Monday, April 27, 2009

things are a changing

finally getting things sorted, starting to get on top of stuff and yeah – that is about it. Website re-arrangement coming soon (new reliable host). twitter (aignome). photography upload, science updates and yeah other bits and piece (just made an offer to buy an apartment).




TwitThis


Tuesday, April 07, 2009

premiership

Well, what can one say. Poor Villa. Aston villa played so well only to be slaughtered by man utd right at the end. Macheda has skills.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Slumming it

So - I've heard a few people rave about slumdog millionaire recently. Having just watched it, I can say yeah it is damn good. Nothing overly amazing about it, just nicely done and the first movie in a while to keep me truly intrigued throughout.

Most movies are crap lately.

I may well be slumming it soon if we BUY here in melbourne. Makes sense to buy though, with the bonus finishing midyear and the market being ripe for longterm investments. Med finance companies to make it easier aswell :)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Feeling the Heat

So, today was a max of 43 degrees. Now that is damn hot, like really hot. Still no real humidity which makes it almost bearable, but not quite. All week it's going to be that damn hot. I walked to the car in the middle of the day and back, as a result I have a mild sunburn. The proton was running quite hot aswell.

Well anyway, no choice but to deal, drink lots of water and yeh - why not some Dr Pepper.

IMAGE_007

USA Foods www.usafoods.com.au sells Dr Pepper, so I bought 24 cans. I also bought some Lipton raspberry flavoured instant Iced Tea, PopTarts (for Matt) and a can of Cherry (Code Red) Mountain Dew (crap).

Hooray for aircon - lets hope the energy companies have enough power to let us keep running it.

Oh yeah, did I mention some of connex's (victorian rail) tracks buckled under the heat today.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Random Reviews

Liverpool vs Everton: Damn - These two are permanently at each other. Liverpool should be the better team and definitely have some better stars. As long as Everton have guts (and timmy cahill) then they will hold out though.

The Black Cow, Launceston, Tas: Best restaurant in Australia. It's a tough call and I have eaten at a few decent restaurants around Australia, but the Black Cow does a mean steak. Still water winery is responsible for the chef and the wine that matches it. The duet has come up with an awesome menu and some great wines to match. The local produce, both the lamb and the beef were just awesome.

Gordon River Cruises, Strahan, Tas: Great cruise, friendly staff and a nice 6hrs on a smooth catamaran. Two nice stop offs at the Heritage Landing and the ex-convict settlement: Sarah Island. The boat cruises down the Gordon River, right to the start of the Franklin river and all through the UNESCO world heritage forest. Oh yeah, it starts off with a cruise out through Hell's Gates and into the southern ocean. From there all you would hit in one direction is Antarctica, or in another direction - Chile. On the way back in you go pass the salmon and ocean trout farms. Damn tassie salmon is good, and they serve it on the buffet in the boat aswell.

Strahan, Tas: overpriced, over-rated but yeah it's ok I guess.

Hobart, Tas: pretty mad. I liked it. Nice cafe's/restaurants/art galleries etc.

Boags Brewery, Launceston, Tas: mmm beer

Mole Creek Caves, Tas: cool, glow worms rock.

Cradle Mountain, Tas. They sell it as this amazing unique experience. Quite over-rated really. Admittedly it was very dry but it really resembled queensland and much of the lakes etc we see in QLD. I would love to go back in full snow, would be quite beautiful then I would imagine. Some nice mountains around tassie though, whereas QLD is quite flat.

HTC touch Diamond: Seriously mad.

Dandenong Ranges: A nice ride up. Pretty countryside. Nothing overly awesome though. Sassafras had some cute shops. I got Dr Pepper at a confectionary shop - yay.

Dr Pepper: still Awesome.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

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:

htc-touch-diamond-wm6-phone

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).

Thursday, December 18, 2008

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

Friday, December 12, 2008

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

Thursday, December 04, 2008

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

A1R-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).

 

Nikon Coolpix S210

So yeah - one positive output from the week anyway.

Monday, December 01, 2008

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.

Friday, October 17, 2008

software, tunes and photos

so - currently I am studying phagocytosis and autophagy. A lot of hardcore visual microscopy and computer modelling-

e.g. Imaris Snapshot

The above is from software called Imaris. $10k +$5k maintenance /year/computer. I have a 1 month off-site licence on my laptop for October (free, yay).

