Jess's Brain Room

New Years In Verbier

2012-01-02T00:14:00.004+08:00

Happy new year! Today is my last day in beautiful Switzerland, and tomorrow I'm heading back to Perth. My stay here has been awesome, and I've had such a fun and different holiday season this year.

On the 30th, we drove to Champex to spend the night at Tom's chalet in the mountains. It really was in the mountains! We had to walk through a massive path of snow (that's usually a road) to get there. The chalet was beautiful; made of wood and decorated with cosy furniture and creepy old paintings, with nothing to see outside the windows but trees covered with snow, it really made us feel like we were the middle of nowhere.

That night we walked to a restaurant in Champex where we had a different kind of fondu (fondu a la tomato). It should have been a 15min walk each way but I think it took us double the time because we were playing in the snow! The snow was like powder, it was so much fun to play in.

On new years eve (after dislodging the car from the snow) we drove to Le Chable where Yvonne had hired a dorm at an awesome backpackers place. The place was directly next to the train station and the tele ski, so it was really easy for us to catch transport to and from Verbier (where we spent new years). Yvonne organised an amazing new years eve with a bunch of friends all staying in the same backpackers.

After some drinks in the common room, we caught the bus to Verbier for dinner at Fer a Cheval, a rowdy pub with hearty meals and cheap steins of beer. Dinner was amazing, I'm so glad it was good because it prepared us for a big night of street drinking! We had a couple of rounds of shots, and for some reason it's tradition in Switzerland to chant (starting low and going up to a scream) before taking a shot. It turned into a bit of a competition between the tables at the restaurant, and I think we lost dismally to the English mob on the table next to us.

Next we headed onto the streets of Verbier where there was music, street drinking, random fireworks, and snowball fights. It was nuts! To be honest I was even a little scared at times, because people had their own fireworks and were launching them quite low just above the crowds. There were a couple of policemen around, but they didn't seem to concerned, it was crazy! The countdown was my first new years countdown in French, and my first without a boy to kiss! However it didn't matter because everyone was hugging and going crazy, so I didn't feel too lonely.

We managed to push our way into the front of the line to catch the bus back to Le Chable where we had some more drinks over another game of jenga in the common room.

This morning we started 2012 with the long drive back to Neuchatel. We gave up and decided to stop for McDonalds; I'm a little ashamed that maccas was my first meal for the new year! It's actually the first time I've eaten a burger from McDonald's since I was 15, but it seems much better in Switzerland (the smell didn't make me feel sick for one). It was really nice! Maybe I just really needed a burger after last night.

Tonight we're going to relax over a movie, and I'm going to try and pack for my trip back tomorrow. And so my swiss holiday comes to an end!

Shopping!

2011-12-30T02:47:00.002+08:00

Today was a shopping day in Geneva, yay! I bought some awesome shoes! That's pretty much all I've got for today.

We're settling down to a quiet night in with raclette for dinner and a scary movie over some junk food. Tomorrow we're heading off to the mountains, but the weather is looking awful so skiing is probably a no-go. I'm not really too fussed, and to be honest I'm more excited to see it snow!

Beary Cold Bern

2011-12-29T03:33:00.002+08:00

Bern, the german-speaking capital of Switzerland, known for it's bears and Einstein cafe (ok maybe that's what I know it for).

I got very excited today when Yvonne and Stef told me that in Bern there is a hole in the ground in the middle of the town centre with bears inside. I was like, is it on purpose? And they were like yes, but someone recently fell in and got eaten. I was sold! So today we took a day trip to Bern to see the bears, do some shopping, and have a drink at the Einstein cafe.

Our first task was unsuccessful. Apparently bears hibernate in winter, so there were no bears, stupid bears! However the bear thing was exactly how Yvonne and Stefan described it. In the middle of the city, there's a giant pit decked out with things bears would enjoy like big rocks and caves and the like (minus the bears). We took the next best option and played on the wooden bear statues in the old enclosure.

Shopping was very successful! Our first purchase was leg warmers for me and a jumper for Yvonne (we highly overestimated the temperature). I also got some great souvenir shopping done.

Our last stop was the Einstein Cafe, built under the house where Einstein stayed in Bern for a while. It was lovely and warm, a perfect end to a capital day.

Vue Des Alps

2011-12-28T03:22:00.003+08:00

Today Yvonne and I did snow shoeing (raquette) in Vue Des Alps. We left behind a massive fog blanket in Neuchatel to find a clear and sunny perfect day in the mountains. We chose to do a 2h long trek which was half through the valley and half through the forrest. The two halves of the trek were really different, and at the middle of the track there was a restaurant where we stopped for a much needed hot chocolate and sandwich.

Raquette through the mountains was very serene (I love the crunching of the snow), but also quite hard! There were a lot of sections that were very steep, and even downhill was quite taxing because you had to be very careful not to slide and hurt your ankles. We definitely got a workout, so hopefully that earns me a few more macarons.

On the way back we stopped at a hot bath to warm our weary muscles. This is something that I'd never heard of before - in Switzerland there are open air baths (kind of like giant swimming pools with jets and showers and the like) filled with naturally hot water from the mountains. There were people of all ages, but I have to say it was mostly young people getting all hot and heavy all over the place! Despite the awkwardness, it was very invigorating and I definitely appreciated it after a long day of raquette.

Gruyere

2011-12-27T06:26:00.005+08:00

Gruyere is a beautiful town known for it's cheese, chocolate, and (of all things) it's Alien themed cafe. Today we took a day trip up to Gruyere and ate lots of cheese, chocolate, and um, alieny tea.

After a slight accidental detour we arrived in Gruyere just in time for lunch. Our first stop was the Gruyere cheese factory for some fondu, but the terrible service and many crying babies (ok maybe just one but we were tired and hungry) made us jump ship and look for lunch elsewhere. We walked up to the Gruyere village and found a beautiful warm little restaurant where I tried my first fondu. It was delicious, but I couldn't eat very much because it was very rich.

On a tight schedule, we rushed off to the Caillers chocolate factory for a fun tour about the history of chocolate, and of course lots of free chocolate.

To finish off our trip we visited the Alien themed HR Giger Cafe. It's a bit weird and unexpected to find an Alien themed cafe in a beautiful Swiss village, but Giger bought the castle in Gruyere so they made a museum and cafe at the top of the village in his honour. Makes sense I guess. The cafe was quite small but very cool, with the ceiling and furniture covered in Alien themed adornments. Makes me want to watch the series again!

Tonight Yvonne invited a couple of friends over for dinner and some Jenga. Man that game stresses me out! I think we all are going to have bad Jenga dreams tonight.

Christmas in Geneva

2011-12-26T03:59:00.004+08:00

Today is Christmas! Merry Christmas everyone!

Yesterday I saw it snow for the first time ever, and even though it was half rainy (because it was quite hot), it was an awesome early Christmas present.

On Christmas eve we drove to Geneva to spend Christmas with Stefan's family. We did some last minute Christmas shopping in the city before heading to Stef's brother's house in Carouge for dinner. Traditional Christmas dinner in Switzerland (well Stef's family) consists of oysters (eek! did not try), foi gras (I tried it, it was nice!), and opening presents late at night. I received an awesome Swatch from Yvonne and Stef, a perfect Swiss gift!

We spent the night in Carouge at Stefan's dad's apartment, and went back to his bro's for a coffee in the morning. I also managed to borrow a set of snow boots and ski pants from Stefan's family. As luck would have it, I have feet the same size as Stefan's mum, and am exactly the same size as a 12 year old Stefan, which means I have my ski gear for next week sorted :) I've been quite lucky so far with snow stuff - yesterday I found the most awesome boys ski jacket (14yo+) on sale at H&M for 20 francs. Sometimes being the size of a little boy can be a good thing!

This afternoon we took the long way back to Neuchatel through the Jura mountains for an awesome view of the French Alps. I saw and played in some more snow, and at the top of the mountain we stopped for a delicious hot chocolate.

I miss my family very much, but I am also very excited to have had my very first white Christmas :)

Switzerland (Day 1 and 2)

2011-12-24T04:21:00.007+08:00

This year I'm spending Christmas and New Years in Switzerland with my cousin Yvonne and her boyfriend Stefan. This is the first year I've been away from home for the holidays, so this trip is definitely going to be a big adventure!

I arrived in Switzerland yesterday afternoon after an extremely long trip from Perth->Dubai->Geneva. Yvonne picked me up from the airport and after a lot of hugging and screaming we made our way to Neuchatel, a beautiful little town where Yvonne and Stef are currently living. The apartment is beautiful, with wooden decking on the ceiling and amazing views from all the windows. This year they bought a natural Christmas tree, so it really feels and smells like I always imagined a white Christmas would.

Yesterday I took it easy and stayed in for the night while Yvy and Stef went out to a uni party. Stef has just handed in his final uni assignment so he was keen to celebrate! I was more keen on a nice long horizontal sleep since I didn't get too much on the plane. Before I crashed like a rock, I did my first local thing and ate escargot (snails) for dinner!

Today I woke up nice and refreshed, ready for my first snow experience! I had seen a tiny little bit of snow in Yvonne's driveway, but I don't think that really counted as seeing snow. Our first stop for the day was to go see some snow on the way to Epesses. It was... amazing! It was nothing like what I expected, I don't know why! I absolutely loved it, and can't wait for more!

Next we went to Monteaux to see the Christmas markets. We spent a couple of hours walking around drinking mulled wine and looking at the beautiful stalls. There were some weird decorations around the place that apparently had to do with a kids TV show, and even a statue of Freddie Mercury.

Now we're about to settle down to relax and watch a movie. I'm having so much fun already, but I'm a little bit homesick too! Tomorrow is xmas eve :)

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2011

2011-12-15T16:29:00.002+08:00

My Votes:

M83 - Midnight City
M83 - Wait
M83 - Intro {Ft. Zola Jesus}
Bon Iver - Perth
Bon Iver - Holocene
Bon Iver - Beth/Rest
Junior Boys - Banana Ripple
Junior Boys - ep
Junior Boys - The Reservoir
Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know {Ft. Kimbra}

This year I've been completely out of the loop because the stereo in my car is broken! I looked through the list and saw releases from a lot of awesome bands (Fleet Foxes, Radiohead, TV on the Radio). The albums are good, but I couldn't really pick any songs as being the best of 2011.

So I tried a different approach. The three albums I've been thrashing this year are:

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Junior Boys - It's All True
Bon Iver - Bon Iver

I decided to pick three of my favourite songs from my three favourite albums of the year, and also vote for Gotye, who I think deserves (and has a very good chance at) #1.

Happy voting!

Australian Summer Pole Camp 2011

2011-11-16T16:08:00.004+08:00

Last weekend I embarked on a strange and wonderful journey to the (2nd annual) Australian Summer Pole Camp in Queensland. Tammy, Krystal, Sabrina and I packed our bags (well, our hand luggage anyway) and headed off to sunny Surfers Paradise for three days of pole, aerial, and circus workshops, and celebrations galore.

We're in Queensland, OMG!

Thursday night we took the red eye flight with Jetstar, and after a long mostly sleepless night arrived in Surfers Paradise at 7am local time. Check-in at the Q1 resort was at 2pm, so we decided to have the big breakfast at the nearby OMG Cafe. OMG... do NOT eat at OMG Cafe. Soon after check-in we were all fighting for the bathroom to deal with our big breakfast food poisoning. Unfortunately the apartment we stayed in only had 1 bathroom which housed the only toilet, the only shower, and the only mirror, and since we were very rushed for time we quickly found that all bathroom facilities were being used at once! Any barriers our friendships had before are certainly gone now.

Meet n Greet
That night was the meet and greet at Shooters bar. The place was small but nice, and there was a pole set up (which surprisingly nobody was on even though we were all there for pole camp!). We got a drink and found a place to sit, from which we were promptly shooed away from (apparently it was the VIP area, even though 5mins later many non-VIPs were happily sitting there, grrr). Since we'd been drinking all day (maybe to help forget the horrors of the food poisoning) I was already quite confident so I decided to get up and break that poles virginity! I drunkly managed to rip out an awesome upright pole split, in my little black dress I might add, and even though my dismount was less than elegant (OK so maybe I almost stacked it trying to come down), it definitely got people up there! I fully take credit for getting that shit started. Tammy got up there and set the bar high, and quickly found a competitor (they were having pole-offs all weekend!). All in all it was a fun night, but we crashed early to prepare for a full day of workshops!

Friday Morning Beach Acro
Friday morning we begrudgingly got up to our alarms for beach acro with Suzie Q and Toby J. But we quickly forgot our hangovers with an awesome morning. Suzie and Toby got all the girls in a massive tumbling line, it was definitely a peculiar sight! After a quick shower it was off to Parklands for our workshops.

Friday Workshops
Chinese Pole with Nica

Very challenging! I managed to get the famous Chinese Pole sit, but I didn't have anywhere near enough strength to get the flick-up into triangle hold.

Anastasia

This was my favourite singles workshop. Anastasia is so lovely, it was an absolute pleasure to learn with her. She taught us a couple of cool spins that transitioned into figurehead and back pull up, and a strange neck hold dismount that made it easy to lower down and make it look like you're really strong.

Aerials

This was AWESOME! There were a few apparatus set up, but this workshop only did silks. I've always wanted to try silks, and it was as fun as it looks! But man did it burn. I still have an underarm cut to prove it.

Fontaine

By this time I was well and truly buggered, but still managed to learn some awesome tricks! I really like Fontaine's teaching style - it's really all about having fun, not getting stuff perfect.

After a massive rush to get ready, it was back to Shooters for another night of celebrations. There were a few amateur performances, more drinks, more pole-offs, then we were off to bed for another early night, ready for a full day of workshops starting early Saturday morning.

Saturday Workshops
Suzie Q and Toby J

Always a pleasure, this was an intermediate workshop where I learned my first "drop" (modified layout into tuck).

Doubles with Suzie Q and Toby J

My favourite workshop of the whole camp! Tammy, Krystal and I alternated doubles partners and learned some amazing stuff. We almost got kicked out of this one (Krystal and I weren't booked in, but we hopped on with Tammy and there was even a spare pole!), so I'm so glad we stood up to the man and stayed.

Gymnastics Stretch

I've always had a profound respect for gymnasts, and this class reminded me why. This class involved crazy stretching which apparently was meant to be painful but not feel like agony… it definitely crossed the line sometimes!

Amber Ray

I can't say I enjoyed this workshop too much, probably because it was based around perfecting an extremely fast salsa style routine, and I am a failure as a dancer! Although, I definitely appreciated ending on a cruisey workshop.

Pole Dreams
Saturday night was Pole Dreams, where the best of the best showed us their stuff. Suzie Q and Toby J, Jenyne Butterfly, Amber Ray, Fontaine, Lou Landers and Anastasia graced us with beautiful and extreme performances. Watching professional pole dancing always blows my mind, and seeing so many performances one after another was actually quite overwhelming. The stand out for me was watching Anastasia; I'd never seen her perform before (I am lucky enough to have already seen some of the other acts), and she has a very special way of making the most impossible things seem easy.

And with that extravagant ending, Australian Summer Pole camp was over. I had an absolute ball!

With a day to go before our flights home, we decided to do some touristy stuff like go to Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum (so much fun, highly recommended!) and eat at Hard Rock Cafe (my first time, yum!). I had an awesome time all round, but I was definitely ready to come home to my own bed!

About to Have More Fun

2011-10-12T23:46:00.003+08:00

I...

Am...

Blonde!!!

Hrmm it's new and different, and a bit strange, and I'm not quite sure I like it yet...

But who cares, I'm having more fun already!

Lapsang Souchong...

2011-10-04T08:20:00.000+08:00

...tastes like smoked meat. What a terrible idea for a tea flavour.

Royal Show 2011

2011-10-02T22:33:00.004+08:00

This years Royal Show was spectacular as always. It was a girl's day out this year, and we packed our day full of food, pats, and crazy shows.

One of the first things we saw (after the disturbing duck rape incident that shall not be discussed any further) was the Swan Valley Cuddly Animal Farm petting zoo. I absolutely love the Cuddly Animal Farm, and seeing it at the Royal Show was like two of my favourite things all at once!

