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MoonFlakeLogsArchiveSix

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MoonFlakeLogs for April, May and June 2004

well, the w/e was great...lots of roleplaying and relaxing. had a great time at my mom's yesterday...gluwein and chocolate...mmmmm.....
today has gone well so far: submitted my paper (fingers crossed that i did it right) and had a very good chat with the NASSP course co-ordinator. Apparently i have been payed too little for the course i tutored, and the length of my thesis is just fine. phew.

28/06/04

hrmmm....feeling better today. seems like the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus (aka Waynne's Disease) has almost run its course.
in good news: i am ready to submit my first paper! the 2nd and 3rd authors have given their go-ahead, i'm just waiting for author no 4 to read it, and then it's in the hands of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society editors! w00t! i had an idea last night: perhaps i can find a compromise between the fact that i need to learn to do something that could get me work outside of the field of astronomy, and the fact that i'm only likely to get funding to do an astronomy PhD?: i should do some sort of programming-based PhD?. something involving scientific computing, modelling, that sort of thing. then i could learn something useful that might get me a real job (i just wanna be a real girl, blue fairy!) and get my PhD? at the same time.
i dunno, we'll see. oh, in other good news, i checked with the course co-ordinator about when the deadline for handin is: 27th august to graduate in december, he replied, but if i don't make it, it's not a big deal. this is great. i mean, i'll probably make it, but there's a chance i won't and now at least i know i won't fail if i hand in a bit later in the year. all it means is that i won't get the pretty slip of paper in december, but i'll still officially be able to enroll for PhD? etc. it seems like the first batch of NASSP MSc?'s are presenting more of a problem than expected, as i don't think any of us realistically expect to hand in on time. mostly because no-one knows how to assign a 'one-year' MSc? thesis, so we have 18-month projects to finish in one year.
go us.

24/06/04

well, did some actual work on thursday. that night had roleplaying, made butternut soup, drank more vodka-lime-and-coconut. fun.
fri was the all-day anime festival on Sci-Fi. more fun. more roleplaying on saturday. schpat couldn't make it and waynne was sick, so their characters went and did something else for the session. stuck around afterwards to watch Shrek and Kung Pow and eat pizza (thanks Al!). fun fun fun.
fathers day: gave my dad a call, went to alex's sister's place for lunch with his parents. left earlyish, finished the Thurteem shirt design, took out 'The Sin Eater', which was not bad at all. i rather enjoy alternate christian mythology movies. monday: sick. not fun. shakes fist at waynne
tuesday: still sick, but back at work. paper ready for submission! yay!

22/06/04

blah. stupid exams. stupid painters.
invigilated on fri. was so irritated at stupid students that i went home afterwards (which part of do section A in one book, do section B in another book, write on the front of each book which section it is and which questions you've answered. hand in two books is not clear?). nice weekend. fun at springboks on fri evening, but alex and i left earlyish (i can still partially handle the commercial jock attitudes and music, including ppl rubbing their crotch against my ass, but alex wasn't digging it). sat roleplaying was awesome as always....then raced home to clean and prep for gathering. nice evening with a few close friends to celebrate alex's bday...thanks for bringing the games, roo, and thanks for the vodka-lime-and-coconut, schpat :)
quiet sunday at my family. monday was more invigilating. left early again.
tuesday the painters were meant to paint my windows (they're in the process of doing the whole building). they left a note kindly requesting that we leave our doors and windows open so they could varnish them. right. like i'm not going to stay home and watch them like a hawk. natch, they don't get to my flat on tuesday. so i spent the public holiday watching them paint, and then watching paint dry.
it wasn't all bad. got a couple of videos: one hour photo, which is pretty good, and gacy, which was a little 'made for tv' (about john wayne gacy, of course). well, back to work. deadlines are a-loomin'.

