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October 19th, 2014
 | 12:52 am - Long time no see
Wow. I cannot believe it has been 2 years since I was on LJ.
This evening I was looking for some information about my brother and Google was coming up stumps. Lj was a last resort, and after logging in (which involved jumping through the numerous 'forgotten password' hoops) I trawled through a few old posts until I found the info I needed.
I had so much fun reading the past posts, the situations that prompted them and the comments/advice I received (despite it feeling rather vogueristic and self indulgent). I've been slightly shocked at how blatantly honest I was on here. I'm defineatly not as open on Facebook, or in real life currently.
Apparently 10yrs ago on this date I was in university in Canada, and was too lazy to get up and use a cutting board, so sliced my finger open while cutting cheese and had to go to hospital to get a few stitches. I still have a scar on my index finger, but it's so long since I've thought about how it got there.
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August 20th, 2012
| 11:25 pm - Suits/Doctor who fic
I really enjoyed this Suits/Doctor Who crossover fic. I've never previously read Who fic, and would have never thought you could make it work blended with Suits, but this fic does a fantastic job. Highly recommend :) http://archiveofourown.org/works/462626?page=1&show_comments=true#comment_1283327 Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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August 10th, 2012
| 07:22 pm - Suits fic
I just spent my lunch break and various odd minutes of the day reading this Suits fic http://epic-recs.livejournal.com/531142.html
There is something I find really lighthearted and fun about this fandom, and I got that feeling through and through with this fic. As unbelievable as the premise now sounds to me at the time it didn't throw me out of the story, and I hope anyone else reading it gets the same feel good vibe from it that I did :) Now i'll just be waiting till the poor A03 stops glitching and I can let the author know how much I enjoyed it. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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March 7th, 2012
| 07:46 am - Lewis/Foyle's War
I want to see a Lewis/Foyle's War crossover, or is it AU? I just want to see Lewis and Hathaway investigating domestic crime in wartime England.
The only thing I can't work out is why wouldn't Hathaway have volunteered, let alone been conscripted. Maybe the priest thing? Maybe he would have to be injured? (but I don't want him to be injured!) maybe his sexual sitting on the fence got him kicked out, but did they do that? I would imagine with a war on you would want every able body around and there would be lots of blind eyes turned. Maybe he was a priest during the war?
Anyway, my head is currently full of war and Hathaway and Lewis and a lot if very reverential 'Sir's' Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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February 7th, 2012
| 09:55 pm - Sherlock, iPhones and Facebook (Sherlock spoilers)
Sooooo... Long time' No See LJ
At the end of 2009 I got an iPhone, joined facebook, and lost interest in any one fandom, at pretty much the same time. This neatly precipitated me having to start cleaning the cobwebs off my desktop computer, and the slow decline in LJ use.
Now that I had the internet in my pocket 24/7, the slow start up desktop didn't stand a chance.
Combine that with the steady flow of candyfloss blooging and friends contact that is Facebook (through a working iPhone app - which LJ has failed to produce) and my contact with LJ declined dramatically (2009: 83 posts, 2010: 47 posts and 2011: a meager 13 posts).
I stopped reading LJ every day, somehow found other sources for fic and even reduced the amount of fic I read (shock of all shocks). I missed the length and thought that went into LJ posts (in comparison to Facebook) but struggled to read LJ on the iPhone and eventually just gave up.
But Sherlock (and an iPad, with its large screen) has enticed me back. (I find it slightly funny that is was a show, not the interesting, insightful, meaty posts of friends that has got me back on here, ... Opps). Due to holidays, I was slightly behind the eightball with watching Sherlock, and after watching that last ep keenly missed not having watched it with other people. I wanted to talk about it instantly , wanted to conjurer up ideas of how he did it, and somehow get my hands on MORE!!!. The first few wants drove me on to the net in search of forums, communities, people who were talking about this at 3 in the morning like me! It was the last want that drove me back to LJ searching for fic and recs.
On the whole LJ has supplied both, but I find myself in a situation I've never had before (and maybe that's just because I've been reading fic of cheesy shows) but none of the fics are able to give me that same emotional connection/impact/intense connection/overwhelming love that the last Sherlock ep gave me. I desperately want something that good, but am starting to wonder if its not possible. Sherlock threw himself off a frigging building to save John. That last scene, with John so overwhelmingly sad, lonely and wanting, just wanting to believe that somehow, someway, that there is some hope that Sherlock has survived, that it is a con and he will be able to see him again. None of the fics I have read have given me that absolute kick in the guts true feeling of the last scene of the show.
