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The ramblings...

Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

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	2009.12.07 13.11 So apparently the small town of Albany should be renamed "the UV hub of the world" Poor sad me got burned very badly - it was only 23 degrees and I had sun cream on! To make matters even better I was wearing this necklace http://eclecticeccentricity.bigcartel.com/product/just-all-legs-octopus-necklace-silver Now I have a while octopus on my chest (luckily I had been walking around so the tentacles aren't terribly distinct). Albany was lovely though - sand with so much silica that it squeaked and beautiful aqua-marine water! Just as fantastic was the beautiful windfarm. Best part was discovering that it was the electorate of WILSON TUCKEY AND HE MUST HATE THE WINDFARM SO MUCH BUT IT'S STATE OWNED SO HE CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT IT HAHAHAHAHAHA Take that Tuckey! Home next week! Bought a sexy tent on ebay! Good is all around (except for in the category of Brendan who needs to be more organised and book flights before they are sold out. Boo. Now we only get to spend 4 days together instead of 6. Boo.)



	2009.11.25 16.50 Well I've been away from things for a while but things are generally going nicely - that said, I was rather taken back when I was met with the sight of bare buttocks when I entered the ladies at work today. Shower curtains are there for a reason Ms Environmental Engineer. I also don't know why you had to put your make up on only clad in a bikini afterwards...surely I am not your type. That said though things are peachy, I'm back in Canberra three weeks tomorrow (can't believe it's so soon, I have many a thing to do here) and have an exciting schedual happening while I'm there. I'm going to be doing some radio tracking and then, I'll be going up and doing field work in Northern Queensland! Blah I'm being kicked off the computer now. Pook. More to come at some stage! B



	2009.10.14 22.13 Is it just me or does Christopher Hitchens have the most delightful voice? Or maybe I'm just liking what he's saying :)



	2009.10.10 16.53 My goodness it's been a while since I updated, so hello neglected world. I've been having a rather good run of it recently, B and I had our 4 year anniversary (this seems incredible to me, but in the best of ways), mum and Sue came over and visited for a week for my graduation which was lovely, Brendan was the lead in a fantastic show called "Parade" and got rave reviews and I went camping with my former supervisor and a friend of ours on an orchid trip (I'm delighted that the transition from supervisor to friend went so smoothly). To boot I've just read a couple of fantastic books that I would recommend to anyone the first is "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole I haven't giggled that much reading a book in years (although apparently the book is somewhat polarizing, still I believe all of you have good taste ;) ) and the second which I've only just finished is " A Fraction of the Whole" by Steve Toltz. This book is as mad as it is remarkable but the fact that I finished in in 2 days (and it's just over 700 pages) says quite a bit. It also says I have to reread it because I'm sure I read it too fast to take everything in. Now I'm going to start on "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" which looks like it will be just as much fun as the previous two. It's been so refreshing to read books that are not only literature but are funny as well -as much as I realised the importance of books like "A Fine Balance" and "A long way gone" I'd perfer to finish books and feel invigorated than feel like I have to stare at the wall for three hours in a state of sheer angst. I'm also feeling motivated due to a couple of meetings I went to this week, one was a seminar put on by Engineers Australia and another was a campaign launch by "get up" both focusing on renewable energy which is something I'm passionate about (and as a result of such I believe I may have signed myself up to go door knocking for signatures next week for GetUp -> they're trying to put pressure on the government to limit the amount of lies being spread by the coal industry about reducing carbon emissions costing jobs and trying to get the government to take a more ambitious plan to Copenhagen later on in the year. Here's something I didn't know. Apparently one of the reasons the carbon reduction targets put about by the Rudd government were so pathetically low was because the massive coal lobbies were threatening to make the most significant job cuts in marginal seats should higher levels be put through. What arseholes. Do you know who else is shaping up to be an arsehole? Western Power. Apparently they're planning on charging folks who have solar panels on their house a tariff for putting excess power that they have generated onto the grid. What shits. Here's something else I didn't know - everything that's said about it taking >15 or so years for a solar grid to produce the amount of energy that was required to construct it in the first place is a load of crap. At the engineering seminar, a fellow who is the executive director of a great little solar company over hear called http://www.sungridcorp.com/ said a good friend of his did his masters trying to work out how long it would take to pay itself off. Worst case scenario (and this is making things far worse than they'd be realistically), about 1.8 years. I also find it interesting how no one asks the same question of a coal fire power station! I did find part of the engineering night quite amusing - as well as discussing urban solar they also discussed urban wind. The best part was about 10 mins in when discussing the pros and cons. The first con mentioned was "It doesn't work" To me this was a bit of a deal breaker. There are a whole bunch of reasons why this is the case that I wont bore you with here. What else? Well steadily but surely working out what I'm doing next year. The plan is to move back to Canberra 17th of Dec, volunteer in Canberra for a while (hopefully I can be a field assistant/lab assistant. I need to organize that...) and the mid March I'm planning on frolicking off to the USA. Spending 6 weeks hiking/sight seeing in California and the Pacific Northwest and then hopefully catching up with my brother and doing the Alaska highway! Then, if all goes according to plan I'll visit my friend in Chicago, pop into NYC and then spend 3 months in Iceland on the volunteering course. Then go move to where Brendan's finished up at. There are a lot of ifs buts and maybes still. But yes that's me for now! Ciao