As far as tunes go - KMH's new cd is out saturday. I have been listening to it on Nova. She has gone like mainstream alternative. i.e. it's very much "quirky pop"... nothing really show's off the potential of her voice. There are a few songs on their with real singing - but the rest are ok I guess. She is playing in Melbourne next month, I think i'll go.

Photos - so many photos to go through and convert to jpg... eeek..

Thursday, October 09, 2008

vicroads

In general, most roads down here are much wider then back in QLD. So why the hell do people almost run you off the road when on a freeway???

and why do people spontaneously decide they want to kill you if your reflexes aren't good enough to avoid their crazy driving.

Ahh well, the daily challenges of driving in Melbourne.

p.s. My washer/dryer has the longest, craziest "finished" tone sound.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Belgium

So.. recently I saw



In Bruges


Released: 2008


Go to IMDb page


Information © IMDb.com



In Bruges


Elizabeth Berrington, Olivier Bonjour, Ann Elsley, Jean-Marc Favorin, Brendan Gleeson, Zeljko Ivanek





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What can I say... damn good! One of the best movies I have seen in a while, unique, well written and a good laugh. It is the directors first full length film, but he did well. You can tell he is a playwright - and I like the style. Anyway - go see it.

Monday, September 01, 2008

a little happiness

So, there is a little good news. I have a new portable HDD... and a laptop that seems quite reliable... and a desktop that behaves.

Steph wants to buy a mac laptop, they are sexy.

I have some new camera equipment, canon EOS 40D, 17-70 f2.8 sigma, 70-200 f4L IS USM, canon 430exII speedlite/flash etc.

Settled into melbourne, working hard, little time for fun - but oh well.

sadness

so... i've ben meaning to post for a while. but meh. Life is busy, another year older, a bit more broke.

My old computer crashed, the one I used to store a lot of my data/photos etc. I've lost the original (raw's, some jpgs) of a LOT of my photos. 50gb of data, irretrievable. THAT FUCKEN SUCKS. so yeah, I have a few jpgs, the ones on my gallery, in high quality - but most of the originals are GONE.

so yeah - I booted it up to back it all up and ... bam... grinded to hell.

I now have a 500gb portable HDD for scientific data and photos... aswell as dvd and my computers HDD (laptop for some, desktop for others). hmm.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

purchases

So, recently steph purchased:

HTC touch dual - http://www.htc.com/www/product.aspx?id=142 

 

(work will pay, eventually).

Recently I purchased:

Canon EOS 40D - http://www.canon.com.au/eos/range/eos40d/default.aspx

Sigma 17-70mm F/2.8-4.5 DC macro - http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/lenses_all_details.asp?id=3315&navigator=6

Canon 70-200mm F/4 IS L series - http://www.canon.com.au/products/cameras_lenses_accessories/telephoto_zoom_lenses/ef_70-200mm4lisusm.aspx

so yeah, I feel guilty.

what a bust

Damn, 4.4 tonnes, 15 million tablets or $440 million worth of ecstasy. They claim it's 60% of Vic's eccies. One would imagine a price rise. At least the dealers not arrested won't be affected by federal inflation for a while. That's a lot of drugs to be in tinned tomatoes... I hope the legitimate shipments of tinned tomatoes from Italy aren't held up. I am quite fond of the ones from my local importer.

Friday, August 01, 2008

full hdd

So, mental note: clicking cancel (then yes to delete the torrent) on a partially downloaded file in ShareAza does not delete the data. It leaves it sitting in your temp files in the shareaza directory. After struggling to work out why the windows system drive was full - I deleted 30gig of partially downloaded files. yay.

In other new... yeah nothing really. Had an awesome sat/sun away at blairgowrie (mornington peninsula).

CRW_7166

Photos on FB, so far.

It's good to chill. So much cleaning etc to do this w/e. tax return is back, yay.

I might go buy a camera.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The universe

The universe apparently wants the hooker-look-a-like Miss Universe: Venezuela to be the new Miss universe.

MISS UNIVERSE 2008 

Miss Venezuela (as per the judges)....

or

taliana-miss-colombia

Miss Colombia.

ahh well..I'm happy with steph :)

miss universe

so... 5 left. I think MU: Australia should have scored higher. Stunning dress she had and yeah, talent. MU: columbia, damn... she is utterly gorgeous. The judges actually seem to be leaning her way (they never agree with me). Anyway, we'll see in a few minutes.