This is going to sound very wanky, but while writing this post, it got me thinking, maybe that last scene resonates so well (and especially with me) because its so true to life. I have stood there at a grave (like I'm sure many others have) and wished, desperately hoped, prayed even, that it was somehow a mistake, a con, a trick, and the person you miss is still alive. I've even felt that anger that they would play such a horrible game with my emotions and I would willing kill them again if they would just stop, stop it, and come back. Ahhh, what a frigging great show, and such great acting, to just GET it so spot on. Well, I shall continue the search for a fic that manages to replicate that magic formula, and in the meantime hopefully catch up on months of LJ-less.
To BBC Sherlock! Whoo-Hooooooo
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May 1st, 2011
| 09:08 am - 1st of May - TV Yay!
Well I have survived my month with no TV with a lack of drama. Unfortunately all my big plans to do other things with my time did not eventuate. I slept more, cleaned more and read more (in that order) but didn't suddenly develop motivation to take up abstract pottery classes or anything else radically interesting.
My one mundane realisation is that TV is actually as essential for ironing as the iron itself. I haven't be able to get up the motivation to stand there for an hour doing that absolutely boring job without some form of distraction, which has resulted in me denuding my wardrobe of every ironed shirt over the first two weeks, madly re-washing and wearing clothes that do not require ironing for the 3rd week, and just giving up all together and going out in un-ironed clothes for the 4th. I now have to joyfull task of ironing my whole wardrobe in one go (half the doors in my house are sporting some form of clothes on a hanger waiting to be ironed).
As I listen to the faint strains of some american Brittany spin off coming from video hits on the newly revitilised idiot box, I pray that one month was enough to break me of the habit of watching SHIT, and I will never again wake up during a show about which American horder with flying phobia wants to move to the British countryside to be a model, and wonder what I'm doing with my LIFE.
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April 29th, 2011
| 12:40 am - Overtired?
I had a perfectly pleasant day but feel like something is vaguely wrong and feel unhappy. I wish I could work out what's bugging me so I could talk myself out of it. I think I'm weirdly panicky about being separated from my parents who are still down south, but I can't work that out either as it's not an unusual occurrence. Hears to hoping sleep makes tomorrow feel better. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.
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April 18th, 2011
| 07:48 am
I'm not really a fan of real life fan fiction. But listening to the JJJ this morning and hearing Will Anderson talking about the slash fanfiction he found about himself and how he got stuck reading it because it was written so well, really made me laugh.
Hahaha oh crap now they are reading particularly bad fanfic on radio. Some poor girl out there must be either estatic or cringing away.
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April 11th, 2011
| 09:02 pm - TV on testpattern
Well I have finished my first week of no TV with no big dramas.
I was rather surprised at how often I thought about watching TV (morning with breakfast -why don't I see what has gone on in the world overnight on the news?, home from work - why don't I just watch the news? eating dinner - I wonder what is on the news?). I never really realized how constantly I was thinking about it until I gave it up. I suppose its rather like the time the modem broke and I had to admit how addicted to the net I was after going and sitting at the computer 20 times and actually turning it on half a dozen times before remembering that there was no net.
I was rather worried that when the TV was turned off, the net addiction would rear its ugly head. Besides a brief backslide when I realised I could get most of the ABC shows I really liked on my iPhone, I havn't spent all that long on the net this week, which was a pleasant surprise.
Something that was an even more of a pleasant surprise was the return of a desire to read books. From somebody who has been a rabid bibliophile from primary school, the steady decline in the amount I was reading was a weird trend I had noticed for quite awhile. I blame fanfiction induced pickness for most of it, but TV certainly was eating into the time that previously would have been used for couch blobbing of a much more literacy bent.
So far, besides reading, I just seem to be sleeping with the extra hour or so I have in my day, which doesn't get my housework done, but hopefully is making me a less grumpy person at work.
This post is brought to you as I pine for the one show I really want to watch on TV - Q&A
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April 2nd, 2011
| 11:35 pm - Tv Flatlined........
In the hope that it will force me to use my time in different ways, I've turned off the TV for a month (well 28 days and 23minutes... and counting to be exact).
Now I while I feel like one of those smokers who claims that they are successfully quitting when they haven't had a cigarette for only 24 hours (but am really so so so much worse as the box has only been off for 20minutes) I have very high hopes.
I'm finding myself so time poor and at the same time have watched more footage of the Japan disaster than I think I have seen any other international disaster, have seen the quirky insect show that is played before the ABC news enough times to know the soundtrack to the credits and now actually know content from shows like "wife swap USA","Hoarders" and "Britans top missing model", which I previously would not have even known existed.
I find myself dreaming about doing craft projects, making a quilt, reading, cooking, dating, gardening, cleaning the house (ok well one of those was false) but not having the time. So fingers crossed.