This year I only went on one ride, Speed, with Gabby. It's the biggest ride at the Perth Royal Show, and it made it's debut last year but no one was brave enough to go on it with me! I was extremely nervous, but determined not to miss out this year. We got to see the ride running quite a lot of times before we got to the front of the line, and seeing people's expressions coming off was a bit daunting! When it came to our turn, Gab and I were on the first carriage being loaded, so we spent a couple of minutes at the top while the other carriage was loaded below us. It was a good amount of time to enjoy the awesome view, but a bit too long to wait to plummet face first toward the ground. Having said that, I can safely say this is the funnest ride I've ever been on, absolutely breath taking!

After a long day of walking around pavilions, it was time for a nutritious dinner of twisted fries.

And yes, I ate the whole plate to myself.

A couple of the girls left earlier on, but Amy and I stayed for the fireworks. This year volunteers were walking around handing out "3D" glasses to watch the fireworks with. At first, Amy and I were skeptical (aren't fireworks 3D already?), but MY GOD it was the best fireworks show I've ever seen!

It was actually so intense at some points that I needed to take a moment to catch my breath. I managed to capture some footage through the glasses, but it's a meagre representation of what we actually saw. It was like every spark of each firework was multiplied by 10 while shooting rainbows at your face.

I already can't wait until show time next year :)

Rabbit on the Brain

2011-08-25T15:47:00.003+08:00

On my recent visit to Melbourne (for Matt's talk at One More Thing) among one of the many things I bought was a cute little cardigan from Friends of Couture.

I liked it immediately, and I'm not even sure why; blue doesn't even suit me, particularly now with the red hue in my hair!

Either way, my stupid brain liked it, and I usually give in to my brain's stupid whims (especially when it comes to shopping). I was picking off George hairs from my cardi when suddenly I noticed that the carpet-like pattern has little rabbits all over it! Touche brain, touche.

My Miracle Berry Fruit Tasting 25th Birthday Bonanza

2011-08-23T16:20:00.002+08:00

A little while back now (but I've been a bit busy lately) I had a miracle berry fruit tasting party for my 25th birthday. What's a miracle berry you ask? Well it's a berry that when eaten, changes the perceived sweetness of food, or in other words, makes sour stuff taste sweet!

I ordered the berries from Think Geek. Each packet contained 10 lolly-type pills made from powdered/freeze dried miracle berry fruit. We each had half a pill, and then had some fun tasting an assortment of random things!

My mum and I spent ages making fruit skewers with grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, apple, pineapple and strawberry. They looked really cute! I also bought vinegar, raspberries, pomegranate, salt n vinegar chips, and tomatoes.

I was really worried at first that there would be no effect - how embarrassing! But luckily, it really worked, although the effect was not quite as intense as I thought. It was a very strange experience, and I think it was different for everyone. Everyone had different favourite foods, and thought certain things changed more than others. Personally, my favourite thing was the lime. I found that strawberry and pineapple didn't change very much, and pink grapefruit (usually my favourite thing in the world) tasted really awful.

Some things that I thought might be good were actually quite gross. Vinegar tasted like lemonade for a split second, then it tasted like vinegar again and burnt your throat. I had read that Guinness beer tasted like chocolate, but I found that there was no change. Pickles grossed everyone out, and Philadelphia cheese seemed to be either a hit or miss, with some people swearing it tasted like cheesecake.

I had heaps of fun, and would definitely recommend this as a fun party idea. Some hints from my experience:

When you're sending out an invite, send some links to wikipedia or other info sites for your guests to have a read of. When I first wrote the invite I realised that without this, it looked like I was inviting everyone over for an acid trip!
Think Geek recommends 1/2 a tablet is a serve, but I recommend you budget one per person (we found that we went back for more since the effect faded after about 15 mins).
Have an antacid on hand!!! I bought a whole packet of Rennie to reverse the acid torture.
Have some normal food on hand for afterwards, something warm like meat pies and sausage rolls, to give your tongue and tummy a rest.
Try a little bit of everything, and then go back and have lots of what you liked. The effect fades quite quickly, so you want to get in a lot of things before it wears off!

Happy Fruit Tasting!

Easter in Melbourne

2011-04-29T14:58:00.004+08:00

I'm currently sitting at home, still in my PJ's at 3pm, sick from work with my most annoying souvenir from Melbourne - a cold :( Despite the sneezing it was an otherwise awesome holiday jam packed with things I'll never forget.

Tutankhamun Exhibit and Melbourne Museum

Our first adventure was seeing the amazing Tutankhamun exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. After a 4h red eye flight from Perth we managed to sneak in a few hours of sleep at Adam's house before heading out. Even with the Berocca and Nodoze we were still having a bit of trouble staying awake, but the exhibit was wonderful. My favourite thing was one of the treasures pulled from Tutankhamun's tomb - a beaded bracelet with a scarab beetle closing mechanism. I was really hoping they'd have a replica in the gift shop, and they did! However it was $500 so I gave it a miss :(

After lunch we hung around the Melbourne Museum for a bit and saw their fabulous collection of taxidermed animals, rocks and minerals, and bugs. I wasn't expecting it, but to my pleasant surprise it was more of a natural history museum. We even found a bug similar to the one we'd found on our driveway!

To finish off a busy first day, we ended the night with some amateur live comedy for the Melbourne Comedy festival. We entered the "comedy club" (which was actually the 2nd floor living of the first floor bar's owner) dead tired, but Josh Makinda woke us right up with a super funny and intimate show.

Melbourne Zoo

This was the highlight of my trip. The zoo itself was fairly ordinary, but Pooja had organised for us to have a giraffe encounter, which involved getting up close to the elegant animals with a group of 6 friends. We were allowed to feed the giraffes carrots, but we weren't allowed to touch them. They're quite timid animals, and they pull their heads away if you make any sudden movements or try and touch their faces.

I managed to sneak in a quick pat while one of them was trying to pry a carrot piece from my hand with it's long grey tongue. I never thought I'd be so close to such a large and gentle animal!

The Great Ocean Road

We hired a car and spend a couple of days on the road driving to Port Campbell and the 12 Apostles. On the way we saw some awesome sights, like the lighthouse from Around the Twist, and we even had a midnight stroll in the forrest to see some glow worms, which were almost impossible to photograph. I was actually a bit scared about seeing the glow worms - trekking through a forrest in the day is scary enough, but at night surely I would never make it out alive! However it was tourist season so we were accompanied by gaggles of torch wielding forrest explorers, so I felt a little more at ease. The glow worms were very pretty, like little blue fairy lights hung randomly on rocks and ferns.

The 12 Apostles were lovely, but extremely packed with tourists, so we didn't stay too long.

On the way back we stopped to do a tree top walk which made me realise that I have a slight fear of heights! At this point in the trip a few of us had started coming down with a cold so the tree top walk was spotted with bouts of tree top sitting down. My favourite part was looking down on the fields of ferns which looked like big green fireworks.

Melbourne

Back in Melbourne we spent our last day shopping and hanging out at restaurants and cafes. The food in Melbourne was lovely! My food highlight was Dalmatino's, a Croatian restuarant. I ordered the chicken soup with polenta (soothed my cold right down) and a shot of slivovita (plum brandy, also good for my cold). My dessert highlight was the Lindt factory where I had a beautiful hot chocolate and a couple of delicious macrons.

This break was one of those holidays you need a holiday from, but I really enjoyed it. It was lovely to travel with my uni friends, with whom I'd never travelled for some reason, and we packed in a lot of sights so I feel like we definitely got the most out of our trip.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

George has been a Busy Bunny

2011-04-20T10:36:00.003+08:00

With Easter coming up, George has had a lot to do!

Charlie Meets George
A couple of days ago, Amy and I executed project Charlie Meets George. Charlie is Amy's King Charles terrier, and George is my pet dwarf lop bunny. We were sure they'd be best of friends!

We let them have a sniff of each other while we each held on to them. George didn't seem too fussed, but Charlie was a little too interested, and was going a bit wide eyed, so we could see that it wasn't going to be the match made in heaven we had hoped for. We let George down, and he hopped away, but didn't seem frightened at all, probably just not too keen on the idea. None the less they both had a good time being fussed over by everyone. I love it when friendship crosses inter-species boundaries!

Mr. Puffington Goes to Work
At my workplace we have a yearly Easter Lunch Celebration where everyone gathers to have lunch and eat way too much chocolate. This year George was the special guest star! I brought George's cage into work with me and he hung out in my cubicle until his big moment. At lunch time I brought him to the meeting room... everyone loved him! George had a very good time, but was very tired from all the treats and pats he was getting.

Happy Easter everyone!

Phoenix at Good Vibrations

2011-02-22T08:25:00.003+08:00

The Good Vibrations festival hit Perth last Sunday, with an all round mediocre lineup apart from the almighty Phoenix. We decided to go even though they were really the only act we were keen to see, and I'm so glad we did! If you ever get a chance to see Phoenix, my god take it. I've seen them twice now, and they're my absolute favourite live act to see.

The set list was very similar to their performance last year at Belvoir, with lots of focus on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and a couple thrown in from older albums. The crowd was really great, and you could tell everyone was a fellow Phoenix fanatic since they sung along to all the songs, not only the new ones. My highlights were 1901 and Too Young, and Armistice due to the fact that this is the song Thomas decided to do his famous jump into the crowd thing.

I didn't get to touch him on his first run into the crowd, but he decided to actually crowd surf this time and... I HELD HIS HAND as he surfed on past! He even looked at me and smiled! Even Matt got all giggly because he got to touch Thomas' arm. No one can resist Thomas' charms, sigh.

That Some Crazy Runner's Logic

2011-02-08T09:44:00.003+08:00

I just bought an awesome set of PJ's from a site that sells this label:
http://www.steviedaniels.com.au/

I decided to look at the label's about page and was surprised and confused:
http://www.steviedaniels.com.au/about.php

How is this a logical career progression Stevie?!?

Matt's take - "Hi, I am Daniel Milland and professional writing is not something I did. As my great grandfather Bill had a moustache, my pants fit well."

Stevie, you make a mean set of PJ's, but you're messin with my mind man.

Happy Birthday!

2011-01-27T09:06:00.002+08:00

Happy Birthday Australia!

We spent Australia Day enjoying a sausage sizzle and pool party at Elissa and James's house. Elissa and James don't actually have a pool, so the pool part of "pool party" was fulfilled by having a couple of kiddie pools and a giant slip-n-slide fashioned by James out of a bunch of tarpaulins.

The slip-n-slide was... interesting. The boys had a great time sliding and trying to launch over one of the paddle pools, while the girls had a great time making fools of themselves while trying to do the same.

It was extremely frustrating! It was much harder than it looks, even with two bottles of detergent and shampoo poured over the tarpaulin to make it super slippery.

Despite the injuries it was a fun day of relaxing by the "pool".

What's that Bug?

2011-01-22T14:11:00.005+08:00

Last weekend Matt found an awesome bug on our driveway that we almost ran over when we got back from the shops. It was a very fancy cockroach looking thing, with a super shiny head and a grooved shiny body.

He could obviously fly since you can see the wings peeking through, but when I touched him he didn't react. I don't think he was doing so well, but regardless I didn't want us to run him over so I put him on my key and relocated him in the garden.

I tried looking up pictures of shiny beetles but couldn't find anything similar, but then I finally came across an awesome website called What's That Bug. I submitted a picture of our bug and got a prompt answer:

"Hi Jess,

You rescued a Metallic Borer Beetle in the family Buprestidae. Because of their often beautiful coloration and metallic markings they are called Jewel Beetles and they are highly prized by collectors. We believe your individual is in the genus Castiarina and of the numerous individuals pictured on the Coleoptera Buprestidae of Australia webpage, it most resembles Castiarina castelnaudi, though many other species are also quite similar. We verified that by comparing your image to a specimen of Castiarina castelnaudi on the Entomology section of the Agriculture of Western Australia website."

Thanks, What's That Bug! It was so cool to actually find out what the little guy was instead of being curious forever.

Meet George!

2010-12-22T21:33:00.002+08:00

Our new pet bunny, George. I've wanted a bunny for as long as I can remember, and George was my (early) Christmas present from Matt.

George is a 9 week old dwarf lop bunny. He's the first bunny I've ever taken care of so I'm still getting used to how to pick him up and cuddle him just right.

I love you George, welcome to our home!

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2010 (updated)

2010-12-20T12:44:00.004+08:00

My Votes:

The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio (#31)
The National - Sorrow (nope)
The National - Lemonworld (nope)
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (#58)
Tame Impala - Solitude Is Bliss (#33)
Yeasayer - Ambling Alp (#51)
Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun (#55)
Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Dance The Way I Feel (#3)
Underworld - Scribble (nope)
Chiddy Bang - Opposite Of Adults (#36)

Would have loved to fit in:

Miike Snow - Billie Holiday (nope)
Caribou - Odessa (nope)
Darwin Deez - Radar Detector (#28)
M.I.A - XXXO (nope)
Angus And Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane (#1)
Cee Lo Green - Fuck You (#7)

(Update) There were some surprises! I was positive that Cee Lo Green would take out #1, and all in all I was a bit disappointed with the top 10. However good on Australia for giving The National, Arcade Fire, Tame Impala and Yeasayer so many entries! And thank GOD that stupid Magic Fountain song was low this year (I'm still sore about Parlez Vous Francaise getting #2 last year).

I (or my family) am (are) the Goddess(s) of Death

2010-11-29T20:30:00.001+08:00

All hail Jess Manea, Goddess of Death... Rawrrrr

Toyota Hiace Cake

2010-11-28T12:10:00.003+08:00

This weekend I made a Hiace cake (with Matt's help) for Cam and Jean's going away dinner. They're still in Perth for another couple of weeks, and then they're off on a trek around Australia in their decked out Hiace van.

For the cake part, I made a rainbow cake using a square cake tin. I cut the square cake in half and stacked the halves to make the general rectangular prism shape of the van.

Next I cut off a section from the top of the cake to make the slanty part of the front windscreen. To do this I used an un-serrated knife and cut very slowly at a 45 degree angle aiming to finish at the join between the two halves.

The body paint of the van is (very thick) butter icing. I find that adding a small amount of milk (about a tablespoon for 50gm of butter and 3 cups of icing sugar) to the mixture makes the colour a lot whiter which was appropriate since the Hiace is white. The icing is a lot thicker than usual so that it got into all the cracks and hid the two layers of cake. I used a large spatula to try and get the surface as smooth as possible, but still ended up with quite a lot of icing streaks.

The windows were done using the same butter icing made blue with a few drops of food colouring. I also added some strawberry essence just to make it different to the white icing taste. Applying the blue over the white icing is quite fiddly. I found that the most effective way was to put a dollop of icing (about half a teaspoon) in the center of where you want the window to be, and then spread it out radially with a knife. You need to push gently so that you don't go through to the white, but if you do it's no big deal, you can just hide it with more blue icing. After the shape is correct, run the knife horizontally very gently along the blue icing so that the streaks go all in one direction.

For the bumper and all the other details I used chocolate butter icing (same as the regular butter icing but with two tablespoons of cocoa powder). I made quite a large batch (30gm of butter and 1 cup of icing sugar) because the details require a piping bag which always takes up a lot of icing. Adding the bumpers is not as hard as adding the windows, but the technique is similar. The hardest bit is getting the icing all the way to the bottom of the cake because you need to use the tip of the knife to push it down. I also added large chocolate buttons for the wheels.

I used the smallest circular nozzle on my piping bag to add rims around the windows, the stripe around the van, and the handles and window wipers. My advice is to spend some money on a good piping bag since I bought a cheapo one that broke half way through (grrrr). This part is quite easy if you have a small nozzle, and it's one of those things that turns out better the less you try! When I was concentrating really hard I went too slowly and the lines turned out wonky. The lines looked smoother when there was a thick stream of fast icing.

For the lights and number plates I used sections of yellow, orange, and red jelly snakes cut to size with scissors. If you press the parts of the snake that have been cut they stick together so the lights are nice and sturdy. I think they give a nice effect because they look sort of see-through :) I really like how the back lights turned out.

For the front head lights I used white chocolate chips. At first I tried using a section of yellow jelly snake but it just didn't look right. Hiace lights aren't actually round, but this was the best I could get it to look. For the side mirrors I used milk chocolate chips with the flat bit pointing toward the "driver".

And there you have it! A Toyota Hiace Camper Van.

