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MoonFlakeLogs archive for June to August 2003.
First off, huge shoutout to everyone who came to my party, and thank you very much for the cool pressies! Extra-special thanks go to FirstFallen for organising the blender ... although i suspect that her motives were duplicitous, as she has already ordered that there be humus-making. i bumped into the scary German woman from downstairs, and she said that the party wasn't too loud, so thanks guys for not getting me kicked out of the complex ^_^
workwise, this week is turning out to be a complete disaster. My students are on vacation (hopefully working on the horrible handin i gave them) and my supervisor is in Sutherland. Before he went we decided that i would spend the week working on some c-code he was going to mail me, and getting Hendrik to teach me to use Labview. Now i discover that not only has he forgotten to mail me the code, but Hendrik has gone up to Sutherland too. Also, on the way there, the SAAO shuttle skidded in bad weather and overturned, severely injuring one astronomer and lightly battering the rest. The weird thing is, i was going to go up with them, and only decided not to at the last minute. Guess i open-ended on my luck roll. Phew.
26/08/03
Wow, ThursdayNightMovies was awesome! We watched Desperado and Se7en, and great fun was had by all.
In other news, Adam is back from Israel until October 20th! yay! By the second day here, he had already taken over the table at Cafe Nescafe and thoroughly bewildered the newer Clawmembers. Wow, i can't believe how much i miss first year, with everyone on campus together, cutting class and causing trouble :)
Anyway, can't wait for my housewarming tonight! See you all there.
22/08/03
Dammit, i've caught someone's dreaded 'lergy.
Okay, i noticed a very disturbing trend today. Everyone on #claws is from my generation of claws or older. Why the age gap? Where is the online presence of new clawmembers? Is it that only my generation and older miss the clawroom and must therefore congregate in this virtual room for some small taste of the good old days? Or is it an aversion to irc in general? Either way, i am saddened by the lack of fresh blood :>. Comments?
- As Adrianna mentioned at some point, current CLAWmembers don't use the internet for fun. While I'm sure most or all of them can use, it's just not on their list of recreational activies -- SynKronos
19/08/03
Friday at Gandalfs was cool, after all the lamers and mingers left. Why the hell do people insist on walking where i'm dancing? Do they have no sense of self-preservation? My elbows do not appear to be sharp enough...perhaps i will bring knives next time, and we'll see how they enjoy being eviscerated.
BTW, what's up with everyone getting sick lately? This is what happens when you have a large community of common friends...germs and memes spread unchecked.
i have finally been reminded why i love metal and why i love to headbang. Accordingly, i will wax lyrical about it: see ThrashFan.
Oh boy, sooo many people in my class are just not able to express themselves concisely and without dealing cruel punishment to the common sentence. Speaking as someone who has some small command of the language, i can't believe that people are allowed to leave school or enter university without mastering the language of instruction. If you cannot make yourself understood, how is someone supposed to mark your work? It doesn't matter at all whether YOU know what you meant...you have to get it across. As you may be able to tell, i just marked their first test. About a third did quite well, though, so at least i know i can't be failing them miserably as a lecturer. Blah. Gonna go edit ThrashFan now.
17/08/03
First off, MSBLAST can suck my metaphorical dick.
Secondly, Gandalf's on Sunday was one of the best evenings of my life. Great music, great people, dance-floor madness and general debauchery. Yes, yes, YES! This WILL become a regular event i hope (clears throat and looks at ClawThing?). Anyway, we're trying to organise another strategic take-over on Friday, so hoping to see lots of familiar faces there. Also, i think the choice of music played a big part in the entire atmosphere...there's something about hearing music that you love, that reminds you of times past, of pain and joy you thought you'd forgotten, and then thrashing all those feelings out, tribally, obsessively, with friends around you thinking and feeling and doing the same...oh, and love cats was fun too :)
13/08/03
Shelagh, Kait, Jo and i totally roxx0red the Doxx0r this evening! We were the first people on the dancefloor, bcos everyone else was too LAME to start dancing...so we go dance and suddenly it's the popular place to be. Hehe. Later we're dancing on the raised bit in front of the stage, when...firedancers! Two seriously gorgeous guys with...hehe...naked flames...They were totally l33t, and we were standing right in the front of the crowd, about 3 feet away from them. literally close enough the feel the heat. Mackin' the pyros!
Speaking of macking, we all totally got macked on by various arb members of the crowd, including one particularly special crotch-grabbing (his own, not ours) case who wouldn't leave Kait and Shelagh alone. Such are the dangers of being female in a club full of skanky Northern Suburbs cousin-shagging dudes.
I'm putting my foot down - Markus is soooo learning to firedance when he gets back. They were miles better than strippers!
27/07/03
i actually put the following question in a tut today:
Uranus has an amazing moon, Miranda, which has a diameter of only 485 km, yet shows huge fractures characteristic of the plate tectonics only expected on much larger bodies. In order to solve the mystery of these huge fractures, you go on a geological (actually Mirandalogical) survey expedition to examine the cracks at first hand. After landing on Miranda, you are climbing down from the top of the deepest crack (which is 10 kilometres deep!) when you slip on the icy surface of the moon, free-fall 1 kilometre and land on a ledge.
