I've been meaning to post wedding photos for ages, but then I acidentally deleted them, and then Robert found some on his computer and emailed them back to me. But I've lost for good all the funny ones with the dogs in them, and that makes me sad :(




I've been meaning to post these for ages, then I acidentally deleted them all, then Robert found some on his computer and sent them back to me. I lost all the ones with the dogs in them though, and that made me sad :(

This is Danyal's starch utiliser. Not sure of any of the specifics though. I think he grew it from a fresh potato sample.

Well, this is really just for the people in my micro group, but my other loyal readers (I know there is at least two of you) might think the photos are cool. Especially my flatmate Viki who looked at the luminescing one and said, "Ooh, that's so nice, which end is its head?"

Also, while I remember, here's sample location info. Unless you want it specifically, I won't bother with prawn/fish samples since everyone took their luminescent samples off my plate (if you want it just ask me). So, the sample location was Coogee Beach, taken on 02/08/06. The ambient temperature was 13ºc and the seawater surface temp. was 18ºc (Bureau of Meterology). Samples were taken at the incoming high-tide. And if you really want to know, I got wet when I was doing it because the waves that day were..well..wavy.

This is a photo taken off my plate, you might notice that it seems a bit brighter than it was when we were looking at them today, I just changed the contrast levels to make the glow a bit more obvious but the colour of the luminescence is the same. Just as something to think about, I'm pretty sure we can get a good idea of the species and genus just from the spectrum of the light, but hey, we'll see what the PCR comes up with :)


This is just to give an idea of the macroscopic morphology of the colonies. They seem quite small (my reading said common size is 2-5mm), but I think that's because the plates were only subbed quite recently. The graininess in the background is just from the BL agar.

I want to swear. I WANT TO SHOUT. I just lost an hour's work on my lit-review of sifting and collecting research papers to write the stupid thing and put them in my library basket, saved them in a new folder and then logged out. Then logged back in and THE BASKET IS EMPTY. THE BASKET IS EMPTY. THE PAPERS ARE GONE. An hour of my life is gone and I can't remember the search terms I used or the names of the papers. THE BASKET IS FAULTY!!!!!

Well, I got someone arrested today. How's that for a conversation starter?

Long story short, I was on fitting-room patrol (a noble job if ever there were one), and this guy was coming and going and taking in large amounts of very expensive jeans and also a number of very large shopping bags. He was a bit strange and more than a little suspect, and he kept oogling my breasts which was starting to freak me out, and so because I had a fair idea he was up to something, I called my good friend Melvin of Loss Prevention. Mel and another dude came down and started following this guy and realised he was using a cutter to get hard tags off clothes, but then he noticed they were watching and quickly departed the store. I got really disappointed then because they hadn't caught him, but excited at the same time because I'm not really much of a suspicious person and I've always wanted to catch someone in the act. Just as a side note, I'm pretty sure I've heard people having sex in a fitting room but that was gross and not an act I particularly wanted to catch..

I'm not really sure how the next part of the story happened, but about half an hour later Melvin comes bounding down the escalator as enthusiastically as a retriever with a frisbee and demands I give him a hug. Why, you ask? Because Mel and the cops, somehow realised thief-man must be at the station and rushed down there only to aprehend him four minutes before the train left. Then on inspection of his bags, our local constabulary put him in handcuffs and escorted him back through the store under arrest. What was in his bags, you ask? Among other things, seven pairs of Armani jeans from A Rival Department Store, which at around $200 a pair were worth a pretty penny. Now that's just greedy.

So anyway, yay for me, I caught one finally. The new store manager came down to the floor and though he doesn't talk to us lowly floor staff (because he's better than us natch) and doesn't know my name, shook my hand and said "congratulations, well done."

High praise indeed.

In other news, I finished my essay on the philosophy of observation and theory-loading with hours to spare which doesn't happen oft. Now, on to the next one, a lit-review about bioluminescent bacteria due on Friday. And I have decided that my career path is to work for the Ministry of Science so I can write reports about..science. Things really are looking up.

Mike got a letter published in the Herald a few days ago. Teehee, must be genetics that makes us so witty...

"Mr Howard, your generous offer to subsidise the cost of converting vehicles to LPG could rapidly cost the Government a lot of money. How about killing two birds with one stone by getting people both active and less reliant on petrol?

My suggestion: a $50 walking shoes or $200 bicycle subsidy.

Michael Pratt Alexandria"

Mmn, yes, I think it's time to put the heater away for the summer, what with the weather warming up and all. And with the nice little second degree burn I got from said heater last night.

It was my own fault really, I've bumped it a couple of times before when it was on and known the damage it can do. But last night I hot the back of my leg on the flat bit (it's one of those metal oil-filled ones) when I had it on maximum. It's fair to say that it hurt. Quite a bit. For quite a while. And I didn't have an icepack or and frozen peas/steak/other old wives' tale food so I had to make do with an orange I found in the fridge.

Oh, and I got abused by a customer at work today. Wanker. And the kitchen, which I spent two hours cleaning on Monday, is filthy again. I hate this house!

