Things that Look Like Other Things

I personally wouldn't have chosen this to be the logo for my company... and I ESPECIALLY would not have chosen to put it on a whipped cream container. Oh Mr Tatua, you got it so, so wrong.

Photo Booth!

I've really started getting used to my Mac, and I'm starting to be really productive on it. I just set it up to get wireless internet around uni so that's been fun! I'd always been jealous of the people with laptops at uni :)

I've also just been playing with Photo Booth which is really fun. There's some pretty effects like sepia, black and white, comic book, and some fun effects like (my favourite) the mirror, squeeze, and bulge. Some of the effects are REALLY creepy and I mostly stay away from them since after the funny wears off it gets a bit sickening. Take a look at some of the fanciness and silliness on my Flickr!

My Poor MacBook

I've just finished installing Windows on my MacBook and I sort of feel like I've betrayed her :( It's really not fun going back to Windows after you've used a Mac. All of a sudden my computer was telling me what to do, making stupid noises every 5 seconds, and constantly winging about security. Oh well I really do need it, so what can you do?

Putting it on was fairly easy using Boot Camp, except for a bit of drama with a system file that went missing. I ended up allocating 20GB for the Windows partition (it's a 120GB hard drive), so hopefully that'll be enough for Matlab, PSpice, Retro and all those other little programs I'm gonna need.

More importantly, it looks like Psychonauts is going to run pretty well! I've got the demo running so that's gonna be fun!

How to Make a Nurse Outfit in 4 Easy Steps

I bet it's something you've all been wondering, so this post will help put your mind at ease.

Ingredients:
* A plain white dress
* A waisted red belt
* Some white fish net stockings
* Big red buttons
* White electrical tape
* A headband
* Some white heels


Step 1. The Hat
All you need is a piece of paper and a headband. You just need to fold the paper up in the hat shape, and draw on the red border and the cross/love heart. You then make two loops (out of paper) for the head band to slide through, and sticky tape them on the back of the hat.

Step 2. The Buttons
Picked these up from a craft shop for 50cents each, and used some white electrical tape to make the little white crosses on each one.

Step 3. The Stockings
It actually took me a while to track down white fish net stockings, and I managed to find some at this little sock stall in a shopping center for $5. Sew a button on each stocking. Some suspenders might also look cute!

Step 4. The Dress
This was an old under dress I haven't used for years, so I didn't mind destroying it. It was originally flat at the top, but I gathered it up with a button to make it look a bit cuter. Sew the buttons down the front, but leave some space for a waisted red belt which helps brighten up the white.

The Final Outfit


In case you're wondering, this whole thing was for Vanessa's 21st. It was a uniform themed dress up, and she got the Party Bus which took us through Northbridge. Me and Matt ended up going as Doctor and Nurse, which surprisingly, nobody else chose.

I was expecting to not be let out of the house by my parents, but they thought the outfits were fantastic! Even my grandma complimented my handiwork with making the outfit, which was a nice surprise.

I was pretty embarrassed about going through Subiacco, but Vanessa was keen to try. We tried the Sapphire Bar and the Red Sea, but neither would let us in due to dress codes (no surprises there). So we ended up just visiting the Queens, the Hippee Club, and ended up at the Dean, where we fit in with all the other wierdos.

It turned out being extremely fun and not embarrassing at all, since everyone thought it was pretty funny and made a point of chatting to us to find out what the hell we were doing! Just a warning to anyone planning to go as a nurse; expect to hear the line "Hey baby, will you take my temperature" a couple of hundred times during the night. I find that the response "I'm not qualified, but Dr. Matt here will do it" usually does the trick.

It's Good to be (a Girl) in Engineering

I had a really bad day today. Tuesdays are usually my worst day since I have 9-5 uni with an hour break for lunch. For some reason 9-5 uni is SO MUCH WORSE than 9-5 work, probably because you can't choose the pace you're going at, and only so much information can go into your brain before you start going insane.

I had a three hour Embedded Systems lab this morning which involved translating a C program into Assembly. I would usually find that sort of thing very fun, but when you've got three hours to debug an Assembly program, it's not so good. What makes it worse is what we were actually doing. The actual program we were writing was a key-guessing game, and was being loaded onto this little robot thingy (which pretty much consists of an LCD screen, 4 buttons and most importantly, a faulty power cable for our enjoyment). Now the program plays you 3 random notes, and then you have to press the corresponding buttons to repeat the tune (higher levels involve longer sequences, but we only had to implement level 3 in assembly). So imagine about 8 groups each with one of these bloody things all making stupid noises in a small, resonant lab at 9 in the morning, while trying to figure out why your stupid stack is screwing up. GRRR! At least we (finally) got it finished in time.

Next was an awful Communication Systems lecture. The material is very interesting but unfortunately for the class, the lecturer has a thick Chinese accent accompanied by an adorable lisp, or rather, would be adorable if we didn't actually REALLY need to understand what he was saying to pass the unit. By this time my cold and flu tablet started wearing off, but on the bright side at least my cough kept me awake during the lecture.

