Lost amongst the familiar

Just a brief post before I toddle off to another day of fun and hijinks at the Victorian Algebra Conference at UWA. (Yes, the organisers grasp of geography is a little thin. And no, we don't go round talking about *tries to think of a victorian era algebraist* ...Gauss?)

Last night I eneed up being the lone sandgroper amongst a bunch of easterners and so became the native guide. I showed such a poor knowledge of Nedlands pubs and the basic layout of UWA (I got us lost on the way from Broadway to the maths department!) they decided I must only be pretending to be from UWA :) It is not wise to get between mathematitians and their beer. Today I've been given the task of taking this Iranian woman out to lunch, presumably because I'm the only female UWA attendee who's free :)

The blog is supposed to be meme free, but the "quote some shakespeare" one gives me a chance to do one of my little rants. The first line of "Twelfth night" is the oft-quoted "If music be the food of love play on". The second line is "so that in surfeit of it the appetite may sicken and so die". And the guy saying it (Duke Orsino) does fall out of love with the women he's sick of being in love with, and gets together with someone else (his manservant Bob...I mean Viola :) ). Thus proving that it is better to make up your own pithy sayings than to quote the classics out of context.

Oh, and becuase it's so darn heavy I haven't been taking "JS and Mr N" to uni to read, so won't finish it for a bit. So far it's interesting but a little heavy going since I don't like Mr Norrel and (not to spoil the plot) he's one of the main characters so hard to avoid :)

Fate laughs wetly

It was the washing machine getting stuck on "fill", in case you were wondering. Meanwhile I was happily working on my Phd in the study (on of the two rooms NOT to get flooded. Luckily these two are the ones with all the electrical equipment!) with the door closed. *sigh* Once I noticed I swore for a while, turned off the washing machine, and rang the real estate agent who sent round a carpet guy. Currently we have a rearranged damp bedroom and the loungeroom is full of all the shoes I rescued from getting too sodden but on the plus side all the rooms with lino are very clean :/

I'm off to read "Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrel" and have a bit of a lie down.

Put the lotion in the basket

In case anyone's wondering, turnout to my impromptu movie showing was me, Cam, gelignite, hipikat and miss_kittylix. Also Alex would have come if I'd thought to contact him properly, for which I feel kind of guilty, ah well. Anyway, it was lots of fun, and from Retro Betties I have stolen the idea of iced herbal tea (or tisanes, if one wishes to be all Regency Romance) plus lemonade. Lipton cranberry, rasberry and strawberry= good, twinings lemon and ginger= ok.

I did a comic for Skeletor and Hordak: Partners in Crime which was fun. Man, did I used to love He-man. It's left me with an affection for black mages which if nothing else made Final Fantasy 9 extra fun :)

Finally, isn't my new lj-icon pretty? It's from Digger. Oh- and the title of the post comes from the song I've had stuck in my head since I found out what it means...(Note: I'd pay attention to that warning, it's kind of a freaky video. Catchy tune though)

A night at the pictures

So, having belatedly realised it's uni holidays and thus my last block of comparitively free time before ze end of ze thesis, I've decided to go see a movie. Since I am feeling a little socialness deprived, I'm inviting any of you who can come. So...

• What: Wallace and Gromit, the curse of the Wererabbit
• Time: 7pm for dinner for a 8:45pm movie.
• Where: Innaloo Megaplex. Meet at Retro Betties before hand.
• Who: People I like who also like me. If you read this it's probably a fair bet :)(*)

I don't want an impractical number of people coming, but given the incredibly short notice I don't see that being a problem. People who don't read my blog are welcome too, assuming they somehow find out about it...Oh, and I get hungry early so we are not waiting around before eating. I don't mind waiting around while latecomers eat, though.

