The Blog

Hey you lot...

I'm exhausted after several days conferencing, but I'm going down to London tomorrow and I'll not be back for a week or more. I don't know what my connectivity will be like, so don't panic if you don't hear from me again until the 21st of September.

I've got my phone if anyone needs me.

And any suggestions for fun things to do will be appreciated.

Labels: conferences, england, london, losing sleep, trip09

Ah, Rio...

I think I'll miss you. But before I leave, I must swim at the beach. *grins*

Catch you guys in England.

Labels: beach, conferences, holiday, rio de janeiro, trip09

Space Frosting...

So, a blog, eh?

Well, I suppose I promised. So, I’ve had a day of conferencing, and several days on the beach, and I’m coming to the conclusion that Rio is a bit of a rip off, mainly because people don’t give you the right change when you go for food. This has happened twice now, and I’m really bummed about it. Yes, I’m stupid for not paying enough attention and not realising until it is much too late, but it’s not nice to take advantage of my jetlag like that. Stupid paper money that all looks the same. I’ll be on my guard from now on.

Anyway, I’m still under budget, so that’s okay. Worse, I bought a loaf of bread and will pack some vegemite sandwiches tomorrow. *grins* But I must be sure not to turn a profit on the trip, because that wouldn’t be nice for the boss.

So I’m thoroughly jetlagged. I got myself sorted so I was able to stay awake until a reasonable hour, but now I’m waking up at 3am, and by about 7pm I’m so very dead it’s no wonder the restaurant people can rip me off. This morning I made it back to sleep around 5am and it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Yesterday I went to Ipanema, as there were some markets there that certain parties wanted to see. They were alright; I managed to pick up birthday presents for the people back home, and a few more small things for the family. Ipanema is more of a surf beach than Copacabana, at least in the winter, and the water was full of young people taking their turns on perfectly curled waves.

I love the beaches here, and wish I could go swimming as I think it would be nice (after the first moment of OMG WINTER SWIMMING AIEEE!). There’s something perfect about sitting in the shade of a palm tree, drinking out of a nice ripe coconut and watching the pretty young men play volleyball or soccer. It’s just wonderful.

The conference started today, so there goes my next two weeks. I hope I will have time to do Sugar Loaf and Corcovado this weekend. Otherwise I might have to miss out on some of the official business sessions to get there. Because, you know, it would be a tragedy to miss out on the vote to pass a resolution stating “the IAU members should continue to encourage and support the female astronomers in their communities.” Why can’t they have some controversy on my trip?

Hopefully as time goes on they’ll come up with some sort of interesting thing to vote on. Or at least discuss meaningfully.

***

Think I’m going to skip the politics, as oh my does it sound boring. It’d be okay, but there are at least an hour and a half of speeches before they get to the music and ddancing. And six hours until the drinking. But really, it’s okay.

Went to a fantastic review talk this morning on icy bodies in the solar system, which is the comets and asteroids and space junk out past jupiter (including pluto). It was really good, given by a David Jewitt, who speaks in a manner quite like that of Steve Jobs, and his “powerpoint zen” (keynote really) was fantastic. I think I might get in touch to get his slides, since he had to skip many for time purposes.

So, the next session is starting. Will post more tomorrow.

Labels: astronomy, conferences, rio de janeiro, trip09

Checking in...

Still alive. Have no internet at my hotel, so I can't post from there, but I'll try and write something tonight to post tomorrow. The conference is okay, only nodded off once today (and the boss saw, oh crap!), although they need more coffee stations and food. Oh, and a few more available IP addresses, as I'd rather like to just be able to switch on my internet and have it work.

Labels: astronomy, conferences, rio de janeiro, trip09

About to run away...

So I thought I'd get off my busy butt and take the time to blog, to tell you all what's going on and make a vague promise to post lots while I'm away (that never ends well, but here we are once more). I'm about to disappear overseas for several months, hooray hooray!

First up, I'm going to Brazil (Rio de Janeiro in particular) for the IAU General Assembly. There's a few days in advance where I'll be crashed in a youth hostel, hopefully catching up on sleep, but also maybe engaging in some Portuguese lessons and a few tours of the city and surrounds. My conference runs from the 3rd to the 14th of August, and I'm flying out on the 15th.

