Visit to parents’ (also, podcast announcement)

First, an announcement: I’ve previously mentioned on this blog that I’d recorded an episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Well, the day has arrived and you can go listen to it! I’ve posted a comment there which says all I have to say at this point. Here’s a link to the blog post from January that contains just the song the podcast is based on.

I spent some time recently – not exactly the weekend -  at my parents’ place. Quite a lot happened, but let’s start with photographs of dinosaurs just to get your attention.

 

General updates 2011: July (including new Zazzle product)

Everything’s going well in preparation for my upcoming holiday and computer upgrade.

The last time I mentioned the upgrade plans was in May, when I’d just started getting prepared. Back then I was cleaning up old files and emails. Since then I’ve made sure that customisation settings for various programs are backed up, and compiled a two-page document with notes about all the software I have installed. It’s a kind of checklist to make sure everything is upgraded correctly.

General updates 2011: Apr/May

Latest adventures and interesting links. This one’s rather long, to make up for last time.

Easter followup:

The Easter week that I spent with my parents feels like an eternity ago now; see my previous posts for pictures of the bonfires, lambs, easter eggs, etc that provided the entertainment while I was there. I also helped Mum and Dad out by varnishing a towel rail and assembling an Ikea stepladder for a bathroom they’ve recently had renovated (everything was useable when I was there, but there was not yet any electricity).

More excitingly, I’ve finally got the mulberries that I picked from my parents’ tree last December! These were kept in little snap-lock bags and stored in the freezer, waiting for an opportunity to be driven over to my place. But each time my parents visited they either forgot, or weren’t coming direct (and didn’t want to risk them unfreezing). Anyway, I’ve got them now and they are very nice. I love mulberries. Need more ice cream.

Flock of Worlds

In the January 14 installment of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, Bob Hirshon challenged listeners to write a solar-system-related song, with plans to showcase the songs received in a future podcast.

[UPDATE: My song was featured in the August 14, 2011 episode of the podcast, which I recorded. Pity that the audio quality suffered so much in copying/converting: the version below is much better.]

I decided to give it a go, and at the time of writing sent Bob the link to my mp3 file about 24 hours ago.

Here is my submission. I hope you like it, and please tell me if you do. [download]

Lyrics follow, and then technical info.

The sun’s in the middle of an orbiting swarm
In the distance it’s cold, but closer it’s warm
And humanity’s carried like fleas on a bird
Though the first time you hear it, it may sound absurd.

General updates 2011: Dec/Jan

At the end of 2010, I decided to terminate the Interesting Stuff series, which I’ve been running on this blog for the last two years. This is the first in the series that will replace it. Instead of interesting links followed (possibly) by a personal soapbox, the personal stuff will come first with (possibly) some recommended links at the end.

This update spans the period from Christmas (December 25) to the beginning of a short family holiday in Perth, Western Australia (January 2), and includes some links to interesting articles I came across in that period.

Bought books

I’ve just ordered myself some books for myself, my main purchase of books for the year. They’re all geeky non-fiction titles. [See this post for an update]

Mike Brown’s How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming has just been released, and obviously I need a copy of that. I also ordered Mark Rosenfelder’s books The Language Construction Kit and The Planet Construction Kit. I once asked Mike Brown whether he sees the PCK as a threat, and if you don’t get the joke there you probably don’t follow @plutokiller on Twitter. (Apparently it’s not a threat, though a hypothetical Dwarf Planet Construction Kit just might be.)

Interesting Stuff: Early June 2010

The voting period for the Three Quarks Daily Prize in Science is nearly over, but there’s still some time remaining as I write this. The eighty science-related blog posts that are candidates include some that I have read before, and many that are new to me.

Among the articles I’ve seen before (and indeed linked to from this blog), there are some very worthy candidates, notably #38: Evolution: the Curious Case of Dogs by Christie Wilcox. However, my vote went to an article I hadn’t previously read, candidate #70: On Seeing Yourself by Meera Lee Sethi. This is not your typical science-related blog post. It’s written more in the language of a story, and develops a character around the first person protagonist even as she muses on psychological aspects of reflections and self-recognition.

In votes, Meera’s essay is not doing so well. To win the voting round, an article must be among the twenty most popular, and hers is not currently making the grade. (At the time of writing, it has eight votes in its favour, and there are almost thirty candidates with that many votes or more.) So if you agree with me about its worthiness, you might consider adding a last minute vote of your own.

Now, having said all I want to say about the 3QD competition for now, here are some other interesting links that I’ve come across recently.

The Ghost of June Past

Early June is voting time for the Three Quarks Daily Prize in Science, and in a few days I hope to tell you which nominations are my personal favourites this time around. My favourites from last year’s competition included articles on mathematics in science, triboluminescence,  C. P. Snow of Two Cultures fame, and Faraday’s experiments with gravity.

Other items that I linked to a year ago include articles about how apes laugh when ticked, how our senses are connected even if we’re not overtly synaesthesic, a system that promised automatic music, a possible detection of an Andromedian planet, and a plant with special roots for snow instead of soil.

As for blog posts from previous Junes, in 2007 I returned from a few months’ blogging break, and wrote several posts about family events that occured during that interval. I also wrote a creative linguistics post about inventing scripts that could have evolved in alternate realities, and talked about my favourite computer game from the eighties.

In 2008 I found Satanic messages hidden in poetry from the Australian Skeptics. :-)

In 2009 I wrote a lighthearted mathematical piece on why pi is not 3.

Dad turns sixty

My father was born on 11 February 1950, and last night (20 February 2010), we celebrated his sixtieth birthday. It was a good night.

My own contribution to the party was a trivia quiz that I compiled on the history of science within Dad’s lifetime, something that I’ve already mentioned on the blog during my research phase. I was happy with how it all turned out, as it succeeded in the goal of facilitating conversation around the tables. More about the quiz at the end of this post.

Inverloch photographs

I’ve just got back from a holiday in Victoria.

My parents spent the week as volunteers digging up dinosaur bones at Inverloch. I spent much of it in Melbourne, catching up with my Uncle David and Auntie Sue, but we all spent a few days together at Inverloch as well.

[Update: I've discovered that my parents, Roger and Dianne, get a couple of mentions on the Dinosaur Dreaming blog. See here and here.]

We caught up with relatives at Nhill, both on the way there and on the way back. On the way back we went via Shepparton, where I caught up with a much-valued friend I haven’t seen in thirteen years. It was very nice to see her again.

Right now I don’t really feel like describing our holiday in detail, but feel free to ask questions. The rest of this post is devoted to my beach photographs.

Day one at Inverloch (i.e. the day my uncle, aunt and I joined my parents there):