Bon voyage Cam and Jean :)

The 2010 Perth Royal Show

2010-09-27T19:01:00.005+08:00

It's my favourite time of year again, when the Royal Show comes to Perth! Yesterday I spent a whole day at the show. My parents and Mina hung around until just after lunch, and then we met up with some friends and stayed until the fireworks at night. Matt and I arrived at 10am and stayed until 8.30pm and I still didn't get to do everything I wanted!

I pretty much had to force my parents and Mina to come, and I was sure they'd have a good time. They complained the whole time they were there, but each of them had one thing that they really enjoyed so hopefully that made it worthwhile! Having said that I don't think I'll manage to convince them to come again next year...

First up we went to the Food and Cooking pavilion to see some cake displays. Despite Mina's insistence that everything she baked was a million times better, I found it amazing what some people manage to make out of icing. It's both inspiring and very very humbling.

Next we went to see Jack and Molly the Wonder Dog at the Entertainment pavilion. We somehow found seats next to a very excitable lady who managed to singlehandedly be louder than all of the kids combined, and was violently bouncing around in her chair the whole time. This was much to Mina's horror who scored the seat right next to her, and poor Mina spent the whole time giving me worried looks and clutching her purse tightly. However the show was really cute with the highlight being when Molly shut herself in a little suitcase, exasperated at Jack's impossible requests for her to jump through a 3m high hoola hoop.

The Dog and Poultry pavilions were next which is where I think my parents and Mina had the most fun. The dogs were awesome as always, and my dad looked like a little kid giggling at all the dogs being prepped for show with their clips and bows and all. The Poultry and Pigeon pavilion went down a treat as I knew it would, being chicken owners ourselves. Mina had heaps of fun, and her favourite birds were the pigeons with the tails that looked like umbrellas.

After this Mina and my parents got a bit showed-out and decided to give up. I'm actually surprised they lasted that long, but was a bit disappointed they didn't get to see more things. We then met up with some friends and had some sushi lunch (I brought some sushi to try even out all the sugar with some healthy stuff) and hit the pavilions again.

At 3pm was the highlight of my show day; an event called "Dancing Ducks". We'd seen this before a couple of years ago and I couldn't wait to see it again. I can't properly describe the show, but it certainly did not involve any ducks dancing. To sum it all up, a crazy old farm guy has made a duck fashion parade with ducks wearing different dresses (including a bride and groom duck), and he's decided to toss in a strange pig race, a weird sing along, and an even stranger game of pig musical chairs (that also has a dog for some reason). There's also a bit where a strange ghost thing inexplicably pops out of the runway and he gets all the kids to yell at it. Anyway... it is strange. The strangest bit was during the pig musical chairs thing where he lost control of the broom he was using to push the pigs away with and fell head over heels as a pig trampled him to get the food from his bucket... so, so strange.

Next we saw Clive Lotah and his Sway Pole, which was an acrobatic show where Clive, a 75 year old in a red spandex suit climbs a 9m pole and does a bunch of crazy tricks at the top. He (literally) seemed on top of the world and I couldn't clap loudly enough especially since Clive was sitting in a wheel chair before and after his amazing performance.

We filled in our time until the fireworks with more patting of cute animals, buying of candies, and a couple of rides. I went on the Gravitron (a spaceship like ride where you stand up and get stuck to the walls as it spins around really fast, definitely my favourite ride of all time) with Kristy, and the Mega Drop (a 45m, 5.5g force fall) with Andrew. To top off a perfect day we went out for a relaxing dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. I love the Royal Show so much!

The Incident Celebrations

2010-09-06T20:13:00.005+08:00

Last Saturday we had a few people over to celebrate Matt's final week of (salaried) work and all the success of his awesome game, The Incident. To mark the occasion, we decided to make some The Incident themed cupcakes, and I tried my hand at a rainbow cake that I iced with The Incident icon.

Balloon Cupcakes
We had a great idea about making cupcakes themed with all the "balloons" you can get in the game. There's health, health boost, shield, up/down and curse balloons which we captured with coloured icing and ready rolled for the icon. Matt is really good at ready rolled icing! The curse balloon with the skull was my favourite, and he did an awesome job with it!

Psychedelic Icon Cake
I'm pretty sure this is the best thing I've ever baked in my life, and I probably should just stop now at the height of my baking potential. I was inspired by a layered rainbow cake that someone brought in for their birthday at work, but decided to go for the full mixed rainbow cake after googling some amazing pictures of other people's creations.

I decided to stick with 6 colours and repeat the sequence twice (yes, to make a double rainbow). I bought a square cake tin for the occasion (since the app icons are square) and filled it with a double batch of vanilla sponge cake mix. To the lighter colours (red, orange and yellow) I added some strawberry essence, but it turned out really subtle so you couldn't taste the difference between the colours of the rainbow.

It may surprise you that there's no manual mixing involved to create the rainbow pattern (it surprised me!). The effect is achieved by scooping concentric circles of coloured mixture on top of one and other. The mixture will spread out under the weight of each new colour application, and the result is the perfect amount of psycadelicness!

I documented each spoonful of mixture I added (I'll skip every second addition here for brevity). Because I wanted to go through the spectrum twice, I used about half the amount of each colour each time.

When the cake came out of the oven the surface was a lovely brown, but there were little cracks where you could see the magic shining through! It was huge tease that I couldn't find out what was inside! I couldn't wait, so I managed to convince myself that I needed to cut the top off the cake so that it could be properly iced as a perfect icon prism. It was... SO EXCITING to see this:

Next I mixed up 6 shades of purple and a bright yellow in vanilla butter icing. I iced the cake as best as I could, and used cashous for the stars. I think that the colours came out really nice, and I managed to get the sky a really nice deep purple. I used cocoa powder as well food colouring for that part.

I decided to use ready rolled icing to capture Frank in all of his pixely detail, and managed to do a pretty good job with the colours! I didn't think I could get the colour dark enough for his hair, pants or shoes, but it came out quite accurate.

Cutting the Cake
When we brought out the cake I was SO excited to find out what was inside. I had no idea what to expect even given the sneak preview of cutting the top off. Matt did the honours, and it was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

I love you, rainbow The Incident icon cake. You are the best thing I've ever made.

Cuddly Animal Farm

2010-08-29T09:54:00.003+08:00

Today I had an awesome time at the Swan Valley with my friends from uni. As a (late) birthday present, they decided to take me out for breakfast at the Margaret River Chocolate Company, followed by a visit to the Cuddly Animal Farm and finishing off with lunch and drinks at Oakover winery.

OK so the whole day was great, but Oh My God the Cuddly Animal Farm is the best place ever! Despite the fact that we were obviously not the target audience (and apparently I'm too big to ride the pony... yes I asked) we all had a really great time! I patted so many things!

My animal highlights are cuddling the baby bunny with the white nose (I want it), seeing a turkey (I had no idea they actually said 'gobble gobble' and their face looks like chewing gum), feeding a piglet (but he went a bit crazy and I got milk everywhere), and hanging out with my duck buddies (I was the duck whisperer today, all the ducks and me go way back).

Cupcake Month

2010-08-22T10:43:00.006+08:00

Well it seems like August has been a month of cupcakes! It was my birthday earlier this month and I decided to have a crack (well two cracks) at Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' cupcakeified. Then Amy and I decided to do 'Cupcake day for the RSPCA' to help raise funds for all animals great and small :)

Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' in Cupcakes

As a tradition, I always make cupcakes (instead of having an actual cake) for Matt and I on our birthdays. I try to keep it cute and geeky (e.g. last year I made Mario Mushroom cupcakes for Matt's birthday), and this year I came across an amazing idea that immediately stole my heart.

It turns out that Van Gogh has been translated in to all types of sweets (I found a great summary of a bunch of different attempts) but since we have a print of Starry Night hanging in our lounge room I thought I'd give that one a shot.

I did a practice run before my birthday and took them into work as an early birthday cake. Everyone loved them! Only one person guessed what the painting was without any hints, but that certainly made my day :)

For my actual birthday I asked for Amy's help and managed to do a much better job with help from her infinite cupcake knowledge! It took us about 3 hours to ice the whole lot (I baked the cupcakes the previous day just to rush things along) but it was great fun! So much better with two people.

Cupcake day for the RSPCA

After how much fun we had making the Van Gogh cupcakes, Amy suggested that we put our baking to a good purpose and take part in Cupcake day for the RSPCA. The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is a really great cause, so we were happy to do whatever we could to help, and thought it would be great fun having a go at some animal themed cupcakes!

Amy signed us up and the RSPCA set up a fundraising page for our team, and set our fundraising goal as $500AU. I personally thought that was very ambitious, and didn't think we'd get anywhere near that amount. Turns out we're currently the 6th top fundraising team in WA (we actually got up to #3) and we've raised $729.35AU! Go team!

We each baked a huge amount of cupcakes and got together for a marathon icing session. We had some really big ideas to start, but because we had so many cupcakes to ice we thought we'd keep it simple so that it wouldn't take us all night.

We had paw prints (big and small), gummy bears, sharks, and (everyone's favourite) kitties. People at both of our work places were really generous, and my books actually overbalanced! I guess who can resist cupcakes or helping animals in need.

Europe Trip 2010!

2010-07-22T23:07:00.002+08:00

Last night we got back from a 5 week trip to Europe, and I'm feeling so good after a night's sleep in my own bed! It was the family vacation that Matt's dad wanted us to have to meet his relatives in Italy, and we also had a chance to do some detouring while we were there.

Paris

Paris was lovely as always! After almost missing the plane to Europe (Matt's mum has a talent for being late for everything) we arrived at our Paris apartment in the central 7eme district. Matt and I had been before but this time we had a solid 5 days to look around. We managed to see:

The Eiffel tower - First time we went to the top, the view was amazing at night! Worth the 3h wait for sure
The Louvre - We took it a bit slower and saw heaps more this time
Musee D'Orsay - Van Gogh's galore, our favourite artist
Musee Rodin - The most fun museum, we spent a lot of time eating icecream in the gardens
Musee L'Orangerie - The Monet rooms were breathtaking
Versailles - The hall of mirrors was beautiful, but the gardens were the highlight
Notre Damme - I guess church can be fun!

Geneva

Geneva is a wonderful city that felt like home, probably because we stayed with Yvonne (my cousin) and Stefan! It was so great to finally visit Yvonne and see where she's been living for the past 3 years :) We were happy to just hang out with Yvy and Stef, but managed to see the Jet of Geneva, Saleve Mountain, Saint-Pierre's Cathedral, and even ate some horse (it's a common cut of meat there, ick).

Rome

Matt and I spent one night in Rome in the Oxford Hotel before heading off to Calabria. It was a nice break, and prepared us for the loooong stay with family to come!

Calabria

This was the purpose and heart of the trip, which is where we met a whole lot of family from Matt's dad's side. We stayed with Matt's Nonna's brother in Girifalco, but spent a lot of time visiting Caraffa di Catanzaro.

It was really nice to meet so many people that looked like Matt! Unfortunately almost no one spoke english, but this was an opportunity for everyone to learn a bit of Italian, and we all did pretty well. By the end of it we were understanding almost everything and managing to put some words together ourselves.

As well as meeting family, we did some things around Calabria. My highlights are:

Eating a mountain strawberry (a fragolina)
Seeing "Comi alley", where all the Comi family houses were and where Matt's dad grew up
Feeding a reindeer
Tropea beach

We had a nice time, but got a bit bored, and got a lot fatter. They eat like maniacs there! I packed on 4kg so I have my work set out for me for the next couple of months :(

Bucharest

At this point in the trip, I took a detour and went to Romania while Matt and the rest of his family went to Northern Italy. I stayed in a beautiful pre-communist era house with my dad's friend Mitica and his family, and spent some time in the city where my dad grew up.

Mitica used to be a tour bus driver, and his son Catalin is studying tourism at uni, so I had a pretty good set of guides! We did a lot of sight seeing around Bucharest (the obligatory stuff including the Village Museum and Casa Poporului), and they took me to the most wonderful places where I really got to see the beauty of Romania:

Brasov - "Probably the best place in the world" as is written on umbrellas all around the city, and they're "probably" right! It was a stunning city which was right near Bran Castle, the (fake) Dracula's castle where Vlad Tepes apparently spent some time (but probably not).
Sinaia - The place where Peles castle is. Peles was the most beautiful rich place I've ever seen. It was extremely well preserved, and the riches were mind boggling. I also had a taste of mountain raspberries!
Snagov - The island on Snagov Serpentine lake is where Vlad Tepes's remains are said to be. We had to row there on a crappy little row boat we hired from a gypsy, and I strengthened my arm muscles by rowing all the way back.
Comana - Where I met my grandparents (from my dad's side) for the first time in my life! It was such an amazing experience. Our family in Perth is so small, and it was very strange to meet other people that looked like me. For the record, I look exactly like my grandma :) I also met my dad's brother Cristi, who laughs exactly like Tati.

Bucharest was an amazing place, and all the bad stuff I'd heard about it was really wrong (even the stray dogs were so cute!). Family stuff aside, it's really a place I'd love to go back and spend some more time.

Cluj

The largest city in Transylvania, and where my Mina grew up. Here I met some more family on my mum's side including Mina's brother Silvi (he's hilarious and a little bit insane) and my cousin Vlad (I have a cousin that's not Yvonne or Simona!). Until Matt arrived in Cluj, I spent some time with Mina and Licia (my mum's cousin) and took it easy for a little while. Cluj is lovely, but it's small so I spent a lot of time at the apartment and at the Mall.

When Matt arrived, we took a trip to Turda to see a beautiful salt mine. It was extraordinary, and not just because I'm obsessed with salt. I don't know what you think of when you hear the word salt mine, but I was certainly surprised! It was a beautiful 13 story cavern carved out of salt, with walls made of swirling grey patterns, and a salt lake with row boats at the bottom. Isn't salt wonderful?

We took another day trip to Lita; a quaint small town where everyone knows their neighbours, and is the place where Mina grew up. We had a barbeque at Mina's cousin's house, complete with plenty of visinata and tuica, the national moonshine of Romania.

As well as meeting with family, my highlight of Cluj was going to an underground "club", Janis. The club was a converted wine cellar filled with candle lit tables and red spot lights. The music was pretty awful, but the place was amazing, and my god do Transylvanians know how to drink! We gave up at around 2am and left blind drunk, but Vlad and his friends went on until about 5am. Needless to mention none of us could stomach any visinata the next day at lunch!

Back at Home

So now we're back at home (after 35h of travel!), and I'm back at work on Monday, but I'm actually looking forward to it! Being away for 5 weeks really makes you appreciate being at home, especially your own bed :)

I've feel like I've got a lot more stuff in perspective now, and I really appreciate how my family (and Matt's family) came to be where they are now. It was very strange to see the places where my family grew up, and meet the family that is still there now. I've always been proud of being an Australian with Romanian blood, and it's so great to know where that blood came from!

Phoenix

2010-03-07T11:15:00.008+08:00

Last night was hands down the best concert I've ever been to; Phoenix played in Perth at the Belvoir Amphitheater on their Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix tour. I've never seen anything like it before! I guess I knew that they're meant to be stunning live, but I certainly didn't expect this!

The Belvoir venue is kind of like a big semi-circle crater with wide steps (where people can sit) leading down to the stage. There's also a wide open area directly in front of the stage where people can dance. When we arrived the crowd seemed pretty tame and most people were sitting down on the steps, but we decided to stand at the front for Miami Horror (the support act) anyway just in case it got crowded. Well that's an understatement! Toward the end of Miami Horror's set everyone started pushing like crazy into the dance area. We were actually in the 2nd row from the front, and being vertically challenged as I am, I was getting really pushed around and could barely breathe most of the time!

When Phoenix finally came on stage (about 40min after Miami Horror's set) the crowd went ballistic. They started with Lisztomania which created a huge mosh pit - yes a mosh pit for Phoenix! Well the mosh pit didn't let up at all throughout the set which was absolutely amazing, with my highlights (from the main set) being Love Like a Sunset and Too Young. After finishing Funky Square Dance they said goodbye to the crowd and left to huge cheers for encore. After a couple of minutes of leaving us hanging and teasing us by taking their instruments off the stage, they came back and did acoustic slow versions of Everything is Everything and (OMG) a cover of Air's Playground Love which was INCREDIBLE. They then brought back all the gear and played If I Ever Feel Better and 1901, which (along with Too Young) is my favourite Phoenix track ever.

