Weird and wonderful gadgets

The Gist: Completely distracted, three interesting gadgets: the vacuum cleaning Roomba, the USB rechargable battery and the titchy teeny "where on earth did I put it?" iPod Shuffle.

I'm having one of those dreadful days at work where you really do begin to wonder why you're there and what was it you were supposed to be doing again? I know you've all had them so don't come the innocent with me. And no, I wasn't drinking last night. Well, actually I was but not excessively and by that I do not wish to imply that I'm an alcoholic for whom a few drinks every night is an essential but I do enjoy a glass of wine now and then. In fact I'd had that particular bottle of wine since my birthday (2nd December for those of you that need a reminder and yes, it's coming up again soon).

From that first paragraph you should all now be gathering just how distracted and fragmented my mind is at the moment. Must perform a de-frag this afternoon. It could be to do with all the crazy brain games Toby's had me playing all week, such as seeing how many sequences of numbers you can remember, forwards and backwards (I reached 10 sets of 3 digits before I got bored but perhaps I wasn't playing properly), and spelling words forwards and backwards.

So, I thought I'd share with you all some weird and wonderful gadgets I have stumbled upon this week.

The Roomba
Firstly, I bring you the Roomba, a fantastic labour-saving device for all you working peeps out there with busy social lives and very little time (or desire) for housework. This little device will vacuum your floor for you. How brilliant is that? It's flat so it can get under furniture that you would usually struggle to reach (or just not bother) and it will even find its way back to base when it needs recharging. I really want one of these. How wonderful it would be to arrive home from work and find the vacuuming has already been done. You can get similar gadgets to mop your floor too. Now all I need are dusting and toilet-cleaning gadgets.

USBCell
Brilliant! I love this. It's an absolute stroke of genius. The USBCell is basically a AA battery which you can recharge by plugging it into the USB port on your computer. Oh what a wonderful world we live in. Apparently greenies think it's pretty good as you can recharge it whilst you're using your 'puter anyway. It only has 40% capacity of a regular battery due to the space taken up by the USB connector but who cares when it's so damn easy to charge anyway? These cost £12.99 for two and I shall be purchasing a few when I'm in the UK at the end of the year for use with my wireless keyboard and mouse.

iPod Shuffle

This is more amusing than anything else. The iPod Shuffle claims to be the world's smallest digital music player and let's hope it is as anything smaller would be difficult to see, let alone operate. I was led to this titchy tiny gadget via Silicon.com's Weekly Round-up which makes mention of an episode of Saturday Night Live from a few years back which poked fun at Apple for releasing ever-diminishing iPods. Well, now they've gone and done it and as Round-up points out you need double-jointed fingers to use it (see image). Remember Zoolander's mobile phone? I'm amazed at the technology behind this, really I am. I mean it's just incredible that they can make something like this so small. But I mean really, does it have to be? No matter how many times I go to the website and look at the photographs I can't help wondering if this is a joke.

Climate change tip for the top: Well, it's got to be to replace some of your AA batteries with USBCells really, doesn't it? And that's about it from me really, although I would like to point you in the direction of some interesting articles I saw on the BBC website this week and also to encourage you to go and see Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth (brilliant title), which I'm planning on seeing next week. I'll try and get round to letting you know what it's like.

State of California sues auto companies for damaging environment:
State sues car firms on climate

Should we spend money on climate change? The arguments for and against:
Wasteful efforts to curb global warming (Against)
Climate change remains top priority (For)

Bridesmaid refuses to fly

If you think I'm a bit crazy with my whole "cars are evil and aeroplanes kill the planet, let's all plant trees instead" approach, then check out this blog I stumbled across earlier in the week.

Babs2Brisbane is the travel log of a young woman who lives in a caravan in Wales (with no electricity and no computer! Crazy!!) whose good friend invited her to be bridesmaid in Brisbane. It's clear Babs is a bit of a greenie and she was horrified at the thought of having to fly to Australia so, after toying with the idea of not going, she decided to travel overland instead. See, because Babs is a greenie, she doesn't really spend a lot of money so she doesn't really need a full time job. She will take 6 weeks to get to Brisbane travelling by boat, bus and Trans-Siberian rail. What an adventure!

Whilst I do find Babs' way of life a little extreme I also find it entirely admirable. She has completely opted out of the rat-race (if she ever even joined it) and lives life according to principles she believes in.

See, no matter how passionate I think I might be about the environment, I will not travel to UK overland, even though I feel a bit bad about flying. Why? Well, because if I take 6 weeks off work, I want to spend that time with my family, not sitting on my bum looking out of a bus or train window. Why can't I take more than 6 weeks off work? Well, I can't really afford it. Why not? Because I want a sizeable house by the beach, a laptop and other gadgets, running shoes, a gym membership, a social life, the odd dive holiday. In short, my desire to have stuff and do stuff stops me from living in a particular way. (I think it's been termed Affluenza although I have a very mild strain).

Her decision has sparked some lively debate as to the virtues of air travel versus overland travel and there are some interesting comments on her website. I think she'll have an amazing time and I wouldn't mind giving it a go myself some day - obviously not every time I come home though, otherwise I'd spend the rest of my life travelling between England and Australia.

And to close this very green post, here's a very green picture of a dew drop which I spotted the other morning whilst doing yoga in the garden and which I suffered 4 mosquito bites for because I stayed still for too long whilst taking it.


Related: I also stumbled across this article in The Telegraph which discusses how flying is becoming an anti-social activity: Travel without leaving a trail

An “eeeeeeeeee hello” to you all and a sad farewell to The Crocodile Hunter.

I haven’t blogged in quite some time. I’ve started a few posts but then not quite got around to finishing them and getting them up here. But after hearing the sad news regarding Steve Irwin this week I was reminded of the important things in life and the fleeting fragility of our mortality.



I’ve just been to the zoo (i.e. Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo) and was overwhelmed by the number of tributes laid there and the scores of people still rolling in five days after Steve’s death with messages and flowers and donations for Wildlife Warriors, the charity Steve and his wife Terri founded. Surprisingly, it surpassed the tributes I witnessed at King’s Cross last year, two weeks after the London Transport terrorist attacks. The only thing I can liken it to was the aftermath of the death of Princess Di, although it hasn’t quite reached those same levels of hysteria.


Whilst we were there Toby ran into a girl he used to know at university. Turns out she played softball for Australia in Athens in 2004 and won a silver medal. But that’s another story (although it is the first time I’ve met an Olympic athlete). She works for the zoo so was able to give us an interesting insight into the goings-on there. It’s clear that everyone who works at the zoo loved Steve very much and that he had a big impact on their lives. His loss has affected them all deeply. She also told me that apparently today (Friday) was International Khaki Day… wonder if that will become an annual thing. I had no idea of this but quite independently organised for my team to come in today wearing the closest they could get to khakis. Not everyone took part – some insisted that they had nothing remotely khaki – but for those that did it was a nice gesture.

At the zoo I made a donation to Wildlife Warriors and wrote a message on a khaki shirt. There were dozens of these hanging around the place covered in the messages people wrote for Steve and his family. Whilst I was doing this about seven zoo employees, some of which I recognised as having presented crocodile and tiger demonstrations, approached carrying a covered frame. They spent a few moments attaching it to a fence and then said a few quiet words to one another before turning around and having their photograph taken with it. At one point they all raised their thumbs and cried “Crikey”. After they left I moved in for a closer look. It was a framed photograph of Steve in action, feeding a crocodile. At the bottom were two crocodile teeth. I don’t know if they were in any way significant, maybe they were from a particular croc whom Steve was fond of but that’s just speculation. Around the photograph they’d written their own very personal and moving tributes.


Steve Irwin is an intrinsic part of the Sunshine Coast where I live and it's only now that he's gone that I've really noticed it. The day after his death I was cycling home from work and a bus passed by me. There he was, larger than life as always, covering the back of a bus. Anywhere you drive there are huge Australia Zoo billboards with Steve's picture on them. I wonder what will happen to those billboards... whether over time Steve's photograph will slowly be replaced by his daughter Bindi, or one of the other crocodile handlers.