At which point I'm going to Cambridge. As in the university. As in, SQUEE! I'll be attending a workshop at the Isaac Newton Institute from the 16th to 22nd of August, staying at Wolfson Court.

After that I'm staying on at the Institute as a student/affiliated participant of the Dynamics of Discs and Planets Programme, save for two weeks (5th - 20th September-ish) when I'm going to London for some sightseeing. I don't have my accommodation sorted yet, but I'm hoping it'll be organised by tomorrow.

And then on the 17th of October I head back to Heathrow to fly home. *snores* So I'll likely be busy (I want to get several chapters of my thesis and a paper written), and I'll be exhausted, but I'll hopefully be able to get online enough to keep this place in a better state of update than I've managed so far this year.

The short version, for anyone who couldn't be bothered reading:

• 29/7/09 - QF321 Sydney to Santiago
• 30/7/09 - PU402 Santiago to Montevideo
• 30/7/09 - PU222 Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro
• 15/8/09 - JJ8084 Rio de Janeiro to London
• 17/10/09 - BA15 London to Sydney

And just randomly for sticking with me so far, a link I've been hanging on to forever: The Cute Cat Theory of the Internet.

Labels: Brazil, Cats, conferences, holiday, itinerary, Newton Institute, the internet is for porn, trip09

Why hello there, silent blog...

The good news is that the IAU has decided that I really am a student and thus qualify to attend their awesome conference at the discount rate. Sadly, I'm not awesome enough to be allowed a vote on any matters of planet defining importance.

Labels: astronomy, conferences, science

 Awesomeness...

1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference

I was disappointed to find that the subtitle was Protecting Earth from Asteroids

Labels: astronomy, conferences, planetary defence, science

   blargh...

Finally felt I was human again after all those conferences, and my immune system promptly declared that it was shutting down to recover from all my stresses too. Which means I now have the flu, and am completely unable to function (though for some reason I decided a half-day at work would make me feel better... why?).

The only good thing about all of this is that I finally looked at the ingredients list for those hot lemon drinks and realised that the reason I feel worse after my mum foists one on me is that they contain phenylalanine (try typing that three times fast while under the influence of a cold), which always makes me feel headachey and bleh.

Minako has gone in for service, and we can only hope that she will come out of it okay. The ASA has very nicely given me $200 towards the repairs, which is about the nicest and most generous thing I've ever encountered from such a big organisation.

So anyway, if I'm not online much at the moment, that's why. Sickly, and without my nice computer.

Labels: conferences, iCatherine, sickly-Cat

   Back to work today...

Not that the thought of going back doesn't make me into a gibbering wreck, but we have to fight past that if we want to succeed (and go on that long-awaited round-world trip when I get the PhD). So, it's a new day and I'm going to fight on.

James has taken charge of my iBook, and yesterday he pulled it apart enough that he was able to get it charging. With two full batteries, it looks like he might be able to do a full backup of the hard disc, which would be great. And if we're lucky, when he puts it all back together it might just work. Otherwise, we'll apply money to the problem and see what Apple has to say. I've only had one good experience with Apple servicing my machines (*huggles the replaced iPod, named Haruka for the curious*) and a couple of bad ones with respect to the laptop, so we'll see what happens.

The toe's almost completely healed up, which is great. Still hurts sometimes when a shoe presses on it in the wrong direction, and doesn't quite have full mobility, but it's close enough.

The conferences are mostly done; I just have to do a set of final updates to the websites with photo galleries and the like, but I'm hoping that will be sufficiently fun that it doesn't particularly stress me out anymore. Oh, and I have to make a naked set of web pages for the WA peoples who are hosting it next year, remembering that I need to put in a few pranks, to see how long they propagate in the system.

Anyway, I'm going to go catch a bus now. Hope this finds you all in great health and spirits, and that you've all kept out of mischief while I've been away. I will be catching up on everything soon, I promise.

Labels: astronomy, conferences, iCatherine

   and I'd get him to give me a fucking computer because this just isn't fucking fair...

Uh, I'm down one laptop battery now, and I'm not sure if there's enough charge on the other to get me through the conference tomorrow. Then I will send it off to Apple to see if there's anything to be done, or if I'm just screwed for all eternity, just like Brendan's old iBook.