Miranda is composed of an ice and rock mixture which has a mean density of 1.3 g cm-3. Assume that Miranda is spherical.
What is your weight on Miranda compared to your weight on the earth?
How long does your 1 km fall take?
How fast are you going when you land on the ledge?
How far would you have to fall on the earth (neglecting air friction) to reach the same velocity? Might you survive your fall on Miranda? That is, do people survive falls on the earth from the height you have just calculated for the earth?
Go on, read it with a dirty mind, it's more fun that way. :->
24/07/03
Mwahahaha! i have begun the assimilation of ripe young minds, known as lecturing. It is day two, and i have already given them their test dates for the semester. Tomorrow i will be giving them their first tut. Bow before me, squidgy little earth things.
In other news, ShadowsLight (aka The Bastard) has introduced me to bash. It's like IRCQuotes?, only bigger. You will laugh until you cry.
Only i can't go there right now because I CANT SEEM TO GET OUT OF UCT SERVER-SPACE! This means about the only thing of interest i can access at the mo is the wiki. i have no idea what ITS is up to now. They have apparently killed the entire internet in the space of one day. Go them.
15/07/03
Aaaaargh!
Moving sucks. Thought i was just about done on Sunday, only to discover the place was lousy with little cockroachy thingies. Called the exterminator in on Monday, turns out they're German Cockroaches. Yes, i have now heard every possible joke about cockroaches goose-stepping across the lounge, looking for a little liebensraum. Har har. Had place fumigated professionally on Tuesday, moved in officially on Wednesday. Spent first night there last night, paranoid about cockroaches crawling into my ears. Not cool.
Oh, and i only get my phone connected on the 18th. Fcking Telkom. Now i have to rely on varsity connections for email, wiki-updates and webcomics. What's worse, the only machine here that i have a login for is a linux machine, without xchat, and i obviously don't have root :-( No irc until next friday. I repeat, fcking Telkom.
10/07/03
The employees of cape town's electrical department are as thick as a pair of planks. Everything must be repeated to them at least twice, preferably in a slow, melodic, careful tone remeniscent of talking to a five-year-old.
Tomorrow is the final haul. Mass exodus of furniture and oddly-shaped thingums that didn't fit in any of the boxes. It may take me a while to get the phone transferred, so i might not be back on line until monday or tuesday. Sorry to all who are following the Tao for my shoddy upkeep lately. ToothpasteDealer's party was fun(ny) on Wednesday. Plenty of booze tho, so no worries, eh?
04/07/03
i hate banks
i hate packing
i love machall
30/06/03
Back from the conference, and it was great. Three days and two nights in stellenbosch, and when we weren't attending lectures by Nobel Laureates, we were ripping up the town. Found Stones, played plenty of pool, had a fantastic time. You can walk around stellenbosch in the middle of the night and not even get mugged...it's surreal.
Well, as SynKronos has mentioned, i'll be moving out of FirleighFlats this week. Very exciting, taking over Dave and Philipa's flat in Rosebank. Will have to organise housewarming at some point :)
i will be very sad to leave Firleigh. i've lived there since march 2001, and i will miss being able to bump into friends in the corridor and go over for coffee without having to walk more than a dozen steps. sigh.
i will not, however, miss having my car broken into and stolen.
28/06/03
Well, i am technically on holiday, but there is still sooooo much to do. Going to a conference in Stellenbosch for three days on wednesday, going to visit markus's parents in gordons bay on saturday, gotta do a shirt for Schpat's team by the end of the week, and then next week i'm probably moving house. Oh, and a set of lectures to prepare for, and a thesis to organise.
Phew.
Well, right now, i'm just playing a little quizland. Also, SynKronos gave me this great little game called bookworm, like a cross between scrabble and tetris...just my kinda game. i've never been into games where you blow shit up. Give me a puzzle and i'm happy. This may be a cliche, but it's my cliche and i like it. So there.
Can't wait for Barbara's 21st on Friday...going to see YetiBe and Kim for the first time all year! This fashionable thing where everyone pisses off has just got to stop. No more leaving Cape Town, dammit.
Sigh. It's like the end of an era.
Yeah, i'll be away for three days at said conference, so i've updated the Tao accordingly. See some of you on friday night at Barbara's.
24/06/03
Free at last! i'm free at last!
Wrote my last exam today...EVER! Now i am officially a thesis student. w00t! And i give my first lecture on the 14th!
In other news, i might be moving into Dave and Philipa's place soon...fingers crossed. It will be the first place that Markus and i can say is really ours...and i can't express how incredibly important that is.
Oh well, see you all at Mark's Farewell.
20/06/03
Hmmm...long time no entry. i've been waging the battle of the examinable, but the end is in sight. Only two more of the horrid things cloud my horizon, and then it's time to kick back and relax for a whole two days before i have to go off to a conference.