It’s clear that Steve Irwin was a man who touched the hearts of many people all across the world for many different reasons. Some loved the entertainer, the man who could see the beauty in any animal and who educated the world about the characters and complexities of so-called dangerous animals. Others loved the conservationist, the selfless man who worked so hard to help and protect animals, putting all the money he made back into the zoo and similar projects. And yet others, those close to him, would have been more familiar with the family man, the ordinary bloke. Although after watching a re-run of a 2003 Andrew Denton interview with Steve, who insisted his TV persona was the real thing all the time, and others who knew him have confirmed this, I fail to see anything ordinary about him. On the contrary, I believe he was an extraordinary man, albeit down to earth. (By the way, Andrew Denton is like a younger, Australian Parkie.) An example of his ability to be both down to earth and extraordinary can be found in the weekly column written by the VC of the uni I work for (University of the Sunshine Coast): when Steve was granted an honorary senior fellowship at the uni in 2000 he turned up for graduation wearing, as always, his khakis.

I never actually met Steve Irwin but I did see him in the flesh once. On one visit to the zoo I spotted him running towards me with a group of zoo workers. I was trying to figure out what on earth could be such an emergency that they had to run - had a croc escaped? But maybe that's just how someone as energetic as Steve Irwin gets around. A girl I was with shouted, "Hey look, it's Steve. Hi Steve!" and as he ran passed he waved and smiled at us. Other people I know have said that he rode around the zoo on a scooter saying hello to people. And others have said that seeing him do the croc presentations made their visit. Everyone who visits the zoo hopes they'll be lucky enough to see Steve Irwin in action. It's so strange to think that will never happen now.

Germaine Greer's scathing, and possibly inaccurate comments earlier this week (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1865124,00.html, calling Irwin "self-delusional" and "dominating" of animals, claiming that the zoo's crocs are depressed and that Steve's tragic death is a case of "the animal world finally taking revenge" on him are nothing less than disgusting, not least because of her insanely insensitive timing. But, whilst she claims John Stainton's job is "to keep Irwin pumped larger than life, shouting "Crikey!" and punching the air", it's clear that Greer's job is to disagree with general opinion and to wind everyone up in the most appauling way she can imagine, and, I suppose, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Greer states that, "the one lesson any conservationist must labour to drive home is that habitat loss is the principal cause of species loss", implying that Steve Irwin failed to do this and instead barged into fragile habitats, manhandling and distressing animals. But I think he did do this and this is how I hope the world remembers him, as a compassionate (and passionate) caring conservationist, as opposed to an "entertainer". Yes, he was entertaining but this was simply a by-product of his passion.

So, with this in mind, I have racked my brains trying to think of an Irwin-esque Tip for the Top. I thought of the fact that he bought vast swathes of land so that they could be conserved and kept away from greedy developers, something the Sunshine Coast sees a lot of as one of the fastest growing regions in Australia. And whilst it may be possible to put that into place on a smaller scale by buying land to live on and not developing or sub-dividing, or by refusing to buy on one of the new massive development estates and instead going for a traditional Queenslander (wooden home, raised for air-flow with a big deck or verander around the outside), that's really beyond the capabilities of most people and applies more to Australians than Brits, where most of the land has already been developed anyway.

So then I thought of the little things you could do, like encourage birds into your garden and put two bells rather than one on your cat's collar so it can't catch the birds. Rather strangely, as I was writing this post travelling in the car on Friday evening to Toby's parents' place, not too long after leaving the zoo, we hit a small animal. I remembered having heard somewhere what to do in these situations, particularly if it's a koala. We found the animal and it was definitely dead. But then we had the distressing task of moving it into the light and checking to see if it had a pouch. If it did we would have had to check inside the pouch for a joey and call the Australia Zoo Hospital (the number of which I have in my phone) to come and take it away. The animal was some kind of small marsupial by the way, possibly a bandicoot. Now, again this applies more to Australia as UK doesn't have animals with pouches but it can teach us to be more aware of animals crossing the roads and to take some care to check them out if we do hit them. I wasn't driving by the way. Oh no sirree! Blogging and driving definitely do not mix. Don't do it.

My struggle to think of some practical advice to offer has perhaps highlighted to me that this is an area I'm quite ignorant in. Or maybe conservation has been so ingrained since I was a school child that it's now second nature (leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs, that kind of thing) but I do think I have a lot to learn, especially in this less familiar environment of Australia.

I will be making a donation to the Wildlife Warriors and for those of you who wish to do the same I will say be wary of bogus sites. I haven't seen any myself but I've heard they do exist. It's www.wildlifewarriors.org.au and you can get there from the Australia Zoo website.

Strange things that I now say

The Gist: A general discussion about the weird words I have picked up since living in Australia. Plus, do you really need all those light bulbs?

I got chatting to an old friend on MSN last night, and by old I mean we've known each other a while not that he is old, although he is really now and part of our discussion was about how old we'd become since we last saw each other. This in turn led him to check out the post I wrote about my 30th birthday which led to me having a quick look at it myself to remind me of what a fun time I had.

And then I saw it. In amongst the list of things I managed to squeeze into a fun 24 hours was this word: sunbake.

It is one of a few that I hadn't really heard before I moved to Australia and yet there I was, innocently using it as though it was a natural part of my vocabulary. Which led me to wonder, what other unusual words have I picked up since living here, what do they mean, and what might I otherwise have said had I remained in England?

Aussie Word	Meaning/Usage	English equivalent
Sun-bake**	To lie in sun absorbing its rays.	Sun-bathe
Awesome	Very good.	Wicked
Doona*	A bed covering.	Duvet
Uggies	Comfy warm sheepskin boots.	Slippers
Router (pronounced rowter)	A piece of hardware used to direct network traffic. This primarily illustrates a difference in pronounciation which also applies to the use of the word as in "is there another route we can take". Route (pronounced root) is rude in Australia and people laugh at you when you say it.	Route (pronounced root).
Thongs***	A type of sandal.	Flip-flops
Capsicum**	A fruit usually used as a vegetable.	Pepper
Zuccini** (pronounced zoo-kini as in bikini)	Is it a fruit or a vegetable?	Corgette
Eggplant**	Some vegetable/fruit type of food thing. It's not even the same colour as an egg.	Aubergine (the actual colour of the fruit thing).
Togs**	Something you swim in or wear on the beach.	Swimsuit, bathers
Servo, Fuel station	Somewhere that sells petrol.	Petrol station, garage
Fuel	Something you put in your car to make it move.	Petrol
Woolies	A supermarket.	Sainsbury's
Bottlo, Bottle Shop, Liquor Store	Somewhere you buy alcoholic beverages.	Off-licence, Offie
Unit	An apartment.	Flat
Town-house	A house attached to another house in some way, perhaps within a complex	I'm not even sure we have such a thing in England but it could be a maisonette, or just a house.
The ocean	Vast expanse of water off the coast.	The sea
Soccer*	A game involving 11 men and a round ball and the men are only allowed to touch the ball with their feet (apart from the goalie).	Footie, football (which can mean one of many things here: rugger, AFL, union, league, it's all just footie to the Aussies apart from the one game which clearly is by definition "footie".
Lollies*	Confectionary.	Sweets. In England a lolly is a sweet on a stick.
Ice block*	Frozen confectionary.	Ice lolly
Film clip*	Short film accompanying a piece of popular music.	Video (pronounced vidjo)
Movie, the movies/the cinema	A film, a public "theatre" which shows films.	Film, the pictures
Stubbie	Small bottle of beer.	A what? Why would you want a small one?
Light beer	A beer light in taste, and often alcohol.	Come what? But of course, they drive everywhere in Australia.
Mid-strength	Lager, normal colour and alcohol content.	Lager
Jug**	An electrical boiling device.	Kettle
Highway	A multi-lane road where cars are allowed to go quite fast.	Motorway. They have motorways in Australia too but they're more like B roads: not as fast and not as many lanes.

* Words that I don't really use but either say occasionally so that people actually know what I'm talking about, or at least need to know what they mean.
** Words that I use interchangeably.
*** I went through a phase of saying the Aussie word but have now reverted back to the English word because I like it better.

It's quite amazing because after living here for over three years I am still learning new words and phrases. I'm sure there are many more that have slipped my mind.

Climate Change Tip for the Top: Do you really need your light-bulbs?