17/06/04

blah. didn't feel like going in to varsity last week at all, so skipped on thurs and fri. lately i'm just so friggin tired all the time.
the weekend was fun. roleplaying madness on saturday at al's. then back to alex's for pizza and tv. sunday morning alex's sister came over to his parent's place, with her son and boyfriend, and we all had brunch. i really can't eat a big meal just after waking up, but it was great, even tho i couldn't finish it. spent the rest of the day lounging around at alex's, watching tv and American Pie 3, which alex had not seen yet. Still funny the second time round :)

astronomy announcement: Transit of Venus, 8th June. Venus will be transitting the face of the sun tomorrow morning at sunrise. we will miss first contact as the sun will still be below the horizon at that time, but venus will be a black dot moving slowly across the sun's surface as the sun rises. it will be visible with eclipse goggles. do not, repeat DO NOT, look directly at the sun without adequate protection.
This is rare astronomical phenomenon. telescopes will be set up at the cape town observatory and at the planetarium for safe viewing of the transit. it is, at most, a twice-in-a-lifetime occurance, so if you can haul your sleep-deprived ass to either of these venues at sunrise, you should.

updation

right, the transit will be quite slow, and will last until about 1:30, so no need to be up at dawn. The observatory will be open to the public from 10am, and Tony Fairall will be outside the planetarium (next to the SA Museum in town) at about 8:30am.

07/06/04

only 35.7% nerd. disappointing.

had a really good weekend. watched a bunch of Buffy Season IV on friday. Went to roleplaying on saturday, which was the bomb (my first AD&D campaign, i'm so proud!). my character is a kick-ass ranger with double-sword-action and l33t woodlands skills. she roxxors. she's only level 1 but can deal a max 36 pts of damage in one round...it can only get better :). then on to ben's birthday thingy...met some old OLD claws...very interesting, but the combo of very smoky, badly ventilated room and overly rich pudding made me feel ill...bleh.
sunday at the family. the electricity went off for a while...no tv so we hauled out the trivial pursuit and had the best game ever. My gran, mom and stepfather against alex, me and my little sister (who really just read out some questions, she's totally in over her head). it was neck and neck all the way, but alex and i won in the end. my family are great to play tp with...they get all excited and cheer every time they get something right. my gran got so into it that when my mom told us food was ready, my gran said 'i'm too busy to eat!'. the power was back on shortly into the game but no-one really cared. it was great.

as for this week so far: nothing much. i've been lazy, mostly. invigilated an exam on monday morning and then went home afterwards (hence no me on irc), then to alex's place for more Buffy goodness. yesterday i just didn't feel like coming in at all, so alex and i went to see Starsky and Hutch, which was amusing. nice relaxing day. tonight we're taking alex's dad's telescope (oh yeah, and his dad :)) to go check out the comets. they should be just above the horizon shortly after sunset, around the same area as mars and jupiter. Comets NEAT and LINEAR, for those who want to google :)

02/06/05

well, alex is writing TAB as i type this. bleh, exams. i'm glad i don't have to do that anymore.
yesterday was fun...i made chile con carne for supper, and it was grrrrrreat. Our usual roleplaying session was paused for character creation for another very short campaign to be played on saturdays with the same group. the idea is to give the Thurteem DMs? a bit of DnD? practice before ICON. character creation was fun, al's hooka was fun, and his teeny tiny little cat spent the whole night trying to sleep on me :) Quote of the evening: schpat: what does Animal Handling do for you?

28/05/04

i had a great day yesterday :) i stormed off campus, deciding that my supervisors were morons, and went home. upon arriving, my sister informed us that she was off to buy a tv :) then alex and i went shopping for lunch stuff, and saw microwaves on special for R395 at pick 'n pay. w00t! obviously we couldn't leave without buying one. then it was off to the Stadium to get some biltong to add to the book for alex's dad's present. then to Mainland China Supermarket for shredded pork and seasoned seaweed ... mmmmmm. then to alex's place, where i watched 5 more episodes of Buffy: Season III. then everyone came over for the birthday thingy, there was much food and dessert, i haven't been that full for years....it hurt. After family types had left, we watched the Kumars at no 42, and Men Behaving Badly. then home, and sleep. aaaah.

