How to beat the system

You may be wondering “which system”? No – i am not talking about the NHMRC, or tattslotto or even the carbon tax. I am talking about Dettol handwash. You see – anyone with a bit of germophobia/microbiology background knows that things like soap dispensers end up full of bacteria. Using a sensor system can keep the handle clean. Dettol sells these little sensor handwash dispensers that are great for your own bathroom. Now the problem is that it is all designed to be single use. You pay more for a single use (250ml) container of soap then you do for a 500ml refill for the oldschool soap dispensers (manual). I am not a fan of single use plastic items, it’s a waste for the environment and a waste of money most of the time.

So – basically all you need to do is cut a hole into the bottom (therefore top) of the single use soap containers and you can refill them using a 50ml syringe.

See:

- The hole doesn’t disturb the pressure (enough anyway) so t still flows well.

- I made the hole big enough for the tip of the 50ml syringe (without a needle).

and voila.

 

 

And no, I don’t have too much time on my hands…

Perth–S&J’s wedding

A little while back I went to lil old Perth for the first time. The cool little city finally got to experience myself and all I have to offer. In a way it reminded me of the goldcoast but a more like the old non-touristy goldcoast, crossed with toowoomba. Definitely had a QLD-esque feel to it though.

The reason of the visit – Sean and Jess were having a (semi)-surprise wedding instead of an engagement party as they are heading off to the US soon. You guys will be missed.

Anyway – a taste of perth… (from the point & shoot camera)

random buildings

old mixed with new

one crazy ass ye olde laneway

 

random artwork all over the city

I found good coffee! greenhouse, 100 St Georges Tce.

some of the crew

guess which one is sean?

Nobody dances like the argentinians. Go lu.

yeah – I realise I had a few on the camera phone (new mozart 7 does a good job in daylight) but ahh well, you can deal.

twitter

Well – in case you haven’t noticed that random feed to the right –> I use twitter occasionally. For those that don’t follow my feed is @aignome . Now I don’t take it serious and I only occasionally post. NOrmally it is a random thought or rant. Sometimes it is forwarding a cool pic or video, sometimes a sick pic or video (mainly retweeting Alex / @uberjan). Occasionally I will link a site to it to forward something like a link.

Anyway – the world is changing. This form of social media has a lot of potential for advertising and networking. If it is used well It can be great. Some of the threads you can follow vary as to how relevant they are. I often add the hashtags to my posts for say #foxsports if I am following a game and want to comment on it (p.s. Foxsports – play more damn soccer and less fricken AFL. That is not why I subscribed to foxtel). Sometimes I will post something for a charity using its hashtag, sometimes for #protectresearch - the current media campaign/protest to help prevent a $400M budget cut to the NHMRC that is in the current draft. I also use #tc to update the status on thecity. Thecity is a powerful social networking site for cool people (christians).

A Hashtag I recently came across was #1stworldproblems. It is fricken hilarious. The mundane things that people in the first world want to bitch about. Of course they are only partly sarcastic about it. You can tell these actually do bug them. A good way to take a look and laugh at the consumerism that is modern 1st world life.

A few things to share

I am all for GMO’s – I mean seriously – half the damn crops we eat today barely resemble the natural parental crop – so whether it is lab generated or generated by intensive growth selection by farmers, the end result is the same. However – some things you don’t mess with. This story for example - http://blog.friendseat.com/kraft-uses-genetically-engineered-growth-hormone/ seems a little disturbing and is certainly worth reading into. The recombinant growth hormone fed to cattle in the US dairy industry generally would not be a good thing. particularly if the higher IGF-1 levels are significant.

Also – how evil does my cat look in this picture. He looks kind of posessed.

Two funny videos from youtube:

Randomness

and a bit of fun/cruelty…

cat laser pointer bowling

Oh and don’t forget this one from the ch10 news desk.

http://youtu.be/j8Bc7eRTdWY

In other random news – invitrogen now has the fluorescence spectra viewer as an app for iOS. The ipad2 came out and it has a pretty cool cover – the other updates are less than expected.

My phone bill is expensive.. my cat is crazy. i’m off to adelaide for four days and I seem to still have a job – albeit with a lot of hardcore microscopy.

I have foxtel – yay for full res sports rather than B grade streams that constantly cut out.

And yeah – science is still as despressive as ever… well life is lately too – but c’est la vie.

somewhere out there in the vast nothingness of space

Sometimes I feel like Foamy http://www.illwillpress.com/vault.html : Sometimes I feel the need to rant.

