Update 23.45.25FAB1

Amber prompted me to write an email update to some of my friends telling them what i have been doing when i realized that's what my blog is for.

As for me im trying to finish up my thesis proposal. strange thing to be doing this far into my phd but they really don't pay too much attention around here. My supervisor is notorious for making people go over things again and again and again before the final draft. Im on my 4th or 5th iteration now. I'm TA'ing the summer engineering physics robotics course, looks like it's going to be awesome. I already know what this years challenge is going to be but i can't say anything until it's officially announced. The students are given a challenge and are put into teams. they then have the summer to build a microprocessor controlled, fully automated robot to do the job. Last year they had to build one that would play operation on a very large scale. There is a new water jet cutting system installed so i can't wait to play with that. I may have to test it by cutting out an autobot symbol for my truck out of Cr.

On the Geek out front, we are doing some awesomely geeky things this summer as may of you already know. PAX is coming up at the end of the summer and we have 4 confirmed attendants. It's gonna be a kick ass, time and get ready for all the swag. There is the awesome concert coming up. Video Games Live, playing in October in Vancouver that many will be attending. Next weekend Genvea and I will be going down to Seattle to see a Jonathan Coulton concert. Awesome folk geek rocker. If you have never hear his stuff then you have never played portal and that is a blemish that must be fixed. My favorite songs are skull crusher mountain, code monkey, future soon, furry lobster, RE: your brains, and of course still alive. Also check out his cover of baby got back.

On the WoW front, I too am a guild officer but I have been good friends with the guild leader since we where 13 so it's really a form of nepotism rather than through my 1337 skillz. My driud is level 64, just entered the Zangermarsh, pretty cool place, lots of interesting monsters and some of them you can skin with herbalism, tonnes of awesome stuff has been attained from that. My guild needs another tank so im trying to get to 70 asap to help them out. we are a more causal guild and are not interested in much beyond playing around in Kara and doing some heroics. I do love the versatility of the Druid. Ran Hellfire ramparts 5 times, once as DPS, twice as a Tank and twice as a Healer. 3 Completely different rolls all in the same character, no other class can do that. Too bad that damn druid staff didn't drop once out of the 10 items that cam out of that chest. Ive also been getting into a bit of PVP. Geneva and I are level 29 and have been doing some arathi basin runs to get some cool loot but the alliance looses 7 of every 8 battles so it goes slow. This did however prompt me to start doing some PVP with my Hord warlock, much more fun when you win on a regular basis. Warlocks are awesome at PVP, jsut throw dot's on everything in sight and run while everything dies around you. Great way to rack up honorable kills although im not sure how Cursing a person and running away until they die is honorable but i'm not going to complain.

Im going to be moving out of SJC at the end of the next month. I really need to start looking for a place so i don't get left with crap. Im going to miss this place, so many good memories. As there are several ex SJC people on this list, any advice on coping?

Oh and one last thing. Dreamworks is making a Ghost in the Shell movie. http://www.variety.com/VR1117984029.html

smoke on the lotus

I wonder if there Japanese find what we do just as funny.

Well that's just Prime

Ok the long awaited keyboard I have been wanting for years is finally on sale. The Optimus keyboard. Each key on the keyboard is an organic LED display 48x48 pixels big allowing compleat customization that would make the G15 shake in it's boots. Now if I only had $1500 to buy it. From the reviews i have read apparently it's a little hard to type on, not advisable for sechritaries and novelists but that's not really what it's for. It's for custom program templates, Photoshop keys or gamers to keep track of all those different hot keys easier. Now which button activated my long range trasponder again, was it j or k? well now you just look at the picture. I can see 1 think wrong with this, the only people who could afford this, the big hardcore gamers who compete for thousands of dollars in prizes in the pro gaming circuit would never take the time in a game to look down. That would waist precious seconds that are being used by your enemy to line you up in his sniper scope. People like me who can't be bothered to take the time to memorize every Warcraft 3 hot key would never be able to afford the price tag.