Now I know I'm starting to sound like a crazy hippie but hear me out. The other week the fluorescent tube in our bathroom went. It's winter here in Australia which means that the sun shines for half the day and then it's dark. In the absence of a spare fluro tube we turned to the comfort of candles. And it was so nice that we didn't really feel encouraged to go out and buy a new fluro tube. However, we are now being unceremoniously booted out of our house (which we only found out about a couple of weeks ago and which I blogged about in an unpublished post during a very angry "all real estate agents are b@stards and my landlord doesn't love me" moment, and which I don't have time to go into now as it's taken about a week to write this post as it is but suffice to say that we are currently submerged in boxes and packing tape and will be arriving in our new abode this coming weekend) so now we have to replace the tube but it did get me thinking that perhaps we don't always need to use light bulbs. If you do feel the need to use light bulbs then my tip for the top is to use the energy saver ones. They seem a little cold when you first switch them on but they soon warm up (I'm talking colour, not heat folks). They use less electricity than normal light bulbs and last much longer. The only lamps I don't use them in at the moment are ones with specialist fittings that you can't get with energy saver bulbs (such as the small screw-ins) or where you need a particularly small bulb for the lamp shade as fluros are still pretty bulky at the base.

Oh yeah, and I planted some trees to make up for my flights to the UK. Not literally. I gave money to an organisation that will plant them for me. And before everyone gets on at me about how planting new forests isn't as good as maintaining existing forests, it's better than nothing and the organisation I donated to (Greenfleet) re-plants native forests in areas that have previously been cleared for agriculture. Rather than plantations it actually reconstructs entire ecosystems. So, even if it doesn't offset the carbon emissions of my flights it's a good cause, right?

Climate Change

The Gist: More strange dreams, The Lovely Bones to be made into a film, scary climate change stuff, a self-confessed enviro-hypocrite but what can I do? (Answers on a postcard please.) I'm not a mad scientist but I'd like to do my bit. Save energy with your PC. If the gist makes no sense, then read on...

I have always determined that this was not to be a political or preaching site and have strayed as far from such deep and meaningful matters as I possibly could, preferring instead to entertain you all with my dreams. And have they been weird lately! One night I dreamt about a house full of ghosts with a slightly malevolent mother ghost and a daughter ghost who was more freaky for the sheer fact that I had seen her outside of the house and thought she was alive. Seeing her in the house meant she was dead and I was so freaked and the mother was so evil that I had to call for a taxi to come rescue me. Another night I dreamt about a girl wearing the most revoltingly revealing PVC leotard who was murdered by a dodgy serial killer guy. I didn't see the murder, thankfully, but I did see an image of the girl (pre-murder) and then I saw the guy's car and just somehow knew that he'd killed her. I blame the book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold which I read a few weeks ago for that one. Apparently they're now making that into a film. Is no book safe?

However, the more I read on the subject of climate change the more scared I get and I'm beginning to feel it's irresponsible and lazy of me not to mention it on occasion. Therefore, I will attempt to append to each post an interesting fact/statistic/reading/reason-to-be-entirely-freaked-out about climate change, followed by a little tip on how to do your bit to help prevent the world from utter disaster and probably save money too. Unfortunately it no longer appears to be the domain of long-haired tree-hugging hippy types trying to save the world. We've gone beyond that intersection on our journey to destruction. Now it's up to each and everyone of us to do our bit to limit the damage.

Before I go on I should point out that I am, in fact, the world's biggest hypocrite when it comes to climate change. I really like the idea of living a low-carbon life but I still have not figured out an eco-friendly way to travel between England and Australia. Air travel is perhaps the worst contributor to climate change that individual consumers are responsible for (see Fly and Be Damned by Mark Lynas) and I feel eternally guilty for the amount of it that I do. It doesn't really matter how much I cut down CO2 emissions in all other areas of my life, it will never make up for the amount I am responsible for by flying. Sometimes I comfort myself by saying "well, the aeroplane is going anyway so I am actually making it more efficient by helping to fill it" but really if everyone boycotted aeroplanes then fewer of them would fly and emissions would be reduced so it's a false justification.

Obviously the idea of everyone boycotting aeroplanes is extreme to say the least and, in this day and age, impractical. Some environmentalists predict that we are approaching the end of capitalism because the world simply cannot continue in this vein; there just aren't enough resources. However, I believe that this view is the best way to ensure that people don't do anything to help the situation. It's scary, it's extreme, it's almost impossible for people my age and younger to imagine and it's like a chore that is so big that you don't know where to start so you just don't bother. I believe we can find ways to live our existing lifestyle more efficiently and environmentally friendly and, even should this not prove to be sustainable over the long-term, it is at least a good place to start.

A pretty picture of Noosa Main Beach to break up the long post and remind you all how beautiful the planet can be and why it's so important that we do what we can to preserve it. I didn't actually start writing this sentence with the intention of sounding like a hippie - it just came out that way.

Now for this week's tidbit, and before I go on may I remind you all that I am not a scientist, nor an expert but merely an interested layperson.

A brief and simplistic introduction to climate change as I understand it:

Climate change is caused by a general and global warming of air and sea surface temperatures as a result of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Once referred to as Global Warming, it is now called climate change for a couple of reasons. Firstly, people living in cooler climates like the idea of warmer weather and so "global warming" does not quite relay the severity of potential consequences. Also, not everywhere will experience warming per se. Climate change may mean colder winters (the UK could suffer significant decreases in temperature in the extreme event of the Gulf Stream slowing down or stopping), wetter weather, more severe storms, rises in sea level leading to loss of land, worsening droughts. The symptoms are many and varied and nearly always nasty.

Some places will be affected more than others and climate change models nearly always focus on global rather than local changes. Global changes may sound small. For example, scientists currently predict a rise in temperature of between 1.4° and 5.8° Celsius for the period 1990-2100. In fact current observations show that the earth is warming at a rate of about 0.17°C per decade which would lead to a temperature slightly higher than 1.4°C (see World Climate Report blog.) . These temperatures may not sound very high but applied globally could mean a significant rise for some localities.

So how does the carbon dioxide get into the atmosphere? Primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas. The earth has a natural carbon cycle which ensures that carbon released through the decomposition of matter is then taken up again, for example by trees and plants. However fossil fuels, as the name suggests, are part of a much longer carbon cycle which occurs over millions of years and are the result of matter which decomposed millions of years ago. Thus we are releasing them back into the atmosphere faster than the short-term carbon cycle can absorb them. This is why some environmentalists are not convinced that planting forests as carbon "sinks" is an effective solution, as eventually the trees will die and release the carbon back into the atmosphere. The only way we can be sure to stop the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and therefore stabilise (and eventually reduce) the levels (which are still increasing) is to stop burning fossil fuels. But this leaves us with a big problem to solve: just where do we get our energy from?

Of the fossil fuels we like to burn, coal (which many countries burn for electricity) is the biggest producer of carbon emissions, followed by oil and then gas. Gas in its natural, pre-burned form of methane, however, is twenty times worse as a contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane).

Climate Change Tip for the top - This week's tip for doing your bit:
If you work in an office (or have a PC at home) ALWAYS switch the monitor off before leaving for the day (or when you're not using your PC). Use your PC power saving settings to save power during the day. (Right-click on the desktop and select Properties then go to the Screen Saver tab. There should be a button marked Power...) Setting your PC to shut down the monitor, stand-by or hibernate after certain periods of inactivity will save energy. If you won't be using your PC for more than 8 hours then either shut it down or hibernate it. If you do this with your PC at home it should save you money too; running a PC costs 3.5c per hour (see reference 6 below) which would cost $306 per year if you left your PC on permanently. If you use it for three hours a day but switched it off at all other times you would save $268. I don't have similar figures for the UK but apparently leaving a PC monitor on all night wastes enough electricity to microwave six dinners (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/estates/environment/energyandw.shtml) and according to Scott Richards from power supply manufacturer Antec (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4929594.stm), "If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 thousand litres of gasoline a day."

For more information see:

• http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=204
• http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html
• http://www.earthcarecanada.com/FAQs/Energy_related_FAQ.asp

For help with the difference between stand-by and hibernate see:

• http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/Windows2000/UserTips/
  Hybernation/HybernationvsStandbyModeinWindows2000.html
• http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=56728
• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/russel_02march25.mspx

Resources and Further Reading

This is all just information I have gathered into my head over the last couple of years so I can't pinpoint where all of it comes from. However, here is a list of resources that I have read which will provide further information:

1. The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
2. High Tide by Mark Lynas (Mark's final chapter inspired me to write this post.)
   
3. A Big Fix: Radical Solutions for Australia's Environmental Crisis by Ian Lowe
4. Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor (I thoroughly recommend this book by the way.)
5. Affluenza by Clive Hamilton
6. Eco-Wise and Wealthy by Joanna Tovia
7. www.realclimate.org
8. www.marklynas.org
9. www.greenpeace.org.au/climate/
10. www.greenpeace.org.uk/gp_pollution/climate_change.cfm
11. The Modern Scholar: Global Warming, Global Threat, a series of audio lectures by Professor Michael B. McElroy. This was what first stimulated my interest.
    