They're such amazing performers. Thomas is such a show man, climbing on the set scaffolding and on various occasions coming up to the barricades and performing while the crowd (yes including me) touched and grabbed him. It was hilarious watching security try and keep a handle on him, they certainly had their work cut out for them last night!

In conclusion, if you ever get a chance to see Phoenix, my god please take it! It's a night I'll never forget, best performance ever! (Oh and also because I touched Thomas and managed to get Deck's guitar pick)

Rottnest Island Trip

2010-02-07T16:00:00.010+11:00

What an awesome island! I'd been to Rottnest once before, but I was a lot younger and it was only for a day trip so we didn't get to explore too much. This year I went for 3 days for a short relaxing trip with Matt's family. We stayed at the Rottnest Central Bungalows, and spent our time relaxing and trying to see as much of the island as possible.

We took it easy the first day, and decided to spend it on the beach and finish it off with some jetty fishing. I'd actually never been fishing before so I was a bit worried about how I'd take the whole fish-murder thing. While everyone was still settling in, I had already baited and lowered my line. About 30 seconds later I had two herrings fighting for my hook! I managed to catch one of them and pull it in, and after about a minute of it slipping out of my hands like a bar of soap we had our first catch in the bucket. How exciting! It did surprise me a bit how difficult it was to get the fish in the bucket after it had been caught. I guess I just sort of expected it to give up once it was caught, but it really struggled to live which did upset me a little bit :( I'm glad that I saw it through though, and we ended up eating it the next day which made me feel very self sufficient!

That night we caught 4 edible fish, and a lot more aquarium fish. I caught a weird frilly black thing with lots of spines, and Elissa caught a pretty yellow and black stripy fish. Apparently I had a very exciting first fishing experience, because usually you don't catch that many fish, especially not so many varieties!

The next day we hired some bikes and decided to ride around to Mary Cove to do some snorkeling. A tip to anyone deciding to hire bikes - get the mountain bikes! It's only about $7 more expensive, but it just did not occur to us that it would make such a difference. Everyone got single speed bikes except for James, and he was the only one who didn't struggle up the multitude of hills.

It was an awesome ride with heaps of beautiful views. It took a while to get to Mary Cove since the wind was against us and the aforementioned one speed bikes whipped our asses on the hills, but it was certainly worth the effort. It was the first time I'd even been snorkeling, and it was amazing! The conditions were apparently quite bad because of the waves, so I can imagine what it would be like on a good day.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of the lakes. From the map I think we stopped at Serpentine, Pearse, and Hershel lakes, which each had gorgeous crystal formations of salt, and really strange red to blue gradients in the water. I'm not sure what causes the strange gradient but it was really eerie and beautiful.

We took it easy on the last day and played some putt putt at the Family Fun Park. It was another first for me, and I managed to come 3rd! I usually suck at all ball sports in general so 3/5 is not bad at all.

Despite the sunburn and bruised bum from the bikes, I had an awesome time. I'll definitely be going back even if it's just to spend the day on one of Rottnest's secluded beaches!

Painting the House

2010-01-24T21:19:00.002+11:00

Over the Christmas/new year's break Matt and I painting the main rooms of the house. We'd done the bedrooms a couple of years back, and decided to tackle the rest of the rooms this year. All we have left is the bathrooms, then the doors and door frames, and our whole house will have had a nice new coat of paint!

We were a bit adventurous and used Dulux "Puddle" for the main colour in the front room. It's a bit dark (in fact we used it as the feature colour in the bedrooms) but the room is really big and we thought it would contrast nicely with the annoying pink of the carpet. We did a dark feature colour (Dulux "Baton") for the entry wall, and eventually we plan on plastering the feature brick behind the TV and painting that the feature colour too.

We actually decided to split the front room into two smaller rooms using an Expedit shelving unit from IKEA. Instead of being one long awkward room, it's now a cozy TV room and a small reading room, which desperately needs a long chaise chair :)

The kitchen and dining we did in Dulux "Crewelwork Half" which is nice and light, and we tried to separate the little lounge from the rest of the house by painting the whole room Dulux "Puddle". We were a bit worried at first because this involved changing colours on a convex corner, but we used painters tape which was absolutely amazing and meant the line was perfect!

We also painted the walk in robe, which has been really nagging me. The previous owner had obviously changed storage a few times, and so there were about a million drill holes in the wall and ceiling, whole sections of missing paint, and giant chips in the plaster. It's SO much better now and it's a real pleasure to walk in the walk in robe!

The best thing about all of the work we did is that we don't have giant drill holes all over the house. The previous owner was not shy about drilling, and she had a like of heavy curtains, tapestries, photos, calenders, etc. Even the bathrooms and toilets have drill holes everywhere!

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2009

2010-01-08T11:29:00.006+11:00

My votes:

Phoenix - 1901 (My obvious #1, the rest are in alphabetical order)
Animal Collective - Brother Sport
Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
Basement Jaxx - Raindrops
Bat For Lashes - Daniel
Big Pink, The - Dominos
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Peter Bjorn & John - Lay It Down
Phoenix - Lisztomania
Royksopp - You Don't Have A Clue (Ft. Anneli Drekker)

Would have loved to fit in:

Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Kid Cudi - Pursuit Of Happiness
Little Birdy - Brother
Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man
Muse - Undisclosed Desires
National, The - So Far Around The Bend
Royksopp - Happy Up Here
Royksopp - Vision One (Ft. Anneli Drekker)
Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

I Have Auryn

2009-12-13T16:06:00.004+11:00

I was recently feeling nostalgic and decided to re-watch the Never Ending Story trilogy. Usually I try and stay away from watching films from my childhood because they're never as good as you remember (I recommend you NEVER watch Labyrinth again!), but NES #1 and #2 were just as good as they were when I was a kid! I actually hadn't seen #3, but it was absolutely rubbish and I'm just going to ignore it completely.

For some reason I decided to look into the Auryn, which is the necklace that Atreyu wears in #1 and Bastian wears in #2 given to them by the child like princess. Anyway it turns out that there's quite a few people that have made replicas as costume jewellery! There's quite a big range but I found one that I really liked and managed to pick up for $40AU (including postage) on eBay from a guy who also has an online shop. However he's selling them for $180US outright so if you're looking for one I suggest hitting eBay first!

I wore my Auryn for the first time on Friday night and one fellow NES fan went nuts! Turns out we both were scarred for life when Ortex succumbed to the Swamp of Saddness :( There were a few other people who asked about it because it looked familiar, and of course I was happy to explain, but I was surprised that anyone actually knew what it was! I'll definitely be wearing it again :)

Matt's Newest iPhone App - Pocketball!

2009-11-17T09:47:00.006+11:00

Matt has been working on his latest iPhone app, Pocketball, for a little while now, and it's finally out!

It's an awesome physics game where you have to draw ropes that direct balls into their respectively colored pockets while avoiding things like boosters, gravity wells, and nukes that explode your ball up into tiny pieces!

It's a really fun and addictive game, and the app as a whole came together really nicely. The graphics are really shiny, the sounds (which I helped on!) are cool, and I'm so proud of Matt for putting the whole thing together from start to finish :)

It's out now at the AppStore for $1.99US, so check Pocketball out!

Waiter, there's a Bug in my Table

2009-11-09T01:04:00.005+11:00

Okay so maybe it's not a bug, but there's something strange going on with our table!

About a year ago we bought a beautiful and massive Shesham table from Classique furniture. After a couple of months we noticed that it was making a funny noise every now and then, maybe once every fortnight for around 5 minutes at a time. We just assumed it was the wood settling, and everyone we told said the same thing.

I managed to get the sound on film a couple of times, and we started getting really worried that it may be something a bit more sinister, like a bug crunching away at our table! We had a few worried reactions from friends and family when we played them the sound, so we finally decided to go back to Classique and play it to them too.

They had absolutely no idea what it could be, and all of them said that they'd never heard anything like it! They assured us it wasn't a bug, since bugs don't make noise, and if they did, there'd be a lot of separate noises instead of just one. They also mentioned there's other signs like small holes in the wood, and sawdust on the floor that usually accompany bugs eating a table. Apparently this particular table is quite popular, and they said they'd never had any complaints about noise in the past! Regardless, they said they'd be happy to exchange it for a new one, so at least we won't have a crazy noisy table anymore.

If anyone happens to know what the noise could possibly be please let me know! Even though we're getting a new table it will still bug me for a while!

A Present from my Parents and Mina

2009-11-04T22:38:00.008+11:00

Last Thursday I got a strange phone call from my dad saying that he wanted me to come straight home after work because my mum wanted me to see something. When I asked what it was, he said that it wont take long, and to just come, because "you know how your mum is". Kind of strange, but knowing my family, I didn't think much of it!

I was really exhausted, since I had been out on a field trial at Garden Island for work and was sunburnt, tired, and dirty from the day. So when I pulled in to my parents house and saw that there was an unfamiliar car there, I was a bit annoyed that my parents had company.

My dad met me as I was walking up the driveway, and when I asked who was visiting, he said nobody was, and that he'd picked up a new car! Finally! I was so happy that they finally upgraded the family car, since my dad drives the same car as I do (a 1986 Mercedes 190E) and both of them had given us quite a few problems over the years.

So we all went out to take a look, and my mum and Mina were really excited about it too. It's a beautiful dark blue 1997 C180 Mercedes - my dad certainly has a type!

My dad invited me to sit in the driver's seat to look at all the new fancy controls, but as soon as I sat down Mina handed me a card. I was very confused, but when I pulled it out and saw that it was a Congratulations card, I got a little worried! Before I knew it, I was holding the keys to the biggest present my family had ever bought me!

I honestly couldn't believe it, and my first reaction was to tell them I couldn't accept it. I mean, it's the newest car we've ever had in the family, and I just couldn't accept that it would be me that was driving it! I started crying and trying to figure out how to transfer the ownership to them, but after about an hour they managed to convince me that they really wanted to give me this present, and they were happy to know that I'd be driving a comfortable car that would hopefully not give my dad any trouble for a while. My mum said that crying was the last reaction she expected me to have!

My dad is actually looking into one for himself too, and plans to get rid of our two 190E's to help fund his upgrade. He'd been looking around for 2 months before he bought the one for me, so he got a pretty good idea of what's out there. I really hope he gets a new car, since he really deserves it, and our driveway is starting to look a bit like a car dealership from the 1980's anyway!

So thanks to my family, it's such a beautiful gift *sniff*

The Pinnacles

2009-09-28T20:53:00.004+08:00

This long weekend my parents, Mina, Matt and I went up north to Cervantes to see the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park. Matt and I had already been with his family, but I thought my parents and Mina would really enjoy it, and I was right!

The Pinnacles are about 20 minutes drive from the town of Cervantes (where we stayed). It's a really strange sight - in the middle of nowhere, there's a huge area of yellow sand with giant limestone formations jutting out of the ground. The whole area is surrounded by thick scrub so it really is like walking onto another planet (and at sunset, that planet would most definitely be Mars).

We also drove up to Jurian Bay where we spent some time on the beach and had an awesome fish 'n chips lunch. It was the first day this Spring that the temperature rose over 27 degrees (where we were anyway, I'm not sure about Perth!) and the beach was packed with people making the most of it. We managed to find a nice quite spot to spend a lazy Spring afternoon.

To my surprise, everyone actually had a great time! My family is notorious for having arguments over nothing in times of high stress, and going on a road trip counts as an extremely high stress situation. My parents and Mina thought the Pinnacles were really interesting, and apart from them packing the whole house to bring for a 3 day holiday, everything ran quite smoothly. I may even be able to convince them to come down to Albany next long weekend...

I Have Graduated!

2009-09-18T13:58:00.010+08:00

Last night was my graduation ceremony from Engineering / Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Western Australia. I now have in my possession two pieces of paper that make my 5 years of study official!

As far as ceremony goes, it wasn't all that bad. Ever since my high school days, where our Speech Night went for 4h, I have not been a fan of ceremonies in general, but the 2h graduation was actually pretty good!

Lara, Ro, Adam and I all deferred our graduation ceremony so we could graduate together, and it was definitely worth it. Because mid year graduation is quite small, R0 me and Lara (M, M, and K) actually got called one after the other consecutively! Adam (N) would have been called before Ro had he not chosen to drop the engineering part of his degree and keep going with Computer Science honours grrrr.

As mid-ceremony entertainment, one of the computer science lecturers sitting up the front of the hall fainted in her seat. She turned a lovely shade of green which matched her sash color beautifully (we can laugh because she was OK folks). It was actually quite ironic since she fainted in the middle of the valedictorian speech during the part where the student was describing how they didn't become an air hostess because of fear of vomit, and was much more interested in disease anyway. How awkward.

After the ceremony we did the obligatory dorky photo shoot all around the UWA pillars, had some drinks and nibblies, and then headed down to Basement on Broadway for a drink. Ro actually surprised us by booking an apartment for after graduation celebrations in the city, his shout, which was really sweet of him!

All in all a great night spent with family and great friends. I'm so happy that we decided to all graduate together - I couldn't imagine a better bunch of people to have graduated with!

My 23rd Bday!

2009-08-10T20:54:00.010+08:00

Birthday time is always busy for the Manea family, since mine falls on the 6th of August, and my dad's falls on the 8th. This year has been no exception especially since Hybrid was in town!

6th - My Birthday
On the night of my birthday (Thursday night) I had the family around to Matt's place for coffee and tea. It was really nice to get everyone together, but we had a few missing since Matt's lil sister has caught the dreaded swine flu, my uncle is currently in Romania, and it was a bit too late in the evening for Simona's kids to join us :) None the less it was a nice night of food and drinks, with Mina making way too many cakes as usual.

7th - Dinner with the Family
On Friday night I decided to take my parents and Mina out to Sandrino's, my favourite restaurant in Fremantle, and then out for dessert at San Churros which is a Spanish chocolatier right next door.

It was a typical Manea family ordeal, with Mina complaining about everything from A-Z (my favourite complaint was that the churros tasted like french fries with chocolate), but she decided she liked the Sandrino's pizza so at least there was one positive.

After dinner Matt and I rushed home and had a 2h nap because we were going back out at 12pm to see Hybrid! It was SUCH a long day - I had been working since 7.30am and was so ready to call it a night, but it's Hybrid... I would have really regretted missing them. When we got to Villa (the venue), it took us quite a long time to figure out that the guy dj-ing was actually Chris from Hybrid! We kept saying to each other how great this guy was, but we wanted him to hurry up so Hybrid would come on. Turns out Chris has just shaved his head and been enjoying a little bit more food lately so we just didn't recognise him, especially since we were expecting "Hybrid", which is actually 2 guys (Chris and Mike).

It was a really great set with a lot of variety. A few things of note were a Moby remix, a Radiohead remix, "I Love You" (John Creamer and Stephane K - Hybrid remix), and Finished Symphony which everyone went crazy for. It was a great night, but we ended up leaving at around 3.45am because we just couldn't stay awake any longer!

8th - My Party
We had a nice long sleep in and almost got our 8 hours sleep, but we had to get up and start getting stuff ready for my party that night. But first off we went to visit my dad since it was his birthday, and gave him his present which consisted of "Bucky Balls" (little magnetic ball bearings that are really addictive to play with) and my old digital camera which he had asked to have since he knew I got a new one from Matt for my birthday.

After we got back from my parents house, we spent the rest of the day (until about 8ish) getting everything together. Mina made me a whole bunch of awesome little cakes, but I still decided to make fairybread, weetbix choc slice, and some fruit and veg platters (to ease the sugar pain). I couldn't wait to put on my new shoes and my new Review dress so I did a lot of setting up in style, which of course my feet punished me for the next day.

It was a really fun night! I managed to catch up with uni and work friends, but I was missing a few people, particularly my friend Amy who was really sick that night. Poor thing came over anyway to drop off her famous Granny Crunch (a mixture of cream, crunchies, instant pudding, and other naughty things) so that was really sweet of her.

9th - Cleanup!
We spent the whole of Sunday cleaning up the house, which was long over due even before we had people over. Luckily we had the new espresso machine from my cousin Simona to provide us with much needed coffee for the day! In fact all the gifts I received were really thoughful, so thanks everyone :)

Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time

2009-06-26T19:17:00.002+08:00

My votes:

M83 - Teen Angst
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Phoenix - Too Young
Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
Underworld - Rez / Cowgirl (live)
Radiohead - Paranoid Andriod
The Chemical Brothers - Setting Sun
TV on the Radio - Province
The Future Sound of London - We Have Explosive
Sasha - Wavey Gravy

Would have loved to fit in:

Air - All I Need
Arcade Fire - Intervention
Bjork - All is Full of Love
Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy
Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
Hybrid - Finished Symphony
BT - Never Gonna Come Back Down (Hybrid Remix)
Iron and Wine - Carousel
The Knife - Heartbeats
Looper - Mondo '77
Royksopp - 49 Percent
The Shins - New Slang

Matt's Surprise Party

2009-06-15T18:01:00.002+08:00

Finally, I have the secret off my chest!

