anyway I guess I have no excuse, I'll have to knit Nicholas' chain chomp hat now ;)

Just finished the first sleeve of my jumper, it took a little longer than I expected though! Hope to have the rest of it done by Thursday so I can wear it to Canberra :) Also, I had a haircut today, as you can see! It was quite hilarious, Nicholas and I went to this place in Chatswood and the girl who was cutting my hair started to trim it even after I asked her to cut it to shoulder length (it was below my shoulderblades), so I had to ask her again and she was all "awwww such lovely hair!" and went on to giggle nervously each time she had to chop another huge chunk of it off. Anyway I'm pretty pleased with the outcome (and Nicholas' hair turned out pretty well too, imo!).

This sounded just terrible when I first heard of it, but I watched the first part today and it was hilarious! Highly recommended, for fans of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, etc.) or not :)

Yes, that's the chick from series 7 of Buffy (she plays of the potential slayers) and she's also from The Guild ( http://www.watchtheguild.com/ ). And yes, that *is* who you think it is as the "nemesis". lol!

http://www.drhorrible.com/act_I.html