If I remember more I'll add them later.

(BANG! Ooops sorry. Just fell off my soap box.)

Too busy to blog

It's sad but true. I thought you might want to know that though. And since I've started a post just to tell you I'm too busy to post I may as well give you a bullet point update.

• I went to Sydney for Anna's 30th birthday at the weekend. It was great to see her, we had a fab party, got very drunk, I was designated photographer which was a great way to meet all of Anna's friends (I forgot my own camera! Can you believe it! What a moron). Sam Bradon and Tim Ayling from uni were there with their girlfriends so we had a mini York reunion down-under. I don't think any of us would have thought nine years ago when we left uni that we'd spend our 30th birthdays together in Australia. Bizarre. We also briefly caught up with Oscar and Jackie from our Angourie holiday at New Year.


• Work is crazy. A friend recently sent through an online quiz to see if people could tell the difference between a computer programmer and a serial killer. I scored six out of ten which, given that I work with computer programmers, is a little worrying. Stress levels are climbing and I'm beginning to understand why you might confuse the two.


• For those dream analysts last night I dreamt about a fat lizard who'd had most of his tail bitten off, a larger lizard, and the hugest python you could imagine. I could sense he was harmless but I couldn't be sure so I was a little scared anyway and was trying to show him to Toby but he was being a bit elusive and kept just turning up when I was least expecting him too.


• Went to see Ross Noble last night. Christ that man is funny! By the end of the first half I was almost wishing it was over, my jaws, cheeks, ribs and stomach were aching that much from laughing. It was just what the doctor ordered after a stressful day at work. I wish he could come and live with us so we could have five minutes of randomist laughter every evening. Instead I made do with a DVD. He reminded me of home. Toby thinks he sounds like me Dad but I'm not so convinced. It was nice though, having someone with a geordie accent who also knows about Australia because sometimes I feel a bit stranded between two worlds. Now that I know I'm stranded with the likes of Ross Noble I feel much better. The lucky barsteward gets to live both here and in England though. One day, my petals, one day!

Right-oh that's probably enough of an update. I have to go tend to the University's ailing website redesign project before it's all too late. Never fear! Buckle's here. (Funny, the uni's management don't look too relieved by that. Little do they know.)

Analyse this: Crazy dodgem-style car reversing dream

Welcome to the first in a series where I offer you my dreams for analysis, as suggested in my last post. Please submit your analyses by comment or email. Thank you for your anticipated help with this. You're saving me a fortune in therapist fees.

Some things had been going on within the dream leading up to the bit I'm going to tell you about. I can't remember what they were. They weren't very memorable. There were probably a load of us girls going out for drinks or something. But the bit I'm going to tell you about starts in the ground floor of a building, possibly a shop or something. It had the impression of a car show room but it was empty. It was on the spot where my best friend's parents' house is, in the street I grew up in but I don't think that's relevant. I dream about that street a lot because I spent so much time there.

There were about four of us, all girls. Only one girl is relevant and she is someone I was friends with at school but haven't really been in touch with since. I did randomly bump into her at the theatre once about seven years ago but other than that I haven't seen her for about fifteen years.

This girl was complaining that she'd somehow let her driving license expire and failed when she went to take her test again. Another of the girls suggested that it's to do with how she changes gear and gave her some advice which I was not privy too. The advising girl left, and the rest of us got into the car with the driving girl. Driving girl put the car into reverse to pull out of the parking space she was in and then kept going and entirely took her foot off the clutch like you have to do in the "reverse" maneuvre of your driving test (in Australia). Then she continued to move up through the gears, all the while in reverse (yes, I know that's impossible, bear with me here) but seemingly paying no attention to where she was going, apparently more intent on practising her gear changes. She was ricocheting from one parked car to another causing lots of damage. We were all yelling at her to stop and pay attention and eventually she did, freaked out and somehow drove her car into the shop we'd just come from.

So there we all were in the shop and at this point it became obvious that I knew the owner, who I actually think was Ron Dixon from Brookside. She decided to run away and I tried to persuade her not to. Then all the other girls ran away and tried to drag me with them. I explained that the car was registered in her name so she wouldn't get away with it but they pulled me outside and shut the door anyway. I then had to ring on the door bell to get the owner to let me back in. Obviously he wasn't very impressed to see a car in his building and I then had to explain what had happened, hoping to provoke some sympathy for my friend but he was having none of it, saying she still owed his partner (not sure if that was life partner or business partner but it was a female) money for the car.

Then I woke up.

Analyse that!

One Degree of Separation

The Gist: I keep bumping into people I know and I went to a comedy show. I've no idea where all the other words came from.

You know you've been living on the Sunshine Coast too long when you start bumping into the same person more than once. Or you go out for dinner and one of the other guests happens to know someone you do. Really well. In Australia there are only about three or four degrees of separation. Pin-point it down to south-east Queensland or the Sunshine Coast and it's more like one or two. It's spooky. That's started happening to me so I'll be moving to Melbourne next month.

I went to a comedy show last night. This was quite an exciting event as such things rarely occur on the Sunshine Coast (unlike bumping into people you know) and it's fair to say that in the three years I've been living here I haven't been to one. Not one! Somewhat different to living in London where there was a world-class comedy club (Jongleurs) just down the road from me (that's London-speak for "it's five minutes that way on the number 77"). It was the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (which was on when we were down in Melbourne but we weren't organised enough to get tickets) Roadshow and it was pretty good. Unfortunately, Ross Noble wasn't there, which is good because my friend informed me that she hates him. (What? Sacrilege! She obviously doesn't know the meaning of the word "funny" or "f***ing hilarious" or "oooh... he went a bit far there, don't you think?") However, we bumped into someone we knew (it happens more often at "cultural" events such as these because they occur so rarely that everyone on the coast goes. In fact, it's strange if you don't bump into everyone you know. And yes, they really do class a comedy show as a cultural event.) So we bumped into someone we knew (again) but that's not the point. The point is that these people told us that Ross Noble will be being funny at Nambour Civic Centre on June 1st. Guess what I'll be googling today.

The point of today's post was originally to share with you that I drank too much beer last night, went to bed feeling sick and have woken up with a sore head, after having weird dreams where Toby, me, my sister (possibly my mother but I really can't remember) and a couple of random infants and a hamster all lived in one tiny house that seemed to consist of only one room. The hamster was psycho and spent the entire time running around and around the house squeezing its little self amongst wires that seemed to be all around the skirting boards for some reason. It really went too far when it tried to squeeze through a hole the size of a five pence piece (or five cents if you'd prefer) in the front door, which I'd been telling Toby we should fix before the weather gets much colder. But again, I digress. That really wasn't the point. But it has given me an interesting idea for future blog topics. Dream analysis! Oh don't get me started. I had a great airport dream the other night. Scary but anyway, I'll share that another time.

The two stars (in my opinion) of last night's show were Mark Watson, a funny, almost hyper welsh dude, and Fiona O'Something, an Irish-Australian alcholic with anorexic sisters and a really scary mother. She left her baby in Liquorland once. It was like a horrible view of my own future when she told that story. I've asked people to remind me, should it ever become relevant, not to let me have more than two children because I will start forgetting them. Every day this week I've managed to forget something. Yesterday was a classic example. I had a meeting with the salary sacrifice lady (how scary does that sound? I don't want to sacrifice my salary, thanks. I quite like it) and I'd emailed her to ask what I needed to take with me. She didn't really ask for much. Just my payslip really. So what did I do? I took my payslip home with me on Tuesday. And then left it there.

Actually salary sacrificing works out quite nicely. I'll be getting about 30% of the cost of my laptop back. Yes! I finally bought a laptop and I'm most pleased because I'm blogging on it right now. It's still not quite set up the way I want it because it only arrived on Monday and I've been very busy drinking and laughing and stuff. So unfortunately I am forced to use Internet Explorer and as such my blog looks s**t, as per my previous blog. If you use IE and you can't see the posts, here's a tip: scroll right down. It's down there somewhere. But then if you're reading this you've probably already figured that out. Sorry about all the swearing by the way; that's the hangover. For those of you that are interested I bought a Dell Latitude D820. It's super fast and has wi-fi so I'm quite happy. It looks cool when it's open because the inside is black. But the outside is a naff silver. I also have a super duper wireless keyboard and mouse. I could write a geeky post about why I chose this laptop (it was cheap!) but I'm not really in the mood today. Another time, maybe.