Last Saturday was Matt's belated surprise birthday party. Matt's dad was already quite sick around his birthday (in April), so the day came and went and just got forgotten. I thought he deserved a party - better late than never right?

I managed to get the numbers/emails of all of his friends, do all the shopping and organise the food without Matt even having a hint of what was going on :) My mum and Mina helped out heaps though - my mum organised all the food on the day, and Mina made many of her famous cakes which were much appreciated on the night.

On that Saturday we were actually invited to Matt's cousin's 21st birthday party, which unfortunately fell on the same day. I got Matt's mum to ask him to go over her house to help out with the new computer at 6pm, which gave me 1.5h until 7.30pm when Matt would come pick me up to go to his cousin's. My excuse for not going with him to his mum's was that I was feeling sick, and so he tucked me into bed, and went without me. Little did he know that as soon as I heard the garage door go down, I was out of bed quick-smart and running around like a madman getting everything ready.

When Matt arrived, he gave us a bit of a surprise too, since he was meant to message before he came but didn't! I think he was in the twilight zone for about an hour trying to figure out what was real and what had been lies, but slowly all the strange happenings of the week started falling into place.

All in all, it was a success! Very stressful, but so much fun to do :) Happy (belated) birthday Matt!

Dralion

2009-03-28T17:53:00.005+08:00

Last Tuesday I went to see Cirque du Soleil's Dralion with my mum, tati, Mina, and Matt. It was amazing! I had never been to a Cirque du Soleil performance before, and I didn't know much about it in general, other than it wasn't a regular circus. I ended up getting tickets by chance since there was a special offer through my work that got us cheap tickets, but I'm completely won over and will definitely go again at any chance I have!

My favourite performance was the hand balancing act. As the name suggests, it was a girl balancing on one hand (for over 5 minutes straight!) while performing inconceivably elaborate holds. She switched hands a couple of times but for the greatest part of the act she was balancing on her right hand with her elbow slightly bent. This was the only act that I actually couldn't believe was possible! All of the other acts also seemed extremely hard, but it was perceivable that with an immense amount of practice, the human body was capable of doing those things. The hand balancing act was like... magic. I was speechless at the time!

My second favourite act was the ribbon dance. This involved a guy and a girl performing a love story type dance on suspended ribbons. It was very beautiful, and it was of particular interest to me because I've actually looked into taking lessons at a dance studio I used to go to that recently added a suspended ribbon room to their building! It was amazing to see what is possible at the height of that sport - really really impressive.

In conclusion, if you ever have a chance, go see a Cirque du Soleil performance! My whole family loved it, and they're pretty hard to impress :)

Bamboo

2009-03-08T12:20:00.005+08:00

I recently bought a small bamboo plant from IKEA which already had a little shoot growing out of the side. I planted it in a vase by propping it up with marbles, and maintained it by keeping the water topped up whenever I remembered. I can't remember exactly how long, but it took no time at all for the little shoot to be almost as big as the main bamboo!

I decided to take a clipping of the little shoot and put it in it's own vase. I looked it up on the net and found that bamboo is quite resilient and clipped shoots grow quite readily. It seems that as long as the shoot is bigger that about 10cm you shouldn't have any problems with getting it to catch and grow.

I made a clean cut with a really sharp serrated knife at the place where the shoot connected to the main bamboo, trying to keep as close to the mother plant as possible. Then I placed the shoot in a similar setup to the original bamboo - propped up in a vase with marbles and water - since the original bamboo seemed to be doing really well in it's environment.

Hope it works!

Reticulating

2009-03-02T16:55:00.005+08:00

This long weekend Matt and I decided to tackle the next step in fixing our front yard disaster - putting in reticulation. We got a couple of quotes for around $2000 (parts and labour) which seemed a bit excessive for something we felt wasn't too difficult (hah!) so we decided to do it ourselves.

To get started, we measured up our front yard, and then went to Total Eden with a scale drawing. We didn't realise we had to provide them with our bore flow rate too, so we had to go back for that missing detail. After figuring out how to turn our bore on, we realised that measuring would be difficult since the water pretty much exploded out of the bore pipe! To actually measure the water, we used a big mop bucket with measurements on the inside and let the bore run for 1 second (I timed 1 second with Matt's iPhone). Well, we didn't PLAN it to be 1 second, but it just so happened that the time it took for Matt to turn the bore on, and then turn it off again as soon as he heard me scream "ARHGHRHSTTTTOPPP" was 1 second. We measured 4 litres in the bucket, and 0.9 seconds on the iPhone, and lets estimate about 10 litres all over me, which was enough to tell the man at Total Eden that we had plenty of bore pressure to run the whole front on one solenoid (he almost didn't believe us).

Total Eden drew up a plan for us and quoted $680 for all the parts, so we were really happy to save the extra even if it meant doing the hard bit ourselves.

Actually doing the retic involved measuring where the pipes were to be laid, digging trenches for the pipes, and putting the pipes together. Before we started, we decided to get rid of our old and unused cement bore by smashing it up with a sledge hammer and filling it in with sand. It was much more successful (and fun!) than we expected and it's completely gone now so we have one less eye sore to worry about!

Matt, my dad and I spent all day Saturday measuring and digging the trenches. It was... extremely difficult, and the 36 degree heat did not help. We found that taking turns digging while one person went around wetting the dirt with the hose was the most efficient way to work.

We spent all day Sunday actually laying the pipes. This involved measuring the pipes up, priming the ends (with pipe primer) and gluing pipes together with T-junctions between them (using PVC cement). The T-junctions had the bottom of the 'T' facing up and were for the actual sprinklers to sit in. Another key aspect of the day was continuously driving to Bunnings to get extra parts as we kept breaking stuff.

After all the pipes were glued together, we turned the bore on (with the sprinkler tops taken out) to make sure the water ran correctly, but we were a bit worried that the pressure wasn't high enough since sprinklers at the end of the rails weren't really turning on. We ran it for a bit to get all the sand out of the pipes and then screwed all the sprinkler tops on for the final test. It worked great! Turns out you get heaps more pressure when the sprinkler tops are on so there was no drama there. The last step for Sunday afternoon was to cover up all the trenches, which was much easier than digging them, but hard work none the less.

So, we now have retic at the front! For anyone planing to take the "do it yourself" option, I highly recommend waiting for a long weekend (or taking the Monday off) to recover from the task! Next we're planning to get roll-on lawn as soon as we can, and get some paving done to run along the garage and to the back fence. Easter's coming up so hopefully we can get our act together and make good use of the days off from work. Although tomato sauce day is coming up too so that may put a hitch in our plans!

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T19:59:00.003+08:00

Ok so it's a bit late, but I'm sure everyone's Christmas and new years was just as busy as ours :|

House Stuff
We got a bit done over the holidays, including leveling the front yard, getting a new kitchen sink, a new fence, a whole lot of gardening, a dining room table, and painting the 4 bedrooms in our house. Painting really made a fantastic difference, especially in our study (which was previously a sickly purple colour) and the master bedroom, which had a poo green feature wall.

The dining table was also a great next step to making our house look more like a home. Because it's so gigantic (2.4m x 1.2m) it fills up our equally as gigantic dining room. We were a bit conflicted originally about the woven chairs, but they really grow on you and they're actually extremely comfortable! We also did a bit of work on completing our little lounge room area which is now a really cosy place where we hang out quite often.

Summadayze 09

This year Matt and I went to Summadayze to see Underworld! It was really amazing to see them live and the performance was just breathtaking. We were smack bang in the front/middle of the stage which meant that we had primo view of Karl's bizarro dancing. Of course it also meant that we got pretty trampled, and being as short as I am is not fun in the front row of the final performance of a 36 degree day.

Nautronix
Today was my first day as a grown up! I have officially started full time work at L-3 Nautronix and I'm really looking forward to getting into it. The software tasks I've got lined up look pretty interesting, which makes up for the 6.30am wake up :(

So happy new year to everyone, and have a happy and safe 2009 :)

Final Results are Out

2008-12-13T11:31:00.002+08:00

Engineering for Sustainable Development: 81 (HD)
Optimum & Adaptive Filtering: 89 (HD)
Final Year Project: 84 (HD)
Electrical Engineering Honours: H1 (first class)

I'm an engineer!

On Our Way to a New Front Yard

2008-12-12T21:57:00.004+08:00

Step 1 to our new front yard is now complete! The front yard was completely leveled over 3 days of digging, stump grinding, and hauling off truckloads of dirt (there's no video of the stump grinding because it was way too dusty to film it!). I was really happy with the job, so if anyone needs a similar thing done (in Perth, W.A) then let me know and I'll give you the name of an awesome guy.

The guy (Craig) actually said it was the worst front yard he'd ever seen! The previous owner had planted tens of trees all over the front yard, most of them really close to the house and directly over the telephone, power, and gas pipelines. One of these trees was a giant maple type tree (removed a while back) that was very close to the garage, and who's roots are currently destroying our driveway. Craig actually had to call in a stump grinder because he just couldn't remove it with his excavator! To make matters worse (if that's possible), the previous owner had in fact cut down a lot of trees over the years and covered the stumps with dirt, so there were a lot more stumps beneath the giant mount than were originally visible.

So thank god that's over and done with, and we can move on to the next steps of putting up a fence between the front/back yards, laying down reticulation, paving, and doing some landscaping. We have decided to put ONE TREE ONLY (we've certainly learnt the lesson of not planting giant trees) which will probably be a small frangipani, and using small flowers and shrubs for decoration.

An upside to the mess is that the whole process has been an icebreaker with the neighbours who have gone out of there way to come and congratulate us for finally getting our act together and sorting out the front yard disaster! Although it's still far from being resolved...

Summer Vacation? Pft.

2008-11-28T19:52:00.002+08:00

During my vacation between the end of uni and the start of full time work (at L-3 Communications Nautronix where I did my final year project) I decided to put myself to use and do some things that needed doing around the house. Turns out that there was a lot that needed to be done, and it wasn't as easy as I thought it would all be!

My first job that I thought would be a quick one to ease me into the handy-man mood was to replace all the broken globes in and around our house. I picked up all the required globes from Bunnings, and replaced most of them with ease. However, I discovered that all of our down lights were not properly covered, and so insulation had built up around the connections and was being singed by the heat! I decided to get into the ceiling and see if I could clean up a bit, but quickly discovered that I didn't fit because of the strong slant of our roof, and so settled for just putting my hand in the light fitting and taking out/pushing back as much insulation as I could from around the hole. Not the most optimal solution, but it'll do for now!

Next on my list was to replace our awful kitchen sink. Everyone who sees it says how nice it looks, but it's really REALLY inconvenient. And what the hell is that little sink on the right for anyway? We bought a really nice big double sink with flat metal bits on both sides so I finally have somewhere to prepare meat. We're getting that installed tomorrow morning so I can't wait!

Another big task is the front yard disaster. Anyone who's been over our house knows that our front yard looks like a bomb has hit it. We intend to hire someone to flatten it out to ground level, since all the soil resting on the garage wall has made a lot of moisture leak through and weaken the concrete. We've found someone who will do it for a reasonable price (well... relatively for the size of the task) and so we're looking forward to getting that done so we can design our new front yard.

Something that I'd love to do, but may be a bit ambitious for the time frame, is to paint! Matt and I have been looking at some paint swatches and we've decided on a dark red feature wall for the master bedroom (with the other walls a pale beige). The other 3 bedrooms are going to be that same pale beige, with a slightly darker shade for the far walls. We tested our dark red feature wall idea with a bed sheet that was roughly the same colour, and decided that it looked good!

Some other things on my list include sorting out our shower leakage problem, overhauling our backyard (which is currently in good progress), and buying a new fridge. I've definitely been keeping busy!

Last... Exam... EVER

2008-11-13T22:22:00.004+08:00

Today I just had my final exam ever! I officially graduate next year, but as far as units are concerned, I've completely finished. I haven't been posting lately since there hasn't been much to post about; I've mostly just been in thesis writing mode. Hopefully a lot more interesting things will be happening to me now that I actually have time to do stuff!

I really enjoyed today actually, even the exam part! I guess you can enjoy anything if you know it's the last time you'll ever have to do it. After the exam, we all went down to the tavern to celebrate. I also did the whole tourist thing and went around and took photos of all the places around uni where I spent countless hours working on labs, reports, and my thesis. I also managed to catch the male peacock showing off to the females! He's almost as tall as me when he's all puffed up like that!

So goodbye UWA, I'll miss you!

Perth Royal Show 2008

2008-10-05T22:39:00.003+08:00

The Perth Royal Show comes around once a year. It's kind of a big fete with all sorts of things to see and do. When I was younger I went every year, but since it's usually around the end of the uni semester (which is a very busy time), I've been missing it the last couple of years.

This year I went with a couple of my girl friends and spent the day feeling young again. I decided to do some fun makeup, but I didn't wear my traditional "show hat" (which is a jesters hat fully equipped with bells) which was a good thing since the crowd seems to have matured a bit.

We saw the baby animal farm where I patted some piglets, the dog and cat shows, and a variety of other animals including one giant animal (in the bottom pic) that I don't know the name of (please do tell if you know what it is). It really was huge; they must have had him sedated because he could have done some damage with even just a tail flick!

I went on a couple of rides (the GeeWizz and the Orbitron) but they're so expensive now days ($10/ride!) that we drew the line at two. I bought heaps of lollies and chocolate, and also some dark red bed sheets which I've been wanting for ages, so that was really awesome. It was really fun to take a break from uni and have a nice relaxing day at the show. Actually I've been taking it easy lately, and will be next weekend too with the Spring in the Valley wine festival, a b'day, and a movie night. I think it's my attitude of "it's final year, I'll just enjoy it instead of stressing"!

TV Forecast is in stores NOW!

2008-09-18T21:20:00.002+08:00

Matt has just released TV Forecast as an iPhone application at the App Store! Check out Matt's site for details and links to get it.

There's been some awesome reviews already - it's really cool to see people enjoy all the hard work that's gone into it. Keep an eye out for the Countdown view (in horizontal mode) which was my personal contribution to the project ;)

It's going for US$2.99 and AU$3.99 so check it out. And don't be shy, give Matt a review :)

Metameter

2008-08-18T22:29:00.005+08:00

After a cease and desist email from IGN Entertainment, and much to the dismay of his fans, Matt was forced to take the Tomatometer widget down. Luckily, we've ported the functionality to the new and shiny Metameter, which uses Metacritic in place of Rotten Tomatoes.

So check out Metacritic (available from Matt's website) for some movie rating widget goodness!

Food Tip #2

2008-08-13T20:15:00.003+08:00

I recently discovered the joys of dipping food in chocolate when we finally used the fondu set my cousin bought for us in Switzerland. Although, this brought up the dilemma of what foods can in fact be dipped in chocolate (of course anything can be dipped in chocolate, but whether it will be tasty is another story). Some stuff is obvious (e.g. strawberries) but other stuff isn't that clear (e.g. pineapple).

So I've come up with a rule: If you can prefix the food in question with the word "milk", and it still sounds appetising, then it will taste good dipped in chocolate.

This makes the choice a lot easier - how gross does pineapple milk sound!

Food Tip #1

2008-08-13T19:56:00.003+08:00

Living out of home sort of forces you to optimise your life. I thought it'd be nice to share my findings as I... well, find them. Here's the first of my tips for food!

A mini liquor bottle makes an awesome container for holding salad dressing. Despite the strange looks you'll get when you pour that "vodka" on your lunch, it's much handier than having soggy lettuce by lunch time. Sure you can buy a dressing bottle and leave that at work, but I much prefer using salt, pepper, oil, and wine/balsamic vinegar than the salad dressings you buy.

Just because it's Yellow doesn't mean it tastes like Lemon

2008-08-03T21:13:00.003+08:00

For my birthday I decided to make some cupcakes in lieu of a cake, and thought it would be cute to make them colourful. So I split up the icing mixture into 5 separate cups and added some food colouring to make some purple, green, orange, yellow and pink icing.