Dam you, guess it will go down in price in 5 years, at least i hoep.

The Day of Rockening

Last weekend an old college resident and friend of ours Erwin brought his copy of Rock Band into the college. Now there are a tonne of blog posts all over the internet about how awesome rock band is, and it is awesome to the max, so i'm not going to go into crazy detail about it. It's enough to say it is one of the greatest multi player games ever envisioned by Man or Woman. The fender Strat controller is way better (when it works) than any GH controller I have ever used and anyone who thinks differently is a raciest.

In other news, this is why Eurovision is way better than American Idol.

Home Time

Hmm well it's close to 2 weeks since coming home and It's time to write my final thoughts about my trip. It was an amazing experience, Havening gone for a month I really felt like I began to understand Australia. By that I mean understanding it's people, culture, climate ect but it's only the beginning. I have been living in Canada for all my life and there are still things about it I don't understand, like why the French want to separate, don't understand that.

What do I miss the most, well apart form some of the really cool people I met, dive buddies mostly, i really miss pub squash. See Australia is really like Canada in many ways. We are both colonies of Brittan so we have the same roots. I would say Australia is about half way between Canada and Brittan culturally. Because of this It was very familliar to me not a huge cultural shock. Food was pretty much the same, except for their thick non salty bacon and horrid coffee which is not something to miss. Houses where not that much different, except they had clay tile roofs, interesting but not something to miss. Diving was in a new environment, amazing to behold but miss it, hmm maybe a bit but it really just makes me want to try other different places. Drinks through are a different story, they have a lemon drink called pub squash. It comes in different brand names, Solo being the most popular. It is carbonated lemonade, but not that sickeningly sweet lemonade. It is an insanely refreshing drink on a hot day, probably why it's popular as every day is a hot day. It's the perfect blend of tangy, sour, sweet and bubbly. We had a similar drink in Canada many years ago called Wink. I loved wink, drank tonnes of it, way more than Coke and since it had juice in it i felt mildly better drinking it than other drinks. I wish i could still get it. Oh there is something called Wink Twist, but it's not wink. Oh why Oh why can't North America make one damn pop that's not loaded with sugar, something tangy and refreshing. All im asking for is one product out of hundreds of others, you can tell me there isn't a market for it, I found one.

Anyway my point being is that Australian pop although unbelievably expensive, up to 3.50 AUD for a 600ml bottle in some places, is far superior to our own.

Australia is trying to kill you (part 1)

... or at least ruin your vacation. This must be the only country where natural selection still applies, in force, to humans. Africa might be its rival, but overall, Australia tries to kill you in such a variety of ways. Fortunately, most of these dangers can be avoided with a little knowledge, which leads me to believe that Australians are the most nature- and environment-intelligent people on the earth. Here are just a few of the ways you might die while in Australia (or sometime after visiting):

1) The Sun

Our UV-blocking ozone layer has a large hole in it centred at the South Pole. This hole doesn't quite extend up to Australia, but the ozone over Australia is quite thin due to its proximity to the hole. Less ozone means more UV rays get through and that means without applying liberal amounts of sunscreen you will BURN in 20 minutes or less. And this isn't some sissy burn you might get here. These burns can be quite serious and will lead to 2 out of 3 Australians contracting skin cancer. Skin cancer can kill, so you can see that this is quite a problem. The Aussie government subsidizes sunscreen and heavily promotes "Slip, Slap, Slop": Slip on a shirt, Slap on a hat, Slop on the sunscreen. And by Apollo, you'd better slop it on like crazy, and reapply throughout the day. Thankfully, 30+ sunscreen comes in giant bottles with hand pumps there, so you won't go broke trying to hide from the sun.