One of the guys at the comedy show last night was really odd, not very funny and I don't think I'd recommend him. His name was Sam Simmons. Avoid him. Do not pay money to see him.

Oh, just before I go, guess what?! We booked our flights to the UK! WE'RE COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - YAY!!!!!! Looks like we're going via Dubai (send your travel tips!) and we should be in London around 9th December. We're trying to arrange it so we'll get there in time for the weekend. So who's hosting the party for us?

I really have no idea why I woke up this morning with a hangover and thought it would be a good idea to blog so I'm going to stop now.

Just give me the gist

For all you busy people out there who, like my good pals Brent and Praj, only have time for the gist I have for you this week a) a short post, and b) a link to a website that gives you the gist of books. How fantastic an idea is that? No longer to you have to sift through boring old industry or professional development books. Now you can cut to the chase and go straight for the jugular, leaving much more time for fun stuff such as reading novels, windsurfing, making jewellery, watching TV (ohmigod the final of Dancing with the Stars is on tonight! How exciting) or movies, gardening, bowling, socialising, whatever takes your fancy really because I know you all spend far too much time reading business books.

So, in order to prevent this short post becoming a long post, here's the link: Get the gist (A.K.A Get Abstract)

Weekend In Melbourne

Finally, our long awaited weekend to Melbourne happened last week and it was so much fun. We originally had flights booked for February but had to cancel because Toby couldn't take time off work. Fortunately for us the airline made a change to our schedule which made it really easy for us to get our money back as we just told them we couldn't make the new times. And even though these flights were a bit more expensive we got some extra time down in Melbourne thanks to the Anzac Day public holiday on Tuesday 25th April.

The CIS Old Boys Club Reunion. L-R: Toby Clewett (March 2003), Praj Basnet (October 2005), Lindsey Buckle (still suffering), Brent Dacre (bad influence, started the whole thing, May 2005), Shuwana Shiraze (contractor, went to Lithuania for a cold spell, the mad monkey, between USC and RMIT), Stephen Fenner (contractor, unassuming yet surprisingly good at blowing smoke rings after a few cocktails apparently, approximately November 2005)

When we got there we dropped our bags off at some RMIT offices where friends who used to live on the Sunshine Coast now work. It ended up being something of a team reunion as we all used to work together in the team I currently work in at the University of the Sunshine Coast. I am currently not thinking of joining them down there but mainly because they work on the student system and I don't and have no desire to either. It has been something of a sick joke in the office over the past few months that those people coming to work in a tie will soon defect to RMIT. The IT Director didn't seem to think it was funny though and her blood turns cold at the mere mention of the word RMIT, and the names of some former employees (you know who you are, Brent). Fortunately I don't think she bothers to read this so hopefully the photograph won't freak her out too much. Maybe I'll make it my screen saver just to tease her. Just kidding (you never know she might read it and I don't want to be one of those people who gets sacked for writing stupid things on their blog).

I do miss those guys, especially Brent and Praj whom I worked closely with for quite a while and whom some of you may remember used to have a blog I linked to, which I removed when they started getting lazy. For old times sake we went for a few drinks along with Praj's girlfriend Tracy and it was just like old times only different. For a start it was in Melbourne, secondly it was cold and thirdly there was a decent choice of bars. Much fun was had.

Unfortunately too much fun was had and too much drink consumed for us to think about bothering to go see the people we'd actually travelled down to stay with, Jon and Kristina, good friends from Brisbane. Shame on us! We'd been hoping they'd join us and keep us in check but after a week at work they were tired and wanted to chill out at home. We finally loaded our sorry selves onto a tram (actually, the others did it for us because we were confused small-town folk) and Jon good-naturedly picked us up from the tram stop and drove us home when really he probably just wanted to punch us. By the time we got home Jon was chilled out and started cracking open the beers. It was really good to see them again and I'm so glad they forgive us for turning up so late.

On Saturday J&K took us to the Victoria Markets which are huge and impressive and full of pretty much anything you might want to buy grocery-wise. The deli section was phenomenal. Every sort of bread, cheese, cold meet, nuts, olives, nibbles, dried or smoked fish, just everything. I was gobsmacked. And the fruit and vegetable section looked much fresher and more inviting than the supermarket. I'd love to have somewhere like this to do my weekly shopping even if it was a bit crazy and busy with people moving around all over the place and getting in your way and huffing and puffing at me just because I wanted to stand in the middle of the aisle and take photographs.

Jon and Kristina live in a nice suburb on Port Philip Bay, called Elwood, not too far from St. Kilda. They live about a minute's walk from the beach which is perfect for Jon who's a keen windsurfer and can just carry his rig over the road and through the park. They've made lots of nice friends locally and whilst Jon and Toby went for a sail on the windsurfers, Kristina and I went for a civilised drink at a local bar with a couple of Kristina's friends. I have to admit that despite the cold I was tempted to windsurf. I even took my wetsuit with me but having not seen Kristina since June last year I was keen to spend some time with her.

That evening Jon & Kristina invited Luke and Kate around for dinner. Luke and Kate are yet more friends of ours who decided to move to Melbourne. What is it with Melbourne that has made everyone suddenly want to go live there? I mean it's nice and everything but it's not that great. I liked it because it was cold and city-like, with older buildings and a bit of character. But I wonder if I lived there if the novelty of that would wear off and I'd start thinking it would be really nice to live somewhere a bit quieter and warmer and with a nice beach, like the Sunshine Coast. Anyway, it was nice to catch up with Kate and Luke too and the dinner was scrumptious: morrocan chicken with figs or dates or something. Or were the figs and dates in the ice cream Kristina made? It was all yummy anyway.

L-R: Kristina, Kate, Luke (and me - kind of looks like his head is directly on top of mine), Toby and Jon, wearing an oven glove in case you were wondering what that weird white thing is.

Kate got very excited when I told her that I was taking a photograph to put on my website and made me promise to email her the link. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me remember where I put her email address. Although, I imagine if it really was a case of doing it to save my life I'd remember. Sorry, Kate, I hope I get this to you somehow.

The next day Jon very kindly offered to drive us around some wineries. We headed out towards Mornington Peninsula, stopping on the way to check out the famous brightly coloured Brighton Beach huts, which are very cool. I pondered the pressure that must be upon the owners to have the grooviest beach huts and I wonder if there are guidelines as to how they have to be maintained. One of them even had the Australian flag painted onto it.

Brighton Beach Huts: brightly coloured!

Mornington Peninsula was beautiful. I was very excited by all the autumn leaves as I haven't experienced proper seasons for such a long time. In Queensland the leaves fall off the trees all year round and they seem to go from green to yellow to brown, completely missing out the red bit which is the prettiest. We spent some time enjoying the coastline and the countryside but mainly just the wine. It was really good, and brave, of Jon to offer to chaffeur us around. Thanks to our yummy meal and lots of wine the night before no one could actually taste any wines in the first place, which is a shame as apparently it's really nice. We knocked them back anyway and after lunch we really got into it and started actually making purchases. Here's a lovely photo of us outside one particularly nice winery, our arms full of bottles of wine.

Nice leaves, nice friends, nice wine.

After dinner that evening Toby and I had one more friend to catch up with. Pete's in a band and so lives the life of a night-owl which is considerably different to how Toby and I live. Nevertheless, despite a day on the booze, another big scrummy dinner courtesy of Jon and Kristina (asparagus pasta this time....mmmmm), and just being generally knackered, we dragged ourselves out with Pete. We didn't regret it. He took us to The Espy in St. Kilda where we watched a band called The Nudist Funk Orchestra or something. Thankfully, they weren't nude but they were funky.

Our last day in Melbourne was spent just chilling and wandering around J&K's neighbourhood. Someone had suggested we go to see the penguins on some island in the bay but that seemed like a long way to go so we went to see March of the Penguins instead. It was lovely.

That's all for now folks. Sorry for another long post. As usual, there are more photos at http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/20060425_MelbourneAnzacDayWeekend

The Unprofessionals

I'm upset with my rental agents. They will remain unnamed of course, otherwise I may get myself into trouble. The title of this post is merely an indication as to how I feel they have conducted their business in the past (although with regards to professionalism they are slowly improving). That is all it is. A title. Make of it what you will.

