uni week 06

This Friday’s session started with a presentation by Sue Stocklmayer from ANU, The Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS).

Sue provided an overview of CPAS including their role as the accredited Centre for the Australian National Commission for UNESCO and The Shell Questacon Science Circus (Graduate Diploma).

Questions asked during the session were:

• Why should the public know about science?
• Who communicates science to whom?
• With what purpose do they communicate?
• What should be our goals?

I feel that if we had all the answers then there would be no need for science communication 🙂

Jan Dook then led the next session about interpretation. This was a continuation from the previous week that I missed.

The most difficult task with regard to interpretation is creating a theme on which to base the interpretation topic, key message, and content. We had some homework and tutorial practice at this in preparation for a later assignment of planning and conducting a guided walk.

One of the constraints of the assignment is that the guided walk needs to happen at UWA or within a 5km radius. Many environment examples come to mind, but I would like to explore other science themes for guided walks. So yes, I’m looking for ideas.

The recommended text for interpretation is Ham, S.H. (1992). Environmental Interpretation. A practical guide for people with big ideas and small budgets. Colorado, US: Fulcrum Publishing. It has disappeared from the library, but fortunately I was able to find it at The Book Depository. Yippee, another parcel to look forward to.

local eating

Inspired to create menus and cook with close-to-home food by the 100 Mile Diet has led me to at least think of where our food comes from.

100 miles being approximately 160 kilometres, I realised straight away that being in South Perth, Western Australia that I would need to broaden the scope of local eating to start off with. Just about everything is flown or trucked in from hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away.

I don’t have a nifty map like the 100 Mile Diet members, so I thought I would start with food that is grown or raised in Western Australia and work from there. I’ve already have a small feeling of loss of not buying the pineapples trucked in from Queensland that are available in abundance here.

The next, or should I say the first challenge is being able to identify where our food comes from. Thinking about tonights meal, I only know that the Barramundi came from Cairns, Queensland. But I don’t know where the butter, pine nuts, tomatoes, cucumber or apple came from. I only know about the fish because H asked the fish shop owner.

The butter no longer has its wrapper, the pine nuts state ‘useful’ nutritional information and that they are “Packed fresh on the premises!”, and none of the salad vegetables or fruit came with any indicators of their origin.

I don’t like shopping, but perhaps seeking where our food comes from may make it more interesting in addition to it becoming a more protracted affair. Growing our own food is looking more and more attractive.

survive the day

The Postgraduate Student Association hosted the Postgrad Survival Day today. Which can be a tad confusing as although it was only for an afternoon, its purpose was to learn new skills, get creative, and share ideas of how best to more than survive the postgraduate experience. That is, not just for the day.

Janet Renner, UWA Counselling and Psychological Service, started the afternoon off with a workshop on relationships that included effective communication, managing conflict and emotions, and not forgetting about laughter and fun.

Bronwyn Crowe, PSA President, with initial assistance from Janet, led the group through material prepared by Claire Nulsen and UWA with regard to recognising and relieving stress. Some of the material included the pamphlet and booklet from the Stress Less – Where’s your head at? Health Promotion Initiative adapted from the University of Melbourne’s Staying Sane on Campus initiative..

Afternoon tea of ample comfort food was provided including cookies, chips, chocolate and snakes 🙂

Annette Walker, Insight Career Management, started her presentation with one of my favourite pieces of dialogue from Alice Wonderland:

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here!’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to go’, said the cat.
‘I don’t much care where’, said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go’, said the cat.

Which worked a lot better than the football analogy of putting up the goal posts for the season.

Annette’s session posed lots of difficult questions, which probably would become more awkward the longer you leave them. For example:

• What do you want ?
• What is stopping you ?
• What are you going to do about it ?

The revised definition of career from the ABCD was interesting; “Career is a sequence and variety of occupations (paid & unpaid), which one undertakes throughout a lifetime … career includes life roles, leisure activities, learning and work”.

Sato Juniper followed Annette with more specific ways to ‘phinnish’ your postgrad study, supported by evidence from a number of credible sources. The most important point being to submit your thesis.