The funny thing is, some people managed to taste flavours that weren't there - the pink ones tasted like strawberry, and the yellow ones like lemon! I didn't get any feedback on the purple flavour, maybe because everyone avoided them because they looked grey in the outdoor light. Possibly they would taste like something grey... maybe dust?

Fancy?

2008-07-06T21:25:00.005+08:00

I was on my way out of Malaga Markets the other week after doing our weekly fruit 'n veg shopping, when I decided to take a look in the pet shop. I thought it might be nice to get a new pet mouse (RIP Penny the mouse), so I made my way to the back of the shop where the small cages are kept.

Amongst the usual rodents such as guinea pigs and rats, there was a cage marked "Fancy Mouse", which housed a very large mountain of newspaper, but no visible mouse (fancy or otherwise). Curious as to what sort of pet a fancy mouse was (and why they were charging $2 extra for him), I asked the shop keep to tell me. She said that she didn't actually know but was also interested to find out, so she started to dig through the newspaper mountain for the tenant of the cage.

After a bit of rustling, she managed to catch what appeared to be a regular mouse, a bit on the old and mangey side, but with no tail. From the strange bump on it's backside I'm guessing that this mouse was born with a tail, but had parted ways with it at some point during it's long life.

What did I learn from this experience? That you can take a damaged, inferior, or dated item, prefix the word "fancy" to it's description, charge a few extra dollars, and sucker people like me in.

eBay

2008-07-06T21:15:00.002+08:00

I was recently looking for a gold bangle, but quickly decided that they were a bit too expensive, even for the hollow kind. I decided to take a look on eBay and found this store that sells jewelry with bids starting at 99c. That means that if not many people bid on an item you can end up getting it really cheap.

I ended up bidding on a few items, and won two items; a 4mm bangle, and 3x2mm bangles. They're gold filled (not solid gold, but thicker than gold plating), but they're just as shiny! I managed to get each item for $20, which is a lot better than a price in the hundreds for a solid bangle from a jewelry store. Sure they might not last forever, but I'll probably get sick of them by then anyway!

Gardening Galore

2008-05-05T21:52:00.002+08:00

Matt and I have been on a gardening rampage lately since the garden refuse truck thing is coming around this week. We've managed to completely destroy our front yard (in a good way), and even got rid of our giant tree out the front!

Well OK we payed someone to do it, but it's gone none the less. I have mixed feelings about that tree - the guy told me it was over 20 years old, so it's very sad to see it taken down, but at the same time I'm so relieved we won't have to clean our gutters anymore!

We can't wait to start planting stuff, and getting our garden looking like a garden instead of a jungle. It's still a long way off though, since the next step is to get the ground leveled out the front, but we're slllloooowwwlly getting there!

My Final Year Project Trial

2008-05-05T21:26:00.002+08:00

I thought I'd finally post a little bit about my final year project for those of you who are interested in one of the reasons why I'm always so stressed out :)

I'm currently in my final year at uni, finishing off my engineering degree. Part of this is completing a final year project, which is how UWA (university of Western Australia) decides whether or not you graduate with honours.

My final year project is an industry partnered one, which means that I'm doing it for the uni, but also for L-3 Nautronix. It's still very research based, but has a practical component to it as well.

L-3 Nautronix does a lot of through water communications, and the problem I'm tackling is that of noisy platforms. The idea of the project is to investigate a noise cancellation system to get rid of the noise introduced by a noisy platform at the receiving end of a communication system. When a signal comes in to a Nautronix receiver (which is a big heavy ball thing usually hanging off the end of a boat) a lot of noise is introduced by the platform (such as a noisy boat motor). After some investigation, we chose to use a signal processing approach involving adaptive interference cancellation.

It's actually very easy to describe the gist of whats going on. Imagine putting a microphone at the receiver, and one at the boat motor. One of the microphones would give you a pure boat noise signal, and the other microphone would give you the incoming information signal plus some boat motor noise too. If we subtract one from the other, we're left with the information signal only! Of course it's not that simple due to things like a time varying underwater channel between the motor and receiver etc. but it's very doable, and the adaptive algorithms take care of most of the mess.

Last Friday I went out on trial to do the physical version of the microphone analogy. I went out with the HAIL team on their trial, and did my recordings after they had finished. It was actually a really fun day! I saw a dolphin, some little flying fish thingies, and I went on a boat which was very exciting.

I haven't had a chance to look at all the data I've recorded yet due to my weekend being EXTREMELY busy, but I'm confident that I've got a fair bit to work with! I'm interested to see how strong the effects of the channel were, since I have no idea what to expect. I'm a bit worried that the two "microphones" I used were too different (in terms of response), so hopefully that's OK for what I need.

So there's a short summary of what I've been doing, feel free to ask any questions about the subject :)

If LOST Was a Soapie

2008-05-02T21:47:00.002+08:00

So what if LOST was a soap opera? Well, it would probably have a title sequence much like this one...

Made by Matt Comi

Transporting Wastewater at UWA

2008-04-29T19:52:00.001+08:00

I'm doing a unit called Engineering for Sustainable Development, which is in fact a mechanical unit, but I had to do it anyway due to timetable issues. It's one of those fluffy units that's not very well defined, and where lectures are guest lecturers from industry, and I haven't quite figured out how to enjoy it yet.

Although, it does have it's moments. One of the major assignments for the unit was a Wastewater Transport Project. There was a company, JAMARG, who was producing a bunch of wastewater (i.e. water from a hose) that needed to be transported through the Fiefdoms (different regions of the campus) by the 9 transport companies A-I (we were Transport Team I - iTransport) to UniTreat, the wastewater treatment plant located on the opposite side of uni.

The lead up to the practical was to write a huge management plan involving a risk assessment, communication plan, forms, procedures, policies, etc. That... was not fun, and turned out to be a huge time sink which is not good in final year. However, the day was pretty awesome!

We were given a wheelbarrow and 4 buckets, and we had to physically transport the 220L of wastewater (per transport company) with a wheelbarrow via our secure transport system. Some teams went all out and bought paint buckets as enclosures. We went for the cheap option - put bags in the buckets and fill those up instead, then tie them up with a knot to prevent spillages. By the way a spillage is penalised by a 10minute wait and some money loss too.

We didn't do too badly - we only had one minor spill, but didn't manage to deliver our full consignment. This was relatively minor compared to UniTreat who managed to have two fatalities; a mother pushing a pram wandered into the wastewater treatment area and became contaminated, and promptly died.

So after all my complaining I managed to have a pretty good time! Going down to the tav with our blue suits on was a nice end to a hard days work hauling hazardous waste.

Glad Wrap vs. Al Foil

2008-04-19T15:41:00.002+08:00

This is something that's been bothering me for a while now, and I was hoping to get some comments that will clear up my kitchen konundrum.

OK so how do you make the decision to use Al foil rather than Glad Wrap and vice versa? Sometimes it's obvious, for example, left over pizza is definitely an Al foil thing, where as left over chicken is definitely a Glad Wrap thing.

But sometimes I'm left confused - how do I cover up the left over sausage sizzle? What about left over steak? Left over pasta? Help!

On another note, check out Matt's post about the worst movie in the world, Dark Hunters, which happens to star Jeff Fahey, a Lost cast member. I strongly suggest that you watch this movie if you ever happen to come across it - it's... HILLARIOUS - I think I've seen it about 10 times now and each time has offered a new facet of ridiculousness. I picked it up from a bargain bin in a Sydney $2 shop as a joke present for Matt's sis. Best $2 spent ever!

Face to Face Expo and Google Visits

2008-04-11T21:20:00.003+08:00

I thought I'd post about some stuff that happened last week, since I've been really distracted with final year project proposal due in, tests, assignments... the usual stuff!

Google Tech Talk
The Google guys have been going around to universities spreading the word and doing tech talks. UWA was lucky enough to have Susannah present the Map-Reduce tech talk. I had already heard it at the Anita Borg finalists retreat last year (tech girls - APPLY!), but I picked up a lot more this time around.

The Googlers invited the previous year's finalists out to dinner to catch up on what was going on. Of course the topic of final year project was taboo (for obvious stress reasons) so it was no tech talk at the dinner table. Speaking to the guys got me thinking about applying for an internship over the summer... but I've just moved out so small steps, small steps.

Engineers Australia Face to Face Expo
The Face to Face expo is held at the Claremont Showgrounds and is really just a hoard of companies with stalls trying to scope out the talent (engineering talent that is). I attended this year not as a student, but as a representative for L-3 Nautronix! It was very fun being on the other side, despite the being soaking wet all day (there was torrential rain all morning - but my shoes were fine phew!).

Our stall was put together in a bit of a rush, so we definitely learned a lot that will make it better next year, for example, we're planning on having a banner that lists the types of engineering disciplines that are relevant so that the civil guys don't bother inquiring.

We had a few really interesting people talk to us, so all in all it was successful! Hopefully there's a lot of applicants this year, since it seems to be hard to find good graduates who aren't planning to move away from Perth.

Uni Stuff
Digital Microelectronics System Design (DMSD) test next week, group assignment due, Digital Communications and Networking (DCN) assignment due, Engineering for Sustainable development management plan and practical due (it's actually quite awesome, I'll post about it later), final year project in continuous high stress mode... I miss the days when comp sci and maths units took the edge of the engineering :(

Keeping my chin up though!

RIP Penny the Mouse

2008-04-05T19:15:00.003+08:00

Penny was a happy mouse and was loved by everyone (except for my grandma, but that doesn't count). She liked to be patted between her ears, and her favourite treat was biscuit crumbs.

Penny was my pet for a year, and she is greatly missed :( Goodbye Penny!

Easter Long Weekend!

2008-03-25T18:52:00.003+08:00

This year Easter was not during the mid semester uni break, so we all got a 4 day long weekend... AHHH :) Although it went to fast, like all holidays, and it was back to work today, and uni again tomorrow grrrr

I'm still recovering from the continuous stream of food over the weekend, and we now have more chocolate than we've ever had in our house.

We also have lots of boiled eggs now - we have a tradition where we colour boiled eggs, usually red, and it's sort of a game where you try and break other people's eggs with your egg (don't ask...), so that'll be lunch for a few days yet!

Matt and I thought that Saturday would be a nice relaxing day to go IKEA shopping, since of course, no one was likely to go shopping during the Easter break (no sarcasm, we really did think that). But the monstrous new Innaloo was packed as always, making it extra fun to weave through the IKEA maze. We picked up a lovely Expedit bookcase, which we've been wanting for a long time now yay!

In other news... nothing much has been happening other than working hard on my final year project, and being back at uni. The new house is going well, and our new washing machine means that we are now fully independent!

Keep an eye on Matt's website for some upcoming developments! I'm helping Matt work on a fun project that I can't wait to see take off :)

So hope everyone had a happy Easter with minimal chocolate/food overload!

Valentine's Day

2008-02-16T16:41:00.002+08:00

It's one of those things you can't help but get sucked into despite the shameless marketing ploy that it is. But the way we think about it is that it's the day where we have to make an effort to relax and have a nice dinner, no matter how busy we are.

This year Matt surprised me with breakfast pancakes with jam and cream, and bought me this gorgeous green vase with a red rose. I had a similar idea, and bought a big square vase (we both like the modern square stuff) and filled it with red things like strawberry tea, Cherry Ripe bars, strawberry lollies, and berry Tim Tams.

After dinner we went to our favourite Chinese restaurant, which is usually very quiet, but was uncharacteristically filled to the brim with Valentine's Day restaurant goers. It was nice and romantic, despite having to scream at each other to hear anything.

We ended the night with strawberry tea on our swing, with the fairy lights on (awww). Hope everyone had a great Valentine's day!

Big Day Out 2008

2008-02-04T19:11:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was the Perth 2008 Big Day Out, and I'm still recovering from the best festival I've ever been to. The weather didn't let up, and it ended up getting to 37 degrees - and boy did everyone feel it. I straightened my hair before I left, and when I got home I had tight curls!

Matt and I were there to see Spoon, Arcade Fire, Bjork, and anything else on top of that was pretty much a bonus. We also ended up seeing Josh Pyke, Battles, Silverchair (well, heard Silverchair), and LCD Sound System (last 10 minutes).

Spoon was first up, on the Green stage, which was a small, out of the way venue. What we saw was really great, but we had to leave early to get to Arcade Fire in time. We had to leave during Don't Make Me a Target which was a real shame, but I'm just happy I was there for You Got Yr .Cherry Bomb.

Arcade Fire was AMAZING, really just awesome. Because the band is so big (10 people I think?) and because they all play so many instruments, the show was really amazing to watch. At one point one of the drummers climbed the scaffolding and started playing up there. My highlights were Intervention, and Keep the Car Running. I didn't realise there were so many Arcade Fire fans, but everyone was singing along to almost all the songs (bar the French lyrics of course).

Bjork stole the show with a crazy performance littered with bizarre costumes, lasers, and confetti. The crowd went nuts for her and you could tell that everyone around was a die hard Bjork fan. The whole set was great, and really, every song was a highlight, but I guess my pet favourite has always been All is Full of Love, which she sang so beautifully that everyone just went silent to listen to it.

So all in all it was the best festival I've ever been to, and the night ended in the best shower I've ever had, and lead into the worst day at work I've ever had. But of course you can't have one with the other.

Still Getting Used to Writing 2008 on Stuff

2008-01-13T21:45:00.000+08:00

Well it's 2 weeks into the new year, and it looks like I've kept up my last year's new years resolution (keeping this very blog) quite well! All in all the new year's break has been non eventful, with family stuff taking up most of our spare time.

Christmas, new years, and boxing day were spent with the family (as always), so we ate a month's worth of food in a week (as always).

In work news, I've moved on to my CEED project on site work, so I'm no longer getting paid as a vacation student. This is very depressing as I was just getting used to the steady income of money, which I found to be very pleasant. I'm currently researching the different types of solutions that I may use for my project, which has involved reading many books on adaptive filtering/blind source separation theory, which all tends to look like "Greek alphabet soup" after a while. But I am not discouraged! The sea trial where I'll be recording all my data is coming up, and I'm really looking forward to that.

I've just finished reading "Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions" (Edwin A. Abbott) which was a Christmas present from Matt, inspired by my interest in manifolds. It was a really great little book which involved no maths, and really gets you thinking. I had previously tried reading "The Shape of Space" (Jeffrey R. Weeks), but that really requires pen and paper to fully keep up with the content. But I strongly recommend Flatland as a short read for anyone who's interested in thinking about our perception of space.

I'm back at work tomorrow after a week of struggling with the dreaded holiday stomach bug. It looks like the year has already fallen back into the regular pace!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2007-12-25T21:46:00.000+08:00

Just had a really nice, relaxing (by my family's standards anyway) Christmas day. Got some very cool gifts including:

A watch (thanks Mum and Tati)
A new desk for Matt (some contribution from my parents)
A little outdoor setting for our little duck out (pressie for us from us)
A blender and a baking dish (thanks ZiiZii)
A cute bath mat and some Nandos sauces (thanks Elissa)
Tea towels and salad tongs (thanks James and Chloe)
Door bell and a vacuum cleaner (thanks Matt's parents

I bought Matt a big CD wallet, a desk protector mat thingo, a draw tidy, and Corpse Bride, Night Before Christmas, and a Labyrinth and Dark Crystal double DVD. Matt got me 3 full length mirrors (for when my pole finally gets here), Xenocide (an Ender's Game novel), and one more surprise coming in the mail!

We're having a boxing day family thing tomorrow, but it's going to have to be indoors since it's going to hit 41 degrees tomorrow eek! Get a chance to see how that water cooler air con works in high humidity...

In other news, work is going well! After the break I'll be entering my CEED student on site period during which I'll be gathering info for my final year project. It's starting to look very exciting (and scary!) but it's very promising and I can't wait to work on it. The project itself is to investigate a noise canceling system for the receiver end of an underwater acoustic communication system, but I'll save the details for a later time (and for those who care!).

Work went really well over the summer break. I finally got to solder something! Reaching the end of my engineering degree without having soldered anything was getting embarrassing so I'm glad I finally crossed that bridge. My test box works well and is currently being used a lot, so that's very fun to see. I quite enjoyed making the box from scratch (which involved wiring diagrams, drawings, ordering the parts, drilling the box, soldering stuff, crimping, heat shrinking, and many more very fun things), even though that sort of thing isn't really what the engineers do every day.