I honestly have never known such a fussy house to live in. We have inspections every six months and it feels like much much more, to the extent that we've started looking for evidence as to whether they are in fact occuring more often. The house is slightly more difficult to keep clean on account of the fact that it's large and has many residents, most of whom don't clean up after themselves and are so disgusting that they leave their droppings everywhere. I hasten to add that most of them are spiders and ants. We have the occasional gecko lodging with us and now and again a cockroach visits to steal food. Toby and I put our droppings in the toilet or the bin (depending on the kind of droppings) and we are quite good at cleaning up after ourselves. The insects, on the other hand, take a lot of looking after. The spiders in particular like to make webs so they can gather dust. I don't know why they like dust so much. Perhaps they read my weird dust post and they're saving it up for when it becomes important international currency.

The lady that used to deal with our property has given us a few headaches in the past, mainly due to her Jekyll and Hyde personality. One moment she'd be quite normal and the next she'd be snarling at us and jumping to her own defence at everything we said no matter how innocent. Before inspections I'd run around cleaning and tidying until the house was spotless and sparkly. And then she'd leave a note saying "Window sills need dusting" and it would turn out there was some dark hidden corner of the house that I never ventured into with one dusty little window.

Besides all this I am working quite hard at becoming a good housekeeper, mainly thanks to the friendly advice the agent leaves after the inspections ("Clean mould from windows." Mould? What mould? "Tend to gardens." We've got a garden? So we do, would you look at that!).

I've even been known to voluntarily take down all the net curtains and wash them and a few weeks ago I took to cleaning the windows. This was no mean feat and despite spending an afternoon two weekends in a row doing it I didn't quite get it finished, especially those pesky windows that are behind security/fly screens because you have to remove the screen to get to the outside of the window and it's the kind of palava you leave until you have the time for it really.

After the run-ins we had with our previous agent (which I won't go into in detail mainly because I can't remember them) I was rather pleased to hear that we had a new agent assigned to our property. I found this out when I called them up regarding another inspection that was imminent. They chose a really inconvenient time to call round. I'd been sick the previous week (with 6WMV) and had only managed rudimentary cleaning that weekend. They gave us slightly less than a week's notice and chose to come around the following Monday, the weekend after the wedding.

Frankly, I was far too busy to care about the whole running around making the house sparkly and clean. We live in a clean house and we take good care of it so I decided the agent could take us as she found us. Which was just as well really as we didn't get home until 10pm on Sunday night anyway. We'd brought Toby's cousin back with us so I called the agent to warn her there may be a young man sleeping in the house and could she give him a call to let him know when she'd be there.

Turns out it was two days before she actually made it to our house. I think that might be illegal because the written notice was for the Monday, not the Wednesday but I'll let it slide (for now).

The other day we received a notice from the agency asking us to tend to the garden (damn irritating in itself as Toby spends almost every weekend we're at home cutting the grass but I'm not going into this right now). The thing that got me was that there was a little note attached to the back of the notice. Guess what it said. Go on, have a guess.

"Windows need cleaning"

Ah! Well! There are no words. I was dumbfounded. "What does she mean 'windows need cleaning'?" was about all I can manage. The *&^$&$(#$ windows are (*$#%*#$& clean!!! I cleaned them! I spent hours cleaning them. Just a few weeks ago. Without anyone having to ask me to do it. I just did it. All by myself. It was my idea. They look great. (Except for a couple of the bedrooms which I didn't get around to and maybe the dining room window and the pesky windows that are behind security/fly screens but it's a work in progress and I was going to do it just as soon as I had a weekend at home and got a goddarned chance to do it!!!!).

I am incredibly hurt by this and am seeking comfort in the thought that the windows I did clean may have made the ones I didn't clean especially noticeable. But really, there's nothing worse than working hard on something and feeling all proud of yourself just to have someone to not only not notice, but actually ask you to do the job you have already done!

Come back Mrs Hyde, all is forgiven. And I promise I'll deliberately leave something unseen to so that you have something to comment on at the next inspection.

Sorry for the long ranting post. I really needed to get that off my chest. 'Preciate your time. Thanks for listening er.. reading.

Honey, the ants are eating the sealant again!

Okay so I didn't quite manage to get back to blogging over the Easter holidays despite the fact that I do have lots of little stories and nice photos I'd like to share with you all. No, I spent most of the time researching laptops which are called notebooks these days. I don't like that term because it makes me think of something containing paper which you would write on with a pen and that's not really what I'm looking for. Anyway that's a whole other topic and for all you geeks out there I will blog about it someday and soon.

What prompted me to write today is the recent discovery that the ants in my bathroom like to eat the shower sealant. I noticed this a few weeks back when a good crowd of them had gathered on the edge of the shower screen. I was wondering what could be intriguing them so much so I leaned in to take a closer look. Imagine my astonishment when I realised that they were eating the sealant between the glass and the metal frame. Suspecting this could not be a good thing for the future of the shower screen, not to mention the health and safety aspects of the bathroom, I gave the ants a quick warning by splashing them with water which they don't like because apparently they can't swim, blowing on them and yelling "Run away ants. Go home because I'm about to take you out. This is your final warning". Most of them heeded my warning and those that were left got wiped up. I figured I was doing the colony a favour by removing the stupid ants from the gene pool.

This morning they were back again but on the other side of the shower screen and this time they were really going for it. They were so into it they didn't budge when I splashed them. What is it about the shower sealant? It doesn't look that yummy to me. I have come to the conclusion that I live with a bunch of crazy, starving ants. Does anyone have any idea why the ants would eat the sealant, whether this is bad for the shower screen or really won't make that much difference, and what I can do to stop them (if deemed necessary)?

At least I don't have the problems some Bangladeshis have been discussing on the ICT Bangladesh Yahoo! Group (according to APC magazine). Apparently they are quite adept at preventing "Mr Ant" from getting inside their laptops notebooks and eating their circuit boards and wires. Tips include, creating a moat around your laptop (I'm sorry but I'm really struggling with this "notebook" thing) because ants can't swim, keeping food away from it, moving to Saudi Arabia which apparently has no ants (a bit drastic but could work) and drawing a chalk line around the outside of the machine (but not inside the machine which would not be good). Apparently this works best for cockroaches (what?!). Personally it brings to mind crime scenes involving dead laptops. By far the best quote is the following:

"Go to the residence of Mr Ant. Say good-bye by destroying his colony"

Wise words indeed.

As one who is soon to be purchasing a laptop and lives with a crazy bunch of sealant-eating bathroom ants, I'm a little worried. I shall be purchasing a Naphthalene ball which I shall place inside my notebook so that "insect will hate [my] notebook and [I] will be charmed with sweet smell."

It's a nice day for a white wedding!

Saturday 8th April was indeed a nice day for a white wedding which was just as well because we went to one. Well, actually it wasn't that white, more a sort of vintage-silk-and-lace-in-an-off-white-almost-very-pale-green-kind-of-colour wedding. Well the dress was anyway although it was much nicer than I have described. I'll have to see if I can find a photograph. Unfortunately I didn't get too many of the bride and groom because when the photographs were being taken we took the opportunity to take a family photo whilst we were all dressed up so here you all go. This is my Australian family. Ah! Bless, aren't they dead canny?

This weekend we're back at Toby's parents' place so that Toby and his Dad can build a carport, only Toby kinked his neck on Thursday night so has only been able to do light work. This meant that his mum and I have had to do a lot of the heavy lifting tasks. Let's just say it has been an interesting exercise in communication, planning, "authority" ("respect ma authoritaahh!!!") and teamwork.

I think I'll probably be back with more photos and updates before the end of the Easter break but just before I sign off for today I have to share some exciting news with you all. My best friend Catherine and her hubbie John have just had their second baby, a boy called Joshua John. He was born two days ago and she has already sent me through some lovely photos of the baby with their (almost) four year-old daughter Jessica. I hope they don't mind me mentioning it but I'm very excited by this news and can't wait to see them all again when I'm next home.

Hermit Crab

Try as I might I simply can't think of a song with lyrics relevant to a hermit crab. For some inexplicable reason the words "Froggie went a hunting, he did ride, a-hum" keep springing to my mind and clearly they have absolutely nothing to do with crabs. I'm not even sure if they are the right words.

Anyway, because it was so beautiful at the weekend we went for a snorkel. It was so calm we were able to jump in off the rocks, something we can't usually do as there is nearly always at least a titchy tiny bit of surf. Usually we go off the beach and swim up a sandy channel and out around the rocks. We were at Shelley Beach in Caloundra. The visibility wasn't great, I guess because of all the storms we've had lately, but everything else was perfect. There were lots of fish to see and we tried to photograph some but they didn't come out too well due to the low viz. So instead we hassled the hermit crabs in the rock pools where we sat drinking beer after our snorkel. We even saw some weird hermit crab convention where they all climbed on top of one another (kind of like "pile-on", that weird game we used to play at school where one kid's on the ground and everyone else piles on top of him, except they were walking around). I got a movie of it which I will put online when I get the chance to edit it. Goodness knows when that will be.