	2009.07.28 18.21 I venture out of my cave to say hello. Had been busy with work which I'm loving - I think I've learnt more GIS stuff the last few weeks then I have for a long time and having been enjoying a social life as well (made all the more fun by a discovery of a spanish hot chocolate shop :) ) One of the things taking up quite a lot of my spare time though recently has been Craig Shuftan's book "Hey Nietzsche! Leave them kids alone" which, in all fairness, I primarily bought because of the play on words. The book is really interesting though and discusses how a lot of current art-music (I say this in comparison to generic pop bands who are really more entertainers than artists) has its roots in the Romantic movement (and the expressionistic period as well). I found the book to be really interesting and a lot of fun (although it's structure did drive me a little insane- rather of having chapters to make changes nice and clean, it segues to buggery instead) and now I suppose it makes me think about music a little differently. I had never really thought about music being little snippets of autobiography, and instead considered them "just words" to music that sounded good. Don't get me wrong, I never thought that the lyrics of music was meaningless, especially in protest songs, I guess I thought in normal pop, lyrics were just a) made up or b) inspired by experience. This makes me respect some artists a heck of a lot more but others, like Billy Corgan in particular, it just makes me want to slap in the face because of how conceited they are. A lot of the quotes Schuftan included reminded me of the character Tracey Morgan from 30Rock with his "truth bombs." I'll spare you the rant Brendan suffered through. My favourite bits would have to be where Schuftan writes toungue in cheek - especially when he states that Kanye West is a living version of Nietzche's "superman" (Nietzche, for the record comes across as a crazy hedonist, I will have to discover more about him! Podcast downloads here I come). Anyway, I'd best be off and make dinner B



	2009.07.07 21.06 Woot! I got my thesis results yesterday and I got a first! Yay :) Over and out!



	2009.06.29 20.11 Quick update on life! Thesis, done and sent to the binders! Examiners were very positive and some of them even suggested that I should write a paper from it and submit it to Biological Conservation! Got a job and started at SKM (Sinclair Knight Merz) which has been great so far and will be even better once I get my act into gear and start riding in. Have had to substantially add to my wardrobe though getting work clothes and the like. Too tired to write anything substantial...life is good :)



	2009.06.15 17.18 Well friends, It is done. The oral defense was this morning and it went well - so did the general comments I got from my examiners on my thesis. I do believe all three of them used the word "excellent" at some stage so I am absolutely thrilled (I haven't had a look at the scribbles they've made on my thesis yet). Looks like the blood, sweat and tears all paid off, so fingers crossed for a first! So thrilled, in fact, that I didn't even get annoyed when I accidentally deleted the mask (in GIS) I'd been working on all day (sadly there's no restore option!) or when the blood bank barred me from donating for 6 months (unless I get a doctor's note!) because I had lower than acceptable iron levels (114) and it turns out, amazingly low Ferritin levels (4.24 ug/L when the normal range is 15-200). So what even is Ferritin? Med students? Something to do with iron I suppose? Anyway, I am now going to cook some food, indulge in some wine, look at travel books and then write poetry about Canberra - I have to write a guide to Canberra in rhyming couplets for a friend who is visiting there for a short course at ANU. I May have to post bits and bobs here for your critical analysis!