Adam: sorry to hear about your bad news :( BIG HUGS
bad news travels fast. thank you wobbly smile

27/05/04

ah, the ongoing saga of The Paper. Latest installment:
so yesterday i get an email from supervisor linux saying he's read the paper and he doesn't like the mass range i've used (which supervisor xp told me to use). he says i must rather use the maximum range possible. so back i go and change everything. now, he must have bcc'ed supervisor xp, because this morning supervisor xp cc's me his reply to supervisor linux: bollocks, using the max range is stupid, no one does that. use the range i recommended. so here i sit, waiting for supervisor linux to get back to me. in the meanwhile, i have now made two copies of the file, for the two different ranges. i am beyond tantrums. i have reached a stage of zenlike amusement. the corner of my lip lifts in a condescending little smile (or that might be a nervous tic, i'm not sure).

went to roo's on monday night to play cards and watch movies. we played Strange Synergy, which i've decided i really don't like. Instead of watching a movie, we battled away at the MovieAlphabetQuiz for a while, and got 3 new answers. earlier that day, i had mailed the guy who runs the site, and asked for clues. got them yesterday and we finished both quizzes. fun fun fun, but counterproductive to all forms of work.
in other news, it's alex's dad's bday today. we'll be over there tonight. perhaps there'll be cake :)

26/05/04

ah....study week....
the relative quiet on campus, the non-existent lines, the drastic reduction in students....aaaah.... anyway, i had a nice, restful weekend. spent all of saturday watching episodes of Buffy: Season III. i'm just over half way through.
spent sunday at my mom's place. watched 'Sinbad' again, and 'Identity' again...suffice to say that it is unlikely they will take out a movie i haven't seen. my sister brought her stupid boyfriend along...firstly, he states that Identity was boring, and he just fastforwarded to the end. then he goes on to tell my sister, in a loud whisper, exactly who the killer is. and then reminds her again, later on, in an even louder 'whisper'. moron. anyway, he had to leave early for work, thank god. my mom made babotie, which was great. got home at a reasonable time, and got a decent night's sleep, and got up an hour later than usual.
i love study week.

aside: this morning, as the elevator reached our floor and we opened the door, a cat walked out. needless to say, i found this somewhat disturbing. first, they start taking elevators. next, they'll work out how to use a can opener, and then we're all doomed.

24/05/04

students!!!!
really, it's not their fault. the lecturer has set a horrible tut, despite vowing to make this one shorter. and, in fact, because she sent it late, they only have 5 days to do it instead of a week. so naturally, they're all in my office, all the time. the funny thing is, if supervisor linux complains that i'm not doing any work on my thesis, i will just tell him 'well, tell your wife that i won't be looking after her students or doing her photocopying for her anymore, and she can forget about me invigilating the exam for her, since i need to work on my thesis.'
then we will see what marital disharmony it creates :) yesterday i ran away after lunch. went to cavendish and watched 'Troy', which was great.
oooh, made the best tom yum soup on monday, with butterfish and alaska salmon, served ramen-style with noodles. mmmmmm....so gooooood...

