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I’m walking on pins & needles

grantdmckenzie — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 02:32:09 +0000

I’ve decided to start a new feature on my blog. Its called Thesis Word Count. Pretty self explanatory… my goal is to reach 30,000 words by mid-late June. That way I’ll be able to submit it for revisions (a few times) and still make it out of the country by early July. That being said:

Thesis Word Count: 2,397

On to the latest news that is my life. Tuesday night Jen & Kim decided to head out for a night of comedy at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Didn’t make it. Apparently the venue was pretty dodgy and they decided to head to Level 6 Rooftop Bar instead. So we met up for a few Drinks, a few more friends showed up and we had an eventful evening chatting and admiring the Melbourne skyline.

Yesterday was ANZAC day (Australia & New Zealand Army Corps). It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. As in most other countries, a day of remembrance is a national holiday. ANZAC day also marks the annual Collingwood / Essendon footy match up. Federation Square was playing the game on the big screen, so we went down, grabbed a slab of concrete and watched the game. It was a pretty full-on game. Unfortunately Essendon lost, but fun to watch regardless.

Last night Sarah, Scott, Adil & I went out to the Billy Talent show. It was really strange seeing them at such a small venue (Corner Hotel) considering the last time I saw them they were on a stadium tour and performed to a sold out crowd at plaza of nations. We estimated the Canadian crowd content to be around 40%. Overall, they played a great show and the audience was excellent. Personally, I was a little disappointed that they didn’t play Pins & Needles… but they played most of my other favorites.

This weekend looks like it will involve a Pub Crawl, Comedy & Metro Pizza. Do do da loo do.

Friends & Participants

grantdmckenzie — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 04:34:23 +0000

Not a whole lot to report on this week. I have 2 participants to go before closing the door on the data collection portion of my degree. I was hoping to have them come in to the lab this weekend, but as per usual, the lovely individuals at Access Control are taking their sweet time in granting me access to the visualization facility. Hopefully I’ll be able to get them in early next week.

My friend Robyn arrived in town on Thursday and I was able to meet up with her yesterday. She’s been living in Sydney for the last 7 years and just by chance I ran into her on FaceBook and discovered she was coming to Melbourne. It was great to catch up with her. At the same time, Jen’s friend Kim arrived from Vancouver. She is down here for a couple of weeks and will be staying with us while she explores Melbourne. So last night, the 4 of us (and a few other friends) went out to Lygon Street for dinner, over to Fredos for gelato and then on to the Yacht club for a few drinks. A pleasant Australian evening. Tonight is all about playing Magic and possibly Wii. It should be a battle.

Lighter Footsteps

grantdmckenzie — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 02:34:22 +0000

So sustainable environment… yada yada… global warming… yada yada. I know, I know… reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Well, lighterfootsteps.com has produced an article outlining the ten easiest ways for you to start moving toward a lighter lifestyle. Some of the usuals are on there, like switching to Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (which I assume the majority of people reading this blog already use), but there are also some not so obvious ones. A number of my favorites are:

1) Unplugging idle appliances and electronics. Regardless of whether or not the device is in use, it is continues to draining power. By unplugging these devices you could drastically reduce your power bill… I’m talking hundreds of dollars a year.

2) Leave the car at home. Try biking, public transport or a ride-share program. It will save you piles of money, get you exercising and seriously benefit the environment.

3) Go meatless once a week. The human body does not need to eat meat everyday, let alone every meal. Try reducing your meat intake. There are plenty of excellent alternatives out there. As Lighter Footsteps puts it: Each calorie of animal protein requires 78 calories of fossil fuels to produce, and irrigation directly associated with livestock production (including feeds) amounts to about half of all the consumed water in the United States. Interesting…

Lets face it, something has to be done and I’m willing to change of few of my less environmentally friendly habits in order to provide a better future for my children.

Article: Lighter Footsteps – Ten First Steps

This is a call to all my…

grantdmckenzie — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 00:35:11 +0000

So its 1:30 am on Sunday night and I’m just about to head off to bed. I’ve been up marking papers for the past few hours as they have to be returned tomorrow morning. While I’ll freely admit that I despise marking student papers, I have learned a lot. Its interesting to read how different people interpret questions. Quite a learning experience for me.

A fun weekend all in all… or fun week I should say. In all the Easter craziness, I don’t think that I mentioned going to the Newfound Glory show last Sunday night. It was excellent. 26 songs in 1.5 hours. A truly exciting band to watch. They reminded me why I love pop punk music so much: energetic, melodic and sincere… really the only traits that matter in a pop band.

