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technowhinge [Jul. 11th, 2009|11:32 am]
work computer is in for repairs (loud clunking noises, made me squawk. hasn't been diagnoses yet, but presumed to be the fan. not impressed with the telephone manner of the person who answers the phone at Winthop tech, nor their 'can't book it in over the phone' approach. )

thus, have reverted to my little laptop. Which because of hard-drive failure after acquisition of work computer, I did not bother to do anything except dump everything salvaged from old hard-drive into folder on new hard-drive. Which means that none of my programs work, and my head is in the wrong space to sort this out. Which means that getting any work done while away from work is going to be a damn nuisance.

what this also means is I'm using an old version of safari, because firefox no longer works, and I can't download a new version, because I've managed to break stuff-it exander. *sigh* which means that facebook won't load, and livejournal is being grumpy with me (will only follow some links, and won't follow cuts at all). And I have no access to any email that anyone has sent me in the last few weeks. so, if I have promised to do anything for you, I apologise - I can't, and it is really pissing me off. Specifically put time aside next week for following up on things.

and special message to [info]i_ate_my_crusts - I don't appear to have put your contact details anywhere sensible. will try to send a message....
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(no subject) [Jul. 8th, 2009|07:18 am]
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yesterday youngest asked me, in that serious 'just checking I've got the way the world works out sorted' tone, if boys really could be nurses. At which point I mentioned who in our social circle is a nurse (one, male), and left it at that, because I wasn't thinking about it hard enough. Shortly after, I thought about who in our social circle are (medical) doctors, and came up with four women (one paediatric, one A&E, two GPs). Had I actually thought about the families that we associate through the school with though, I would have come up with completely the other picture - I can think of four (female) nurses (and suspect I've missed some), and one (male) doctor. I find this interesting in so many ways, but the selection bias would have to be the main one! I really must start to think of the people I interact with at the school when trying to think of examples of people who do certain things. After all, I know lots of random stuff about many of them, as we've stood around and talked for a few minutes at a time, so never a really full on conversation.
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It's raining, hallelujah! [May. 20th, 2009|09:31 pm]
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there is rain on the roof noise happening *right now*. artisanat got excited enough to load the various satellite images. Yay!
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(no subject) [May. 20th, 2009|08:53 pm]
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it would appear that semester is over for me, teaching wise. (there is the potential for exam marking, but I'm not sure whether I will be doing that or not - not sure if it is part of the requirements for tutors). This has been a nice mob of students, if I pretend a couple of them aren't in my class (and usually they aren't, although one of them has been late to 8 out of 12 classes). I really like tutoring - I like interacting with the students, I like that it keeps me focused on some of the aspects of my field that I might be tempted to ignore, and in some peculiar manner I like the marking (it has positive connotations from my childhood - marking was something I used to help my mother with).

But in terms of the organisation of the unit, I am sooooo relieved not to have to worry about it any more! Not to know whether the tutorial sheets will be available when I get to class. Not to worry about whether the way that the lecturer thinks is significantly different to the way I do, because of the differences in our academic backgrounds. Etc.
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eye in the sky [May. 10th, 2009|04:36 pm]
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today has definitely been one of getting things done. However, in terms of the list I started with, umm, well.

the starting list:

  • getting rotary cutter and self-healing mat
  • finish the patchwork square I started on Thursday, work on the other two I have planned
  • finish the marking
  • get the desk of doom varnished (2nd coat of 3)
  • deal with the drawer handles for the desk of doom
  • go to bunnings, get some metal gridding to go over the retic stop value so that it doesn't get buried again
  • maybe install said gridding, if there is time
  • get fruit/veg, bread, milk, weetbix, conditioner
  • followup lice treatment on kids


the stuff done

  • get wedding dress out of the annoying box and into something that means it can be stored in the ceiling
  • put a pile of stuff in the ceiling so I can ignore it
  • clear up the ceiling space so that the piles make sense, and so that the heavier stuff is correctly balanced across beams
  • fail to buy patchwork equipment, as the patchwork store that was open on sundays is now an online store. (swear)
  • spend $50 on secondhand children's books
  • go to bunnings. buy seedlings, and some treated pine patio squares that will have to do, as what I was after is not available. I suspect that had I the energy, I'd probably find what I wanted, but it would take me six months.
  • get myself a dreamwidth account. There will be more work done on this later.
  • forget to go shopping for bread
  • buy fruit/vegies
  • varnish desk
  • get the drawer handles out to think about. Discover they are further along than I had remembered!
  • read trashy trashy fiction.


Note: if there are any collectors of Ivan Southall books, there was a large selection of them at the second hand store. I picked up a couple, but as I have no idea which ones I already have, it was very pot luck.

Right now, I could pot out the basil, or the rhubarb seedlings I bought. Or I could work on my marking. Or I could go to the shop and hope that they haven't sold out of wholemeal bread. Or I could work on the craft project for Ju (yes, I know it wasn't on the list. but I got the sewing machine all set up, and I can't work on the task I was going to without going hunting for various things in the back room, which while nearly survivable, is still not great). Or I could do the Borderlands mailout. Or I could read more trashy fiction.

