Cheap Therapy

• Using Google Sketchup to model some housing development and investigate overshadowing. Pretty awesome once you get the hang of it. Write submission
• Probably no WWDC this year
• A birthday dinner for Becc with fine food and company
• A week without students. Meaning lots of things getting done while they’re not around
• Get to see Cygnet for the first time
• A long weekend. ANZAC day. Bless ‘em.
• A picnic in a smaller park than anticipated. But my first time walking both Puggle and Bilby there. Reminder, Bilby is heavy enough I need the stroller
• AppleScripty pythony Dilberty goodness
• Car test driving. Kia Grand Carnival and Toyota Tarago (Last week the Volkswagen Passat Wagon, Subaru Liberty and the Tarago). See a separate post somewhat later
• Games at Kylie’s. Happy Birthday! This time I prove I can lose at Super Scrabble as well as Scrabble

The RAC are running a car battery recycling day on the 3rd of May 2008, just drop your battery off at an RAC Auto Service Centre.

Welcome to Canberra!

Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.

At the first Olympic torchlighting ceremony, Berlin, 1936 - Adolf Hitler

More quality editing from news.com.au.

This site lists some of the electric vehicles converted by members of the Perth branch of the Australian Electric Vehicles Association. The next meeting is 6:30pm Wednesday in the Billings Room at UWA’s Electrical Engineering department.

Check out isitferret’s Swancon 2008 photobucket here. Leece and Rob’s photos from the Heroes and Villain’s Ball are here. Suggested flickr tag swancon2008.

We wandered down to Cottesloe to see the last day of Sculptures by the Sea. It had obviously been too long since I’d been to the beach. I found it very relaxing to paddle my feet in the water, even though there was hot sun at 6pm in the afternoon (well, 5pm real time). Cottesloe beach has fond memories for me , going there with Mum or Gran to swim, and a few times to fish, generally unsuccessfully (I remember the old concrete boardwalk before it fell over in a storm, and the sea water swimming pool). To round the day off there was a twinpole conveniently split between Puggle and Bilby. I think my favourites were the snake, the sundial or the peapod tree at the end of the groyne. I asked Puggle which sculptures he liked the best, and he said “the elephants”. Of course, they weren’t actually part of the art exhibit, they were the garden ornaments outside the Indiana Teahouse.

Somewhat old news, but since 2000 the World Bridge Federation drug tests players and will strip them of their medals if they refuse the test.

If you’re free on 18th March you might want to check out this lecture (at UWA’s Social Sciences Lecture Theatre).

Mark Bould is a Reader in Film and Literature at the University of the West of England. He is the founding co-editor of “Science Fiction Film and Television”, and an advisory editor for “Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory”, “The Journal of Horror Studies” and “Science Fiction Studies”. He is the author of “Film Noir: From Berlin to Sin City” (2005) and “The Cinema of John Sayles: Lone Star” (2008) and co-editor of “Parietal Games: Critical Writing By and On M. John Harrison” (2005). He is currently writing “The Routledge Film Guidebook: Science Fiction”, co-writing “The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction”, and co-editing “Neo-noir, Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction”, “The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction” and “Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction”.

So if you want to compete in the WA round of the Barista championships you need to go to the Australian Specialty Coffee Association site and download the appropriate entry form.

WA heats are held in Perth on 15th and 16th of March at the Perth Town Hall.

via CoffeeSnobs.