A good buddy of mine here in Melbourne leaves at the end of the month, so we went out for meter pizza, Il Fredo Dolce gelato and a movie on Friday night. We caught Sunshine, the futuristic thriller concerned with reigniting our dying sun. It was decent. Kind of ripped off Event Horizon and the original Solaris though. Mind you, both of those films ripped off 2001: A Space Odyssey. Entertaining none the less.

Saturday night I went out with a few friends to ACMI (The Australian Centre for Moving Images). We watched George A. Romero’s Martin (1977), a very disturbing, yet intriguing look at life as a vampire. In amicable discussion, we made our way to Smith street and had a few drinks at one of its well hidden lounges. We honestly walked into a hole in the wall off Smith street, up some stairs, past a salsa dancing class and into this packed dining room/bar. Gotta love Melbourne’s eclectic night life.

Monday brings reality and with it week 2 of participant testing. 16 down, 10 (fingers crossed) to go.

The first lawn mower of Fall

grantdmckenzie — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:14:07 +0000

The inaugural day of participant testing has come to an end. After just over a year of preparation, I began collecting data today. It is too soon to see any kind of trend, but I am happy with how smoothly the tests have been executed thus far. Another week and a half and I should be ready to start analysis.

In other news, Jen & I had some people over for an Easter potluck last night. Well, a few more than some. In all, we counted 23 people. It was a little cozy at points, but everyone appeared to have a good time. I was extremely impressed with the quality of food that attended the feast. We had everything from sun-dried tomatoes & ricotta wrapped in chicken breast to a three layer chocolate cake. Delicious! Jen & I made some chocolate brownies, dinner rolls & mini panzerottis. Needless to say there was very little leftover other than a few cases of empty beer bottles and a dozen or so empty wine bottles. Good times. More photos of the event can be seen through the on-line photo album.

Lastly, I saw my first lawn mower of Fall today. The seasons are quite a bit different than back in Vancouver. Most of Victoria has been in a drought for the past 5 months, so there hasn’t been a need to cut the grass… most of it is dead. Having not smelled fresh cut grass in almost 6 months, it was quite a pleasant awakening. Reminded me of home.

Let me entertain you

grantdmckenzie — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:06:24 +0000

Australia really is a strange country. Apparently Tuesday is a holiday! For some reason having Friday & Monday off isn’t enough for these people… they need to make it a 5 day weekend. I’m not going to cause a ruckus; A day off is a day off, but some holiday logic is necessary. As it turns out, I’ll be working Tuesday. No rest for the wicked… or graduate student as the case may be.

Tuesday is my first day of experiments. A nervous, yet exciting time in any graduate student’s life. Everything is ready to go, but I’m still not entirely sure what to expect. I’ve become more than a little obsessed with backing up my data. I’m talking every 10 minutes. Its beginning to affect my productivity.

Anyways, the long weekend has been fairly pleasant thus far. Friday involved waking up early to put the finishing touches on my experiments, a few skype/phone calls, a nice mid-afternoon nap and a night at the movies with some good friends. All in all, a nice little Friday. We wound up seeing 300, a film based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, which was in turn loosely based on the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BCE). I’m sure the majority of my friends back home saw the film months ago, but Australia saw its release on Thursday. I enjoyed it. Excellent cinematography, but a little too much violence (and horse shots) for Jen.

Today was a lazy day of grocery shopping, reading my new book The God Delusion and marking a few papers (I’m TAing a couple of courses at the Uni). I have a new found respect for all the marking my mom does… its tough work!

Monday is our big Easter potluck (or bring-a-plate as they say). Jen & I decided to get a bunch of our Canadian-orphan friends together for dinner & drinks. We ended up inviting well over 30 people, expecting a fair portion of them to decline. Turns out people like us… now what are we going to do? Those of you that have seen photos of our apartment are probably wondering how we’re going to fit 30 guests… should be a fun night I’ll upload the photos later this week.

Bittorrent: Ad-Supported downloads

grantdmckenzie — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:48:02 +0000

Finally! Someone in the entertainment industry is starting to realize what the rest of us have known for years. I have never understood why record labels and movie studios haven’t gone the advertising route. As soon as they started losing to illegal downloaders, they should have accepted that they could no longer make money the conventional way, through record sales. While record companies haven’t jumped on board quite yet, at least movie studios are beginning to get the picture (pun intended). Why not offer free, high quality, ad-supported downloads? Its a win/win situation. I could honestly care less if the latest U2 single was brought to me by Coca-cola. Torrent sites are already covered in advertising, why not let some of that go to the artist (well, in this case the label). Stick a banner on their download page and a 10 second clip before or after each song. I’m sure advertisers would pay big money for that. I’ll be honest, I’ll probably strip it off as soon as I get it… but they’ve forced me to listen to it at least once. Sure you could go on about artist integrity and all that BS, but honestly at the end of the day an artist has to make a living and this way their music is freely available to anyone that wants it. I can’t see too many struggling artists arguing with that. In my humble opinion… free, ad-supported downloads are a no-brainer.

