PHYS452- Medical Imaging

The worst part of only having one exam that is the easiest subject i've ever done is that it is not for another 5 days and I can't shirk it off! It's like a bad dream hanging over me and I know it should be a pretty easy exam, but I can't shake off the feeling i should be studying more in the offchance that it is a difficult exam! I think it's mostly because it was such an easy subject that if i did badly the final i will just drop out of uni in shame. Or as in BM, it will be very malu...

In the meantime, Thrice are really really good. Was watching their House Of Blues dvd last night and i love the depth of their sound even though they are only a 4-piece. Their balance between light and dark, heavy and pretty music is quite exceptional. Super excited for VANS WARPED TOUR ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha (July 19th, New Jersey). Bought tickets the other week and they're so cheap compared to our international line-ups...which makes sense since america is where they're from actually.

Others i'm looking forward to are:

• Alexisonfire
• Underoath
• Chiodos
• A Day To Remember
• The Devil Wears Prada
• A Skylit Drive
• Anti-Flag
• Meg and Dia (chiiiiiiicks!)
• Gallows
• Dance Gavin Dance
• Flogging Molly
• VersaEmerge etc etc (admittedly i've seen most of these before...but not on Warped!)

I'm hoping to flaunt my aussie accent and gain backstage access to the whole show. Should be fairly successful i think! "Hi i've travelled 156 hours from Wollongong to get here. Love me!"

I am currently listening to Taking Back Sunday who are not playing Warped tour, but are also very very good! gotta get the new album sooooooooon. I am also learning to love Dillinger Escape Plan. These get me through the drudgery of exam periods...

hmm...

I <3 Physics

Note: i wrote this earlier today. Even earlier today, i also wrote a long-ish blog about hanging out in the lab and how amusing it was to be blogging on a computer located in a hard science lab and then discovered that windows 95 just ain't what it used to be...and then i lost the post. Let me recap as best I can:

I'm sitting in a small room located in a larger room known as the medical and radiation physics (computer) lab. I am surrounded by a mass of wires and miscellaneous science equipment i will probably never use. In the corner is a small safe containing radioactive sources. Next door, my experiment is running and i check on it every 10 minutes to read a simple voltage measurement. There are 2 PhD fellows also present who up until now have been speaking rapid-fire Italian as they continue to play with their electrical signals. They are strangely quiet now.

And here i sit blogging.

Ah the life of an experimental physicist!

Because that's right guys...after 6 weeks of 'lit review' (basically bludging around at home watching Battlestar Galactica) i have FINALLY started work on my honours project! So it is with great irony that i have done more work in the past two days of my easter holidays than i have in the entire semester! So far so good ay.

As you can tell however, it is nothing particularly challenging and i have time to sit here read a book and work on a sudoku (which incidentally is rated 'tough' today NOTE: i never finished it...). I even read an article about the new Wolverine movie and found myself less cynical about it. (which leads me to my next topid: allow me to 'geek out' for a minute).

My original cynicism was based on the Hollywood mass-popularisation of a much-loved and revered character and his history. Wolverine's comic history took many decades to unfold and his mysterious background is very much part of his allure. Now Hollywood is going to present it to a largely undiscerning audience and everyone is just going to take his Origin story for granted on a simplistic basis. Which it very much is not.

But then again i realised how fanboy elitist this was and now my mind is slowly changing.

Wow i had no intention to write about wolverine. it kind of just came out. As you can tell, this experiment is most definitely taking up much of my mind. Haha.

Here's an awesome picture i'll always remember: Magneto removing wolverine's adamantium by force. A very painful process i assume...

Thanks for reading.

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Katoomba Easter Convention was amazing and it was such an enriching weekend and met many interesting people. We're all BFFs by now. Go Ecclesiastes (life is meaningless people)! Check out my photos on facebook. I made them look all pretty and nice. Maybe i'll draw a comic about the weekend.

When It Rains, It Pours...

The week back from Malaysia saw heat on our fair city like we hadn't experienced in a long time. It felt even more intense than the Malaysian heat! This could be because of our lack of air-con, and my house is fairly well insulated as such. Although the rumours of a 47 degree heatwave in the west didn't fully come to fruition, it was hot enough for us to sweat long into the night.

One week exactly after we arrived back home though, the rains came. As I left church on Sunday night i remarked to Tony and newborn daughter that we better get home before it rained. I could smell it on the air. The breeze was picking up, but it didn't actually rain that night. Monday morning however, was grey as winter and we've had wet and dreary ever since. Is it a welcome change? I've always claimed to be more of a winter guy. It allows time for quiet and solitude, while forcing us to stay indoors with friends and family.

I think I'm neither a winter guy nor a summer guy really.
I just try to enjoy whatever
the day has to offer.

[There's that old Carpe Diem Coram Deo thing again!]

So while I've been taking much advantage of the quiet and the solitude since coming back from Malaysia, it finally seems like things are settling down. I even visited ANSTO today for 4 hours to cover some uni stuff, and while it felt a little weird and I'm still a bit confused about it (my brain has atrophied slightly,
but physics is just like riding a bike really...
Just get back on!) it did feel peculiarly nice to be back.

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Summer is gone prematurely.
But I do quite enjoy
wearing a jumper.
driving in the rain.
seeing breath on the window.
keeping you close.
for warmth.

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Change. The things we want to change always stay the same, and the things we don't want to change always do. Whether it be as meaningful as a long-time friendship or as fickle as a TV show, life always seems to change in places we least expect it...

Here's a change I didn't expect to find. Cleaning through our old computer yielded my braces photo! I remember this day very vividly. It was a sunny day in early 2003 as we drove from the orthodontist back to school, this song was playing on the radio and I'm pretty sure I couldn't stop licking my teeth, eager to debut my new accessories (haha). One can't quite forget the unique, permanent taste of metal in the mouth. Not quite a million dollar smile, but $4500 rounds up to a million doesn't it?...

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Please spare a thought and prayer for the Victorian bushfire victims.
The fires are still ongoing, and the damage is tremendous to say the least.
Too many homes lost. Too many lives destroyed.

Studying In The Library

Exams at uni are done. But it was a slow and painful process... We all like looking at pretty girls and drawing them is just as fun. I didn't even see this one's face but she had a nice dress on. She looked very stressed. I was studying for statistical mechanics PHYS385. I do believe I did ok in the exam, even though I missed out on some really simple questions I should've killed.