19/05/04

now that was a good weekend.
went to alex's on friday, rented 'S.W.A.T.' and 'The Rundown'. The first was fun, the second was lots of fun. so we spent the night snuggling on the couch, under a blanket, and were fed yummy roast pork and potatoes (mmm..spuds). saturday: took the videos back, popped into pick 'n pay and bought little cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped cocktail sausages and a muffin each for breakfast. then went and arbed around blue route for a bit, where i succumbed to the cuteness that is winnie-the-pooh fridge magnets :) went back to alex's and watched 'The Lost Boys' while he did his maths assignment. it was cheesy 80's, but still fun. then we rented 'Finding Nemo' and 'Identity', and had pizzary goodness. 'Nemo' was very cute and typically pixar funny. 'Identity' was great. Good atmosphere, good cast, good script. Very dark piece with plenty of intelligent twists and thrills.
sunday: alex's sister came over and cooked breakfast for everyone...mmm. it's not often i get bacon and eggs for breakfast :) returned the videos again, then went to Anal Walk to wonder about. i joined the edgars club (R14 for any nu metro movie, any time), and while we were standing in the q, i noticed that the scrolling message board held for a few seconds at the end of every line. On the line 'Welcome to Edgars Canal Walk', it held in a position such that the only letters on the screen were 'Anal Walk'. at least edgars knows their place :) while we were there, i went halves with alex on Final Fantasy Tactic Advance (early birthday pressie). We also went to see 'Van Helsing'.
okay, here it comes: <froth> what a great fucking movie! ILM are the unrivalled gods of SFX! that movie had the best morphing, best cgi characters, best mosters i've ever seen! i loved the way they did the brides of dracula, the vampires in general, frankenstein's monster, and the werewolves where great. the tearing-the-skin-off during the morph was awesome. there was plenty of plot, there was nothing wrong with the acting, the leads were both perfect for their parts, the script was just fine for an action movie. That was without a doubt one of the most enjoyable movies i've seen all year!</froth>
also, for those of you who watched Carte Blanche yesterday, the guy who won South African Hero of the Year is my uncle :)

17/05/04

• at least someone else liked it; the schlock historical horror market is underappreciated :) - *d@vid May 17 2004*

spent the last two days marking tuts. yet again, i am amazed at my students' abilities to fuck up a question beyond all belief. there will be hell to pay during their tutorial this morning...
if you see a small nuclear explosion over uct, don't worry. it's just me. game last night was the bizomb! i will update the game page AdventuresWithSpaceEntrepreneursWhoMayOrMayNotBePirates. the antics had to be seen to be believed.
oh, and i signed up at http://www.roleplaying.co.za on schpat's insistence. looks like a great idea, but the spelling! i am still a little nervous about clicking 'accept' under an agreement that largely made no grammatical sense.

hey, GeekDotNeo :)
(SO busted :$) it was the signing your actual nick on the page that gave it away ;) just a tip for next time - MoonFlake

14/05/04

weee! handed in final draft yesterday! now steve has to approve, then i submit it to the journal, then the whole round of rejection starts again! w00t!
to celebrate, we went to Anal Walk for a bit yesterday evening. we partook of corndogs (the cheeeese!) and donuts, i bought new pants, and it was generally fun. at home i made miso soup and sushi for supper. then my sister gave me a full-body massage with lavendar oil. then i had a nice hot bath. 'ohmy$#@$#@. i cannot believe you made me this jealous in a single paragraph. i'm not sure i'm ever reading your logs again. GeekDotNeo' life is, for the moment, good.
icky weather this morning: hauled out our NATO jackets, then realised it wasn't really cold enough to justify the lining. i can now say with certainty that i can field-strip my NATO jacket faster than alex :) yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's geek love.

12/05/04

well, that was a short weekend.
friday: my dad came over for our monthly dinner date. i made lasagne, and all about saw that it was good. saturday: went to Taste of Japan and Taste of Korea. the latter has some catching up to do - no english signs and weevils in the rice. spent the rest of the day at schpat's father's garage, while alex and schpat rassled with computers that would not submit or say uncle in any way, shape or form. as a consequence, we missed lucas's shindig :(
sunday: we made sushi for 10 ppl for mother's day. one of them - and only one - happened to be my actual mother. the rest were relatives muscling in on the action. oh, and my sister's stupid boyfriend (who got called in to work and had to leave early, a fact which pleased me greatly). the sushi was great. mmmmmm. well, one last draft of the paper left to do. supervisor XP's comments were most helpful. hopefully i will finish it this avie and be done with it.

10/05/04

if i go on a rampage and murder my students, don't be surprised. one of them handed in a tut 2 weeks late, after i gave out the solutions, then got all surprised and upset when i informed him i'd need to knock off some marks. Honours. not first years. Honours.