	2009.06.10 20.23 Thought it would be a pretty good time to demonstrate that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. So, by far the biggest thing that's happened recently is that I have handed in my thesis! Woot! I handed in on the first and just felt such an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders. I have my oral defense this coming Monday so fingers crossed that that will be ok. I'm sure it will be fine - my mark will either stay the same or increase so that takes the pressure off somewhat. After that I fix up any other corrections submit a bound copy and then all is done for good! Since then I haven't actually had any time off - straight after submitting I started a little project with the center of water resources which was excellent and they might have a bit more for me to do in the near future which is great. Job wise I'm really playing things by ear. I was offered a position with a consultancy here but after asking around about it, didn't hear a single good thing about it and got pretty negative and so turned it down. I've been offered bits and pieces at the uni which is nice, but the thing that's really exciting is that I've been asked to send my CV off to a very good consultancy here, but more on than when I know more... I'm feeling a little gross and run down at the moment. Brendan decided to be completely unselfish and gave me his cold which, as well as making my brain feel as though it's full of mucus, has had the added fun of aches and lack of energy. I don't think I've been helping myself though - my diet got pretty crappy towards the end of my thesis period. So much so that the blood bank turned me away on Monday because my iron count was too low (110, the lowest they accept is 120). So up goes my spinach and chickpea intake. I think I'll start back on iron tablets for a bit. Anyway, all for me from now! Toodles



	2009.05.28 11.24 One of my supervisors just sent me an email (he's just read the second draft of my thesis). There was a positive comment in said email "[it's] taking shape nicely" This means the total number of positive comments received from this supervisor during my honours degree now stands at 6. WIN :P



	2009.05.25 17.05 Well despite things looking down last week, Ecologica have decided to employ me as a part time GIS person. This is excellent as it means I'll get to do some real world GIS rather than just uni labs. Hopefully I'll be able to wangle some casual work at Kings Park as well (as a number of folks have said it'll be a shame to see me go :) ) so here's hoping. But this all happens post thesis. Still I don't think I have much to do now, so this is fab. I need to write my abstract (easy) I need to write acknowledgements (easy) I need to fix any corrections my other supervisor has (pretty easy) I need to read stuff aloud and make sure I haven't pulled anything momentous out of my buttocks (not too trying)



	2009.05.21 17.28 Most unpleasant thing said to me today: Student: So Bryony, is your thesis due soon. Me: Yes, why? Student: You look like it's due soon. Wanker Nicest thing said Students: generally showering me with praise because they said I was an awesome tutor and they couldn't have made it through third year without me :) :) :) I hope they were able to talk sense into one of my other third years - this particular person decided to ignore me and has decided to interpolate data about stray cats. To do an interpolation, one needs continuous data. He apparently disagrees with me when I say stray cats are not a continuum. Hilarity.



	2009.05.21 08.15 Well bugger I didn't get the research assistant job at Kings Park (or, as they so kindly informed me, the second research job that came up during the interviewing time - this just felt like they were putting the boot in) which is a shame because a) I would have liked to have stayed in Perth until mid next year and b) I would have liked to stay at Kings Park. I'm feeling ok about it today, yesterday I was not so flash and succeeded in getting no thesis work done after I opened the letter when I got home. The main thing that's changed in the way I'm looking at it - one of the things that got to me was the fact that everyone had been saying it would probably be between and another of my friends at Kings Park because why go for someone else when you knew the applicants and what they were like. Consequently losing something that was rigged in my favour did bite a bit. However, I remember talking to Dean (someone who used to work at Kings Park) about it a while ago and he said that Rowena (one of the panellists) was going out of her way to make it a fair thing (the other two panellists have apparently just used interviews before as a formality), and if that's the case, then I'm fine. Heaps of people probably have more experience with seeds than me and I got an interview when not everyone did so I should, and do, feel proud of that. This outcome does make a conversation I had with Annette (admin) make more sense though - she was asking me if I'd looked into working with other people up at Kings Park if the job didn't work out because she'd like me to stay there. Oh well. Life happens. But I need to concentrate on making my thesis awesome now and then think about jobs later.



	2009.05.15 17.29 The hands of my thesis is now in the hands of my supervisors. I really really really hope it's ok and I don't get an email back saying "Liked the first line, killer final line. Redo bits in between" In part because I would like the next fortnight to be gradual value adding not frantic rewriting, but mainly it's because I care far to much about their opinion of me. If I have to redo any more of the stats I will scream. And punch something. Probably Bambi. Tomorrow I'm going to have my first full day off for about a month. Can not freaking wait.



