Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Razorback

A woman has reported a huge pig on her property near Murwillumbah.
Could it be?

Monday, September 22, 2008

Raining Russians

I know I know, second post on Anastasia spam in a week but I've been inundated with emails from two more Russian women. Now, in order to generate some good blog fodder I've created a email address and I've been all lonely hearts and replied to these girls. Problem is that the next step is that they want my money - I need to sign up to an account so that I, and they, can be verified.

What the? Any way, being sensitive, I've asked if the "Verification" for Olga will include a doctors certificate to prove that she is a maiden. (I really hope this is an honest to goodness con or I'm going to feel so crap)

According to my extensive research (http://www.russianbrides.com.au/)
"The main difference between Russian women and Western women is that Russian women do not suffer from the "Cinderella syndrome" so common to Australian, US or UK females. Over–independence and feminism have not spoiled Russian women belief in traditional family values. Unlike their Western sisters they still put family ahead of career."


Further more "Russian women are more than just pretty faces atop nubile bodies." And, not only are they "easy to get" they are more than happy to be 10 to 15 years younger than their partner.

Wow, just what I've always wanted - a docile twig with an accent.

Any questions you want me to ask them???

===========


Hello, how are you doing?
Likely, you will be now surprised. But I long thought before writing to you the letter.
Today in the morning, I have received love the Internet dispatch, from the unknown person to me the addressee. In the given letter, it was spoken about love attitudes between people. In the list e-mail addressees, I have seen your personal address.
I think, what you as search for serious attitudes? I consider, that given chance for me unique, therefore I have decided to write to you. I wish to find the present love!
You are ready to learn me?
If you will allow me, I would like to begin our acquaintance, with the small story about me.
My name is Yuliya. To me of 30 years. I was born in not the big Russian city which refers to Ryazan.
I am quiet, young, purposeful girl. Friends speak me, that I cheerful. I love dialogue. I consider, that dialogue very important component in our life.
I am, as well as all women of our country, like to cook food, to go in for sports. I conduct a healthy way of life. I do not smoke and I do not take alcohol. I have work which very strongly I love. But I do not have not enough love. I am assured, that on our planet, there is a person whom the happiness and love can present me!
On the Internet I more recently. I have no wide experience in the Internet acquaintances. I saw transfer on the TV, about love in the Internet and have decided to find the happiness. I consider, that it is real.
I search the present for the man which will love, and to respect with me. I consider, that this main thing in attitudes.
You interesting the man, and I would like to learn you in more detail. Probably it is our destiny?
You can write to me the letter and tell to me in more detail about you. I with pleasure shall answer you. Certainly, I shall send you my photos as. In the future as I shall send you a photo from my life. You can learn all about me.


Please reply only my personal e-mail: Yulechka1978@gmail.com


I with impatience shall wait your letter to me, with more detailed story about you. I am assured, that we become good friends and we can love each other.
Yours faithfully,
Your girlfriend from Russia, Yuliya.

=============


Hello.

I see and read your profile on se and would like to know you better.

Some words about me. My real name is Olga , friends call me olya. I’m a single girl from Russia, now i live in city - Sovetskij

My age 27 y. I was born 27th August 1981 year, on a sign the zodiac i'm maiden, my height is 176 cm, weight is 56 kg. I have the blond hair and brown eyes. (You can also look at the photo in the attachment).

Friends say, that I’m attractive, optimistic, kind and sensitive person. I like to go to theatres, museums, i like to keep fit and go to the gym hall and pool, but work takes most of my time. I live with my parents.

In free time i love reading books, seeing movies and cooking. O! Yes, i cook very good and i like to create new dishes.

I'm looking for truelove, my best friend and soulmate. I want to meet reliable and responsible man, who will be a special man for me. I just need one special man and have no interest in others.

I attach the photo that you knew my face, please tell me what are you thinking about my photo - ok? Also I want to ask you to send me some your photos!

I'm very open and its easy to get to know me, so please ask me anything.