People dropped in and out of the afternoon, and because I was being collected could not stay for the last session which was promising to be entertaining stories of survival by Benjamin Jardine and Graeme Doole.

I came away from the workshop thinking that I must go easier on myself.

new batteries and new roses

I charged the new batteries for the camera that I received yesterday with anticipation of being able to be a little more flexible and the opportunity to wander a little further afield.

However, having started to take photographs of what I would consider ordinary things, I’m sure if the occasion arose the camera would be more readily available for more extraordinary events.

Anticipating that I will have more than three shots available due to the new batteries, I was able to photograph the first roses that appeared on the Pink Kardinal rose bush. I’m more of a happy snappy than a serious photographer, so I took lots of photographs with the purpose in mind of being able to show the bud and bloom next to each other on the bush. Then I choose one that I thought best represented my stated purpose.

I am going to have a go at pictorially documenting the life stages of the Dog Vomit Slime Mould.

Being up to day three, I’m wondering if some sort of animation may better show the various stages. Anyway, here is Day Three in the life of a Dog Vomit Slime Mould.

Dog Vomit Slime Mould

Yay ( I think), there is another Dog Vomit Slime Mould (Fuligo Septica) in the front garden. Not as impressive as the first two, but at least I got a picture of its initial stage.

According to the link that OGiRl provided in the YGG Forum, the honeycomb appearance is the second stage, and the browning off is the third stage.

The Field Book that the Perth Urban Bushland Fungi (PUBF) group has collated includes some amazing fungi and moulds of different shapes and colours. What is even more fascinating, is the common names that are assigned based on the characteristics and appearance.

There is a disc shaped fungus that has appeared in the sheep manure that Dad gave me, but I’ll have to get a photograph of that when I have more light and less rain.

I can see why groups such as PUBF are active. The science of fungi or mycology in your own back yard (or front yard) is great fun. Apparently the best time to see fungi in the Perth region is “after the onset of substantial Autumn rains”, i.e. now!

uni week 05

I missed uni this week due to getting a cold. It was just too uncomfortable for me to attend class feeling really awful, snuffling and coughing.

But what I did do is get our camera film developed so that I could share the photos of the Science Communication exhibit at the UWA Expo with my classmates..

I tried to capture the whole window display, but Carl Sagan is hidden behind the frangipani tree. But I like that Ernest Rutherford ended up next to the HAZCHEM and other warning signs.

orange blobs

Eeewww. One of these appeared in our garden a couple of weeks ago. It was bright bright orange the first day, and then it turned yellow brown the next day.

On the weekend I scraped away the mulch and buried it in the sand and recovered with the mulch. It reappeared where I covered it over as if it has seeped through. It may have been orange before it was brown, but I don’t know this as I didn’t go out into the garden yesterday.

Today I noticed another similar orange blob around the cumquat tree and a little nearby and on the retaining wall. It is the colour and consistency of honeycomb.

I obviously don’t know enough about mycology as my search terms did not show anything conclusive. But I did find the Western Australian Herbarium and Perth Urban Bushland Fungi. The WA Herbarium is near to us so I’ll ring up and see if they are willing to accept an email from me with an accompanying photographs. I really would like to know how to get rid of the stuff and it goes like tar and then very fine and powdery. Also, it’s icky to have it appear in huge blobs in the front garden.

The neighbours already think I’m strange for growing fruiting trees and vegetables in the front garden. I wonder what they think of the new gate crashers 🙂

no smoke and over proof

We went to the Perth Blues Club (PBC) last night for the first time in ages. Not to see the bands in particular, but just to go and enjoy the music and the atmosphere.

The atmosphere is a lot less smoky now being “smoke free”, but the airconditioner still pumps smoke from other parts of the hotel, so it can tickle the back of your throat if you are not used to it. But at least I didn’t have to undress outside when I got home and leave my clothes outside this time 🙂

It was my turn to be the designated driver, so it was tonic water for me, and H settled for a dry cider. We drunk our first drinks while watching the very old movie and gig clips of mostly Blues musicians.