We had the office Christmas party at Social on Station St (which is where I had my 19th birthday) and I was disappointed to find out that the adjoining restaurant was not of the same high caliber as the cocktail bar. Also I was looking forward to trying my first cigar but they no longer sell them at the bar, probably due to the new indoor smoking rules. I ended up enjoying the night a little TOO much (engineering student + free wine = mayhem mayhem mayhem!), but on the upside I won a greatly needed cookbook in the raffle, which will hopefully help expand our diet of frittatas and toasted sandwiches.

Hope everyone has/had a great Christmas and an exciting new year!

Results are Out

2007-12-08T18:42:00.000+08:00

Results came out a few days early this year - hope everyone went well and passed, and can put the 2007 uni year behind them!

Here's mine:

91 Robotics
84 Analog Electronics
95 Graphs and Geometry
100 Electromagnetic Theory

Electromag theory!! WHAT THE HELL? Those who know me (or read my blog for that matter) will have had to frequently put up with my complaints about how hard that unit was and how I didn't understand anything. That one was completely unexpected!

News Update

2007-11-29T18:52:00.000+08:00

Well my week off between the end of exams and the start of work absolutely flew by, and was mainly chewed up by house stuff and organising my final year project. I'm just about to finish my first week at L3-Nautronix doing some engineering vacation work, and I've also mostly organised my CEED project.

I'm really enjoying my vacation work, and it's really fun to get an insight into what the other half of my degree is all about. I've done 2 lots of vacation work as a software engineer already, but I was feeling a bit uneasy about the fact that I really had no practical electronic engineering experience at all. It's a bit strange at work, and I'm feeling really self conscious about being a complete beginner to the point where I've only soldered something once in my life, and I barely know how to use a multimeter. Oh well I guess you have to start somewhere! It's just strange because if I was programming I'd know exactly what to do, but I need to take baby steps on the hardware side of things.

Although, my tasks have been really fun! I'm in the middle of building a test box and I got to do some catalog shopping for all the parts I needed. Who says engineering isn't girly! I threatened to make the box all pretty, but alas the world is seriously lacking in pink pcb connectors.

My uni friends and I celebrated the end of exams last weekend with a notes burning session mainly aimed at destroying our piles of dreaded electromagnetic theory work. I thought I'd be environmentally friendly and only choose the most scaring of all my work, which included a selection of the worst tutes and some past exam questions. All in all it was actually a very healing experience, probably because inhaling all that smoke burned out the bit of my brain who's purpose it was to remember that I took electromag theory in the first place.

Christmas is fast approaching, and Matt and I have already put the Christmas tree up. It's looking a bit lonely without any presents under it, but we just couldn't wait! Although I have a feeling it's going to be a boring Christmas this year, since we'll be getting a lot of "necessary" house items, which we are of course very grateful for, but it's no fun opening a washing machine on Christmas day. I guess having a house on our own is definitely a present in it's own right though.

My CEED project is looking very promising at the moment, and I'm really excited about getting all the details sorted. I'm having a meeting with my project mentor (from Nautronix) and supervisor (from UWA) on Monday, so I'll post what I can about it soon.

I already can't wait until the Big Day Out... Arcade Fire, Bjork, Spoon... YAY! I get a big smile every time I walk past my fridge. (Our tickets are on the fridge... not that I don't usually smile at fridges).

And It's Over :)

2007-11-16T18:29:00.000+08:00

Just had my last exam today (Robotics), which went absolutely great since it was the EXACT exam set in 2005 hahah lazy lecturers (oh well suits me fine). I got out of the exam room and the sun shone a little brighter for me today! Also, congratulations to everyone else who also finishes exams today, which is all of UWA, and Edith Cowan too I think.

I'm pretty much just going to relax tonight by watching a movie with Matt and getting some well deserved sleep, then celebrate tomorrow at Yvonne's going away and a 21st at night. Ahhh it feels so good to relax and not feel guilty about not studying :)

One Down

2007-11-07T12:11:00.000+08:00

Just came back from my Electromagnetic Theory exam, and I think it went well! Definite pass, but I'm sure it'll look nicer after scaling. It was all over very quickly which sort of makes all those hours of study seem pointless. No more vector calc, time varying fields, and no more magnetostatics yayyyyy (at least for 6months anyway).

Still to go:
Saturday 10th: 9am Graphs & Geometry, 2pm Analog Electronics
Friday 16th: 9am Robotics

Google Sydney 2007

2007-10-15T14:44:00.000+08:00

I had a fantastic adventure at Google Sydney for the 2007 Anita Borg Scholarship this past week, but now unfortunately it's back to reality. I was a finalist again this year, and the winner, Tracy, is from Perth UWA, so it's great to have a Perth girl on the winner's list!

The actual retreat involved spending lots of time at the Google Sydney office, listening to talks, chatting with engineers, and generally meeting a lot of smart people. It was also really fun to meet up with people from last year's retreat! I especially enjoyed the talk given by Robin, which involved the story of how she got to where she was today, and was very inspirational. There were also some "break out sessions" where the finalists were split up into small groups to talk about issues concerning women in computer science, and it was interesting to hear about everyone's experiences of how they ended up in this discipline.

Google pretty much took care of everything, and spoiled us thoroughly with hotel rooms in the Hilton, snacks provided every hour, dinner on the warf, and a cruise of the harbour. Plus I've made some friends for life from all over Australia, which is priceless given that the engineering and technical community is so tight here.

We also had a lot of spare time, which I mostly spent with Tracy, Dana, and Liz wandering about Sydney, shopping and the like. We also did the touristy stuff like going up the Sydney Tower and taking lots of photos of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. On the last day of our trip, Tracy and I went to Taronga Zoo which was voted to be the best zoo in the world a few years ago, and it really was fantastic. The position makes it much more than a zoo, with breathtaking views of the harbour from the chairlift and lookouts throughout. The highlight for me was definitely the giraffes and the tigers, and I'd highly recommend that everyone who goes to Sydney should spend a day there.

So the moral of the story is - APPLY FOR THE SCHOLARSHIP! Going to the finalist retreat at the Google office is a really great experience, so give it a shot girls :)

IKEA Wonderland

2007-10-06T20:16:00.000+08:00

Had a very productive day today - shopping wise, not uni wise of course. Matt and I decided to take a trip down to IKEA to see what they had to offer by way of coffee tables and TV stands. We found two perfect pieces among a mostly crappy assortment of furniture, but that's always the way with budget furniture stores.

1. LACK Coffee Table: $49

2. LACK Shelving Unit: $119

3. Enjoying our new dining room: priceless.

OK so it's not priceless - it actually cost $168, but it's great to finally have some non-hand-me-down furniture of our own!

We also took a trip next door to Freedom and Furniture Bazaar, which are both slightly more pricey (but higher quality) establishments than IKEA. We definitely saw a few things to aspire to, but since a simple coffee table can cost over $400 we may put it off for a few years yet!

Matt's New and Improved Site

2007-10-06T13:36:00.000+08:00

Matt's new site design is all done and looking shiny! Check it out for some cool widgets and iPhone apps :)

Busy Time

2007-10-05T19:07:00.000+08:00

Well it's coming up to the end of semester and boy is there a lot to do! I don't think I've ever had so much stuff due all at once, and considering that Electromag Theory is one of my units, even the simplest* things take me days to finish.

I'm also sorting out my final year project for next year, and it looks about 99% sure that I'll be doing a CEED project with Nautronix (the company I've been doing vacation work for). It turns out that the engineering manager at Nautronix actually did a research project with my supervisor from uni so it looks like the project will go smoothly in terms of everyone getting along!

This weekend I also need to pack for Sydney for the Google retreat next week. I can't wait, but I'll be missing an important lab and also skipping out on my group assignments, so I'm trying heaps done before I leave so I don't feel too guilty. More on that when I get back, yay!

Matt's house is going very well, and I think we've pretty much moved in. We have all the basics; bed, fridge, table, tv, but we're still missing a washing machine so we've been dropping off the washing at mum's (good ol' mum and grandma to the rescue). I'm getting a knack for this cooking business, but given mine and Matt's busy schedule, it's been a chore to keep the fridge filled up with stuff to cook with.

No other major news really, since I've officially had no life since mid semester break. I'm missing the royal show AGAIN this year which is really unfortunate since I've been looking forward to seeing the duck parade again since 2 years ago :( Oh well, next year!

Keep an eye out next week for news on the Google Retreat!

*simple meaning simple to a person with an astrophysics degree

CUDOS Optical Switching Tutorial

2007-09-29T13:00:00.000+08:00

Just got back from Coogee beach, Sydney, after a couple of days at the CUDOS Optical Switching tutorial. It was really interesting stuff! The majority of students there were physics students, but there were also a few electrical engineers. Quite a bit of the material was too in depth for me, since I had no previous experience with photonics, but there were also quite a few sessions on applications and integration which were right up my alley.

The schedule was fairly tight so I didn't manage to see much of Sydney, but I went into the city on Thursday night with a few other students and we spent some priceless time at the Oprah House bar enjoying the views of the house and the bridge.

Had some fun, made some friends, but now it's back to reality and my ever increasing pile of things that are due. Although I'm back in Sydney for the Google Australia Anita Borg retreat on the 11th of October so that'll be another fun weekend to ease the pain :)

2007 Google Anita Borg Scholarship

2007-09-16T17:28:00.000+08:00

Just got the word that I'm an Anita Borg Scholarship finalist again this year! Currently awaiting an email back from Google for the date of my phone interviews which will determine the winner. Fingers crossed :)

I Always Wondered How Far I Ran

2007-09-11T15:16:00.000+08:00

I just discovered the coolest feature on Google Maps that lets you plot a journey without snapping to the roads. I have two routes that I take depending on how nice the weather is, and depending on whether I feel like walking or running. I'd always wondered how far they were, and I estimated that my run was about 3k (it's actually just under) and I estimated that my walk was about 6k (it's actually WAY over haha). It tells you the distance of the route, and you can also save the routes so you can actually see my walk and my run! How cute!

The House feels more like Home

2007-09-02T11:14:00.000+08:00

Matt's house is finally officially his, so we've been doing a lot of work lately cleaning and moving lots of things. It's been really tiring, but also really rewarding and every day it feels a bit more familiar and comfortable.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet that we have a house, and that we can choose where things go, and what to do and when. It's so cool! It's also fun to do stuff on our own, but we still need a lot of help from the parents when it comes to making new electrical sockets and antenna plugs etc. Yesterday we went shopping for a new shower head which we picked and installed in the big bathroom yesterday all by our selves! Ok this all might sound stupid to many people who have already lived on their own before, but this is the first time for me (and for Matt too).

Another thing we need to do is to start making friends with our neighbors, who all seem really sweet. One night when we arrived at the house, the couple next door was cleaning up our driveway! Another neighbor left us a welcome cake, which was delicious. We had our first guest over last night, Adam, who came over to watch the old Transformers movie (it gets more confusing every time). We still haven't stayed the night because we currently only have a king single as a bed, and plus my parent's house is only 5mins drive anyway.

In other news, the UEC (engineering) cocktail night was on Friday, and I went with a few uni friends. It's Simona's 30th birthday today and I'm just about to start getting ready to go to the bbq at her house. I also need to take Penny (my little mouse) to the vet to get her last installment of itchy cream (she was all itchy behind her ears, but she's almost better now). After a lot of thought, I've applied for vacation work at Nautronix in the hope to get some engineering experience with a company who cares about me. I decided to do this after looking through endless other job descriptions about equipment maintenance and installation, monitoring, writing user manuals, and other boring crap.

And that's about it for now! Oh I had an electromag theory test on Thursday (which went OKKKKK but we'll see), which ended in an interesting way. At the end of the test, everyone had to pass their tests to the end of the row. I was sitting next to Lara, and so Lara and I passed our tests to the guy sitting to the right of me. Lara and I started to talk about the test when I realised that I still had my equation sheet. As I turned to ask the guy at the end for my test back so I could slip my equation sheet back in, I noticed that he had his pen in his hand, and was busy copying the front page of my test onto his paper! Plagiarism at its best! We told the lecturer, but considering that the first page was only worth 3 marks out of the 60, I'm guessing it didn't help him much anyway.

More on the house later!

Vacation Work

2007-08-23T17:43:00.000+08:00

The time has come to secure work for the summer vacation... and I'm completely lost. I went to the IEEE networking evening and that sort of made things worse. I realised that I have no idea what I want to end up doing after I finish my engineering degree.

Now I could always take the easy way out and go get some software work, since that's always easy to find, but I've already done plenty of software and really want to get some engineering done before I graduate. The problem is with engineering is that most of it in Perth is very evil. Companies that make ammunition and battleships littered the prospective employers at the networking night, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be involved with stuff that kills people. Of course many will argue that it's defense and someone needs to do it, but still, I'd prefer it not to be me.

I'm quite interested in the water corporation and the Perth transport authority for these reasons, and I'm currently trying to find out more about what kind of work I'd be doing there. Although, I already know that the water corp pays about $17 an hour, which is pretty much what I'd be getting as a sales person at Tandy, so I guess you need to sacrifice money for morality - great :(

In other news, my car is back, and she's more beautiful than ever! I never realised how much I actually use my car until it was gone for a week and a half. They even vacuumed it for me, which was an unexpected nice suprise! Also, Simona and Chad and their baby Keanu are coming to Perth on the 25th, and Matt's getting the house on the 28th of August. It's Sim's birthday on the 29th and I have no idea what to get her. All this excitement does NOT bode well for my electromag theory test on the 30th...

Kymmy's Gone Again

2007-08-17T12:13:00.000+08:00

Last night Kym went back to Ireland for two years :( She's going back to finish her (optometrist) degree, and will be back in Perth after she's done. Hopefully she'll make it back for Christmas as well.

Amy and I stopped by her house last night for some goodbye strawberry cheesecake (any excuse will do), and to see her off to the airport.

We'll miss you Kym! But we know you'll make us proud no matter where you are :)

Car Troubles

2007-08-14T16:46:00.000+08:00

I thought I'd wait until it all got sorted out before I posted about my little car accident. I'm currently at uni waiting for Matt to pick me up (I caught a lift in with him since my car is in the shop), and so what better time to write about why that is.

I was in the engineering car park at around 11am. Circling around the pews slowly, I notice a car coming towards me in the opposite direction (in the other lane of course). As we approach each other, he starts to indicate, slows, and then stops. I didn't see the space he was indicating for but I guess it was behind him. I'm still driving forward slowly while he's stopped, which has been for a while now. At this point I'm next to him, when he starts to reverse, turn, and slowly hit the front-right of my car. He didn't actually notice this, and so I beeped my horn. So he stops, and then drives forward again, hitting me a second time (I'm pretty sure this is when my door got dented).

Two and a half weeks, two quotes, and a lot of heated discussion later, he finally came to his senses and wrote the cheque for the full amount (he originally only wanted to accept 80% of the blame for some reason). I guess I should be happy with the fact that this is my first car accident in the uni car parks which are packed with students, mostly P platers, desperately trying to find a spot that doesn't involve trekking for 20 minutes to class.

I get my car back on Friday which is nice and speedy.

My 21st Birthday

2007-08-06T16:50:00.000+08:00

Last Saturday night I had a small gathering of family close friends to celebrate my 21st birthday (which is actually today)! It was a really fun night (or so I'm told, I was mostly too busy to notice!) and I'll never forget it :)

I decided to have my party at home this year, and keep it small since our house is spatially limited. My mum worked really hard and managed to turn the garage, which is usually so full of cars and other stuff that you can barely walk through it, into a gorgeous room which I personally thought looked like some sort of Arabian palace. We put some rugs down around the place, and Matt's parents lent me their plastic chairs, so together with a table overflowing with food, we had a nice little party happening :)

I really wanted it to be as fun and non-formal as possible, and so I refused to give/accept speeches/toasts, and insisted on having a pass the parcel and a Pinata to prove that I am NOT an adult no matter what number candle is on my birthday cake. Although I did go a bit far on the dress, but hey, I thought I'd push the boundaries of my usual style and take a risk. Everyone really enjoyed the games, especially the pass the parcel, and especially Stefan who hadn't ever played either game. The pass the parcel was played to Toop Toop by Cassius with me as the music stopper lady person, and Kym won the big prize which was a beer mug filled with chocolates and lollies.