2) The Ocean

Rip tides, sharks, jellyfish, cyclones, stingrays, octopi, fish, coral, even crocs... Australia's goregeous coastlines are like those sexy female assassins you see in movies. Beautiful and tempting, yet deadly.
The Aussies are taught from a young age to spot rip tides which can suck you out to the open ocean before you know what is happening. Even a prime minister in the 1960s disappeared when he went for a swim in the ocean near Melbourne.
Sharks are easy to avoid. They are not maneaters as long as you don't:

• swim at night
• swim in murky water
• swim if you're bleeding
• throw food into the water
• gut fish on the water
• rub the guts all over yourself and then go for a swim
  

Lastly, it goes without saying: don't provoke sharks. The ocean is their house, so don't be an annoying visitor.
Australia has a jellyfish season, and Shawn and I were smack-dab in the middle of it. Now, I've been stung by a jellyfish before and it is certainly not an experience I wish to repeat, especially here. The sting I received in france felt like thousands of needles had entered my arm. The sting caused painful welts which lasted 5-7 days. The pain was so intense that even the gentle breeze caused significant pain (my dad made me a sheet fort to prevent wind from blowing on me). However, I survived the ordeal without even a scar to show for it. It would have been a cool-looking scar too because it kind of looked like a shooting star/asterisk. In northern Australia, however, deadly jellies drift around the beaches, making swimming quite dangerous. Even a dead jellyfish can sting you, so romantic walks on the beach and collecting shells can be quite dangerous. Oh, and did I mention the deadly cone shells? These could end your shell-collecting hobby permanently.

3) Highways

The highways must be deadly in Oz, or at least in Queensland. Throughout our trip down the QLD coast we must have seen hundreds of signs warning of driver fatigue, encouraging drivers to pull over at frequently-placed rest stops. Some gas stations even offered free coffee (probably a gimmick to get you to stop and also buy gas).

4) Duck-billed Platypus

It's not a myth. Male platypi have venemous spurs on their hind feet. The venom isn't deadly, but it is supposed to hurt a whole lot. While we were at the Sydney aquarium we saw one of the staff, dressed in a full wet suit, enter the platypus tank and, with much caution and deliberation, grab one of the littler ones, presumably for a check-up.


Next issue: Spiders, crocs, snakes, trees, the land.

Is there anyone out there?

ok well I would have thought that people would be following my adventures. I know some of my friends have to be reading this but you are all suspeciously quite. Ah well I write this more for me than you anyway.

Right now there is a large group of early 20's people watching Tennis on tv. They are into the oddest sports here. I know people like tennis but I had allways thought it was old sophisticated types. There was a guy up in the stands painted up like he was at a football game.

Anyway, poastcards are off and now it's a race to see who gets to canada first. we are flying to sydney tomorow night, heading into Bisbane for the day first. The last to days found us driving leisurly around the sunshine coast (expanse of coast between Brisbane and Frasure Island. There are a lot more people here, everything is built up and the houses are quite impressive. May be because you can swim at the beach here without fear of crocks or jellyfish, water is too cold for them.

Speakin of Crocks yesterday we visited the world famous Australia Zoo, home of the Crocodile Hunter. Oh my to say this zoo has been commercialized is a huge understatement. There is the Animal Planet Crockoseam, A giant Colloseam for live animal shows. Each crockodile pen has bleacher seating around it to view the daily feedings. And, last but not least there are enought immages of Steve Irwen around the place to make you think he has come back from the dead, it's a little sad really. The zoo however is top notch, good enclosures, lots of animals and you can really get close to some of them. The Kangaroo pen was freely explorable and you could walk up to pet and feed any one of them. Also peted a kaola. It was a cool place but at $50 admission is a bit pricey.

Today we went on a hike in the Glass House mountains a series of old volcano lava tubes that now have ben exposed due to erosion of the limestone around them. Stunning to look at but unfortunatly they are quite tall and steep so we where only able to walk around them not summit any one of them. Oh well theres allways the Blue mountains in sydney.

My time is about up on the comp here so I will leave for another day.

TTFN