Over Proof came on first and played for over an hour. They were a very mixed bag, but they played hard and sung well, and got the audience tapping along and some up to dance. They are playing up at the Greenmount Hall in October as part of the “60s & 70s Rock n Blues Peace Night” where they are on with Bad Brett Hardwick, and The Loose Unit. Warning: There is a ticket price for adults and children, so it looks like a bit of a family night.

They put the video back on during the changeover. Unfortunately, this blocked the view to the other band setting up. For whatever reason, I like watching the equipment being set up and the band members getting ready.

What I enjoy most about the PBC is that people of all ages are welcome and the club members and regulars are very friendly. It really is a great place to just go and enjoy blues music, have a drink, and dance. Also, you can do all the usual things that you do at a pub, as you can walk in and out of the PBC venue into other parts of the Charles Hotel. Snooker anyone?

We had dinner before going to the club as the previous choice of hot dogs, crisps or nuts didn’t last well if we wanted to stay until the pumpkin hour. There is now a more varied food menu, and the dishes we saw looked very tasty so we may even eat there if we are running late.

On the way home we had to take a detour around a very wobbly fellow that had decided to leave his car at the lights and walk home. He looked a little more than just pissed, more pissed off, so I guess the other two cars in the other two lanes were right to put on their hazards and let him do his thing. Which was to shut the car doors, steady himself against the car then attempt to walk confidently across the intersection.

Next week the night starts a little earlier as the programme is full with Gary Cox, Dr Charlie and Empire Blues.

uni week 04

The week culminated on Sunday by staffing the Science Communication exhibit at UWA Expo 2007. Rostered on from 1.30pm until break-down at 4pm, it was a full on with lots of people to talk to about what is Science Communication and doing the course at UWA.

Prior to the day our group exchanged emails to let each other know what we are doing and finalise the various parts of our exhibit. My task was to finalise and source quotes and images for the window display.

The window display consisted of images and talk bubbles or callouts to fill the five panes of the window alongside the Science Communication display.

I inserted each image into an OpenOffice.org Draw file, stretched to the size I wanted (A2 to A0) and created a PDF. The callouts were over a number of PDF files, but I still created them in OpenOffice.org Draw which has a neat selection of callouts that I resized to the width of an A0 sheet. I later created a mirror image of the callouts so that I could place them on the window to be read from both sides.

The PDF files were printed on UCC‘s plotter with the gracious assistance of several UCC members.

Quotes and images used in the display:

Susan Greenfield
From: http://www.thinkers.sa.gov.au/images/Greenfield_Report_Insert.pdf

Image Source: Space for Ideas Press Centre, Alan Burles

Carl Sagan
From: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/carlsagan101620.html

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. “

Ernest Rutherford
From: https://kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c4/22/68/Ramsden210905.pdf

Steve Irwin
From: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0000462F-9484-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21

“…if we can get people excited about animals, then by crikey, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to save them.”

Julian Cribb
From: http://www.asc.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=230&Itemid=139

The images were of sufficient quality for the size of the display and its temporary nature. Image sources and credits can be found by clicking on the quoted author’s name. Quotes were selected from reports, speeches, reports, and articles.

I highly recommend the report by Susan Greenfield and transcript of the talk presented by Julian Cribb from which the above quotes were taken.

you know when you’re geek when …

… you get persuaded into attending a talk on Xen and Virtualisation instead of going to the Perth Blues Club (PBC).

But it won’t happen next week.

One, because there is no PLUG meeting next week. Two, because Gerard Maunick is not on 🙂

The PBC AGM is on next week beforehand, so the music and bopping does not start until a little after 9pm, but I think we’ll cope.

With regard to Xen and virtualisation. Thanks to Adrian C, who gave the PLUG talk at the meeting last night, I know a lot more about it. The talk was well structured, and I enjoyed the historical and theory of the different virtualisation tools. It created a good base for understanding the implementation of Xen, as explained near the end of the evening.

I think my brain began to melt about half way through though. But this would happen even if a good movie was 120 minutes long, as I can’t sit still for that long without getting the fidgets. Adrian stimulated questions throughout his talk, and was interesting and compelling speaker until we got called because the pizza was getting cold.