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Jul. 20th, 2009 @ 02:41 pm
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Do people want me to put my thesis bits under a cut?
Or are you all capable of using a scroll wheel?
I figure text is fine, cuts are for spoilers, photos, web quizzes, memes etc.
If I wanted a short text limit, well, I'd just use twitter.
Oh - and I'm friends locking all my thesis bits, because I don't want to later be accused of plagiarizing stuff online. Call me paranoid if you like.
If I haven't friended you and you do want to see my thesis bits, let me know. That said, I choose not to friend LJ's that entirely consist of memes, web quizzes and random trivia that bore me. |
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Sunday was Melbourne Open House day. So we dragged ourselves out of bed nice and early to go have a look see.
http://melbourneopenhouse.org/cms-about-us/about-us.phps
We jumped on the train and headed around to Parliment station to begin by queuing at Peter Mac Cancer Institute. The website had warned us in advance that we'd need to book a tour.
Met Emily at the Peter Mac, booked tours of the radiation bunker and the labs at 12pm, and then wandered down Collins St. We looked at the queues for 101 Collins St, Fifteen (restaurant) and a few other places and decided to go get breakfast instead. I suspect that the day would have been more successful if the other more popular venues instituted the same booking system as Peter Mac. Luckily my lovely compatriots were happy to take the day nice and casually and pick stuff at random rather than spend plenty of time queuing. Had a lovely breakfast at a cafe next to the Treasury building.
Getting to see inside Peter Mac was awesome. The tours were intelligent, well thought out and interesting, pitched well at the audience. There were also plenty of brochures and post cards and so one advertising the good work that is done at Peter Mac as well, it was nice to see donation buckets at most of the Open House venues to this cause. Nigel and me are in the process of working out our will, basically money goes to each other if one dies and if we both die at same time, then it gets a bit trickier, but we've both decided we want a percentage of our money to go towards cancer research and its awesome to see a lab environment where this is being done and being done well.
Then we took a vote between the Treasury Place tour and the Melbourne Fire Museum, the fire trucks won :) It was kind of amusing actually, the Museum was open and charges for entry, or you could go round the corner to the back door and get in for free as part of the Open House day. Fire tower pretty, fire trucks pretty, exquisite wood working in the old signals and dispatch room, basically when signing up to be a firefighter, they hired tradesmen, so all the electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, woodworking in the building was all done by the firemen who worked there.
Then we wandered down to Russel Place in the hopes of seeing the substation there - the queue was massive, so we wandered down to the Manchester Unity building, the queue was stretching for most of city block. We went and queued at the much shorter Athenenum queue. Nigel got onto twitter, which told us that the queues for MU and the Substation were approx 3.5 hours long and only for the extremely patient. Yup - definately need a booking system for the more popular venues. Next year, we start at one of the above.
At the Athenenum only the library was a open, which was interesting, but I was hoping to see more of the venue.
We wandered down to the Arts Centre to look at Hamer Hall. This was prehaps the most awesome tour for me at least. Everything was interesting in different ways, but this was really impressive. The tour wound its way through the lobby, up through the VIP lounge which most of us would never get in, through the practice rooms and dressing rooms, with assorted people rehearsing and working in the space. There was a guy practicing on a double bass who seemed a bit shy about all these people wandering through his rehearsal space. Another lady was repairing the skins on some drums, so we stopped to chat about drum maintenance. Then we got to go backstage, through the stage managers station and onto the main stage, which was very very cool, out through the audience and back to the lobby. There were plenty of Arts Center staff on hand to answer questions and explain bits and pieces and they all seemed really happy to be meeting new people and showing off the funky bits of their space.
It was getting late by this point, so we picked one more venue, the Donkey Wheel House, this is an old building down the end of Bourke St that used to house the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus company founded in 1891. The building itself is Gothic revival architecture and has been used for assorted purposes over time. Its most recently been purchased by a group of people dedicated to social change based on community building and philanthropic principles. They have very little money, lots of enthusiasm, big ideas, an awesome space and a big need for many volunteers to help them realise their vision. They also need a website I can link to I think :)
The basement section of this building is already set up as an artist gallery with people welcome to create and display art down there. They want to work with not-for-profits and all sorts of community based groups and provide a space with which to do so. I reckon the Camarilla or similar should hold an event in the basement area, its perfect for a dark gloomy Vampire freeform.
Other floors have large open spaces and beautiful little touches. The building needs repair work, but it is lovely.
It was interesting to look at the motives for various places in opening their doors to the general public. In the case of the Fire Museum and the Library, it was obviously an attempt to publicise themselves and hopefully get more future custom. Peter Mac was awareness raising and fund raising. The Donkey Wheel House wanted to raise awareness both about the space and get more volunteers interested in their vision for the future of the place. All of these are good motives.
We elected not to take a camera when we left the house in the morning for a couple of reasons. One, dragging around all the bits can get heavy after awhile. Two, its good to go out exploring without a camera, as you then tend to spend all your time looking through a lens and for good camera angles, rather than simply relaxing and looking around you with both eyes. Its our city, if we see something we really like we can always go back.
That said, Emily elected to take her camera and I'm glad she did. She has taken some absolutely awesome photos, which are on her flickr. I need her permission before I can link to them :)
The day finished in a manner which most days good should, with good company and lots of yummy dumplings :)
Then I came home and watched MasterChef. I haven't been so happy about the final week, it hasn't been about who is the best chef, its been eliminating the one who fucked up the most in a specific challenge, despite their other work. But then again, their format dictated the result.