BTW, the thing about the insect parts in chocolate is not bollocks. Check out the FDA's published Food Defect Action Levels Booklet
Apparently the buggers are all over the cacao beans when they're harvested, and it's almost impossible to get rid of all of them, so plenty end up in the driers with the beans.

isn't it amazing what you can find when you really don't want to do the work you're supposed to?

07/05/04

• awesome search-fu moonie, you'll be an Uncle Cecil yet! - d@vid

the date today reads 6-5-4...feels like a countdown. to what? you ask (or don't, it's really up to you). the answer: to my brain exploding.

twice today i have had to trek halfway across campus to photocopy one goddamn sheet of paper. this is because NASSP, in their wisdom, gave us almost unlimited photocopy credits on the maths machine, then put us all in offices in the physics building (phenomenal cosmic power!...)

also, i am currently trying to understand how to analyse polarisation plots. it's making my brain hurt. here's an excerpt from #claws to explain how i'm feeling:

<moonflake> oh, how i wish that the matrix were true, and i could just plug in and instantly learn things
<~SynAck?> maybe you can, but your uploading software is upta date and you can't proccess the information being passed to you <~SynAck?> isn't up to date even
<moonflake> oddly enough, that sounds fairly accurate, if you substitute 'plug in' with 'read this damn book' and 'software' with 'brain' <Synkronos> Like modchips in cyberpunk
<moonflake> i think i need to be reinstalled

game tonight! yay!

06/05/04

i was talking to dave sharpe earlier about legal food content. there is a regulation stating how many cockroaches are permissable per 100kg of chocolate.
you know what that means...for every 1000 or so pristine Lindt bars out there, somewhere there is a bar of chocolate-coated cockroach. yummm. last night's eclipse was pretty cool. i would have gone up to varsity to watch it with the astronomy 100 class through the telescope, but i had marking to do. blah. feels good to have the damn tuts out of the way though...just in time for the fresh batch on friday :)
other than that, not much exciting has happened to me lately. this may be a good thing :)

05/05/04

what a great w/e!
went to Phantom of the Opera on friday with my dad and sister. i have only one thing to say: wow. saturday was Coupling Day at roo's, and was thoroughly enjoyable. that series is great: like a mixture between 'friends' and 'sex and the city', but british. had to leave four episodes before the end, due to parental entertainment the following day.
got up earlyish on sunday to shop and clean. had the family over for chinese...it was awesome. i made chicken with cashew nuts, beef in oyster sauce, pork with chilli and garlic, fried noodles and jasmine rice. it was the bomb. well, the w/e was brilliant, but far too short. it's monday again, and i find myself in my office once more. i went to my other supervisor to discuss the paper, and he was approximately 3 million times better to talk to than the other one. i realise that because i have two supervisors, they are becoming confusing on this page. allow me to describe them in terms of well known operating systems:
supervisor XP: brian warner: on campus: user-friendly, somewhat rounded, but having a more general usefulness rather than being tailored to the project supervisor linux: steve potter: at the observatory: requires experience to operate, may communicate in a terse manner that (incorrectly) assumes understanding on your part, but is best tailored to deliver the data required for the project
yep, that about sums them up.

03/05/04

well, our dept post-doc is away for a week, so expect intermittent computer workage. everything breaks down when he's gone, cos he's the only one who knows how to fix anything.
got in this morning expecting a reply from my supervisor. nothing yet. i don't like the suspense. it makes me nervous. alex was a darling yesterday and whisked me away from campus when he saw i was miserable. we went to cavendish and watched secret window, and i felt a lot better afterwards. hence the protracted 'lunch', for those of you on #claws :)

29/04/04

just when you think everything is working out...

i really did think i had a handle on things. up until 9am today, i was happy with my thesis. i had started to work on the layout, and had written the introduction. the last time i gave a draft of the paper to my supervisor, it only came back with minor little edits. i really felt, for the first time since i started this thesis, that everything was going to be okay.
then my supervisor asks me to send him the paper again. and this morning i get an email informing me of just how inadequate a primary author i really am (not in so many words, but that was the overall, three page message, mistake after mistake after mistake).
i closed my office door so no-one would see me cry. then i wrote him an email saying maybe it would be better for everyone if i weren't the primary author. and i hit 'send' before i could chicken out. so we'll see how much trouble that gets me in.
either way, this year so far has proven to be worse than physics honours. and that's saying something.

