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!

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!

Real life suspended animation

In my latest article for SC Global Group Innovation Institute, I discuss suspended animation and how it is about to become a reality for a team of US surgeons.  

The technique that is being used for these human trials, is derived from a study done back in 2000 which was conducted on pigs.  90 percent of the pigs in the study survived the cooling technique, enabling their otherwise life threatening wounds to be successfully treated.  

You can read about it here:

http://www.scglobalgroup.com/innovation/2014/suspended-animation-becomes-reality/

(And have a quiet giggle at how I successfully managed to slip in not one, but two Star Trek references!)

DEF CON Hermit

I'm antisocial at the best of times, but occasionally I find human interaction almost completely intolerable.  My usual level of hermit will rarely exceed 'Operation Hermit' or 'Operation Extreme Hermit', but last week the combination of having to re-organise the entire house, pack up a family members house, catch up on all the work I'm behind in and... well... people just got too much.

So I declared DEF CON Hermit.

The one thing that gets under my skin like nothing else does, is the feeling of being overwhelmed and then having people hassle me while I'm feeling overwhelmed.  I thought that declaring DEF CON Hermit would stop people from annoying the crap out of me.

I was wrong.

Apparently telling people to leave me alone only encourages most of them to bombard me with facebook messages, text messages and emails even more than they usually would.  I'm not going to lie, this has pissed me off.  A lot.

I get that people don't really get the whole introverted hermit thing, but even if it's not something people can't understand, it's not that hard (in my opinion) to respect it.  Or try to.

And every single message or email I get, just puts me in more of a bad mood and makes me want to stay away from people for longer.  I'm hoping that it'll die down soon and they'll leave me be.  But I highly doubt that.

In the meantime, my inbox can continue to fill while I avoid it.

It's hard being antisocial sometimes.

Why scientists should not catch colds...

When I'm not busy writing, I'm busy being a scientist. Microbiology is a special favourite for me, and normally this is great...

Except when I get sick.

Scientists, and microbiologists in particular, should never get sick. Ever. My thought process/facebook statuses look a little something like this over the past 72 hours:

Thursday: My nose is running and I have a slight headache. It's probably just hayfever -insert grossness here about analysing the colour of bodily fluids Sheldon Cooper style-. It's fine, really... I'm sure it is...

Friday: I'm dying. I have a fever. That's good though, a fever is a non-specific immune defense. It'll burn those germs up in no time... but a fever is also one of the first sign of ebola. Or the plague. OH MY GOD I HAVE THE PLAGUE!!!! No, I'm being ridiculous. Of course I don't have the plague! It's just a headache and fever and runny nose, a normal head cold... Except that's how ebola starts. Oh good lord, I'll be bleeding out of my eyeballs within the week! Noooo! But WHERE would I have contracted ebola? Where was I ten days ago? Who could have infected me with a rare hemorrhagic fever that is usually only found in or near rain forests in remote parts of Western Africa?! You're being ridiculous, it's just a cold!

Saturday: I'm coughing. It's official, I have the pneumonic plague. Farewell cruel world!


....And that, my friends, is why if you know somebody who is a scientist you should avoid them like the *ahem* plague when they are sick. (I HAD to make the lame pun, it was necessary!).

And if you ARE a scientist and you get sick, I'm about to go all 'Madagascar' on the joint and dig myself a dying hole, Melman style. You're welcome to join me. We can play exotic pathogenic bingo!

Melbourne Comic-Con griping

I checked out the lineup for Aus Comic-Con this year, and I'm not impressed.  While Adelaide and Perth get not one, but three Star Trek actors (Nana Visitor, John Billingsley, Conner Trinneer), Melbourne gets nada.  And when I say nada, I mean we get Macgyver and that's pretty much it.  No Star Trek actors at all.

I'm genuinely considering taking a sneaky trip to Adelaide for their spectacular lineup, and just skipping Melbourne all together this year.