Please reply only my personal e-mail: Olga_kulikova_11@rocketmail.com


Please tell me more about you and send me your picture,

I wait your message,
Olga.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Pale blue dot

In 1990 Carl Sagan had the NASA engineers turn Voyager 1 around to take a photo of Earth. At the time Voyager was beyond the orbit of Pluto; 6.4 billion kilometers. Having traveled past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune the spacecraft was, as it is now, on its way to the stars. From this distance Earth is distant pinprick of light very close to the sun almost invisible in the sunlight reflecting from the spacecraft. The stripes are a flare artifact in the lens. The Earth is the little dot, slightly less than half way up on the right, in this picture it resolves to something smaller than a single pixel. Earth is just one of 7 other planets orbiting a very average star in a very average galaxy composed of around 4 billion other stars.



From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

When did Fully become a word?



Fully sick astronomy classes

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Tell me something I didn't know

Your result for How geeky are you?...

Laboratory Geek

77% Geeky, 89% Cranial and 68% Introverted!


You scored 77% Geeky, 89% Cranial and 68% Introverted. You are quirky, intelligent, and like to fly solo. You're too curious to live a hermit's life and would much rather be working on some sort of interesting project though be it alone.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

She loves me She loves me not

So, this Russian chick keeps sending me love emails. But she must really love me because she keeps changing her name for me. I've got the same email from the same girl three times today already.



Hello!

It is my first letter on English. Sorry, if I made some mistake in words. But I write you from my hand and don't use pre-written letters.

I am very glad, that you have become interested in me. And I shall try, that you were not disappointed with me and have learned as much as possible about me.

But I would like to learn you better too. I will ask you, write to me more about you in details.

My name Ekaterina. I live in Ukraine, in city Odessa. I am 28 years old.

If you think, that I am not serious don't make mistake, and know me much more. I gave promise, that I will never married on Russia boy.

All of them lie and don't hold his word. Some man drink alcohol very much. May be I will tell you more about my past relation later.

But i don't like think about it, it was no good.

My family are not large. We live with my mother. My mother have good work as bookkeeper. We can pay for all life expenses.

And I will not ask you help me with money. I know many stories about it. If you will write to me more, you will understand, that I am not such girl!

I want write to you long letter with much ideas from me, but I think, It will not good for the first letter. I am simple Ukraine girl, who want to live abroad.

I want have husband and right family. I will try for this very much. I have very serious intention.

My girlfriend find her husband on internet in last year. She move to Australia and they have happy family.

She lives in Sydney and they will have child soon. She write to me letter every week.

I was glad for it very much. We want to meet some time soon. I have great opportunity move to Australia at the end of this year.

Don't want write about me and my hobby in first letter.

We can talk on the phone, if you will want it. I don't have own phone, but I can use one from my friend or I can use call servise on post.

I will glad, if we can chat on MSN. I stay there at the evening and we can talk about all.

Please, send to me your phone number or MSN name, if you want contact with me from other way.

If You really interested in me, you can ask me about all.

I want ask you some question:

Do you have children? What are you doing at work? Did you have past relation, wife?

I hope, you can know some new things about me from this letter.

You can write to me on my e-mail: suhorukekaterina@gmail.com

I will wait your letter and hope to receive news from you shortly.

Good luck to us.

Suhorukova Ekaterina.

------

Sorry Ekaterina - I already have enough Russian women in my Harem but if any of you out there want woman from Odessa please, guest be mine

Friday, September 12, 2008

I'm a gheek

Like really geeky, I know the absolute speed of light by heart and wore a t-shirt to the intervarsity ski championships which read: "eat my redshift". I have my own telescope.

So, credentials have been assured.

I was going to do a diatribe on the LHC but you can read about it everywhere. So rather then rehash I'd thought I'd open it to you, dear reader, to put to me questions you have about the experiment - why is it round?, why won't it kill us all? - whatever. I'm not omnipotent and with the power of the internet at hand I have no doubt that you smartarses can dig out some contentious unanswerable but I'll give it my best shot.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Speed

I've just been getting outrageously high download speeds on the cable at home.
Averaging 336 kB/s

Hypothetically, if one were to say download the first episode of the second series of *cough* Terminator on something like bittorrent at 350 MB it would take just 17 minutes to download.

Delete

I've been wondering about the way some people delete their blogs and start again. Usually as part of some up and down manic ride but the problem, as I see it, with destroying a blog is that it doesn't have the same cathartic benefit as say, the bang and clamor of smashing up the kitchen or the warm firelight glow of burning your novel.

click

just the cold careless neon reply of the monitor.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Port, Wauchope, Upper Roland Planes and that tree.