Why I love living where I live...

Beautifully calm Buddina beach on Saturday 1st April 2006.

"Oh I do like to be beside the seaside, oh I do like to be beside the sea."

Why I love living where I live....
... because occasionally I can force myself to get out of bed, put on a bikini and walk for about two minutes until I encounter a beautiful paradise such as this beach where I can either go for a walk in the sunshine watching sandcrabs scuttle into their burrows, or I can comb the beach for interesting and unusual shells washed up in the latest storms, or, as I usually choose to do, I can dive into the crystal blue waters and really wake myself up.

Besides the fact that most of my best friends and family aren't here, why would I want to live anywhere else?

It's a bit different to the angry ocean featured in my poem anyway.

Ah Grasshopper....

Confucius says "is this a grasshopper? I'm not sure but it looks like I imagine a grasshopper would look." Wise words indeed.

"You give me fever in the morning, fever all through the night".

So sang Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Madonna and indeed it's what I was thinking early last week. Yes, I've been sick. Still am actually. And according to the lady in the local health shop it's a virus, it's doing the rounds, lots of people have been getting exactly the same symptoms as me, it lasts six weeks and there's nothing! NOTHING!! you can do to make it go away quicker. And she knows. She probably knows more than the GPs because I think more people spend a couple of minutes popping in to the health shop than a week for an appointment followed by an hour in the waiting room. So I have now resigned myself to the fact that I am going to be somewhat indisposed for the next 4 1/2 weeks. Thankfully, the worst of it seems to be over and I'm regaining some kind of normality in my life but sadly I am watching people around me drop like flies as they develop the Six Week Mystery Virus (or 6WMV as it is known in medical circles). I'm just praying it isn't bird flu. Which is silly really because I'm not even a bird.

Anyway, one fortunate aspect of being sick was that I got to meet my good friend Confucius. That's him in the photograph, hanging onto my sick tree. I don't think the tree has 6WMV as it has been sick much longer than six weeks.

I just have to say, before I pop off, that the weather has been absolutely stunning lately and that I have been taking lots of photographs. I am going to try and upload one a day or every couple of days for your perusal, rather than driveling at length about nothing very much (although there'll be a little bit of that around too because I can't help it. If you don't like it you know what to do about it.*)

Oh yes, and the other fortunate thing that came out of being sick is that I successfully identified Mr Clack (I think). He's a Little (or Brush) Wattlebird, a kind of honeyeater. I have not managed to get a photograph of him yet as he's a bit elusive but you can find one at Birds in Backyards. Honeyeaters are beautiful birds but very noisy. Their squawky calls just don't quite match their elegant form. Last week I spotted a striking blue-faced honeyeater, lots of photos of which can be found at http://www.birdphotos.com.au/bluefacedhoneyeaterweb/index.htm.

Anyway, enough about birds. I'm popping off now. Til next time...


(* For those of you that don't know the answer is leave a comment. Or send an email. I love hearing from you all. That is, of course, assuming that anyone other than me or the guys in the office bothers to read this blog. And the guys in the office only read it because I excitedly yell "I've updated my blog" and then stand over their shoulders watching them until they pretend to look.)

Blogspot now lets you add photos

I've just discovered that you can upload photos to blogger. Previously I have had to find somewhere else to put them and then link to them from here but now I can upload them directly. So happy with this am I that I have decided to share with you a photograph I took of Toby last Saturday, running down the beach to jump in for a dip in the ocean.

Kookaburras and Clacking Evidence

"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he."

What do you know, after bemoaning the fact that the kookaburras rarely grace our neighbourhood with their presence, both here on this blog a couple of days ago, and last night on the phone to "me mam", I heard a kookaburra this morning. Such a lovely sound, unfortunately drowned out a little by the surrounding clack-clacks. I only heard him call once and then again but further away so clearly the clack-clacks were too noisy for him too.

I have revisited my presumption that clack-clack is female. I'm so confused by all the different types of birds around our way and the different calls they have at different times of the day and for varying reasons, that there is no way I can tell for certain that the little bird I saw with her chick was Mrs Clack.

I also think I may have translated incorrectly, I think what is in fact being said is "this is my tree so stay out of it. And by the way, I was awake first this morning!" which leads me to the conclusion that it is a territorial call and therefore more likely to be coming from a male bird.

After sleeping late two mornings in a row (I was awake before Mr Clack, as were a number of other clack-clacks over the past couple of days), my bird was the first awake again this morning. Bless! Yesterday I recorded him so that I could share his beautiful singing with you all.

Play or download an audio recording in MP3 format.
Or, you can listen to (or download) a smaller .wma format.
Or, go ahead and view or download the movie so you can get the full effect, see just how dark and early it is and experience my blurry tired eyes. The movie takes a little while to load so please be patient.

If ANYONE can identify the bird by its call I'd really love to know what it is so please leave a comment.

Tick-Tick Joop Joop Click-Clack

I haven't started this week's post with a quote because the title is, in fact, a quote. I assume you're wondering what that means and what sort of crazy person would say such a thing so you mightn't be surprised to learn that it was not a human who uttered this nonsense. It was, in fact, a bird. And in Birdish it's quite a profound statement. It means "wake up. I am the [king/queen] of the tree and I command you to wake up. It's a beeeeauuutiful day and you're about to miss it, lazy bones." Or words to that effect.

And how do I know this? Well, I've been living with it on and off for the past 18 months. Let me introduce you to Mrs Clack (formerly, but not affectionately, known as The Clack-Clack Bird until we discovered her with a youngster and realised she was probably female, not, as we had previously thought, male). Mrs Clack is very fond of the tree outside my bedroom window and is fast becoming the bane of my life. At around 5.15am most mornings (the precise time changes according to the time of year because obviously birds go by the amount of daylight rather than the actual time but suffice to say there isn't very much daylight when Mrs Clack starts), Mrs Clack makes herself comfortable in the tree and then begins her call.

Tick-Tick Joop Joop Click-Clack.

The tick-tick bit is a little like the sound of dice rattling in someone's hand. Or, remember those percussion instruments we used to play at school which were marrow-shaped and hollow with corrugated wood on the outside and a stick you'd use to stroke it with? Kind of like that. A rapid sound. That's the warning that she's about to start.

The Joop Joop bit is fairly self-explanatory and nearly always precedes the Click-Clack and sometimes appears on its own. The Click-Clack sound is like the most horrendous squawking sound, more like a screetch really. Like Creek-CRAAAWK. Like fingernails down a black-board.

Mrs Clack doesn't seem to like incredibly wet, ridiculously windy or terribly hot weather. I seem to recall that she doesn't think much of particularly cold weather either. So around this time of year she reappears from wherever she's been over the summer and reclaims her position in my tree. And then clacks. Loudly. At 5.15am. Every morning. I am very tired.

On Sunday morning I was determined to lie in and catch up on some much needed sleep so I went outside and shook her tree. She got quite a shock and flew away. I smugly went back to bed but within minutes she was back, clacking away. I went out and tried to shake the tree again but this time she was ready for me. Knowing quite well that she was perfectly camouflaged she stayed very still and quiet, pretending that she wasn't there. Of course I knew that she was because I'd heard her, and certainly hadn't seen her fly away but try as I might, I couldn't get her to budge. Within minutes of me retiring to my bed she was clacking away again. I resorted to ear plugs, shutting the window and putting the fan on.

I'm still a bit tired but I'm starting to get used to her and I'm resigned to the fact that I have to wake up at 5.15 every morning. This is fine so long as I go to bed at 9.30pm. The problem I have with Mrs Clack is her inconsistency. She clacks you for months and then nothing. Peace and quiet. This goes on for months and then you get used to it and before you know it she's back. This morning I awoke at exactly 5.15am - before Mrs Clack. It was overcast, you see, so she got confused by the time. But she's got me into waking up at that time now and this will be my life for the next few months until I either figure out how to get rid of her or the weather turns too cold and she decides she'd like a cosier tree to clack in.

Kookaburras: cartoony
with funny dreams.

