Shalalalala HTC

Joy to the world, for new years has come.

Chrstmas was a blast, kind of. I cooked an awesome macadmia/basil pesto roast pork, italian herb/garlic turkey, roast ham and steph took care of a multitude of salads. Her family enjoyed it, and I would say it is the best roast pork I have done. I like it when family visits but damn that's a lot of people in a kind of small apartment.

Speaking of apartments, the landlord wants to increase the rent. Steph and I are considering what's available to buy, or if we want to rent and research more. Fun times. But yeah, Melbourne is the GO. New years party tonight; who the hell picks the theme "9". Oh yeah, Seth does. grr @ seth.

so... any ideas for the theme - maybe a cat (9 lives) or something - sms me as there are only a few hours left.

SMS hey.... I now have a new phone. I succumbed to the revolution and got a PDA/phone. The HTC touch Diamond:

WM6.1 / 4gig internal memory / wifi, 3G, sms, mms, office, mp3, mp4, voice calling, vid calling, 3.2mp, blahhh.

I am now with telstra, and they paid me $200 to go from optus to telstra (cost me $109 to leave Optus). Ahh business plans, so much better.

I am not the only person at work today - hooray for Dakang working his ass off too.

I am going to get back on top of things and not leave people/sites etc neglected (including logging into facebook more than monthly).

RG hits 20k

So, for those of you who don't know: I participate in researchgate. It's a form of social networking/collaborating/data sharing etc site for scientists. Any form of researchers really (including arts/history etc). Recently it hit 20,000 members. In like what, 7 months. Anyway, it's rad - check out the entry about it's 20k membership - http://blog.researchgate.net/index.php?/archives/49-ResearchGATE-celebrates-20,000-members.html

I mean seriously - what is the deal with ferrero Rocher, how much money are they spending on marketing?

Nikon

So, as everyone knows - I prefer canon. But if someone throws Nikon equipment in your face, it's hard to say no.

So... after doing parts of the Monash Micro Imaging Live cell imaging course and playing around with millions of dollars of microscopes from Leica, Olympus and Nikon ... I'd have to say that yeah Leica rocks (depending on the model, the LX is a LEMON), olympus is ok (good images but buggy setup) and the Nikon a1: 

is damn good for the price.

So, the reason I just pimped Nikon? There was a lucky door prize and I just won a free Nikon coolpix S210 (3x optical, 8mp, vibration reduction, nikkor lens).

 

So yeah - one positive output from the week anyway.

update and overdue realisation

So I was watching this doco on ABC by david attenborough covering the Lakes district. Apparently steph and I chose to drive up the steepest road in the UK when we visited a few years ago, hollister pass. We also drove by the sing side stone circle, quakers hill etc. David attenborough has such a cool voice, despite his voice.

Yeah what else - been shit busy with work... yay.

Bought a new GPS - 4.3" widescreen, bluetooth and a built in DVB-T tuner (shh don't tell the cops). - have virtually every piece of software available for it.

Researchgate is taking off... be a part of it.

Wrote a mini-review for the faculty of F1000 - an elitists society for scientific publications/evaluation etc. It's good to have a boss with a big name.

Doing lots of crazy live cell confocal microscopy.. expensive lasers to play with, yay.

Just watched man city play man utd - damn good match!

It hailed down here last weekend, for no reason, and apparently even snowed in the city (very briefly). This weather is damp sporadic.

The christmas tree is up, where has the year gone. Where has my life gone.

My sister is pregnant, so is Em, so is Cindy, so is Lisle so is Panny, etc etc - so many kids around aswell.

and yeah.. that's it. more soon.