Grrrrrrr.

These ones are actually from the last time we did the Spit/Manly walk, when we didn't quite make it to Manly, stopping instead for a little picnic along the way...

After going out for dinner with Lucy and Chris last night, we met up with the Maccas this morning and went for a jaunt today from The Spit, to Manly followed by lunch near the pier. How civilised! It was a beautiful day, as I'm sure you can see, and we met up with Mike and Jen in Manly who'd come across on the ferry from the city. Jen did the City to Surf this morning, Mike stayed at home. Ooh, and she spewed on the ferry, which is gross and reminds me of a story about Andy which we can save for another day.



The chubbiest looking kookaburra I've seen in a while, spotted about half-an-hour into the walk at the first cafe we came across...


The view down from the walking track.


The intrepid anthropologists examining a group of Aboriginal rock carvings.


Looking out through the heads, on to the Pacific Ocean I think (geography not really being my strong point).


An unusual place for a house!


The A Team.


Chris attempting to direct us.


Well then, that takes all the fun out if it doesn't it. I thought it was funny though that they didn't have a little cartoon of nude bathing with a red cross through it. I guess it's a bit hard to make those stick figures look naked.

I was mucking around on the STA Travel website, you know...planning going to Sweden and just messing around with the tickets and destinations to see how to get the best price. I found a route that looked good, Sydney, Bangkok, London, Oslo, Stockholm, London, Tokyo, Sydney for $1999 plus tax. So I decided to see if I could get the quote with tax included and started filling out the details and everything, fully intending to quit out of it before it actually got to the "hold my flights" part. But as soon as I filled out the first little form bit, it was all like "Thanks, your flights are being held and an STA travel advisor will be in contact to confirm them ASAP". Oh shit, now they're going to call me and I'm going to have to say "well..actually I was just f#%$^king around, sorry. I mean, I do intend to do that flight, but ah...sorry..ahem."

WHY WHY do I do such things?!

PS. I don't know why, but all of a sudden my blog doesn't seem to be working on Firefox, the text is ok but none of the pictures. A mystery I suppose, unless someone more technologically minded than me can think of a reason why it's happening and knows how to fix it?

Oh shit. I'm a little concerned that I have no idea about what is going on in a number of my courses this session. For example:

1. Philosophy of science: class seems to be full of wankers who have done a lot pure pure philosophy (which I haven't) and they keep spouting off about realism and the difference between pragmatists and pragmatasists. Meanwhile, I sit there wondering how, in two years of studying various branches of HPS, I have no idea what any of them are talking about, and even less of an idea about the difference between ontology and epistemology. Oh, and I can't afford the textbook.

2. Medieval history: firstly, I really don't know much about the Bible, so in trying to prepare for a tutorial about the importance of the body in the early Latin church (let alone my confusion about the actual meaning of 'body' in the question) I keep coming across things about apostles and Moses' father-in-law and having nothing to relate it to. I feel completely out of my depth, which I know is ridiculous because I'm quite good at history, I got 92 in the HSC, but again the class is full of people who keep talking about paradoxes and paradigms which don't seem to relate at all to the set reading material. AND the tutor, who is also the lecturer, did the usual thing of going round the room and finding things out about people and it went something like this:
Tutor: who here is a medieval buff?
Class: a few geeky looking Warcraft boys put their hands up.
Tutor: what about classics, modern, ancient etc.
Class: more hands.
Tutor: I hope there aren't any people here who just enrolled because it fit their timetable... Hmmn, have I missed anyone out?
Me: (tentatively raising hand) Well, I'm actually doing a science degree...
Tutor (and I swear to god he actually said this, and make is as pompous and incredulous as your imagination sees fit): then why are you here??
Class: silence.
Me: well I'm doing an arts degree as well, and my arts major is HPS, and lots of stuff happened in Italy with universities and stuff after the middle ages (note how intelligent I obviously sounded)
Tutor: then why are you here?
By the way, my imagined response was something along the lines of "listen you self-serving pompous git, you obviously have never imagined that some people are cross-disciplinary students who are well rounded intelligent individuals capable of thinking in more than one mindset. I am one of those. And, since your department is in very real danger of being merged with two others due to dwindling class sizes I would have thought you would welcome me with open arms, science degree or not.
Me: too intimidated to say anything for the rest of the class.

3. Genetics: guffaw! Apparently it's all assumed knowledge from first year, so I can only assume that I never actually went to the lectures (because I never made it to that many bio ones), or it's assumed from the second semester bio course, which I was exempt from doing. Hmmn, all I really remember were powerpoints with lots of little circles drawn on them....

In other news, we ate cookie dough tonight and I went to Coles to buy deoderant and fruit and ended up getting pies, popcorn, chocolate, strawberry milk, and fruit.

Oh, and I called my Dad, had a conversation, told him I needed him to pay my student fees (which was a very difficult thing for me to do), and heard his wife make a bitchy comment in the background "oh, so that's why she called". Got off the phone, got upset, felt like shit, took my antibiotics and made a cup of tea. Same story, different month.