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.

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!

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.

Three word budget: For battling billionaires.

With the release of the 2014 budget, the Australian government has shown yet again how out of touch with reality they are, and the depth of their selfish callousness and cruelty.

With big cuts to foreign aid, family payments, medicare and benefits, universities, pensions and hospitals, it seems that the only Australians who will benefit from these cuts are those who are wealthy, in perfect health and without dependents.

But, let's face it, the budget is almost exactly what we predicted from the government, isn't it? 

After all, these are the same morons who will spend $12b on fighter jets and an undisclosed, but also high figure to keep our precious borders free from those nasty asylum seekers who the media and uneducated bogans tell us are a threat to our way of life.  It's okay though.  With $7.5b cut from unnecessary foreign aid, a whole bunch of them will probably die before they reach our oh-so-sovereign borders anyway. 

Obviously the funds to help out our hard battling mining billionaires, and keep us free from the apparent filth of those seeking asylum need to come from somewhere, so why not effectively eliminate universal healthcare and cut funding to already underfunded hospitals, and universities? 

And let's not forget those freeloading pensioners!  How dare they expect handouts?  But that's all good too, because since rising the (aged) pension age to 70, a lot of them will drop off in numbers before they are able to reach their greedy hands out for freebies since not everybody works an office job and those working in manual labour jobs probably won't even make it to the age of 70.

The solution to these problems is simple though.

Don't be poor.

Don't get sick.

Don't be old.

Don't get educated.

Don't have a family.

I can honestly say, I am ashamed to be Australian these days.

How to name a publishing company and media group

In the last week I've set up my new publishing company as well as a media group (which acts as a holding company for everything I do).

My first issue was naming them both.  I wanted something unique...and awesome.  I researched and read up on how to name a company, and when it came to the publishing company I decided to go with the likes of Acer et al, and pick a name in another language which was meaningful.

Now most people would go with Latin.

But I'm not most people.

I named my publishing company Irri-Aepha Publishing.  Irri meaning "believe", and aepha meaning "compose".  And what language did I name it in, you ask? I named it in Rihannsu.

Which is another name for Romulan.

Here's a Romulan for non-Trekkies.

And then there was the media group... What name could I use for that, that was equally awesome?

This:

Yeah, I did.  Interestingly, there is actually a whole Roman mythology thing behind the names Romulus and Remus, and it's apparently popular to name companies after mythological figures.  So I could go with that line if I wanted to.

But we all know I won't! ;)

And now for the plug:

You can check out the publishing services offered by Irri-Aepha Publishing at: 

http://millarpress.com/services-and-packages/

 

and submit manuscripts here: http://millarpress.com/submit-your-manuscript/

 

And if any Trekkies/fellow geeks are interested in publishing their work through Irri-Aepha you can use the discount code STARFLEET for 30% off all products!

OCD adventures

As previously stated, I am obsessive to the point of borderline insanity about some things (the Sheldon Cooper comparison is constantly made).  Last night some friends popped over while I was cooking dinner, and the conversation below occurred followed by utter confusion.  On the bright side, at least my friends know me well...

Me: I have to go to the shops, damn it!
Friend: Wait... what?! But it's TUESDAY?  You know it's Tuesday, yeah?
Me: Yes I know, but I forgot to get basil pesto for the soup I'm making.
Friend: But... it's Tuesday.  You don't go to the shops on Tuesday, you go to the shops on Monday. 

This is true.  I should explain my friends confusion; as stated, I go to the shops on Monday.  And I am so obsessive about my routine that the slightest deviation from it usually results in an epic, epic, epic tantrum from me.  It was more the lack of tantrum which left her confused, and that was fine until we got to the shops...

Friend: Are you okay?
Me: It's Tuesday...
Friend (sensing the danger): Yes, but you needed pesto, remember?
Me: Yes but it's Tuesday.  WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING AT THE SHOPS ON A TUESDAY?! I DO NOT GO TO THE SHOPS ON A TUESDAY, I GO ON A MONDAY! ARAGGGGH!!!!

This would be around the point my brain started a slow implosion.  First over the deviation from routine, second because I'd left half made dinner on the bench (because I needed the pesto to complete it) and that's also something I don't do, and third because... well, because it was Tuesday.

Eventually we made it back home and my stress levels dropped and all was well.  When we sat down later to relax, as much as I tried to resist the urge, I couldn't

"You know that's my spot, right?"

When maths meets marketing

When most people work out a business or marketing plan, I'm sure they brainstorm then methodically work out the best ways to get what they want for the lowest cost possible.  The difference between myself and those people is that I have a fondness for reducing every possible thing to pure math.  I suck at business, I suck even more at marketing.  And I've spent the last four months working out how I can outsource both, or at least make it less painful for me to tackle on my own.  And then today it hit me:

Reduce it to a basic mathematical formula.

So I did:

Believe it or not, that is a marketing plan; one which (when implemented) is going to generate me massive amounts of website traffic and hopefully sales.

To paraphrase xkcd: Math! It works, b*tches!

As for what it says...well, if I tell you that then I'll have to exterminate you <--to be said in Dalek voice ;)

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!