	2009.05.11 09.27 And so now begins the three week thesis tango. This will be fun if my current sleeping patterns keep up - regardless of what time I go to bed, I wake up around 5 and then can't get back to sleep either because my mind automatically starts thinking about stats or because I have too munch tension in my shoulders. On a lighter note though, things seem to be chugging along nicely and I should have a draft finished by friday. Fingers crossed. So are we all excited about Eurovision on Sunday? You should be, if not for the controversy surrounding this years one! For those that don't know, Georgia has been banned from this years competition, held in Moscow, because their entry is an anti-putin song. nicely done Georgia Hilariously, the fact that it has been banned means that it's received far more attention than it otherwise would have and is being released internationally. Also, as a response to being banned, Georgia are going to stage a rival song festival in Tbilisi on the same night.



	2009.05.01 09.04 Just a quick update on my life so far. Thesis is due in exactly one month. I am not terribly happy about this and have got to get myself organised. My main problem at present is that just thinking about how much I have to do triggers the flight rather than fight reaction. I think if I just divide it into sections and run with it from there then I'll be more successful. Things are not helped by the fact that very little progress has been made on said thesis this week because I had my presentation to worry about. Nevertheless, the presentation went well so that's good. No questions that were impossible to answer, I didn't speak too quickly and unlike one of my trial runs, didn't say "Um" 63 times. It was also really great afterwards - Hans Lambers, the head of Plant Biology approached me to congratulate me on the presentation and also to mention that a friend of his from a consultancy in Perth was looking for a research assistant in commercial pollination services. Apparently the people who had already been interviewed had had a background in botany, but no actual experience in pollination stuff, I have a meeting with him at 2pm today. Wish me luck! I also had a laboratory tech interview yesterday at Kings Park and I think that went pretty well as well. I have had some nice distractions this week with Wolverine (which was fun, but ultimately a little disappointing based on what it could have been) and Tim Minchin (who was wonderful :)! ) So much to do, so little time. ARGH.



	2009.04.24 17.03 Oh dear, my faith in the legitimacy of a lot of science in press has taken a beating this week. I wonder at the quality of data out there. It's so easy to make a statistical mistake and, providing it makes sense, not pick up on it. No one sees your raw data. No one knows. Also, the fact that so few people have a good grasp of stats makes me doubley worried. Another reason I wonder is because of the lack of links between journal articles of relevance. One of the major things I was doing was a stepwise general linear model. I find out today that major problems have been associated with using something like this in ecological work for YEARS. However, it's not just beginners like me who have this problem - this article given to me today was lamenting the fact that 57% of 65 papers using multiple regression published over a year in 3 high ranking journals used this stepwise procedure. This is really bad. I almost feel motivated to write a letter to someone - I most certainly will write a letter to the head of botany/zoology at ANU when I finish honours saying how important it is to get a freaking biometrics course up and happening and how disadvantaged I felt not knowing a damn thing.



	2009.04.22 16.37 Oh damn statistics One thing that frustrates me about statistics is how subjective it all is. For instance, one of the aspects of my project is to find out what environmental variables associated with fragmentation have an impact on pollination success (fruit set), and off spring viability (just counting the no of seeds with and without embryos). So essentially I run models through a generalised linear model and see which a) models make up the model of best fit (if any) and b)which of those models have a significant impact on my dependent variables. Only problem with running a whole bunch of models like this is that the likelihood that you'll get false positives increases somewhat (in biology "significance" is set at the arbitrary value of 0.05). So a whole bunch of people decided to come up with ways of rectifying this, although what was happening with some of the early models is that they were too conservative and as well as preventing a lot of type one errors (say something is happening when it isn't), they were causing a lot of type 2 (say nothing is happening when it is which is arguably worse). So then what do you do? Especially if you have a whole bunch of things that are borderline significant, say p=0.047? Any of these tests is going to wipe them out. But then do you just use common sense and identify the false positives? Well that makes statistics subjective when its supposed to be objective. Sadly you can't just pick and chose where and when it's applied either. I have some data that really doesn't make sense - for one of my populations, success is directly related to pop size, but inversely related to pop area and density. So, either something super complex is happening - say a critical point where things drop off which makes sense but I have no idea how I'd even think about proving it, or I have a false positive. I'm guessing the former. Only problem is if I apply a FDR (false discovery rate), it makes that work, but it really mucks up most of the rest of my data that appears to be significant, and in all fairness I have little enough of that as it is! \ Oh well I still have amazingly significant difference in my on a species level even if not in most of the variables I spent a while measuring. (a while = WEEKS). Looks like I'll get to talk about metapopulation theory then. Oh the joys. Still the fact that I can understand what I'm doing stats wise now (well to a degree I suppose) it great.



