The Vulcan Hand Salute Enactment Effect

I honestly have the most awesome best friend in the entire world.  Although she's never watched a single episode of Star Trek (the horror!), she indulges my love of the show and on my birthday last month, spent hours letting me tell her to live long and prosper while giving her a Vulcan hand salute repeatedly.  (Side track: my other close friend made me a birthday cake in the shape of a Vulcan hand salute.  See? Awesome, awesome friends).

The other day was just so full of win that I begged her to let me mention the conversation on my blog, which she agreed to do (I *love* her!).

I was raised Catholic.  My best friend, however, is not at all religious and up until last week she had never been to a Catholic mass in her life:

'I was supposed to wish peace to the people around me,' she said, 'and instead I turned to my husband with my Spock hand up and told him to live long and prosper...'

Again, this is from somebody who has never seen a Star Trek episode or movie in her life.  Do I have my friends well trained or what!? And, as stated previously - I am totally going to make this, as well as Spock Five a thing.  Soon all my friends and family will be doing it.

The Website Theme Preoccupation

I need some toothpicks to keep my eyes open today.  The reason?  My website; or more accurately, my website theme.  I needed something perfect, and it's pretty much all I've thought about the entire week. 

I became obsessed.  Bec-style obsessed.  Think Gollum in a purple dressing gown obsessed. 

The menus in particular were an issue. 

"No! It needs to be clean!"
"It's a menu..."
"It's the most important thing!"
"Okaaaay then..."

The same thing happened with the author boxes at the bottom of the posts.

The same thing happened with the colours.

And everything else.

Finally, finally I found a solution in the form of a website theme builder.  Perfect!  And I was up until 5am playing with it.

I wonder what the next thing I'll obsess over will be.

You can check out the website here: MillarPress.com

The service station exit inadequacy

Winston Churchill once said 'To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often".  Clearly, I am about as far from perfect as you can get.

I hate change.  I loathe it with every molecule of my being.  It makes me uneasy, it makes my brain implode and, to be frank, it makes me bitchy too. 

So you can imagine my delight at discovering road works on the main road adjoining my own street. 

And you can probably imagine what went down when I needed to drive down the accursed road tonight.  I was stomping around like an angry lunatic...err, I mean 'validly upset person', until I realised something.  My sister recently moved in with me.  Excellent.

'Dude! Dude!' I called out.
'What?'
'I need you to drive me to the end of the street'
'Are you f**king serious? Why can't you drive yourself?'
'Because there are roadworks.  Roadworks, dude! And the traffic lights are all stupid, and ROADWORKS...' I was just about to launch into a long winded rant about why this was The End Of The World, when she spotted the danger signs and promptly agreed to take me.  Kudos to you, sister.  You saved yourself at least twenty minutes of my ranting.

So she drove me down there, muttering about how I'm a pain in the ass the whole way.  Until we went to exit the service station on way home...

'You SEE!  I am not crazy! There is no freaking exit there! Now how are we going to get out?'
'Oh crap, you're right.  I guess we just go back the way we came?'
'But that's not what we do.  We do not go back the way we came, we go out that exit there.  On the right road.  The way we came is the wrong road'.

To her credit she managed to not rise to this, and we did indeed go back the way we came.

'You know that I would have flipped it if I encountered that on my own,' I remarked.
'Yeah, I think you would have,' she agreed.

It's so nice when people just play along with my particular brand of crazy.  

The streak plate challenge of 2011

This was originally posted on an old blog of mine back in 2011.  As I am in the process of consolidating all my writing, I am posting it here.  And no, a dog's mouth is not cleaner than human hands.

There are always those questions in life which, when confronted with them, leave you pondering before a fierce determination sets in to find the answer.  Some of these questions have led the most impressive scientific minds in history to dedicate their lives to seeking the answers, and thus adding to the knowledge pool of science and humanity.

For Albert Einstein it was "what does E equal?" which lead to the famous equation  E = mc² and his theory of relativity.

For Isaac Newton it was "why did that bloody apple hit me on the head*?!" which lead to his apple analogy and the discovery of gravity.