I'm very tempted to just throw myself out the window, but I know it's not high enough.

Labels: conferences, iCatherine

   I need a crippled Chibi-Catherine icon...

Well, it's certainly looking busted. All black and blue and ouchies, but it's mostly stopped hurting. Oh, it aches when I put any weight on it, and it feels completely mongey most of the time, but at least it's not actually throbbing like it was last night and this morning.





I guess that's why they call me Catherine the shocker.

The rest of the conference went well, I had a lot of fun and talked to people about many things. It was mostly interesting (there's a certain speaker who is notoriously bad, but we were very short on speakers so in he went, but it did mean that everyone fell asleep in the first session after lunch today.

So that's one conference done, another one to go, and all I need to do now is figure out why my laptop has stopped responding to the charger. I plug it in, and instead of turning amber the light flashes amber and then goes green, and the percentage charge on the battery continues to go down. I'll jiggle the cable a bit when I'm done with the blog, and hope that it sets things right, but I really need to get this sorted before the other conference on monday. *sighs* At least I have three other batteries to last me a few days if it really is kablamo. Maybe I can rush over to the shops to get myself a macbook (although they don't accept student discounts anymore, so I think I'm screwedd in that regard too).

Anyway, I'm going to stop stressing now and go to bed. Maybe I'll even find the time to go to a doctor tomorrow.

Labels: conferences, iCatherine, pain, suck

   Now in pain...

I think I may have broken a toe. *sighs*

Last night after the conference dinner there was observing of the moon and jupiter through the patchy clouds (okay, they were less than patchy after a bit, hence the fact that we didn't try for anything else). Anna didn't make it to the observing, because her jet lag had hit and she was very, very tired.

The point of that digression is that when I got back to the room, it was dark and I didn't want to wake Anna with a light. So naturally I smashed my foot into a cupboard, and now many hours later it still hurts. My toe is swollen, and a little bit bruised. This is very unfun.

The good news is the talks are really interesting, and I'm having a lot of fun. Most of the speakers have embraced the theme of "tell us about your scientific process", which is great because they're all giving such different talks. It's lots of fun.

Labels: conferences, pain, sickly-Cat

   *big big sighs* ...

Well, that went a lot worse than I was expecting. Not the conference, it seems to be going swimmingly; no, the problem is that when you take one Catherine, deprive her of sleep for most of a week, keep her too busy to eat for a day and then ply her with alcohol, she ends up spending large chunks of the night curled up with a toilet vomitting the little bit of food she ate before drinking anything. When she wasn't asleep on the floor, of course.

*is ded from embarrassment*

A random student (her name was Sarah, and for most of our relationship I was convinced she was hotel staff, which makes me even more embarrassed) found me and held my hand for a good half hour or more, and then Korinne and Anna helped me back to the room I'm sharing with Anna.

And of course, I suffered from surprisingly-lucid-but-terribly-honest-drunk syndrome, which I really need to get over. Telling people that you think they have the potential to be great isn't the best way to win friends, although I think she took it in stride. I'm always worried by how I seem to think more about what I'm saying when drink, but I still say all the wrong things.

It's time for the next session of the conference to start, so I'm going to take some rocky road and apologise to Sarah, because she seems like the nicest person I've met in weeks.

Labels: conferences, losing sleep, yay vodka

   Ye gods and little fishies...

I'm so very tired, but I'm done now. Just have to live through the next few days. Not sure what kind of access I'll have, but if you don't hear from me, expect me to be drunk and happy and back on sunday.

Labels: conferences, I want to go home now, losing sleep

   Believe me, this isn't dark...

Dude, we're providing two computers, a Mac and a PC. We're using the university's own system, which takes a bit of learning to drive, but I've managed so far, thanks for asking. The sound system appears to work, and maybe if we're lucky I'll manage to figure out how to record the talks to put online later. Oh, and the lecterns have a full internet connection.

No, we don't have a wireless remote control for the PC. This is a university, and such things tend to wander if they're wireless. Yes, you have to stand at the lectern to speak.

The dark ages would be the slide projector that was used two years ago at Sydney University. That was pretty dark, if I do say so myself.

Labels: conferences, stupid people

   Dear L...

Stop sending out group emails that make it seem like I am completely incompetent. I mean it.