People living elsewhere in Australia are awoken by kookaburras. This usually happens in places known as The Bush, which actually means The Countryside. Kookaburras are very jolly birds. They look like cartoons of themselves and they have very funny dreams that means they wake up laughing. "Koo-koo-koo-hahahahahaha". They're noisy but they've never bothered me when I have heard them. It's a nice sound to lie in bed to. Unfortunately we don't have very many kookaburras where we live. We have lots of clack-clack birds though and they position themselves in various trees around the neighbourhood. Sometimes another bird wakes up before Mrs Clack and you can hear it somewhere in the distance. This can be beneficial as it can give you a chance to don ear-plugs, shut the window and put on the fan (such is becoming my morning ritual) before she gets started and wakes you up good and proper.

I'm not sure what kind of bird Mrs Clack is - I rarely see her and birds are hard to identify by their call alone - but someone once suggested a little friarbird and whilst this isn't her as she's much prettier, it's the nearest thing I've found so far to her call. Check it out and see how you'd like to listen to this constantly for about 15 minutes (feels more like 60!) every morning - and then multiply it by 100 because Mrs Clack sounds much worse: Little Friarbird call.

Tomorrow morning I will attempt to go outside and record Mrs Clack's call so that I can put a link to it in my next post and share it with you all. Watch this space!

Wild Weather

"It's raining men! Hallelulah it's raining men! Every specimen! Tall, blonde, dark and lean, rough and tough and strong and mean...."

It isn't raining men. It never was raining men. And I thank the Lord for that because I imagine going out in a manstorm would be rather perilous. Imagine being hit by a man landing on you from a great height. In the song the men came from The Heavens and everyone knows that The Heavens are up a great height so I think you might die if a man fell on you from that far. Certainly the man would die. No, really it doesn't bear thinking about and I am very glad it is just a silly song and not a freak of nature that occurs occasionally. That really would be climate change gone mad.

Straddie Main Beach in wild weather.

I started with that line for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's about rain (kind of. Perhaps "take me dancing naked in the rain. Cover me in ecstacy" would be a better choice but that's far too provocative for a family-friendly blog such as this) and we have had some wild weather lately that included lots of rain. Secondly, after last week's tribute to Jennifer Rush I decided it would be nice to start as many blogs as possible with either a song or a quote.

So, what was so wild about the weather? I imagine that I hear you ask. Well basically it was a non-tropical cyclone with lots of wind, lots of rain and huge waves. And what better place to go during such an event, than a beautiful tropical island in Moreton Bay. Yes, that's right, we all decided to go to Straddie (North Stradbroke Island) and an interesting experience it was too.

We drove down to the ferry on Friday night in absolutely bucketing rain. We caught the ferry over in absolutely bucketing rain and a fair bit of wind. We drove to the house in the rain. We woke up the next morning. It was raining. And a bit windy too. And then, the rain stopped. It was as dark as an English winter's day but it wasn't raining and so we decided to go for a swim. As you do. "We're on holiday and I don't care what the weather is like, I'm damn well going for a swim!"

The boys decided to surf. The girls watched them from the hilltop overlooking the beach and got a little bit freaked out when they realised that those little things that resembled pin heads floating in a bowl of tumultuous washing up water, framed by waves the size of a frying pan (we're sticking with the washing up bowl here although I concede that it's not a very good metaphor) were actually their friends, boyfriends and husbands. They jumped off the rocks and within seconds were pushed a kilometre up the beach and back to the shore. The girls heaved a sigh of relief. The boys ran back to the rocks and jumped off them again. The girls freaked out again. The boys were pushed up the beach and back to shore. The girls heaved a sigh of relief and ran down to the beach for a swim. Well, more like a frolic really. Swim here and you'll end up on Fraser Island (which, for those that don't know, is a long, long way north of Straddie) before you know it. No, definitely not a good idea to take your feet of the bottom.

By the time the girls got to the beach the boys had disappeared. Then Mindi and I, saw our respective partners right at the top end of the beach heading towards rocks with huge waves bounding towards them. We decided to run down the beach and over the headland to see where they ended up but the sweep was so strong we couldn't keep up. They ended up two beaches away and by the time we got there they'd run back down to jump in off the rocks again.

No one caught any waves that day and later in the paper we read that a wave buoy measured a 17m wave. That's bigger than a telegraph pole! And I can believe it. I saw the surf lifesaver's boat go over a wave the size of a house.

Later that day we walked around the gorge in 60 knot winds (that's what they felt like anyway). The broken off branches and uprooted trees freaked me out a little and I started to wonder if this was one of the least clever things I'd done. The gorge itself was like a wild pot of double cream. Mark and Toby couldn't help themselves and they jumped in, wishing that they were accompanied by babes in bikinis. Every now and then a huge wave would come hurtling up the gorge and completely swamp them both in foam. The waves splashed up the sides of the gorge making it look like it had been whitewashed. The coolest thing was the fluff that was blown off the top and then floated up and away like snow falling backwards. The wind was so intense we found bits of snow-foam in amongst the foliage right around the other side of the headland as we ran back to the car.

We had a fun party that night with lots of food and for those of you that bother to check the photos out I feel I must point out that I started the whole Pumpkin Head thing. Some of you won't find that too hard to believe. There is even a photograph of me actually balancing the Pumpkin on my Head. No, really there is. I just don't have a copy of it. But I'll get one and I'll prove it to you.

The next morning we awoke to a flood in the hallway and no power. Then we remembered the fun we'd had the night before, throwing roti breads at the ceiling fan like frisbees and watching it getting sliced into pieces that ricocheted off in all directions. My, cleaning up was fun!

The photos are in the usual place, but in case you need a reminder go to http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/StradbrokeIsland_MadWeather/

That's the Power of Ten

"Cos I am your ladeeeeeeeee, and you are my ma-a-an, whenever you reach for me, I'm gonna do all that I ca-an. We're heading for somewhere, somewhere I've never been. Sometimes I can't fight it but I'm ready to learn about the Power of Ten".

Ah! The dulcet tones of that 80s one-hit-songstress Jennifer Rush. Probably not very accurate lyrics, and slightly modified in recognition of the ten year birthday of the University of the Sunshine Coast, which, in case you hadn't guessed, is where I work. The uni kicked off its (hopefully) year long celebrations last week with a staff photo and a party. The photo consisted of us all dressing in white shirts and then standing in the middle of a grassy area of campus in the shape of a ten, waving our lovely new free (as a thankyou for participating) Power of Ten* hats for an hour in the heat of the midday sun (thankfully there were a few clouds) whilst various media and the vice chancellor flew over us in a helicopter.

The party was held the following evening on campus, outside the ICT "cheese-grater" building where I work, which was quite risky as it is a bit stormy at the moment and there was an impressive rain storm in the afternoon whilst they were setting up. Thankfully the weather held off, although organisers weren't quite brave enough to place tea lights in the Chinese-style lanterns they'd hung around the place, on account of the wind. There was free food served from Asian-style street carts, lots of free booze and, of course, yummy chocolate birthday mud-cake, each with a little number 10 on it (cute). There were a few little chats and a documentary about the uni and how it all started which was quite interesting. It's a very small university so I knew most of the people on the film. There was also an exhibition in the art gallery of aerial photographs of the uni at various stages of development, including the big 10 pic we'd taken the day before. And we all got a free commemorative book, which was nice. The last few boozers were just leaving at around 9pm when the heavens opened and it bucketed down on the poor techies who risked life and limb to clear away all the electrical equipment.

Meanwhile, I've been keeping busy at work. I'm still dying to sort the study out but have spent little time at home. We popped down to Brisbane a couple of weekends ago for Mindi's birthday. Had a yummy meal and caught up with some friends we haven't seen for a while. Then last weekend it was off to Highfields, near Toowoomba, to see Toby's parents. The house was a bit quiet without his dog, Tango running to greet us. Unfortunately Tang died last year after being poisoned by a tick and this was our first visit since then. Tomorrow we're off to North Stradbroke Island (also part of Mindi's birthday celebrations. This girl beats me with dragging it out. But then she is only 24 so birthdays are still worth celebrating and, to be fair, her boyf surprised her with the meal. Tried to anyway). The boys are very excited as there is some cyclonic swell coming through. Me, not so much, as there is also some unimpressive weather hanging around at the moment bringing rain and wind. The university even keeps threatening to close in case of flooding. Ho hum. I shall take lots of books to read and hope things clear up and that I find a beach which doesn't have waves that will kill me.

So long.

* The Power of Ten is the uni's 10 year birthday logo by the way.