February 2005 Archives

Last Saturday night was a great evening. We celebrated my sister Boo's 30th Birthday in style at Gertie's Bar & Restaurant. Despite our attempts at keeping this occasion from my sister, we really couldn't keep it from her. Managing to interrogate me at a low ebb (after little sleep and a few beers), I think she started to guess what our plans were.

DannyJ spilled the beans a day early, and pretty much it was off to the shops for a new outfit.

Ma & Pa, Christine & Peter, and a number of Alicia's old friend's rolled out to enjoy the tapas and cocktails on offer. There was also talk about prolapses, but that's mentioned in detail in another post. In all, a good evening. My [gf] & I enjoyed it despite not hitting the turps, and in a way that was a good option. Knowing my hunger expands exponentially with any mojito, rusty nail or martini I consume, I reckoned there wasn't enough tapas (or $$ available) to feed me (I was right by the way). After outstaying most of the staff, we eventually left and headed oh so far away to the Anise Wine Bar, located conveniently next door. A few settlers later, taxis were hailed, and bodies piled into a not-so-accommodating Nissan Pulsar.

The night a success, Boo happy & everyone beat from a good night out.

I posted some photos (care of my [gf]'s new i5 camera) of the evening in my photo gallery. Enjoy.

TimmyB

Probably a lot less sensitive and forgiving that what I normally withstand (my prior post being any measure of this). It has been a really hectic 3 weeks so far, and with 20 days until I leave the fair shores of Straya, there's still a bit to be done. Luckily, all the administrivia appears to have been dealt with, and now its just down to knocking out as much thesis as possible before I leave.

My [gf] is super-excited. I haven't let myself get there yet - I have been stressed out over this time - but I do notice I am getting more and more up-beat about the move. I can't wait to start the new chapter of my career & life with my [gf] - its going to ROCK!

Better get to it.

Amendment - Thursday the 3rd of March, 2005 Due to a personal request, the image of the subject of this rant has been taken down. It was pointed out to me that alarming the general public about a person before they had met them was unfair to the individual in question. Although it was pointed out to me that usually this person is a kind, amicable, sweet and intelligent person, I still maintain that I saw the opposite of these properties in this person in the evening in question. Recollecting that she insulted both me and my girlfriend, I don't hold back from my opinions that were shaped by that evening. I do hope that I never meet that person I talked to that night ever again.

Hi, I'm [insert your name here], nice to meet you..

Otherwise you wil receive the following repetitive stream of information at length...

• Prolapses & all their fanastic implications


• Instruction about your age and why you don't know anything


• Why you are not drinking


• More about prolapses


• Why you are boring (as you are not drinking)

Despite her bad day and detailed knowledge of the unfortunate condition called prolapse, should you raise the aforementioned conversation starter, you will then be inflicted with a glazed over expression. Yes, prepare to meet the most boring & obnoxious drunk you may ever meet.

Social convention at the time stopped me from walking away, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Better stay away from DannyJ just to be safe I reckon..

Lawyers pose health risk: study. 23/02/2005. ABC News Online

Lawyers pose health risk: study

By Nick Grimm for The World Today

New medical research suggests lawyers could be bad for your health.

The study demonstrated an inverse relationship between lawyers and the recovery rates of accident victims.

Dr Richard Gun, lead author of the research reported in this week's Medical Observer, has found patients who engage a lawyer after receiving their injury are five times less likely ever to return to work.

He says they also appear to suffer more pain and for longer periods than accident victims who do not have lawyers.

"We did find that people who consulted a lawyer did certainly appear to have a delayed recovery," he said.

"I suppose some lawyers may argue that people who have more disability - who feel more pain - are the ones who are more likely to have a prolonged recovery and also the ones who are more likely to consult a lawyer."

But he says the research suggests consulting a lawyer itself does have some independent effect of its own in prolonging recovery.

Dr Gun does however caution that there are a number of factors that influence recovery time and lawyers are not the whole reason.

He says the research may have implications for the insurance industry in terms of trying to reduce litigation and speed up the settlement period.

I've put together a new page on my site that lists some of the pages I browse religiously.

Instead of being just supplying a list of hyperlinks, I've made a page that parses all the new information from these sites using the PHP-based RSS feed parser, MagpieRSS. Throw in a bit of CSS, and you've got a nice layout.