Yes, we're missing 2.5 abstracts. I am well aware of that, given that I formatted the website / book so that those abstracts were just headings, and not proper outlines of their talks/poster. I even talked with the boss and we decided not to include the .5 of one person's abstract that we did have, preferring to leave hers out and include it in a page of errata after the fact, rather than have an unprofessional half-abstract in the book.

And yes, I have repeatedly chased those people up. By sending out your own chasing emails, you make me look completely incompetent in front of people from outside the university.

And yes, I am more capable than you to proofread this book. Just because you used to proofread joe's astronomy newsletter does not mean you have a better grasp of the English language than I. All it does is make you look like a bragging bitch.

Fuck you,
Me.

PS. "Monday lunchbox" is the most dumb name for a lunchtime meeting ever. I hope A smacks you down for it.

Labels: conferences, hating myself, stupid people, unhappiness, uni, wasting my life

   Gratuitous Scarf Post...

So, I've been busy. We got to that horrible point in the semester where I end up with two assignments and a test to mark within two weeks, and it's always nasty. So between the maths department and the conferences I'm organising I've not done much since I last posted.

That said, I did get to do a little last Saturday.

As you can see, the red was where I was up to the last time I took photos, and I hadn't done very much since then. I got to knit a lot that day, as once we got Heidi moved in and she started unpacking there wasn't much else for a large group of us to do (no one wanted to unpack her stuff into the wrong places).

A better photo will follow in the next day or so as I finish catching up and my brain re-engages enough that I can make with the image-editing-fu.

Labels: conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, Heidi, knitting, losing sleep, Tony is a legend

   Snippets of an Update...

• Got enough HWWS conference registrations (and enough speakers not attending the dinner and pizza nights) that we can afford to give everyone gingerbread in their conference bags. Bags are still cheap ones, but they now will contain mq-branded mugs, books and pens, and star-shaped gingerbread, along with some tacky 'health bars' that we're getting for free. Yay team budget!
• The PhD is suffering because of the stupid conferences. Fortunately, I think that after today I'll be back on top of things (currently coding up the schedules and the like, which is horrible).
• I have knitted about ten rows since the last time I posted the scarf, which meant that I was in no rush to take photos this week (the fact that I've only had one night off this week may have also had something to do with it). I might do something about it tonight, but I might just go home and sleep.
• Heidi and Tony got to move in to their new house on Wednesday night. It's great, perfectly suited to them (no lawn to mow, just enough of a garden that it won't take Heidi forever to manage it and huge lounge rooms for having lots of people over to watch movies). Their furniture will follow tomorrow (hooray for moving days!), the internet will arrive in 2 weeks and then it really will be their house, full of their stuff. I'm so jealous.
• On the subject of jealousy, Manda (*Star) has gotten engaged to her boy, and it looks like they're going to live happily ever after. Congratulations you guys.
• I got an email wednesday about a film producer seeking a 'physics consultant' for a new screenplay they're working on. I replied yesterday morning, but haven't heard back yet. I hope I do.
• And blogger's autosave feature let's me know when my html is broken. I approve. (There's nothing quite like having to wait until it finishes uploading to see that you screwed up and now your blog is broken.)

Labels: blogger, conferences, feeling lucky, happily ever after, Heidi, knitting, never going to graduate, nice people are nice, phd, uni

   So, who's sick of hearing about the conferences?

The answer is me! (For the record, we got enough people, and the deadline is technically tomorrow night, since I need my beauty sleep and we want to give everyone around the world a chance to register. And I didn't break the site at all today, go team me!)

So tonight I bring you a scaled and dated (well, more or less) photo of my latest craft project, because you all need to know just how stressed I am (I only knit this quickly when I'm stressed and need an escape).


I've made myself a promise that I'll have it finished and ready to wear on the last day of the second conference. It doesn't look like it'll be a problem, as I've still got a month and a half and it is now... *bashes head against carculator for a bit* ...31% done.

Wait, that's it? It's not even a third of the proper length, and it comes up to my chin already? I'm doomed!

Labels: bloody hell I'm short, conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, I made this, knitting, web stuff

   Heh...

I checked with the treasurer this morning, and it turns out we only needed 39 students to break even on the kiddy conference. We had that by lunchtime yesterday and are now at ~45 or so, with a few bonuses from New Zealand coming along for the ride.