- Just because you have a baby on board sticker does not mean you can drive like a lunatic.

- just because you are in an Audi/porsche/Nissan etc does not mean you can fit into that tiny gap

- Why does my apartment still smell like paint when it was painted 5 days ago?

- Why are scientists expected to work their ass off and then still deal with being told they aren’t working hard/fast enough?

-What is with the right lane being the slowest lane on the 5-lane (each way) M1?

- Why do hackers says it works for the ipad when it DOESN’T. test it.

- Why are some cells so touchy yet others so damn tough

- Why aren’t weekends something to look forward to? (oh yeah they’re the chance to catch up on work).

- Why are all the good crack sites in russian, hungarian, romanian or english with porn advertising.

- Why does Clayton suck so much?

- Why must copying your data across the network be so troublesome

- What ever happened to the series Heroes?

- Why do I keep delaying cleaning the bathroom?

- What is that damn song the neighbours are playing

- No – you just live in hawthorn, it does not mean you are better than everyone else.

- SA Biosciences – no i do not need multiple spam messages about signalling pathways everyday.

- Applied Precision – why the hell would you use CentOS 4 – go fry in hell!

- Monash, hmmm Monash…….

- UQ – fix your AACR journal subscription so the whitest Arab I know can get his paper (Hi Sameer) :)

- Australia post – Open longer hours.

- Panasonic – why is your microwave 1cm too wide!

-Boston – why is your accommodation so expensive

- Foamy – you aren’t quite as good as you use to be.

- heater – You aren’t quite working

- Deal Extreme – 6 weeks for delivery is not acceptable.

- Germany – why are you guys the only ones that can make good confocal quality coverslips?

- Nikon – finally you have the C1 software update to do FRET/FRAP – it better work!

-Frontiers – give people more than 3 days to accept a paper to review.

- Aaron – stop being a Tom/old man and finish your rant

 

 

So anyway, that kind of feels better. I might chill with a beer, relax, watch a movie and then spend all w/e working.

new coffee find pt II

So, last week i commented on Dr Jekyll @ St Kilda having good coffee. Well it turns out they use a fairtrade organic syndicate blend – roasted lcaolly in Richmond. They did say the name but I can’t remember it (GRR!).

I visited again this morning – this time to check out the food. Simplicity, done well. A beautiful little cafe – they have a nice courtyard I didn’t notice last weekend. Simple style – no bull. A great menu, good specials, friendly staff, great coffee and great food.

Today I had a simple scrambled eggs with feta and chorizo on ciabata. Beautiful, simple, perfect. The other half had porridge with rhubarb etc. Again – simple and beautiful. The coffees were (I rarely say this about cafes) perfect. Perfect as far as how they were made for the blend – I know not everyone will enjoy the rich nutty flavour – but I do.

 

Photo: c/o Espresso Melbourne.

 

If you head on over to Dr Jekyll You willsee the address and a list of reviews. Well worth the visit to the famous Grey st in St Kilda.

New coffee find

So, while waiting for my father to negotiate the purchase of his new honda bike I went for a walk and discovered Dr Jekyll- a funky cafe in St Kilda (107 grey street). Anyway the place had a good vibe to it, looks funky, friendly staff and the menu looked good. I didn't eat there unfortunately but will do soon. The coffee was awesome, unfortunately I didn't see the brand. A nice rich deep and nutty flavor. Flavour! Stupid American spellchecking in this iPad app. Anyway, check out the cafe. A good little find, basically the corner of barkly and grey.

Mobile computing

So – as most of you are aware. I am a bit og a technophile. I like my toys. I like running windows based devices as it gives me flexibility but I am not bound to windows. I have a pc, windows laptop and steph has a mac laptop. They work together well. I run a windows mobile phone (HTC all the way) and steph runs an iphone. They both have advantages. Apple does  a good job of selling packages. Microsoft sells a software solution that might suit your hardware and might not.

With that in mind I recently decided to buy a tablet PC/ultra mobile portable computer (UMPC). I feel I would actually utilise it and won’t just be buying it as another toy. This has to be done before my mortgage repayments start also :)

There are several UMPC’s I invesitgated to purchase direct from China. Most aren’t running true multi-touch (dual etc) and some have incredibly poor battery life (2hrs). Some are cloned to look exactly like an ipad. Some look cooler.

Most seem to run Windows 7. This may be the cause for the poor battery life, but might not be. Either way Win7 is not ideal. Some run Google Android. While it’s a cool operating system, it has its bugs and most of the android devices had poorer hardware specs.