28/04/04

hmm...i've actually been working this week. and it hasn't been too bad....
not a good sign. i'd better take a weekend off to recover and rethink :) in other good news, i actually got paid today. 2 days early. i think they're trying to compensate for something, but what that is, i can't imagine :P
al's housewarming tomorrow! looking forward to drunken debauchery... ahem!... i mean tea and cookies.

23/04/04

well, the eclipse was fun, even tho it wasn't a total eclipse. i really marvelled at the fact that it was happening, and so few people knew. as i was walking down main road, a tree was casting a perfect dapple pattern against a wall, and each dapple was a half-moon. it was so stunningly beautiful, i had to stop, stare, and grin like an idiot. i was probably the only person who knew, and that made the moment all the more incredible :)
in other, non-cosmological news: just read 'when the magic went away' by larry niven. very cute, but a bit short. now reading 'pacific edge' by kim stanley robinson (who i always thought was a woman, but alas, no). meeting with supervisor actually went quite well. for the first time, i feel like i might be able to hand in a decent thesis, on time. have got my grubby little paws on a template LaTeX? file, so i am ready to fill in the gaps.
(short aside: when searching for 'latex' on google, i was amazed to find LaTeX? pages coming up first...i was expecting pr0n) well, with inclement weather abounding, time has come to haul out the Nato jacket and the fingerless gloves. summer is over sigh.

21/04/04

good weekend overall: sushi on friday was incredible! amazing salmon, indescribable butterfish, ridiculously good california rolls. best i've had at sushi yama so far. saturday was a washout...literally. didn't go to dragonboats cos it was pissing with rain in constantia and we didn't feel like standing in the wet...really, just indoor weather. around 10:30 we went to gandalf's, which was a disaster because there was no dj upstairs. anyway, we recovered well, met shelagh, and went to cool runnings for a bit. then went back to alex's and snacked and watched late-night tv. altogether, it turned into a decent night :)
sunday was great: went to my family, and my mom made her insanely good pea soup, which was perfect for the weather. mmmm....

Attention

partial eclipse of the sun today. begins @ 14:51 and will reach maximum (51%) @ 16:10. do not look directly into the sun.

19/04/04

tnm last night was fun :) watched the commentary of the firefly episode 'war stories', which was brilliant. then watched 'freejack', an old-skewl 80's sci-fi with emilio estevez. pizza-coke-and-ice-creamy goodness was had.
going for all-you-can-eat sushi tonight...mmmm....can't wait. then hopefully dragonboats at the waterfront tomorrow, although i have no idea what time they will be. then maybe gandalfs tomorrow evening :) hope everyone else enjoys their weekend!

16/04/04

right, after a much-needed break, and a coincidental cold, i am back at varsity.
um, not much to say about the break other than: sleep is good, tv is good, i wish i could win the lotto and retire right now. hmmm...except that would entail entering the lotto. sigh. too much effort ;) um, yeah...i would say something about the election, but since it's a fucking joke, i'll just laugh.
ha ha ha.

updation

right, i've had food, coffee and coke, and now my brain is working again.
shelagh came over to alex's parents' place (which we're house-sitting) last night. i made nummy cottage pie, and we watched 'slap her, she's french'. i can highly recommend it. it's pretty damn funny for a teen romcom. also, the holiday has not changed my perspective on my thesis. i find i have a little more energy, and i'm speeding thru the papers now, but i still don't care. i'm definitely doing something else next year.

15/04/04

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