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February 2nd, 2011
| 10:13 pm - Extreme Weather events and Climate Change - Soap Box
I am following the events in Queensland with a very heavy heart. I am hoping against all hope that Queensland might come through Cyclone Yasi without anybody getting killed, let alone badly injured.
But as horrified as I am by the natural disasters hitting Queensland I am just so overwhelmingly frustrated about the general media coverage of the Queensland floods, and now Cyclone Yasi. I have watched for days as the media have covered the impact of the floods, have covered the recovery costs, have covered hundreds of people whinging about the rebuilding levy and in all that time have have only heard one media report indicate that these events may possibly be linked to global warming.
I watched aghast as Prime Minister Gillard indicated that to pay for the damage from the Floods the government would scrap almost all of the Climate Change abatement programs it had. The cuts included:
- Not proceeding with the Cleaner Car Rebate Scheme
- Abolishing the Green Car Innovation Fund
- Reducing and deferring spending on the Carbon Capture and Storage Flagships and Solar Flagships programs and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute
- Capping annual claims under the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) Vehicle Scheme
- Capping funding for the Renewable Energy Bonus Scheme – Solar Hot Water Rebate
- Not proceeding with Round 2 of the Green Start Program
- Capping funding for the Solar Homes and Communities Plan
Source: Prime Minister Press Office Media Release
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that the earths climate is "unequivocally" warming, that there is a "very high confidence" that human activities since 1750 have lead to the earth warming, and that with climate change "it is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent and that "it is likely that future tropical cyclones will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical sea surface temperatures."
Source: IPCC - Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
I have not found any scientific data to show that the extent of flooding in Queensland and the strength of Cyclone Yasi are linked to Climate Change. We are in an La Niña weather cycle which is likely to have contributed to an increase in the intensity of weather vents, but I personally think that this extreme weather, as well as the the flooding and extreme storms in other parts of the world are a very loud wake up call. Even if this particular series of weather events was not caused by climate change, climate change is likely to make them occur more often. What happens if the 1 in 100 year climate events happen every 50 years? or ever 20? or if we come to the point were every year we are at the extemes of our climate range (drought, flood, cyclone....).
The money that the government (and therefore us) is going to have to spend re-building after these events is going to be significant. I really want the media to start looking critically at the economic cost estimates of systems like carbon trading, investment in new technologies, carbon neutral power generation, and compare the economic impact of these systems to the economic impact of rebuilding levies and community devastation (let alone loss of life) for the next 50-100 years.
I am so FRUSTRATED. Wasn't this what we had Kevin 07 for? Hadn't we already indicated we wanted leadership on this issue 4 years ago. I am really disheartened with federal politics. I find Gillard a non-inspiring leader. I can honestly say I do not think she has given a single speech that feels real and her on-the-run-policies feel as flimsy as the opinion polls they are based on. And what is the option, Abbott? ..... *crickets*
I can't believe they will cut the climate change programs to pay for a climate disaster. :(
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January 15th, 2011
January 12th, 2011
 | 10:51 pm - Mum :)
I came home from swimming at the pool and watching Southland with  mr_booboo to find this msg on my fridge *huge grin*
(and thank GOD GOD GOD I cleaned my house this morning !)
Also, The Social Network convinced me to give using facebook a try, so my previous trend towards not writting many LJ posts has been exacerbated, although I now find myself equally addicted to reading two friends/update pages/news feed things instead of one.
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December 24th, 2010
 | 03:19 pm - Merry Christmas!
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and safe travels!
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December 11th, 2010
 | 10:37 pm - Fustrated by an inability to remember names.
I really don't know how to make myself better at names.
I've just started watching 'Lie to Me'. I started watching it because I read a cool Doctor Who/Lie to Me crossover and wanted to see who the characters were. I really wanted to read fic in the fandom, so have been trying hard to know which character is which. I'm 5 episodes in and I cannot recall a single one of the main characters names easily. If I was pushed I would guess that the main character is called Cal (which google says is right) but I'm not even sure if that is from reading the fic.
I know who all the characters are, I know their backstory, I could even repeat all the psychobabble about facial characteristics, so why can't I recall a name? Names are so important to human relations, surely I should be able to remember that more easily than I can recall the pictures hanging in some characters wall!?
I have the same issue at work. I can recall, in good detail, almost all the mine sites I have inspected, I can remember details about their rehabilitation, or what treatments they tried when things went wrong, I can even recall what waste dump I was standing on when I took a photo, but if you asked me to recall the name of the company representative who showed me around site, (sometimes for longer than 1 day), I would really, really struggle.
There are people who work on the same floor as me that I would probably see at least 2-3 times a week, people that I know, who I can recall that their dog chews their shoes or that they just laid down floorboards and that their partner is sick, but I will often, (and sometimes this is extremely embarrassing and frustrating), forget their name.