My one hour lunch break was spent going over the Communications assignment which is due on Thursday with Adam and Lara, so that was extra fun. Then the final stretch of the day involved an Embedded Systems tute, a Circuits and Electronic Systems lecture, and an Artificial Intelligence lecture (nice light entertainment to finish the day off). I've actually really fallen behind in Circuits so those lectures could actually be in Spanish for all I know. In the AI lecture we started learning about lists in Prolog which must have taken a very unique form of insanity to invent. When the day was finally over, I was off through peak hour traffic, looking forward to relaxing at Matt's house and watching the final Prison Break, which turned out to be really annoying, (I wont say too much), but there'll now most definately be a 3rd season.

Annnyyywayyy, now to the point of all this complainin'. So I get home after an annoying day at uni, check on Morris the Mouse (c), and sit down for a nice cup of tea, and realise I have a letter from the uni. I open it up and it turns out that I am:

"the recipient of the Motorola Prize for 2006 to the value of $300. The prize is awarded by the Board of Examiners in Engineering, Computing, and Mathematics to the female student with the highest weighted average mark in the following units: Circuits and Electronic Systems 2, Electromagnetics and Electromechanics, Digital System Design, Signals and Systems 3 and four BCM major units".

Nice and specific. That letter couldn't have picked a better day to arrive on! It really made me happy, (not so much because of the money, but hey that helps!) because no matter how hard uni gets, how stressed out I feel, how far behind I fall, it reminded me that I'll always manage to catch up because that's just what you do when you're a student, and you love what you're doing. I guess the moral of the story is that when you're feeling lost, you should remember all the little signs that have proved you're on the right path, even when it feels like you can't remember the reason why you got there in the first place.

My MacBook Arrives!

Yesterday after a loooonggg wait, my MacBook finally was delivered to the uni. It was actually meant to be in last Friday, but the store was refurbishing it's main desk and so things were going slow all round apparently.

After the long drive home (everything seemed to take so long!), I had to quickly rush to the bank before it closed to deposit the cheque from Google into my dad's account, since he paid for the Mac on his credit card (yet another delay!).

Finally I got home and started unpacking :) I was taking photos along the way, which took a huge amount of patience, but hey you only unwrap a Mac once. The packaging was really cool, and I actually forgot that it came with a remote for Front Row, so that was a surprise when I saw it in there. I also got a video connector so that we can connect it to the tv. I'll probably need another connector to plug my monitor in but I'll get that one later.



It really was great fun opening it up, and because Matt has a PowerBook, I already knew how to get started, so I could get into it straight away. I set up some nice folders for uni and transferred all my work from this semester from my pc, which was really fun since it's all ready to go if I want to take it with me on Monday (how exciting). It's sort of hard to decide what to put on it legacy wise; I've decided to keep all of my old photos on my pc and eventually just burn them to DVD, and I'm just in the process of transferring all the 2007 photos onto my Mac, so I'll sort of start fresh from this year with iPhoto.

I'm really looking forward to learning how to use it properly, since it takes a bit of getting used to before you can use a Mac to its full potential. I started writing up an AI tute on it last night and it just felt so nice for some reason. I guess because it's so cute, but also because it already feels like home.

When Matt got to my house after work he didn't quite know what to do first! He was playing with the Mac for a while before he realised he had his iPod to open! There was a special offer from Apple so that if you by a MacBook you get an iPod for $200 off, so Matt got a 30GB iPod video in black, which is really awesome. Now I've just gotta figure out how to get the rebate, since the instructions are all cryptic.

So I am now officially a Mac user! I'm still going to have to install Windows on it (how disappointing) since there's a couple of programs I need for engineering that only run on Windows. But I'm so glad I finally decided to get one, and I'm in love with it already :)

A Nice Surprise from Google

When I got home from uni this afternoon there was a FedEx package waiting for me in the study. I had absolutely no idea what it was or who it was from, and I certainly wasn't expecting anything. When I picked the box up, I noticed it was very light, and it also had the word "ball" scrawled on it in red marker. I was pretty sure I wasn't expecting any balls in a big package, so this further perplexed me.

So I finally found a pair of scissors and opened up the box to find... a surprise present from Google! It was a giant black and pink throw blanket with the Google girls logo on it. There was a really sweet card from Meghan, Neetu and Will from Global University Programs at Google, mentioning that the blanket was a memento of the Google retreat in Sydney, and is intended to keep me warm "as the weather cools" (how sweet is that - thanks guys!).

It was a really nice surprise and considering that it's just crossed into autumn and already started raining, it will definitely go to good use right away, as you can see in the pic below :)



In related news, the $1000 reward money from Google also arrived in the mail today (it's been an exciting day for opening things today for me)! I've already decided what it's going towards (and it's arriving next Tuesday yay!). I'm getting a 13inch MacBook as an upgrade to my PC, and I just can't wait to get it. I thought it would be nice if the prize money was put towards something relevant rather than me slowly frittering it away on shoes and clothes and the like. Also, there's a special offer on at the moment that if you get a Mac, you get $200 off an iPod! I've already got a mini so Matt's decided to get a 30GB iPod for effectively $180 so hooray all round :)

So it's been a good day all thanks to Google! I'll definitely fall asleep tonight smiling under my Google blanket, dreaming about my Macbook, ahhhhhh :)

My New Pet - Morris the Mouse

Last weekend Matt's little sis Elissa rescued a little mouse as he was being attacked by her cat. She knew I wanted a mouse so she made a little cardboard box house for him and kept him in there until we had time to figure out where to put him!