Given I have chosen a lot of sites, I really needed a method of hiding and displaying the content easily. After a few trial runs, I settled on using a DHTML method called the Visibility Toggle that was written by Sim D'Hertefelt. Its a really nice Javascript method, & of course, I recommend using it. It rocks!

I've only tested the DHTML on Firefox 1.0, Safari 1.0.3 & IE 5.2 for Mac OS X. IE 5.2 spat it out - so use a better browser to view this page. Simon says (pun intended) it should work for NN7 and IE6 (for PC I assume). Let me know if it works or not eh?

My feeds page is fairly intuitive, and I'll endeavour to tidy up the page and make it a little more user friendly as time permits.

But for now, enjoy what I like to read!

A happy 30th birthday to my beautiful sister - YOU ROCK BOO!

Leading up to the move, I knew I was going to be flat-out. I think I might have underestimated what I needed to do at this stage. Most of the planning is sorted, and my [gf] and I are in the process of ticking off the items on our to-do list. We've already done quite a bit, and I'll be looking at knocking over the rest of it over the next fortnight - so the remainder of my time here will be spent knocking over my thesis before I leave. I'm going to get this f#cker done before I go, even if I lose all my faculties of speech and interaction its going to get done. Having a blinding focus is a great vehicle for productivity in my opinion.

I have started telling people at the Department about my future plans and impending move. They have been really supportive of my decision, and I'm glad for that. I'm still wondering what my supervisor will say (I haven't seen her for a long time, and well, these things must be said face to face). It will be interesting that's for sure.

More later... of course.

This entry contains a list of web sites that I found particularly useful in helping to plan my move from Brisbane, Australia to Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

I did mull a great deal about my flight to Shanghai. Part of the problem I faced was what type of ticket to buy. Should I choose a one-way ticket, or buy a 12 month return ticket? Here's my reasoning.

This is my first post in a new Diary sub-category. I decided to create 'The Shanghai Shift' category to document my process of moving from Brisbane, Australia to Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

I have about 35 days until I leave the beautiful surrounds of Brisbane for a new life with my [gf] in reputedly the most exciting city in Asia.

Here's a log of my experiences in getting to my new life.

thank f#ck for the a/c which has finally been switched back on in my office/stage of the building. UQ P&F finally got around to fixing it - f#ck@sses! since I can now think straight, more thesis writing can be achieved.

but now, time for lunch...

As this blog has now become available to the wider web community, I realised that I really needed to avoid Trackback & Comment generated spam I had started to receive. So far, my efforts have worked - spammers, just don't bother with this site!

I've had Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist up and running for a little while, and it has proven to be an excellent filter against spam. Jay - YOU ROCK!

The SixApart crew also published a guide to avoid comment-generated spam. Hence I have also adopted their advice. It has really helped out a lot, so I'd recommend any MT bloggers out there to install and configure their plugins using the recommendations above.

This is a great off-beat skit comedy series from England. It is perhaps my favourite TV show right now. So don't call between 9:30-10pm AEST or I'll figuratively kick your furry little behinds (even though I know you like it).

Check it out....

Little Britain Homepage.

I did the brave (and some would consider foolish) thing to publish my New Year's Resolutions on the web.

Scarily enough, I have been consistently working towards achieving some of these goals...

Lets see how it's all going...

... with all this procrastination I've done so far today, I've realised that I really haven't done much thesis writing today. Ugh, this is getting bad. Better get into it before I have to go and collect DannyJ from Indooroops Train Station.

Browsing my favourite sites today, I came across this little ditty hidden in the Sydney Morning Herald. It immediately struck a chord about how I feel about my lab group, my 'discipline', & science culture at UQ in general at various times...

Whether or not that you believe that Mamdouh Habib is a terrorist or an innocent victim of U.S. & Australian foreign policy, the train-wreck of red tape surrounding Australia's 'terrorists' and 'illegal immigrants' is staggering. What about adherence to policy and law?

I'm REALLY liking my new office - its got good karma. My writing has been really productive whilst I've been in this office; good old 534 - it ROCKS!.

I'm thinking about when I'll tell all and sundry at UQ about my decision to move to Shanghai. I've been quite selective in not telling the EBCRC people about it. I dunno, its been weighing on my mind lately, perhaps because I see an end in sight.

Oh yes, as it is Valentines Day, I'll just profess my love for my beautiful [gf] - you are absolutely awesome baby & I'm a lucky guy.