I'm fairly sure I have a really mild form of dyslexia (cannot spell to save myself, sometimes accidentally swap number in a sequence around without noticing, and if tired can mix up p, b, and d) and I'm wondering if this is just something connected to that. I know its perfectly average to forget a name now and again, exspecially if its somebody you don't talk to much, but I genuinely think there is something a bit skew-if about the way I comprehend names. I can remember Mum telling me that I just don't pay attention (and that used to make me feel awful, as it had all these connotations of being too lazy to bother remembering peoples), but I think she may have had a point. Somebody tells me their name, I try to do all the memory tricks like saying it straight back to them, using it as offten as I can when I meet them and somewhere along the line my head just doesn't pay any attention (though to be truly honest those memory tricks have significantly improved my name recognition from what it used to be).
Talking about work,... and avoiding all names :), I got to have a scintillating phone conversation with an very deaf prospector on Friday. The conversation started out with a complaint of illegal mining and then degenerated into accusations that the owner of the mine was running a brothel and growing cannabis out the back. What I find truley bizarre was that this was the same mine I had had somebody ring up and ask to run a paint-ball operation out of a year ago. *raised eyebrows* (What the hell are they doing out there?)
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November 10th, 2010
| 07:01 pm - Veggi Seeds Perth Green-thumbs?
Hello to any fellow Veggi Gardeners in Perth (and sorry for the spam all non Perth people)
I'm about to order some seeds from Diggers and since the shipping and quarantine fee seems to be the same for any number of seeds, I was wondering if anyone else was interested in adding some seeds to this order?
If you would like some seeds please let me know by Friday evening when I will be placing my order.
They have a fairly amazing catalog of heritage and organic seeds (including Gem Squash from South Africa, which has been the trigger for this whole seeds buying business!)
( What I'm thinking of gettingCollapse )
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November 9th, 2010
| 09:17 pm - Cooking Night!
Guess whats cooking in this kitchen?
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November 8th, 2010
 | 12:49 am - Home from Africa
I've arrived back in the land of Oz!
Back from the home of Lions and Zebras, back from the never ending grassplains, huge inland wetlands and skyscraping sand dunes, back from the amazing variety of people, languages and cultures.
Lets just take it as a given that I had a really ROCKING holiday and I highly recommend anyone who is interested in Africa to not let all the bad media we hear put you off. The people I met were very friendly, the crime is misrepresented to tourists (I'm sure there is crime, but I think it is not as much of a threat to tourists as our media make out, and I certainly never felt scared) and things you get to see are out of this world.
My number one pick out of the counties I visited (Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa) is Namibia. Namibia has well maintained roads and facilities (it was colonized by the Germans who I think set out much of the road system) amazing national parks - with a full display of animals (maybe with the exception of buffalo in Etosha) an a spectacular array of different landscapes (inland salt flats, cold sand sea shores, miles of white sanddunes, towering red sanddunes, forbidding canyons and green vineyards.
Red Sand Dune in Namibia
(To give you an idea of perspective, the trees at the bottom of the dune are full sized trees that our truck could park under).
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October 20th, 2010
| 11:23 am - Namibia
I'm currently in Namibia and having the most wonderful time. I've just spent the last 2 days in the Etosha National Park, which has been one of my absolute highlights of the trip. The animals (and facilities) in the park are just out of this world. The park has a number of natural and artifical waterholes and as it is so hot the animals usually gather at them during the day. I saw a week old elephant baby, lions mating, warthogs, springbock, oronx and a zillion birds.
The absoutly magical thing about Etosha is that when the park is closed (sunset) and you have to return to the fanced camps they have a floodlit water holes that you can quietly sit at and watch all the nocternal animals come and drink (and swim at). I really don't think words can descibe how amazing it was watching black rhinos swimming and fighting, or watching a lepoard creaping out the drink and the poor scared springbock on the other side of the pool just freezing, having no idea what to do. Or watching a black rhino bring dwn her baby to the water and seing them reflected in the pool.
Having such a good time! I hope you are all well and happy!
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October 11th, 2010
| 09:58 am - Victoria Falls
I'm currently in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. I was surprised at how nice Zimbabwe is. It is cleaner and has better roads than both Kenya and Tanzania, you can even drink the tap water!
I am having a great time and am about to set off in my second tour, starting with Botswana. The tour only has 8 people (which is awesome) and they all seem pretty nice. Currently it is boiling hot but apparently there is worse to come as in Namibia it should be 45deg during the day (YUCK!).
I have tried several ways to upload some photos without success, which is a real bugger. I would love to have the peace of mind knowing that at least my favorite shots are safe somewhere else besides by camera.
I hope you are all well and I'll hopefully be back on here after I have survived the Okavango Delta (no showers or toilets and very basic camping for 3 days)
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