P9010307
From Point Plomer we continued to drive up towards Crescent Head then back towards Port through the hinterland via the Maria River Road. The GPS was trying to direct me through some extremely questionable tracks that I'm sure would have seen us trapped and petrified into bog-men. We caught the ferry back and devoured a plate of pasta each at a slap up Italian joint.

Wednesday we drove down the south coast checking out Bonny Hills, Laurieton and Diamond Head at the north end of Crowdy Bay National Park which has a fantastic camping area I'm looking froward to taking the kids to in future, beach access and lots of wildlife - there were even wallabies were grazing around the tents.

Thursday we packed the car and headed to the farmstay via Ellenborough Falls

View Larger Map
Rereputed to be the largest single drop of water in the southern hemisphere.
The roads are amazingly windy, which induced Annaliese to vomit over everything, including her teddy. Adrian was initially amazed at the bush turkey in the car park but it has undoubtedly been fed by humans and became brazened and the little guy freaked . Please, don't feed the wildlife. They become dependent, get all sorts of diet diseases and die. It's a death sentence. And that includes you Curtis feeding the bloody cockies next door.
The country up on the escarpment is fantastic. Alternating between thick bush and rolling hills with a backdrop of mountains much like you would draw as a child. The dirt road winds from hillside to hillside often precariously winding along ridge tops then suddenly opening out into cleared pasture. We lunched at the Udder Cow Café. In my case the burger was so big I was in fear I would need to be rolled out in a barrow. Given the amount consumed at lunch we thought it prudent to take precautions least the kids vomit on the hundred plus k's of winding roads we still needed to negotiate.
The Farm stay was tucked away in the picturesque valley of Upper Rollands Plains, more or less south west of Kempsy.

View Larger MapP9030386
Annaliese and Adrian feed the chooks and the lambs and basically just enjoyed being able to runaround and just be.
Thursday was a little rainy (a sign of things to come) so in the afternoon we took the $X$ off into the mountains for a look around.
P9040401P9040402P9040405P9040410P9040425P9040436
I'll post some movies of the tracks later but it is exceptionally pretty, albeit rough country.
We got back in time to visit the local dairy to find out where milk comes from.
P9040463P9040469P9040472
And then down came the rain.
Friday, drive home day, my 38th birthday, my nearly died day.
It rained exceptionally heavily most of the night and continued into Friday afternoon. Communities in the area were cut off due to flood waters so were were very careful on the 400 or so k drive home.
Only just out of the farm stay the trip nearly ended when a 15m high dead poplar tree fell across the road in front of us. Eroded by the stream undercutting its banks it blew and bent in the wind like the other trees, then it seemed to hover for a moment and then in slow motion it lay down across the road. It was a huge tree. I had nowhere to go. We were probably doing 60kph but jumping on the anchors, ABS blasting away we caught the tree across the bull bar. It exploded. Showered us with fragments of kindling. It took about 15 minutes to pull branches as thick as my leg out from where they were jammed in the wheel arches and clean out and check the radiator and break lines, fan belts and everything else I could see. So far it seems that the only damage is a twisted and smashed IPF fog light - so much for the bullet proof hardened glass lens. I'll have to get the steering checked and wheels realigned but we were lucky. A tenth of a second later on the breaks and the tree would have been through the cabin rather than caught on the bull bar. That's one tough ARB bar - best 2K I ever spent.
About 5 minutes after we hit it a council truck ambled over the hill, cleaning fallen trees and repairing washouts in the road. I'd walked back to try and clean up the bigger bits and make it safer for following vehicles. The first worker jumped down from the truck and immediately asked if we were all right, had we run into the tree? - I replied that it had fallen on our car - hit the bar
1st council worker- 'FarrrrrrrK'
1st council worker to 2nd council worker- 'Tree fell on 'em'
2nd council worker- 'Farrrrrrrknelllll'
2nd council worker to 3rd council worker, rolling a larger bit of trunk back and forth under his foot as #3 steps down from the truck - 'Farken tree fell on this blokes car'
3rd council worker - 'Jesus fucking Christ, you ok, anybody hurt, you still able to drive, you need a lift or an ambulance" as he looks at the branches and bits of lumber up and down the road "farrrrk - that must have been a fucking big bang - lucky it was dead or we'd be cleaning you up with a broom".

So there you go - that was my holiday