 

Even a french company has one available. Evo. There’s also the netbook navigator nav9 who ignore the crap battery life and just have it available and in stock.

Some of the bigger companies like HP even had prototypes on display at trade shows. The slate seemed to have the most potential for any windows UMPC (and yes it had flash – fuck you apple). Decent specs, up to 5 hrs battery life. It looked HOT and had usb ports, no forced apple connectors.

 

There are rumours it is now canned as they couldn’t get windows 7 to work properly on it and it chewed the battery life. Hp may or may not be dabbling with android as a suitable alternative to it – but they are not releasing any official details. They did however recently buy Palm and Palm’s WebOS. This will bring HP back into the mobile phone market and potentially give them a new OS for tablet UMPC devices. There’s an interesting article on that here http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/HPs-Palm-Acquisition-Could-Affect-Microsoft-Tablet-PCs-512585/ 

So… despite all that technology – no other company apart from apple seem to have it sorted. Yeah I know there are sites like UMPC portables, pocketables blah that list all the available devices – few of them are actually available or suitable (with regards to tech specs, battery life etc).

A taiwanese company called Innoversal has an impressive looking device with a screen that turns the backlight off during bright light to save on battery. It looks HOT but isn’t expected to be available till September, maybe.

To sum it up…. Flash or no flash, adobe air or no adobe air, apple has it sorted. Yeah the no adobe thing sucks as MOST websites use flash but HTML5 apps/js etc will fill the gaps. The iPad has awesome battery life, a decent screen, easy to use OS, good hardware and bucketloads of apps. I’ll have mine within a week or two.

marine biology

So… ever since I first realised what marine biology encompassed (1st year science I guess) I have been a fan. I already had my mind set, I would be a virologist. Nevertheless marine biology entrigued me. I enjoyed subjects like ecology and animal biology during undergrad and did well in them. During my PhD I tutored on the side at UQ’s Moreton Bay Research Station. The things we covered were mainly for advanceed high school students interested in ecology adn marine biology – but it was still damn fun. Walking across “rocky shores” looking at the wildlife. Examining the life amongst the mangroves. Snorkelling in the murky disgusting water of Moreton Bay’s reefs. I got to do cool stuff like play with exotic fish, feed sharks, pick up a wobegong, pick up Sting Rays, catch crabs, play with octopus and swim with dugongs. I loved it. I liked it more than simply because it was a break from molecular virology/biology.

Now I play with cells all day long. Yeah I still play with viruses and examine the innate immune system, but for the most part it is cell biology. I love cell biology, examining the intricacies of cells. For the most part it is fun, with expensive toys.

My recent trip to Port Douglas, and snorkelling on the reef – reminded me of how much i love Marine Biology though. It’s fun. They are real. So much is unknown about the creatures that navigate the seas.

I have been watching some hardcore HD videos c/o iinet’s Freezone (Earth Touch http://www.earth-touch.com/ ). It inspired me to post some pics of the Agincourt Reef, outer Reef, Great Barrier Reef that I went to with Quicksilver Cruises.

Here’s where Agrincourt is.

Anyway. A random selection of the photos are attached. Of course these are all copyrighted to me, aaron irving. Steal and die.

Most of these shots are from inside a semi-submerisble. SHot threw a thick glass window, no flash, iso 250 or something.

A Holiday (pics included)

So – it has been about 2 1/2 years since I have had a holiday. Yeah I have gone away for a long weekend, taking 2 fri/monday off work. That was living it up. Now I am currently on a 2 week holiday. It feels weird.

Due to poor organisation, our original plan to visit thailand was cancelled. Just as well – the political riots and 20+deaths (3 western tourists and 3 journalists included) makes it less than ideal to visit at the moment. Not to mention the early rain season.

Regardless – we booked a quick trip up to Port Douglas

 ,

flying in to Cairns and then driving and staying @ Sea Temple

  .

Of course Steph hadn’t been to the great barrier reef – so we jumped on a boat

and went out to Agrincourt on the outer Reef

.

Steph even went in the water

 

with the crazy fishies for some snorkelling and we also went on the semi-submersible

.

Apart from the pretty coloured fish, there were pretty coloured coral and turtles

.

We went for a drive up Kuranda way to see some forest

and stopped at Palm Cove on the way back

  .

The rest of the trip was mainly relaxing ,

drinking wine   and

watching the sunset .