I had the first go at the Pinata, and managed to hit it once (very weakly), and missed for both my other goes. When it was Ashvin's turn, I had to leave the garage to take a phone call from Matt's Nonna, and when I came back everyone was crawling on the floor. I assumed everyone had gone crazy, but then I noticed that there was chocolate everywhere and the Pinata was no longer hanging from the ceiling but was in pieces on the floor. I was really upset that I didn't get to see what happened until Matt came running up to me to show me the awesome shot he got just as the Pinata had smashed to pieces! So awesome.

Apart from that the night was pretty tame. By the end of it though people could barely move because of how much food there was. People had heaps to drink but I think it's virtually impossible to get drunk with the amount of food that was eaten. I forgot to mention to everyone that it is customary for my family to make food for 10x the actual number of people coming, and I probably should have mentioned that NOBODY can say no to my grandma when she's offering food. Seriously though... there were 4 cakes!

So all in all it was a great night with great memories that will last for ever :) I put up all the photos at my Flickr page including photos of the night and of the pressies, which were all really awesome (OMG I have Eva Unit 02 I can't get over it it's so awesome - thanks Matt!)

Turning 21 is funny - I don't FEEL any different, and nothing has actually changed, except for being able to legally drink in America (FINALLY just what I've always wanted). I guess I'm still stuck at thinking I'm 17, but that was a whole 4 years ago! Time didn't fly by or anything, in fact it's dragging it's ass with uni taking me so long, but I guess I always thought I'd feel mature and responsible at this age...

NOPE!

Flickering Screen

2007-08-05T22:50:00.000+08:00

My MacBook goes in for repair tomorrow for the notorious flickering screen problem. I'll be without it for about 5 days grrrr so hopefully Winthrop Computers gets their act together and fixes it FAST!

What is it about my car that screams "Please Hit Me"

2007-07-31T12:17:00.000+08:00

I'm currently in the middle of sorting out some damage done to my car in the uni parking lot last Thursday. I was in the car at the time when this guy swiped the front of my car while he was reversing into a parking bay. I went to the panel beater this morning, and he'll have a formal quote written up for me tomorrow, but he estimates around the $1000 mark. It's funny how much a couple of scratches and a dent can cost.

More details later when it's sorted out grrrrrr.

Faculty Politics

2007-07-24T13:57:00.000+08:00

It's my second day of uni, and I'm currently sitting in the library in hour 3 of my 4 hour break until my next lecture. My timetable will fill out when labs and tutes start, but for the time being I have lots of long waits :(

Because my degree spans over the faculties of Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, I've been part of three very different environments since the start of uni. I've never quite been able to figure out what makes engineers so different from mathematicians and computer scientists, but I think I've finally put my finger on it.

I figured it out when I didn't understand something in my Electromagnetic Theory lecture. We were doing a supposedly simple example (according to the lecturer, not the students), and I was lost quite early on. After the lecture, all the people around me had the same problems as I did, and so we had a chat and figured it out to some degree, during which there were several exclamations of "oh my god this unit is going to kill us".

So I was thinking about how that would have gone about in a maths lecture. Well first of all no one would readily admit to not understanding, and during impossible parts of the lecture people would put on a "hrmmmm I seeeee" face as opposed to an "oh my god hahah what the hell is that" face. In a computer science lecture the discussion would have probably not have happened at all since comp sci students would have either been too asleep to notice the lecture at all, and regardless, seem to have pride about not understanding things for some reason.

I guess engineering is where I've made the most friends because of this, since we work through the crazy together rather than pretending we understand, and rather than not caring at all.

My Chicken Laid an Egg!

2007-07-19T12:31:00.000+08:00

Maybe I should mention that we have a new addition to the family - a little orange chicken. She's called Cocolina, after the rooster we used to have called Coco, which is short for cocos, meaning rooster in Romanian.

My grandma originally came home with three chickens, two of which are now soup, and the third is (after a lot of campaigning on the rest of the family's behalf) now our pet. She was in a really mangled state when we got her, but since then she's grown feathers in all the patches where there were none, and she generally looks much healthier. She laid one egg the day we got her, but it's been over a month since then and she completely stopped.

I was outside talking to my mum today when Cocolina started making lots of strange noises that I can only describe as a sounding like a chicken growling angrily. I checked to see whether she had laid an egg, but there was nothing there. It got to the point where me and my mum could barely hear each other over the angry growls, when we checked for a second time and there it was - an brand new egg! Good work Cocolina, we are so proud :)

Congratulations Matt!

2007-07-16T23:43:00.000+08:00

Just got back from a celebratory dinner (my shout for Matt) for Matt getting the house! His original offer wasn't accepted, but they accepted the second offer, so now he's handling all the fun stuff like getting a broker, a settlement agent, inspections, and whatever other magic you need to do before they'll give you a house.

Not sure what the plan is yet with regard to moving in (it might be leased for a while), but it's a real gem, and I can't wait to make it home :)

Pet Shop Update

2007-07-16T12:08:00.000+08:00

It's the last week of uni holidays and, as always, it's gone way too fast. I've been working a lot slower on my game than I planned to, so with uni starting, it looks like it's gonna take me a lot longer than I thought.

I've just finished writing the prototype which was a fully playable version without some of the extra features I'm going to add in later. I got to the point where I wanted to add the possibility of doubling up on items, so for example, you could drag a fish onto another fish, and a little 2 would appear below it. Then, if you complete a pen with ALL the fish attributes doubled up, you'd get double the points. I hacked it in, and it semi worked, but it was a LOT tricker than it should have been since the code has got so convoluted that even the simplest changes are a struggle.

Now that I've proved that it's do-able and play-able, it's time to stop and start from scratch. By making decisions in the prototype I've got a really good idea about how to do it properly now. I'm keeping some of the classes that I wrote really well, (I'm happy with the simpler stuff like my Scoring and ImageLibrary classes, so I'm just in the middle of writing test harnesses for those), and completely ripping apart others.

So that's what's happening with Pet Shop in case anyone was wondering if I'd completely given up on it :)

In other news... Matt's in the middle of fighting for a house in Ballajura. It's pretty much the best house we've seen so far, in a perfect little cul de sac. Fingers crossed!

I'm a (second) aunty!

2007-07-09T23:18:00.000+08:00

My cousin Simona just gave birth to her baby boy!

*** Congratulations Sim and Chad! ***

We can't wait to meet him when they come over in late August :)

Results are Out

2007-07-09T12:45:00.000+08:00

Today's the day everyone finds out if they're gonna be doing their units for a second (or third?) time. Hope everyone passed and is happy with their results! Here's mine:

100 Artificial Intelligence & Logic Programming
77 Embedded Systems
90 Circuits & Electronic Systems 3
91 Communication Systems

Overall I'm smiling, just annoyed about embedded systems. I'm not complaining, but it was a second year unit, open book exam, and its still my lowest grrrr.

Transformers!

2007-07-04T00:26:00.000+08:00

Well it's cheap ass Tuesday, and I've just came back from seeing the Transformers movie!

Me, Matt and some friends from uni arrived at Innaloo for the 6.30 screening only to find that it had been sold out, so we decided to buy tickets for the 8.00 screening. All of us there had our tickets, but Ro jumped back in line to get Lara's ticket since she was running late. As he was in the line (this is at about 6.50 by the way) the board started flashing:

Transformers: 6:30 (FULL) 8.00 (FEW)

But all was well - Ro managed to get one of the last tickets for Lara, and we had dinner at Fasta Pasta (mmm classy) while we waited for the movie.

I really enjoyed it! It was really fun seeing Matt turn into a little kid again every time something Transformery happened. The movie was really cute and I thought there was a nice balance between the fun and the serious. Although, as expected of any movie with a technological base, it was extremely cringe worthy. We all laughed out loud when the blonde girl (who was meant to be a signal expert? hahah in everyone's dreams) mentioned Fourier transforms :)

One thing that sort of annoyed me was the weight. This is strange to describe, but things look real only if they move as if they have the right weight. I think a lot of the times it looked like the transformers were moving way too nimbly for how big they were so that made it look strange, and also made it really hard to tell what was going on. I think the perfect example of what I mean about getting the weight right is in Asuka's final fight in End of Evangelion.

Definitely worth seeing, I'm glad we FINALLY did!

Smooth Sailing

2007-06-28T23:59:00.000+08:00

I just got home from a fantastic dinner with Amy and Kym, my two closest friends from high school, and I just got to thinking how nice things have been these holidays. We had great food and great wine at Villa Da Vinci (a local restaurant in Ballajura). It was really nice to catch up since Kym has been studying in Ireland and Amy and I have both had a hard semester at uni, so we'd been craving a nice night out for a long time. I topped off the night by watching an episode of Cowboy Bebop with Matt, over a warm tea. What a nice end to the week :)

My game's coming along smoothly; I've just worked on being able to drag things between the pen components, and I'm planning on adding a timer next. It's getting to the point where it's almost a real game! I'm really excited that I've finally seen something through, as opposed to having an idea and then getting distracted and completely forgetting about it. I'm really looking forward to putting up a prototype to see what people think, so at the moment I'm hacking a lot of things up, but I'll sit down and redesign the whole thing when it's all operational. Matt's been working on some more graphics which is awesome, so we'll have something complete in no time :)

I'm trying to line up some vacation work for the summer holidays, and I've got my fingers crossed about getting a placement at an engineering company. I'd really like to get some experience in that area of my degree since I'm pretty confident on the software side of things, but am really clueless when it comes to engineering stuff in practice. So hopefully I get some good news from Raytheon!

My cousin Simona is about 11 days off from giving birth to my... I guess second nephew? Bah I'm not sure how that works but I'm gonna call my self an aunty anyways :) She'll be coming over to Perth sometime in August and I can't wait to meet my nephew! It's funny... I'm an only child, and none of my friends have had young siblings, so I've really only seen about 3 babies (apart from the ones you see in strollers in shops), and I've never actually held one! I can't wait to hold him!

Our house hunting has been going pretty well, and Matt's put an offer down on a house we're really interested in. Hopefully that goes well because it'd be fantastic to finally get our foot in the real estate door. Plus it's pretty much now or never cause house prices are apparently on the rise again pretty soon :|

So that's what's been going on for me, lots of nice things to think about :) I'm really enjoying my holidays and I'm taking it REALLY easy. I might be tutoring Kym's bro at some math, and I may be helping out Amy with some work at Video Ezy, but apart from that and my game, it's been smooth sailing for me these holidays :)

Pet Shop

2007-06-26T00:24:00.000+08:00

I've recently started making a game. I don't actually know why I started, but I just thought of a cute little idea and realised that I'd probably be able to make it if I put my mind to it. It's still in the VERY early stages, and is just a prototype at the moment, but I can already tell that it's gonna be fun to play just from what I've got working right now.

The game's gonna be called something along the lines of Pet Shop, and it's all about putting together pet bundles. An attribute will appear in the middle of the board, and then you have to place it in a pen. The point will be to get all the attributes of a pet (so the animal, the house, the toy, and the food) together in a pen (each blue area is a pen), which will then get you money (or points I guess). There's also stuff you can't do, like put a bird and a cat together, in which case you'll loose everything that's in the pen with the conflicting animals.

I'm still trying to figure out the game play exactly, but there'll be a time delay that lets you move the conflicting animals away from each other before they fight. I'm also trying to figure out some other details like how the points will work, when and how you loose lives, how you can flush the pens etc. Hopefully that'll all fall into place :)

Matt's been doing the graphics as I've been going along, and we've got a fish and a steak so far :) I really like what he's done and I think it's gonna look really cute when we're done with it. Please ignore the ugliness of the title and the white background etc, it's still a working progress!

So I'll keep posting about my progress and hopefully I'll have a prototype to put on here pretty soon. Watch this space :)

Exams... are... OVER!!! YAY!!!

2007-06-19T23:58:00.000+08:00

Just had my last exam yesterday and it feels so good to be finished :) I was really happy with how AI, Communication Systems and Circuits and Electronic Systems went, but I'm really worried about my Embedded Systems exam (which was a 2nd year, open book exam, so that was unexpected!). I'll post about my results, which should come out in about a month.

So that's it for the semester :) Although I'm still trying to figure out my stupid enrollment. The uni canceled a unit I was enrolled in (Neural Computation, which I'm actually really upset about), and so now I have to re enroll with either Functional Programming, Concurrent Programming (which is also probably canceled, thus no unit web page), and Human Computer Interaction (which sounds like a slack off unit). Please feel free to give me any suggestions. I'm hoping to pick concurrent, but I'm not getting my hopes up since I'm pretty sure it's not going to be run *sigh*. I need to organise a meeting with a course adviser about the whole mess.

So I've just had a relaxing day cleaning up my study, going for my run (I've been slacking off lately!), shopping (bought some nice speakers for Matt's new LCD tv), and going out to dinner with a few friends. Tomorrow I'm gonna go pay off my enrollment for polemoves intermediate (starting Saturday woohoo!), do a bit more shopping (I've been deprived, OK?), get my hair cut/coloured (so overdue - my colour is about half way down my head), and start on my game!

It's nice to actually be able to think about all this stuff without feeling guilty about not studying for exams!

Optical Switching Tute

2007-06-12T23:53:00.001+08:00

Just got an email from one of the CUDOS committee letting me know that I'm one of the 30 students from 3rd and 4th year engineering, physics and science being flown to Sydney for a workshop on optical switching. Yay! It's in September so it's yonks away but it's definitely something I'll be looking forward to next semester.

I really have no idea what it's going to be about, but I guess that's the point. I'm sure it'll be all about how what we've learned in uni is going to be redundant quite soon - but I'm pretty used to getting told that given that I'm doing computer science aswell :| But I'm really interested to find out what it's all about because I've just done a unit called Circuits and Electronic Systems 3 (my exam for that is this Friday... AHH!). I've just spent the whole semester learning about MOSFET's (and to a lesser extent bipolar) transistors, so I'm full bottle on the current uses, speed limitations, etc. This workshop is about the research being done into optical switching which is faster than current technology. How exciting! (look - it's exciting for me, OK?)

As an added bonus the retreat is in Coogee beach in Sydney, which is the next beach up from Bondi, so I can't wait for that :)

Anyway back to exam study :)

I'll Never Get Used To Exams

2007-06-07T23:16:00.000+08:00

It's just reaching the end of study week, and exams are fast approaching. I've actually been working really hard all week, but I'm not at all confident this year. I guess it's because this semester it's been 3x Engineering + 1x Computer Science, and the computer science unit (AI and Logic Programming) has been EXTREMELY hard. It's been completely unlike any other computer science unit - mostly theory, completely abstract, and the only programming has been in Prolog which isn't quite programming at all. Also I usually have one maths unit to balance out the engineering units, but this semester it's been full on with the hard core eng. I guess I'll just have to take it as it comes and do my best, and hope it'll aaaalll work out (eeek!).

To keep up my spirits I've been coming up with some Fun Things(TM) to look forward to during and after exams. Helps keep my eyes on the horizon and makes the impending exam doom seem less doomy. I'm looking forward to:

Seeing Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End - just watched the first two on Matt's new LCD tv... so nice!
Getting my hair cut - for some reason during semester I never get my hair cut and it ends up being all gross by the end of semester
Teaching Penny some new tricks - she's already learned how to walk vertically down a ladder (!) but that's about it so far
Putting up my Space Doggy print - I've had it for about a month now and I still haven't got around to putting up a hook
Starting Polemoves Intermediate - I've been slacking off with the exercise so it'll be great to start classes again
Washing my car - YESSS my car is finally back with a brand-new second-hand (haha) gear box, but it's all dirty and I really need to clean it up (the car, not the gear box)
Working on my game - I've come up with a really cute idea for a little game that I have no idea how to make, so I'm gonna make an effort to try and learn how to do it!
Organizing my 21st - it's not that far off (August 6th) so I should start thinking about what I'm gonna do
Playing Psychonauts - yep I completely stopped that when my units got scary
Looking for vacation work - I really need to find some engineering work experience so I should get my resume together
Catching up with friends - I've been completely antisocial this whole semester so I've got a lot of catching up to do

So that's a nice little list of things to look forward to, but still there's SOO much study and stressing before it's all over. It's always the same thing every year since high school but yet I'll never get used to the whole ordeal. Oh well, come June 18th at 5.15pm, I'll be a free girl! (at least until next semester...)