	2009.04.21 11.53 Things are immeasurably better today, I think actually making some graphs and looking at my data makes me feel as though something has actually been accomplished as opposed to just general arsing around. Hopefully I'll stop being tense so much no (I'm not tense emotionally...most of the time, but my shoulders keep deciding that being relaxed is for the soft). Also happily hanging out at the ECU library which I actually approve of greatly - I've been avoiding Kings Park because of my tendency to distract and be distracted. The ECU lib is about a 20min walk from my place (which is why Brendan driving causes me to raise an eyebrow so high it almost disappears into my hairline) and unlike the Alexander library so far no one has sat near me who I hasn't washed in about a fortnight and then leave bits of beard on the table. I know some of these people can't help it, but people who smell probably distract me more than people who talk. More later! B



	2009.04.14 17.01 The +'s and -'s of today +Waking up feeling good +Printing out all my stats results that look pretty swish to show my supervisor that I had spent pretty much all easter weekend (and a good proporation of the week beforehand on) -Being told that said stats are probably unusable because of pseudo replication -Bursting into tears in KP. There were witnesses. Double minuses per witness. +Being told by a statistician that everything is still looking ok - Still feeling like crap. More to come.



	2009.03.30 10.19 9 weeks until hand in. Get set for the ride. Statistics, it's time to kick your ass.



	2009.03.25 08.51 I love bike week - there's nothing quite as rewarding as a free breakfast. The only possible thing that would have improved this morning was if my bike hadn't bitten me, still, the fact that I can't find a bandaid probably means I can milk sympathy for my bleeding leg for a good portion of the day. Finished counting my damn seeds (bar 2 samples that I have to redo) Hurrah! Also, free trip to Rottnest Island on the weekend - one of my tute groups is headed over for a field trip. The most excellent part? I have to go over around 12pm on Friday to help set up equipment which really shouldn't take too long and as it's going to be a silly 35 degrees on Friday I'm going snorkelling (I've heard it's excellent of Rotto). I apparently also get to supervise groups that are looking at Quokka scats. Joy.



	2009.03.19 14.14 I've just finished reading the very good book "The Vagrants" by Yiyun Li. It's another novel which highlights just how despotic Communist China is/was and so unsurprisingly all of the nice characters die or end up miserable (a sentance from the book that sums it all up quite well is "the one who robs and succeeds will become the king, and the one who tries to rob and fails will be called a criminal"). I've read far too many books/seen too many plays/movies that end this way this year. Although that said, if anyone knows of books which are in a similar vein to "Wild Swans" or "Mao's Last Dancer" but are Russian, please let me know. Why can't there be books called "A Jolly Jaunt Through the Woods" in which everyone is kind and polite to one another, no one's kidneys are removed while one is still alive and there are plentiful opportunities for witticisms and general pleasant foolery? That I would be very keen to read. Actually as far as pleasant foolery is concerned, I saw Shane Warne the musical last night. It was great - and like Keating it sampled a whole range of music genres - from your typical Fosse music theatre style to Bollywood and R&B hilarity. It's wonderful fun so I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance - although one does get to see slightly more of Eddie Perfect than I would have liked (still seeing him like that was preferable to Mickey Rourke in the Wrestler) and he is rather mean about musical theatre (although I don't know whether this aspect was hammed up somewhat because they were in Perth - Perfect is a WAAPA music theatre graduate but appears to have entirely disassociated himself with it because, he apparently didn't fit in all that well. I find this fairly easy to believe as the MT's here most adhere to a fairly safe sterotype. That went on a bit of a tangent but anyway I have a tute to take so goodbye!



	2009.03.11 08.14 Today was sad - my record of only being overtaken by other cyclists wearing bike shorts was cruelly taken away. This would have been ok if it were not by a 60 year old. I felt less Speedy Mcspeed and more Sweaty McSweat. On that note though, does anyone have any recommendations for good riding music? My collection of Eurotrash that I usually listen to is slowly changing from inspirational to damn annoying. Catch you later. B



	2009.03.10 20.49 O pook. Why oh why is Pekka Kussisto playing with the ACO the same night I am seeing Shane Warne the musical? Pook You must all go and love him for me :) He's playing in Canberra this Saturday so no excuses! http://www.aco.com.au/Default.aspx?url=/innervoices

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