And in unrelated news, there was a mixup with my poster being printed for Open Day :(

(*)Unless you're reading this on planet ucc and don't actually know who I am. But you are of course free to organise your own outing to see the movie tonight should you feel so inclined :)

Stupid Muse

I haven't felt very artistic recently, but felt I had to draw this comic anyway. Since I didn't feel like making it pretty, I did it in about 45 minutes (from pencil on paper to upload) and apart from the text and speech bubbles it's pretty much the original line drawing. (I normally spend ages tweaking) It's based on this realisation, I must admit that while I do remember being fascinated(*) by staplers as a child I can't remember exactly when I noticed the plate thingy can be twisted. Maybe such complex functionality had yet to be invented way back then.

Looking at old photos of me as a kid for reference I was amused to realise I still wear summery dresses over skivvies, a habit my mum managed to get me out of between around 1988 and 1999 :)

And huzzah for Blambot fonts!

(*)Also terrified. What if I stapled myself?

Duck!

This is just to say I am SICK and it SUCKS! Though if I'm going to be sick I geuss this is the best time, since I'm waiting for my supervisors opinion on a bunch of stuff anyway.

Also, Cam got me The Hallowed Hunt! He is the best fiance ever. I have also

• played Penultima (A fun NWN module) with a stupidly powerful character Cam made for me so all the fights took like 20 seconds.
• Watched "Paycheck", which was ok.
• Watched "Sahara", which was great, at least to my fevered brain.
• Finished watching Full Metal Panic which I quite liked, in a "I need an anime fix" kind of way :) It gets points for having an organisation called Mithril and a submarine called the "Tuatha De Danaan". But is not about elves, not even a little bit.
• Felt sorry for my self until Cam came home with The Book and some fruit. Yay for Cam!

The name of this post refers to a little russian duck I made at the St Petersburg exhibition. Becuase...well, it just does :P

Also: Phlebas, thanks for the offer anyway :)

EDIT: Read "The Hallowed Hunt", quite enjoyed it though not as much as the previous two. I had just been pondering the lack (in my reading, anyway) of any fantasy with a country like England, which had been taken over and assimilated. All the fantasy worlds seem to have Always Been That Way, or get taken over and treated horribly and then previal. If one ignores all the bitter(*) pagans who are clearly writing about England/Ireland etc in particular rather than exploring the idea more dispassionately :) (Yes, Marian Zimmer Bradley, I'm looking at you)

(*)Not that they don't have a right to be bitter, but that's a different type of story.

New LMB book!

Yes! It's called "The Hallowed Hunt". Looking for reviews I came across this rather bad one but I don't care. Waiting till it comes out in soft-cover though.

This page of Lois McMaster Bujold photos I also came across has a cool necklace she got made with all the tie-pins she has won plus a photo of her as a teenaged Star Trek geek :)

And to stop being quite such a fangirl: went to the russian exhibition with kitsune_iii today, which was heaps of fun. I discovered that paneforte makes a good energy bar if one is fatigued and the only source of sustenance is a pretentious cafe. Also bumped into the kids from next door (who looked mildly shocked to discover that I exist outside our street :)) and two fellow fangirls who told me about the book (yay! *ahem*) which I had to go look at, but sadly left in the store ($55! I'm not paying that!) then went home where I fell asleep for several hours. Which is why I'm buzzed but incoherent now, stupid nap.

The Phd progresses. Thankyou to the people who commented on my poster.

Help with my homework

Guh. Feeling very stupid today so I'm doing all the things on my to-do list that don't require thinking. Anyway, I would be very grateful if people could give me a non-maths perspective on my Open Day poster- careful, it's pretty big and the colours are wierd since it's designed to be printed, not seen on a screen.

Cam understands it, but he does have 2/3 of a maths degree, and I'd like it to be understandable to at least the brighter highschool students. If you don't undertstand it TELL ME, it's not because you're stupid it's because this is my first attempt at explaining my thesis to anyone who isn't a group theorist. I'm especially after feedback from people who did some maths in year 12 but haven't done any "real" maths at uni since that seems like the closest I'm going to get to highschool level. But anyone's opinion is good.

If you spot any typographic errors etc that would be cool too :) Note that the light green only looks weird because of my kludge to make the green letters visible, its ok on the actual poster. And yes, I used powerpoint, I tried doing it with Latex and it was All Bad.