And for Marie Curie it was "I wonder what will happen if I play with polonium and radium?" which lead to her winning Nobel Prizes in both chemistry and physics before dying a horrible radiation related death, her cookbooks being sealed in lead lined boxes and having the 96th element (curium) named after her and her husband.  Though why you'd want to go to the effort of putting on a radiation suit just so you can go through Marie Curie's cookbooks is a little beyond me...

So in the pursuit of science and knowledge, and with the help of a friend, I am going to dedicate a few weeks of my life to answering one of life's great questions...

Is a dog's mouth cleaner than human hands?

I'm looking forward to busting out the agar and swabs and brushing up on my rusty steak plating techniques to bring mankind the answer to the question nobody wants to know.

So stay tuned for the results, cos I'm about to get my science geek on!

*the apple didn't actually hit Newton on the head.  He watched it fall from a tree, it's just usually depicted in the former.

The genuis of xkcd

This was originally posted back in 2011 on another blog I had.  As I am in the process of consolidating all my writing, I am posting it here.  Even though, by now, you all know how obsessed I am with xkcd:

 

I am completely obsessed with xkcd, a web comic written by what is probably the funniest physicist in the known universe.  Not only do I enjoy it because it's full of science in-jokes, but because it shares my fear of velociraptor attacks, it's hysterically funny and even did a cross over with my other favourite comic, Calvin and Hobbes.  And since they allow you to put a few of their comics on your blog, I'm going to share some of my favourites with you.

This is so something I'd do...

I was in absolute hysterics over this one, especially since it reminds me of the "stick figures of death" comics my sister and I used to make.

The Spock-Five conditioning paradigm

A funny thing has been happening to me over the last few weeks.  I made the decision to give up high fiving people, and instead replaced a 'high five' with a 'Spock-Five!'.  Which is essentially the exact same thing, except you make a Vulcan hand salute first and say 'Spock-Five!' either before or after.

I thought my friends and family would ignore this latest insanity.  They usually do.

But then a few of them started Spock-Fiving me.

So I thought to myself 'what the hell, this is totally going to become a thing.  I will condition them to accept Spock-Five as normal behaviour and it will be awesome'.

And lo and behold, in my familial and friend circles, it has now become the acceptable practice.

Step one is complete.

Now I just need to take it to a global scale and have the entire world Spock-Fiving each other; or at least the trekkie world.

Now that would be cool!

Why yes, I am a woman in science/technology! Thanks for noticing!

An awesome thing happened to me today when I woke up.  I was checking through all my notifications, and one in particular caught my attention.  Being mentioned in a paper.li is becoming a regular occurrence and I know that it's no big deal.  But the mention from this morning was slightly more noteworthy.

It wasn't the actual mention which got me excited, it was that it was my own writing which was mentioned in a paper.li which "captures all of the cool things that women and girls are doing in science, technology, engineering and mathematics".  The unintentional recognition of being a woman in science/technology was what got me, and what had me grinning like a complete idiot.

See, I have a bit of a complex about this.  In Australia, you're not really counted as a woman in science/technology unless you are working on research or have a doctorate to your name (or at least this is what I've encountered in the past).  But, as I work for a US based company as a science writer and clinical innovation specialist, I am a woman in science/technology.

It's a weird place to be; recognized for what I do in the US, but not the country I reside in.  So I never know if  it 'counts' or not.

The validation this morning means that for today at least, it does count.  And this makes me insanely happy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get my science writer/clinical innovation specialist on.  Cos that's what we women in science/technology do! ;)

Missing Wrath of Khan makes me go all Wrath of Khan

Last night I most definitely got my Wrath of Khan on.

At 4:30pm I discovered that the Astor Theatre was playing a double feature; Wrath of Khan and Into Darkness.  The theatre, which was opened in 1936, is seriously awesome and I've been dying to go back and see something there for a long time.

But three hours notice is not enough to sort out a babysitter and bribe somebody to come with me/drive me to the theatre.

So I missed out.

And I was angry at it.  All night I was stomping around yelling 'from hell's heart I stab at thee, people who wouldn't see Star Trek with me!'.

In retrospect it may have been a tad irrational.

I think I need to get some more Trekkie friends too, then I wouldn't have to bribe them to come see Trek-tastic things with me like I do the rest of my friends!