And we're only 17 short on the grown-up conference, no doubt with a big rush to come this afternoon.

Someone remind me to post photos of my new knitting project at some point. I keep meaning to make it a "take a photo once a week and show how it grows" thing, but I keep forgetting. The good thing is I have a very good memory, and I'll just annotate the first photo with dates.

Labels: conferences, I want to go home now

   Only 40 more to go...

Earlybird registration for the conferences is tomorrow. We're currently 40 people short for the main one, but on the other hand, we received 40 registrations today, and it does seem like everyone is leaving it to the last minute. I certainly know the boss hasn't registered yet.

The most excellent news is that we're about to break even on the students-only conference, which hopefully means we'll have enough money to buy star-shaped cookies for everyone!

And if I didn't have classes on Wednesday morning, I'd totally be taking the day off to recover from the stress of the last two days. Ah well, maybe I'll take the afternoon off and hunt down some new manga to entertain me (surely tsubasa 13 is out by now).

Labels: conferences

   Brief Update...

So, if we include all the Local Organising Committee and the kids who asked for financial support, we've had 25 registrations for the student conference so far, with 2 weeks until the earlybird deadline. This is great news, I think, since most people wait until the last day to register, and we've done most of our budgeting around there being at least 50 people.

I'm not sure that any of this was because of the work I've done for it all, but it's nice to know that the webpages (including the registration system) are still working and nobody has made any complaints (except for Lesa, who broke it on the first day by not liking more than one type of food).

So yeah. I will at some point bring everyone up to date about what's going on and why I'm so busy with it all, but it's not going to be today because I'm about to go teach a lab class.

Labels: conferences, I want to go home now

   Elementary, my dear Watson...

My first spammer just registered for the conference. This is sad for all involved, because now I have to think about how to stop such fake registrations. I'm pretty certain that nuking anything with the word 'nigeria' in it would stop most of them, but it still makes me unhappy.

The worst bit is, I'm pretty sure he actually filled in all those text fields by hand, and so I know that he knows there's no where for him to link to his website or anything else there. And I think he gave real information too.

*sighs*

Labels: conferences, stupid people, unhappiness

   I'm fickle, I know...

But I forgive you for being so picky, and a dick. After all, you did just send out a very public email to a lot of the PTBs around here saying: "Excellent work Catherine! Well done - we are in Good shape I reckon at this early stage."

That almost makes all of this trauma worth it.
Almost.

Labels: conferences, fickle-Cat, web stuff

   Yes, this is very nerdy...

But this is something I just needed to know and had difficulty finding online.
If you want to forward your mail from a unix server, the easiest way to do this is to set up a .forward (dot forward) file in your home directory, containing the address you want to forward to.
If you want to forward your email, *and* keep a copy in your local mail system, your .forward file needs to read:
/username, other@email.address

In positive, and less geeky, news, the conference websites are due to go public, and within three seconds of me telling everyone, L had registered and the database read that she doesn't like cheese, that she was presenting "no olives" and that she was paying by "poster". Oops. Stupid comma-separated lists.

Labels: .forward, conferences, don't ask about the commas, emails, some times I think I'd be good at helpdesk, the Harry Potter / Domus Prime crossover seems more likely every day, web stuff, yes I am dumb

   This is why I keep him around...

"Tonight's ASA Annual Scientific Meeting is proudly presented by the Anglo-Australian Observatory - helping you observe better. And by the Australia Telescope National Facility - where radio-astronomers who know go! And by Macquarie University, Australia's innovative university."
- James

Labels: conferences, love my boy, web stuff

   ippen, shindemiru?

No, I don't care that your logo is smaller than everyone else's. You should have chosen a square design like the other peoples, or, you know, had a bigger logo available on your website. The fact that you don't is not my fault. I'm doing the best I can with what I was given.

Labels: conferences, paging the jigoku tsuushin, stupid people, web stuff

   An Actual Conversation...

Q: So, when's the website going to go live?
Me: Probably early next week.
Q: Excellent, excellent. You are getting paid for this, right?
Me: Not a cent.
Q: Good, because this is meant to be volunteer work.

*sweetdrops*
I get that a lot.

Labels: conferences, still poor, uni, wasting my life, web stuff