That said, I think Channel 10 won, as the most widely marketable contestant won. |
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Jul. 20th, 2009 @ 10:44 am
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Ascension turns 5!!!!
That's right, we've been at the Slox for 5 years.
To celebrate, we've got a fantastic night of fun and frivolity lined up.
There may also be cake.
Our guest DJs this month are the ever excellent Rake, and, in her DJ debut, The Red Menace!
Cheap cocktails from 6 - 9.
Free pool.
Awesome. |
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Jul. 20th, 2009 @ 09:01 am
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Share housing. I've never done it. I am terrified of it. I'd be less terrified if I was moving out with people I knew and and trusted but that's not an option right now so all I can do is move into an already established share house with complete strangers. This means selling or chucking nearly everything I own which is so painful. I've spent nearly three years collecting and setting myself up with a home and homey stuffs only to have to start over. Blargh.
I've sent out many, many emails in response to ads on share house websites but most places either can't have cats, or already have cats and are wary of adding another. Or if they don't mind cats, then they're type of place that has "Must have own bong and be willing to share their green" on their ad. Which is basically my worst nightmare.
Ideally I'd love to be able to find one or two people I kind of know and find a new place with them and set up from scratch. But the problem with living in a city without knowing a lot of people, is that I don't know a lot of people. Ha. Yeah.
Haven't yet ruled out moving back to Sydney. If everything goes to shit at work this week (which is another story) then Sydney might look more and more appealing.
Either way, I am stressed to the eyeballs over this. And everything else that's going on. Still haven't quite gotten over death of grandmother. Definitely not over death of uncle. End of relationship has also not been dealt with (how do you let go of five years?) and now this. FML. |
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I have glass. I have a glass cutter. I have putty. Soon, I will have an intact balcony door again. Also, I heart Reverse Garbage, it's been far too long since I wandered around there.
Reference: http://users.monash.edu.au/~ralphk/glass-cutting.html |
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2Y6M
Hard copies available from redbubble.com
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BLOOD & SCONES appear on P.70 of Music to Die For and in the "B" picture section.
Tops!
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So... today I summoned the courage and rode down to The Oaks for my trial instruction flight.
The trainer said that today was perhaps not the best day for a first flight, as there was quite a nasty cross-wind and quite a lot of turbulance below 3000ft. Given the distance that I rode, I thought that I might as well give it a go in any case - I might as well experience flying in adverse conditions just so that I don't come away all starry-eyed but without a clue as to what it can be like.
The initial climb was quite scary - as predicted, it was quite bumpy and the cross-wind was sufficiently strong that we flew slightly side-on. Intellectually, I knew that this was what was going to happen - but there is a world of difference between academic knowledge and experience.
Eventually, we made it to somewhere around 3800ft and after being shown how to hold the plane level, and how to bank into a turn - it was my turn. Man - there is so much to keep track of up there - airspeed, attitude (i.e. how the aircraft is oriented in 3-space), altitude, heading and location all the while keeping an eye out for landmarks and other aircraft. I found myself only being able to concentrate on so much (well, so little) - so, attitude and vertical speed say - that I wasn't able to quite keep an eye on little things like altitude. Needless to say, I became a little lost up there - I've not seen that part of the world from the air before.
In any case... I'm glad that I did take the flight rather that wimping out. I feel at least a little proud of myself :-)
I'll have to give it at least a couple more flights before I know whether it is something that I want to take up. I suspect that once i have my fear under control, I'll really love it .Listening: Christy Moore - Shine on you crazy diamond |
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"While you're down there, you can suck my cock"
"Just want a bit of English cock in you, don't you?"
"oooooooooh she's a feisty one"
"Betcha love anal"
"Bet she's a right little fuckin slut mate" (to the chef, about me)
Two of the the longest days of my life. |
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Dinghies
Such a strange word, the plural scares me a little. Hard copies available from redbubble.com
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Jul. 17th, 2009 @ 10:50 pm
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Blah blah hate it when I'm right blah.
Here, have a picture of a Muskoka road.
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Jul. 17th, 2009 @ 04:33 pm
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Well...
Quite possibly learning to fly somewhere near Camden in this:
Whee... :-)Feeling:  cheerful Listening: Sisters of Mercy - Tainted Love |
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Jul. 17th, 2009 @ 03:10 pm
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You know you've been working to hard, and multitasking between reading and note taking on the computer, when you try to scroll down the page on the book you are reading and wonder why your mouse isn't working.
*facepalm* |
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Jul. 17th, 2009 @ 03:05 pm
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Jul. 17th, 2009 @ 02:53 pm
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Not that I imagine anyone really gives two fucks, but for the first time in literally months I am completely caught up at work. I don't have any pending tasks to do until Monday next week.
Considering the department, and me specifically, is overworked at the moment (I am currently about ~35-40 clients over what I should be looking after, and they're all the "involved" programs), this is actually a lot more fucking awesome than it sounds. Whew. Fuck.
Anyway, nothing more to see here. You can get back to what you were doing, and I will get back to being poor and quiet again. |
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I got the job! I got the job! I got the job!
In about a month, I return to being a sysadmin. Apparently that's where I belong.
Soon, I'm out of support and away from clueless external customers.
*bounce*bounce*bounce*bounce*bounce*bounce*bounce*bounce*
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I want one! *plots to raid hardware store...*
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Untitled
Hard copies available from redbubble.com
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