Visa hasn’t come through yet, so I’m still in Melbourne. In case anyone is looking for me somewhere else or something…
hēg denu
The old english words from which my name is derived, hēg 'hay' + denu 'valley'.-
Recent Posts
Jumping on the bandwagon
I caught up with Mike yesterday, who seems to be doing quite well out of this iPhone app development thing (Loopy). So I decided it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. In a way it makes a lot of sense, I already have experience writing Cocoa applications for Mac OS, which gives me a head start over a lot of people.
Of course I’m flat broke, so my current “business model” involves writing an application then using the profits to actually buy a phone, we’ll see how that works out for me…
Bushfires
I arrived at Heathrow on Sunday afternoon for the second (and by far the longest) part of my trip back to Melbourne from Barcelona have spent a night in London catching up with friends and breaking up the trip. When I checked in the woman at the desk said how dreadful the fires were in Melbourne, and this is the first I knew about what are the worst bushfires in Victoria’s history.
The fires have been truly dreadful with over 180 confirmed dead already and fires still going more than a week later. I won’t say any more about the events themselves, as I’d just be repeating what others have written, probably far more eloquently than me. Having said that there’s been a lot of fantastic support for the victims from all of Australia and some of the stories that have come out of fires have made me proud to be Australian, no matter where I normally live.
I’m still alive
After pretty much two weeks of 11-13 hour days at uni I’m finally done. That’s not to say I’ve completely finished everything for the semester, but the presentations are done and the rest is pretty much just expanding on the slides.
I gave all three presentations today, and at one point I got up in front of everyone and completely blanked, I couldn’t remember which presentation I was suppose to be giving, then I got it wrong and was confused when the slides didn’t match what I was about to say. The fact that I’ve only slept six hours in the last two days probably didn’t help.
In some much better news, the education conference paper that I wrote with some other guys from uni has been accepted, so I may be off to America in May to present it, which would be nice. It’s titled Teaching Model for Computational Science and Engineering Programme and will be presented at Workshop on Teaching Computational Science at ICCS 2009.
It’s now 1am and I need to get up in less than 6 hours to go to the airport. I’m spending a night in London and I’ll be in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Well that was unexpected
I’ve basically packed for my trip to Australia, which is probably the earliest I’ve ever packed for any trip in the last 20 years or so. Of course I haven’t actually packed any of my things, just Elisse’s stuff and Evan’s suit, but since my packing will only take as long throwing 5 by socks, jocks and t-shirts in on top, it doesn’t really count.
I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, end of semester compacted by the fact that I have to leave a week before the end of it, so I’ve got to pile everything in a bit quicker. Only five more days of it though and I’ll get a nice proper holiday (with warm weather too boot). So another week of 11-13 hour days at uni and I can collapse into a puddle once I get on the plane at Heathrow.
Australia Day
Hoy es el día nacional de Australia. Aquí tengo una corta lista de cosas que mucha gente no sabe sobre Australia:
- La cuidad capital de Australia no es Sydney, tenemos una cuidad especialmente para políticos para que no necesitemos vivir con ellos: Canberra.
- Un apodo típico para gente con pelo rojo en Australia es “Blue”.
- Australia tiene la serpiente más venenosa “Yo” (mentira, se llama Inland Taipan), la araña más venenosa (Sydney Funnelweb) y el animal marino más peligroso (Blue Box Jellyfish). Cada año, este último mata más personas en Australia que los cocodrilos y los tiburones juntos.
- Melbourne tiene la tercera población más grande que habla Griego (incluso Grecia).
Normalmente para el ‘Australia Day’, los Australianos están en casa disfrutando de una barbacoa[1], escuchando el “Triple J Hottest 100” en la radio[2], jugando al cricket en el jardín (“Backyard Cricket”)[3] y comiendo chuletas de cordero[4].
No tengo espacio para una barbacoa aquí en el departamento y nadie de este lado del canal de la Mancha sabe como jugar al cricket, entonces como embajador de Australia (y con ayuda de Roberto) he hecho pastelitos típicos de Australia, hay “lamingtons” en el agujero negro.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf2Oz4ynkpk
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hottest100/
[3] http://civil.usyd.edu.au/people/wilko/backyard_cricket.htm
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dKeKuarZhA
I dream in…
I had my first dream in Spanish last night, or at least in the dream I was speaking Spanish, I don’t actually remember if there were other people. In fact I really don’t remember anything more than waking up and remembering having spoken Spanish in my dream. Very exciting.
Dario, Diana, John and Juan Carlos came around last night to play poker, which was good fun. I started out with no idea what I was doing and must have had beginners luck on my side, because I ended up with more little shiny things than anyone else. When people started heading off I realised it was already 4:30 in the morning, so I gave (uncle) Phil a call for his birthday since I knew he was with the rest of the family. Needless to say everyone was a bit confused as to my still being up at that time, I probably should have played along and said that I did get up in the middle of the night just to phone.