Ain't life grand...?

I've spent most of the afternoon at UQ packing & sorting through my PhD stuff. Gee, there was a heap to throw out - Meegan saw what I had accumulated and berated me for being a hoarder - of lab tweezers.

I've also spent a bit of time with Todd's external DVD burner this afternoon. Its been really awesome to back up my iBook (CD-ROM burner only). I can't wait to get my mitts on the new Powerbook series from Apple. A sweet 15" PB with SuperDrive - awesome. That's going to be my big purchase before leaving Brisvegas (kinda catchy don't you reckon - is Linda my Elizabeth Shue?).

Its been liberating throwing all this stuff away. It is definitely time to move on. With all the events of the past couple of weeks, I really haven't had a chance to process a lot of what's been happening. I'm seeing a lot more of Justice & Meegan since the clear-out of 549; I reckon we all feel a little lost about the recent upheavals. I know I feel disjointed by it. Clearing the decks has been a good move - it'll keep me fresh.

Now, since all my procrastination is out of the way - time to do some writing.

Gotta fly...

The people at Gmail/Google in their infinite (googleplexed?) wisdom have given me another bloody 50 free invites to give away. Ugh. Do I know 50 people, let alone have 50 people read my drivel?

So if there's any lurkers out there, contact me through the sidebar link or write a comment if you want an invite.

I have a few invitations for Gmail to give away. In case anyone actually reads this site (except for LindaE & AndyO), get in contact with me and I'll send you an invite.

I'm really loving using Gmail at the moment. I found a good mail export tool on the web that allowed me to forward about 120Mb of emails to Gmail over a 4 hour period. Its been handy to have important emails from my PhD and the last 5 or so years backed up elsewhere, or available at a drop of a hat. The beauty with Gmail is that I haven't cracked 15% usage yet either!

I read this article in the last week.

Sydney Morning Herald - Web Users Searching For Identity

(For the full story, go to the permalink for this article).

And yeah, I've been guilty of that. Especially since I got my site hosted. Yes, my cheeks flushed with pride in finding that I was the top hit on Google or Yahoo. I beat out my namesake, an artist from the U.K., who by all accounts appears to have much more talent than what I can muster right now (too harsh? well you haven't read what I've written lately! ;) ). I like his stuff, it reminds me of what Jeffrey Smart has done.

Here's a site with some of his goods.

Quite a talented doppelganger I think you'll agree. Go TimmyB! You ROCK!

I was reading The Australian yesterday, and came across this Opinion article by Andrew Kenny.

The Australian: Andrew Kenny: Beyond the great divide [February 07, 2005]

I agree with a heap of what he has written. I've been feeling a little disjointed by the Left vs. Right stuff recently, and have come to my own understanding that it isn't that simple. I don't believe I am profound in that realisation. Ideology, money & power definitely have a lot to do with it. As does compassion (or lack of it). I consider myself on the humanist & balanced part of the ledger of humanity, but what do other people reckon. That's the gist of this article...

Its a strange feeling, being alone during the bulk of your day. I must admit I'm a fairly social creature, and enjoy conversing (even if it is only small-talk). Since the end of our lab clean up (phew), the 'leftovers' have now been shrunk to just a small number. Sharing my office is no longer a problem, given I'm the sole occupant, well, for the next couple of days until I move into a new room.

The feeling of isolation has also been affected by my lunch-time buddies relocating to the Mater Hospital, or their New Jobs. Only 2 of us remain - and my presence will only be temporary until early March when I head off to Shanghai with Linda. As she is also not around at the moment (visiting her parents), its a really eerie occassion coming into work.

Its been good for my writing - last week's relocation & cleaning has badly affected my writing of late. This week's been more consistent too. Another chapter finished by the end of this week? Fingers crossed!

The last couple of days have been spent doing something I really don't want to do right at this moment - cleaning out lab 549. It's really pissing me off - mainly as it is eating into my writing time. Luckily, 'the leftovers' should be able to empty this by lunchtime tomorrow; well before the deadline of Friday this week.

But as usual, I imagine there will be some kind of crisis that can only be rectified at the last minute.

I'm feeling more and more positive about the Shanghai decision - and knowing intimately the group dynamics that I am leaving in Brisbane, I know I have made the right choice.

Mind you, listening to content on a few 'Teach Yourself Chinese Mandarin' websites, it could be quite a difficult task at first.