We couldn't quite figure out what he was since he didn't look like a regular mouse - he was much more pointy and stood on his hind legs a lot. It turns out he's a field mouse, and we originally thought he was a baby (since he's SOOO small) but it looks like he's full grown and won't be getting any bigger.

So we went and bought Morris a cage for him and tried to make is as comfortable as possible with lots of fun things for him to play with. Unfortunately, at the corners of the cage the bars were slightly further apart than everywhere else, so in about 5 minutes Morris squeezed through and was running around the house quick as lightning. Elissa managed to catch him again, and we put him back in the cage but made sure to seal the big spaces up with masking tape.

It took him a while to get used to it, and he kept hiding under the newspaper. After a while he built up the courage to explore and finally discovered his wheel. It's so cute! He runs on it for like 10 minutes at a time, but he's yet to figure out that if he stands on top of the wheel, it will turn and make him fall off.

He's really nimble so I haven't been handling him much (he's so small I don't want to hurt him!) but he's already used to people and doesn't get frightened at all. He actually keeps running in his wheel even if I'm carrying his cage around! I've noticed that as soon as we start talking to him he'll run out of the house and go straight to his wheel - I'm pretty sure he's showing off to us!

My parents were angry at first (my grandma still wants to kill it) but now they love him (how could you not!) and I often catch my mum or dad talking to him when they think no ones looking :)

Tomato Sauce Day

Yesterday was Tomato Sauce Day, the day that Matt's (very Italian) family makes tomato sauce for the year ahead. I think I'm the only person that actually enjoys Tomato Sauce Day, probably because it always ends up with everyone in the pool after a long day's work, but mostly because my family is quite small and I always enjoy the big family affairs of Matt's huge family.

So here's a glimpse into how a traditional Italian family makes tomato sauce...

Step 0. Wash the Tomatoes
We washed the 20 crates of tomatoes on Saturday ready for the actual making of the sauce on Sunday. This is the boring part and your fingers always get all wrinkly by the end of it ewww.

Step 1. Cut the Tomatoes
I should mention that everyone always plans to get up at like 5am and get started, but no one is ever that organised on a Sunday morning, so we actually started cutting at about 8am. Me and Matt got there early, but a few people arrived later on (shame shame shame) . I got a photo of the driveway at about 11am, and about 3 more cars arrived after that!

We cut them up in quarters and get the core out. Everyone has their own technique for getting the core out (and everyone thinks theirs is the best way, but I KNOW my way is the best). Notice that everyone's wearing gloves so that our hands don't turn red just yet - there'll be plenty of that later on.



Step 2. Boil the Tomatoes
We put the tomatoes in material bags, and boil them in a big pot to cook them and soften them up. This is what the dad's usually do, and everyone doing it usually gets burnt some way or another.



Step 3. Run them through the Machine
The boiled tomatoes are all run through this crazy contraption that has one "in" pipe for the tomatoes, and two "out" pipes - one for the sauce and one for the scraps. The scraps are run through a couple of times to get all the juice out. I love doing this part, but all the steam coming out of it means that your pores get filled with sauce - which is not a good place for sauce to be.



Step 4. Put the sauce in a Big Bucket
All the sauce that comes from the machine goes in a big bucket ready for the bottles. We have to stir the bucket occasionally to keep the consistency constant otherwise the bottom gets all chunky.



Step 5. Fill up the Bottles
We fill up all the old beer bottles with the sauce, leaving enough space so that the bottles don't explode on the shelf. This part takes skill and you can usually figure out how much to put in the pot so that you can fill the bottle to the right place all in one hit. When filling starts sauce pretty much goes EVERYWHERE including in your shoes, in your hair, on the dog, on the ceiling etc etc.



Step 6. Close 'em Up
Putting the lids on is the worst job and I'm really bad at it - I usually just stick to other stuff. That's Chloe (Matt's brother's girlfriend) putting the tops on.



Step 7. Boil the Bottles
All the bottles go back into the pots and are boiled to sterilise and seal them.



Step 8. Pack the Bottles up
After they're all boiled, the bottles are split up between everyone, and the sauce is ready to go. But of course nobody actually feels like pasta after spending a day pretty much soaked in the stuff.




Step 9. Bury the Evidence in the Back Yard
All the scraps then get burried in the back yard in a big hole. You can't really see how deep the hole is but there's a lotttaaaa tomataa in there.



So that's it! After we finished me and Elissa (Matt's little sister) were the only ones who braved the icy cold pool, but I think I would have gone in no matter what. And I can tell you that the shower after sauce day is the BEST shower you'll ever have in your life.

Look What Matt Did!

Matt's been busy working in secret on a dashboard widget for the Mac. It started when we wanted to know when Lost was coming back, and got sick of continuously checking. Matt came up with this handy solution, take a look! I'm so proud :)