Dralion

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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 :)