Link: BitTorrent Inc. Introduces Ad-Supported Downloads

Fifteen & Flowers

grantdmckenzie — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:59:05 +0000

Ah yes, another week down and what an interesting week it was. Jen’s birthday was this Thursday and being the ever-so-thoughtful boyfriend, I made dinner reservations at Fifteen Melbourne. I thought I was on top of it by calling a month in advance, but apparently Fifteen consistently books 3 months ahead. What a nightmare. Anyways, after some sweet-talking, we ended up having an early birthday dinner at 6 pm on Tuesday night. For those that don’t know, Fifteen Melbourne is one of Jamie Oliver’s project restaurants. It started as a reality TV show with him taking 15 less fortunate kids off the street, throwing them into a kitchen and filming the drama. Being a) the reality TV buff that I am and b) the Jamie Oliver fan that I am, Jen & I watched the show and bought the books… thus making a visit to the restaurant that much more enjoyable.

Wednesday night was dinner & drinks on Lygon St with friends old and new. Said goodbye to Harmon Rab as he jumped on a plane to Singapore the next day. Thursday was Jen’s actual birthday which meant take-out curry, presents and a trip to Brunetti’s (ridiculously good chocolate cake!) Its funny how after a massive dinner you can see chocolate cake and convince your stomach to open the spare bedroom. Great cake, but we came nowhere close to finishing it. Friday was meant to be plenty o’ drinks at LaLa Land, but ended up being a couple of drinks and conversation at Lounge. A great time though! The balcony, while packed, was a great place to relax and hang out on a Friday evening.

Today lead Jen and I to the Melbourne Flower & Garden Show. We really weren’t planning on going, but needed to get out of our apartment. It turned out to be a lot of fun. I know virtually nothing about gardening and even less about the flowers themselves, but it was nice to be out on a sunny day. The weather is starting to get a bit colder and the sunny days are less frequent. Thoughts are starting to drift homeward. Time minus 4 months.

Music: Indie music web neutrality

grantdmckenzie — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:08:16 +0000

CNN.com reported today that musicians are finally standing up together to voice their concerns with net discrimination. RocktheNet.com has brought together lesser known musicians and indie labels to support net neutrality.

What is Net Neutrality? I’m glad you asked. To give a rough example: Imagine you go to a free (legal) music download website. You punch in your favorite independent artist and wait as their page loads. Funny… their download page is taking a little longer than you would expect for it to load… but lucky you, while your waiting, a pop-up shows its bubbly face and offers you a direct link to the latest *insert major label act here* single for free. It gets better… this major label song will download at double the speed of your indie artist’s tune! Essentially whats going on is that artists with a bit of financial backing are able to buy the faster bandwidth, advertising, profile data and service providers, in turn pushing the independent artist further down the totem pole.

Link: Musicians: Keep the Web neutral (CNN.com)

Environment: Three great websites

grantdmckenzie — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:00:03 +0000

In the past year I’ve been exposed to a number of great websites/programs that you should definitely check out. I thought since I’ve got the blog back up and running, I would post 3 of them up and let you try them out for yourself. I wouldn’t have come across them if it wasn’t for LifeHacker.com, so please give them a visit as well.

– A search engine with a twist. While most search engines make a pile of money buy exposing YOU to advertising, GoodSearch takes 50% of its advertising revenue and donates it to the charity of your choice. All you do is punch in the URL, type in your search words, type in your charity and search away. Its powered by Yahoo, so you’ll get the same high quality search results you’re used to… and its good to get away from Google for a change.

– As their website puts it “Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research.” Its funded by UC Berkeley and allows you to choose what project your computer works on. Boinc uses your computer’s idle time to crunch numbers and do simple forms of analysis on projects in an area of research that you care about. It doesn’t slow down your computer and makes great use of all the times you accidentally leave it on. Works a treat on my Linux box.

– I just recently found out about LocalCooling.com. Yes, I do realize that it sits in conflict with Boinc, but it is good none the less. Download LocalCooling and watch as it reduces your computer’s energy consumption… really quite fascinating.

Thats it for now. I’m going to try and post links to interesting energy saving websites / software more often. If you have any sites that you’drecommend, please let me know.