Raw carrots remind me of Inspector Gadget
Thursday 19 February, 2009 | 3:29 p.m.
According to Google I'm the only one. Mum used to feed us them when we were stuck in front of the TV before dinner.
7 Feb 09
Saturday 7 February, 2009 | 5:07 p.m.
My sympathies to those caught up in the fires today. [ update: Family and friends in Jindivik, Healesville and Kinglake West are ok ]
Yo soy un tío
Friday 17 October, 2008 | 8:12 p.m.
¡Hola Archer!, welcome to our little planet. It may look big -- but you should see the rest of the universe. Perhaps in your lifetime a few people will explore Mars, but for now this our home which we share with more people than you can count on your fingers and toes (actually, more people than you could count in a lifetime). I'm writing this on my new toy, an Acer aspire one (using ArchLinux!) - I guess it seems pretty old and crummy to you - but when I was your age we didn't have laptops, in fact people didn't have their own computers. If we wanted to talk to someone (I admit I didn't do much of that at your age) we had to find a room with a telephone in it - and typing messages on those old rotary phones was incredibly slow. The Internet was limited to a few scientists and some people in the US military, since then the information revolution has profoundly changed the world in ways few people imagined. Now, a clean energy revolution is getting underway, which is very exciting - but it's past bedtime here in Madrid, so I'll tell you more about that when I see you in a couple of months. Love, Uncle Dave
Nuclear Family
Tuesday 19 August, 2008 | 4:25 p.m.
I have a brother-in-law with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of all things sciencey which makes up for his suspect taste in music -- my sister tolerates both. He made the wonderful remark to Beth during his wedding speech that she was the hydrogen that made him helium. As unclehood looms, I'd like to propose a name for the baby: Lithium. I think it works for girl or boy. Later on, Beryllium is not so bad either - although after that Boron might be a little unfortunate...
fin de semana de relajación
Sunday 17 August, 2008 | 3:50 a.m.
Spent the last couple of days entirely relaxed, sitting around in parks and cafes with Ben and Clive. We wandered back to Sol at some point last night - there happened to be a partial lunar eclipse going on. On reflection, I expect it wasn't confined to Sol. Even with Clive as my bipod I only managed to take a fuzzy photo of the eclipse
django
Wednesday 13 August, 2008 | 4:59 p.m.
Finally, I put aside a day or so to fix up my site. Wordpress isn't bad, but I like having fine control over my site and there are many things I'd rather do than mess with php, including not using the site. So now I'm using the amazingly wonderful django, which I've been playing with for quite a while, but never got around to fixing this site up. Still lots of tweaking to do, but the basic stuff is done.
Madrid: primer día
Wednesday 11 June, 2008 | 4:13 p.m.
Flight was fine, but was made less bearable by the food poisoning - probably picked up through my experimentation with several-day-old food from a questionable local chinese take-away. Hardly touched my first 3 in-flight meals, but after 20 hours or so I was feeling fine again.
Of Mountains and Men
Tuesday 5 February, 2008 | 4:06 p.m.
Started off the weekend on Friday night with a sake too many at dinner with my hosts. You won’t see the raw chicken on the table there in the photo, we’ve eaten it already. The next morning I got up when I was able, and headed back in to the city. I walked from the Imperial palace, though Nijo Castle and towards the west.
A day out in 奈良
Sunday 27 January, 2008 | 8 p.m.
Nara (奈良), some 45 minutes from my apartment on the local train, was the capital of Japan for much of the 8th century — after which Kyoto became the capital for ~1000 years before they decided to switch syllables and move east. Nara’s reputation reached great heights again in the 20th century, when it became a sister city of my (kind of) home (kind of) city Canberra.
京都
Sunday 27 January, 2008 | 3:45 p.m.
Spent the last couple of days back at NIFS, north of Nagoya. Stayed up all last night in Nagoya with C and crazy locals, ended up karaokeing though till dawn and catching an early shinkansen back to Kyoto. Celebrated A+T / Australia day singing Aus songs at karaoke. Icehouse. Tonight: Sleep. Tomorrow:Nara. Next time: pronouns, a few more adjectives and perhaps some sense.
A Melbournite among Parisites
Sunday 9 December, 2007 | 3:37 p.m.
Have been iffline for most of my time in Paris. I’ve seen a lot of the city, walking the streets, in museums and galleries. Highlights were Sacre Couer and a design exhibition at le grande palace. Tomorrow to London, hopefully catch up with B and H, then back to Aus.
On a fast train somewhere between Amsterdam and Paris listening to the Underground Lovers
Monday 3 December, 2007 | 3:23 p.m.
friday was my last day at ipp. i had been sick since tuesday, but finally feeling pretty good by the time i headed with my host to get some locally smoked fish to have for dinner with his family and PhD student D. Nearly got drunk enough to miss my train the next morning.
Griefswald
Wednesday 28 November, 2007 | 3:16 p.m.
The Max-Planck-Institut here is amazing. The new facility is the epitome of German design and engineering. With the exception of a few works of art, everything in the new building is either functional and visually appealing or absent. Had a tour of the Wendelstein 7-X hall, where preparations are underway to join together the two halves of the first of 5 field periods. Cranes in the machine hall were at the same time being load tested with around 100 tonnes.
Berlin
Sunday 25 November, 2007 | 3:06 p.m.
at berlin hauptbahnhof waiting for train to greifswald. got to berlin a bit too late,cold and tired to look around the city last night. met a young trade unionist called edgar on the trip from the airport. had some discussions about the state of affairs in broken english.