Winza

Another one of those environmental documentaries is coming out in May, at least in the US anyway. The title, Inconvenient Truth really captures what’s going on in real life: We know all about global warming from the media, the scientists, politicians (like Al Gore as it was repeatedly shown in the film trailer) and environmental advocates. It is easy for us humans to accept the truth about the future and consider the ideal actions to alleviate it.

BUT it is too difficult for us to change our lives overnight to alleviate global warming even if we are motivated to do so because we are so dependent on the things that contribute to it - like our car, the economy, the internet (I can’t live without it) and so on. It is so easy just for us to switch on the heater when we feel cold than to put more clothes on (in fact, too much clothes makes one feel bulky and uncomfortable). It takes up to seventy-five minutes for me to ride the bus to uni (including waiting), but it only takes 15 minutes to do so by car.

If we are to accept the truth and adjust our lives so that GW and the subsequent blah blah disasters occurs it means we would have to give up the convenience that shapes our lives. From the title, it appears to me that what the future is going to be consists of two choices: Either to give up the stuff that adversely affect GW and which we are dependent on to accept the truth about GW and to curb it OR to continue with our lives and quietly pretend our own innocence about GW.

via: HKMacs”

I still haven’t made up my mind about my stance on the issue, maybe that’s a good thing.
While still on the environmental topic, I have a song to share based on the hurricanes in the US in 2005.

New Orleans by Jim O:

Life just feels so hectic these days, with everything happening all at once. Last night I finally got the chance to catch up with uni friends and to find out why Aaron has been so busy despite not studying anymore.

Today was one of the busiest days I’ve had for a long time. I had a lecture from 10 till 12, then instead of a normal lunch break I had to finish off a geochemisty prac. As usual on Wednesdays, I attended a sedimentology prac from 1 till 4, but had to run all the way to the other end of the campus (Geosciences to Geography department) and back to the lab to pick up raw data for my project. I was then meant to attend a seminar thing for forth year students, but it was postponded. (And I wasted time preparing and practising for my presentation). Went back to the geoscience lab and worked on a prac till 6 pm.

I took a different route home this time and went along Huntingdale Road instead of going on Warrigal Road. As I drove into the right lane at the corner of Huntingdale and Waverley road, there were twelve cars in front of me, all waiting to turn right. I couldn’t switch to the left lane as cars on the left lane didn’t seem to want to let me in. There wasn’t an arrow light either, so I waited for five minutes before I could turn right. Frustrating isn’t it?

My Easter holidays were neither great nor boring but I enjoyed it. Last Saturday, I went out to the city with some uni friends to celebrate Helen’s birthday and indulged ourselves on hot chocolates, waffles, korean food and Asian herbal tea. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I dug myself into sedimentology and volcanology books since I was quite disappointed with my marks for the first half of this semester.

Besides the geology stuff I had to do, I spent most of my time on Wednesday at the GIS lab, mapping and trying to solve the problems that I’ve had with my datasets. The datasets I had to analyse were a problem - I’ve received two files of the same dataset that were meant to be exactly the same, yet they appear to be different. Either formatting went wrong, the file was corrupted or there is a compatibility problem between the Windows and the Mac version of Excel. Whatever the problem was, I would need to analyse the data again and start writing up my lit review. I had to take a long break away from study over the weekend and limit my computer use to an hour as my eyes were getting sore and I was starting to feel tired. I was shocked to find an email that said I need to give a mini presentation about my project on Wednesday. I tried to get out of it and sent in an email that I have a prac that afternoon, but he postponed it so that it suited my time. Damn! It looks like I need pull out something from Steve’s bag of presentation tricks.

The RACV is making scary predictions - $1.45 per litre for petrol. When it used to be cheaper, I refused to drive to school. And now that I have picked up driving again, petrol prices are going up and even worse, I have to pay three bucks a day to park my car at school because I’ve missed out on the first and the second release of parking permits.

If petrol prices keep rising, I might have to abandon the car and ride the bus again.

I have never read the books, but I love solving puzzles. The webquest competition started 5 days ago and it related to Dan Brown’s novel. It goes for 24 days and a new puzzle pops up on google’s personalised homepage each day. The puzzles are based on six different types of skills: symbol, restoration, curator, chess, geography and observation. I have played all of them so far and they are not too hard and most involve a search on google to find the answers. I found one blog, student rant that is devoted to the challenge and provides walkthroughs for people who hasn’t read the books or are stuck. Wikipedia also provides some solutions.