Waynne and Jean's birthday party was great. Nice warm fire, nice people, good snacks, plenty to drink. Toasty marshmallows, which landed up being thrown around instead of actually toasted. People are funny when they're warm and fuzzy on the inside as well as on the outside ^_^
i think i'm going to start a new page, called the TaoOfMoonflake. i will post a new rule each day for you to reflect upon. Use these rules wisely, my son, for they are the path to enlightenment. Of your bladder, at least.
14/06/03
Well, here i am stuck in exam hell. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if i worry that i might not pass. It's that i know i have to study if i'm gonna pass. And i never fail. Which means i always study.
and i hate studying.
it's only been one week and already i'm tired of it. there's only so much you can do in an attempt to WAB, and i'm running out of things to do. I bought Thief of Time and read it in two days. I bought "I moved your cheese" and read it in one sitting (and it's brilliant...go get it!). i draw the line at cleaning my room.
some days it's just not worth chewing through the leather restraints.
06/06/03
i have a car! i have a car! YES!
The world is once more my molusc of choice. No longer will i suffer the ignominy of public transport. i will now cruise around in my metallic blue Opel with the window rolled down and the sound pumping, going where i damn well feel like. It's almost worth the parting of sweet, sweet cash.
Cowshed on Saturday was great. Spent the day in the kitchen and had a rocking good time anyway. Jo won the poetry competition, so i will bother her for her poem to stick up on MoonFlakesPoetryCorner. Thanks to MyrdemInggala for posting her entries and putting it on the Contents ^_^. I will also try to get the other entries up asap.
Markus went to a rock festival this weekend. All the big names. Sigh.
02/05/03
i may or may not be purchasing a car soon. It all relies on whether the guy who put a deposit down still wants it or not. Hold thumbs!
And i expect to see you all at the chocolate and fondue evening tomorrow night. Hehe.
29/05/03
Blessed be the name of Phensedyl, for it is a powerful expectorant and doth contain codeine. i is all better now.
Well, the cough, anyway.
Is there no way to keep your hands warm while working at the pc in winter? If i wear fingerless gloves, then the tips of my fingers are still frozen. If i wear full gloves, i can't type. Bring on voice command, dammit. The future isn't happening fast enough (or cheaply enough).
i'm trying to avoid studying for my exams. i think i might have to put tape across all the reflective surfaces in my flat in case i accidentally walk into a parallel dimension
i can levitate birds. No one cares.
27/05/03
Matrix:Reloaded is the most amazingly perfect piece of eye-candy i have ever seen. Every aspect of that movie is gratuitous, from the long, lingering shots of keanu's nekkid bod to the stunning action sequences (where the bad guys do not, in fact, wait their turn). It exists as a true and untarnished example of a movie made purely to be enjoyed.
Oh, and anyone who didn't stick around right until the end of the credits to catch the Matrix:Revolutions trailer can kiss my ass. As the great InvaderZim would say, 'Stupid human worm-babies'.
Still coughing. i think i may have SARS. i did just recently receive a tax form...
24/05/03
w00t! Just had my last lecture EVER! The semester is over, just exams to go and then i will officially be writing my thesis.
i'm going to see Matrix 2 tonight. Anyone who hasn't seen it by Sunday does not deserve to. i've had tickets booked since last week.
Still sick, still coughing. Overdosing on Benylin does not seem to have had any effect on me. Or my cough. So much for self-medication.
Hmmm...the entire Astro MSc? and Hons classes have been invited to a free end of semester lunch at the UCT club. i like being in a program that has plenty of funding (cough R40,000 bursary cough). Speaking of which, am i using program resources to mess about online? Me? Never!
Wow, MyrdemInggala just walked into the Cosmology lab and i had to repeat that line to her. The timing was too good. Also, i have recently begun to reread Helliconia purely because her nick reminded me of how cool it is.
23/05/03
I've decided to share my poetry with anyone who cares. Check some of it out at MoonFlakesPoetryCorner if you like, and feel free to add your own.
Does anyone know if it's possible to overdose on cough mixture?
21/05/03
yeah...i'm currently avoiding doing a (shudder) FORTRAN project for my Stellar Structure and Evolution course. i shudder at FORTRAN not because it is a stoopid language, but because no-one uses it outside of the scientific community. Thus it serves no function in the Real World (tm), just like most scientists.
This page may or may not turn into a rant/diary.
For those who know me, Markus is away in the UK (uk - it's that noise you make when you find something distasteful), looking for work. i have suggested that he stand on a streetcorner with a cardboard sign that says: 'Will code for food'. Naturally, the state of affairs leaves me with plenty of free time...
Hmmm...gotta go to a High Energy Astrophysics and Pulsars (HEAP - concidence? I think not) lecture now. It's in the law building. If you've never been there, Brendan gives a very accurate description of it. i agree with him wholeheartedly.
later that day...
My HEAP lecture is in ... wait for it ... the Oliver Tambo Moot Court Facility, and is run entirely by video conference (which is why it's in the Kramer Building, cos only lawyers have money for that kind of equipment). The video link is prone to failing at the least little highveld storm, not to mention Telkom's inability to find its way out of a paper bag. So we lost the feed for a while today, and i just have to share the error message:
A normal event has occured with no standard cause applying. No resulting action is required
Thanks, Rob.
20/05/03