Guess what is going to win right now?
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ooops [May. 8th, 2009|11:12 am]
so, I have something I really need to be working on. And something else I'd really like to have finished. And a cat asleep on the bed.

So, I've finally got "organised", and done something I've been putting off for ages - I've joined Facebook. I'm in the process of adding people, but if I've missed you, feel free to point out that I should have been more competent in my identification of friends....


(the motivating factor is that apparently the best way to find out about my high school reunion is facebook. Of all people, [info]crankynick is the enabler here)

edit: I'm having problems with adding at least one person from my lj friendslist. If you think you are the only person I've missed it is because when I click "confirm" after 'add friend', nothing happens!

edit2: can anyone give me a quick heads up on the etiquette of adding people as "friends"? There are an awful lot of people there that I know from SwanCon, but I'm not sure about whether I should add them or not. As a social networking tool, I can see that adding them is potentially interesting, but I probably don't want to know about them every day. Is there an equivalent of LJs custom friends groups?
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Vulture Culture [May. 5th, 2009|09:49 pm]
dear lazyweb

I would like to investigate possibilities for designing a quilt done with hexagonal pieces. has anyone come across any nice online/downloadable resources to enable me to design this in advance? (even a template for hex paper would be better than nothing, but I suspect I would need to make several copies before I'm happy with it, so I'd rather have a digital version).
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best of ABBA [Apr. 25th, 2009|09:37 pm]
I've just found a use for Excel that doesn't have me swearing at it, and actually decreases the amount of swearing I do otherwise. I'm suspecting that this means that the sky is about to fall, or some other equally improbable action, just in case you feel you should be warned.

At what is this use? It is helping me mark assignments, where there is a fair bit of arithmetic that needs to be worked through. I set up the various sections of the work through, and then if one of my students has botched up a section, I can put in their erroneous value, and see how well it propagates through, and thus whether or not their conclusions are valid. I consider this to be a wonderful time saver! (and other than keeping my timesheets, most of what I use excel for voluntarily).
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Arrival [Apr. 24th, 2009|08:25 pm]
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I've had an interesting work week. Tuesday afternoon, I got a call from L (who just happens to be in Switzerland), telling me that R (who is somewhere in the middle of the US - yes, I know there is a lot of middle) has a small problem that needs dealing with ASAP, and can I produce them a study design by Friday. Please.

Argh. Gasp. Panic.

L then gives me some sketchy details, forwards an email from R, and leaves it on my desk. I read the email, and then it's time to go home. By the time I reached home, I had a list of questions a couple of pages long, and sent them off. Various back and forwards, some begging time from J, who is one of the senior researchers and has a lot of experience with things related to the study that I'm designing, and I had it written by Friday afternoon.

I'm a somewhat smug monkey at this point!
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Voulez-Vous [Apr. 17th, 2009|07:51 am]
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one of the reasons that statistics is so confusing to the casual user is that people regularly redefine standard terms, or give them new names. Here is a lovely example of the latter, coupled with a complaint about the former:

"The benefit from a surgical procedure can only be determined if we assess the patient in the same way before and after the treatment; a point emphasized by Dr. Zarins. While there is inconsistent use of the word ‘outcome’ in our literature, common sense indicates that it means whatcomes out of the treatment in terms of the chosen measurement tool applied at a reasonable time after surgery. In order to determine the effectiveness of the treatment we need also to know what goes into the treatment or the “ingo”. Thus the effectiveness or result of the arthroplasty is the difference between the outcome and the ingo as indicated by the same metric."

heh. what happened to 'baseline'?

(http://www.ejbjs.org/cgi/eletters/87/8/1671, second letter down)
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ah, stats [Apr. 9th, 2009|08:51 am]
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I'm reading a book my supervisor gave me to read. It is called Statistics: An introduction, which might seem a strange thing for a stats PhD student to be reading. And then, page 65 "This is an easily solved differential equation." *double take* *what*. (actually, yes it was an easily solved differential equation, and fortunately they solve it for the reader, because I don't think I remember enough about differential equations to do it myself.). What was worse was hitting page 69, where integration by substitution is used to lead into a double integral which is then converted to polar co-ordinates.

At least I'm not coming in to this cold. I had the foolish thought that people might need a year or two to read this book, if they didn't have the right background, and then thought about the number of years I've been studying math, and laughed at myself.
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ABA conference - random notes [Apr. 5th, 2009|11:05 am]
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I took somewhat random notes through out the presentations at the ABA conference. I'm recording them here mostly for my own information, but other people might find them interesting. (random here means that I can't necessarily understand what I was getting at, and there may well be inaccuracies)

Note: some of the presentations are online somewhere, for the month after the conference. I was going to investigate this, but haven't.

Nancy White (US neonatologist/paediatrician):

  • focus on improving nutrition for NICU infants (everything from the talk is on the provided cd)
  • The late preterm (32-36 weeks) birth rate is increasing faster than others.
  • There is now a 50% survival rate for babies born with weight ~ 500g.
  • neurological damage is increasingly proportional to weight gain ( I don't remember exactly what this means - I suspect the details are in the presentations somewhere)
  • protein is the factor limiting growth in preterm infants, *not* calories
  • human milk is not meant to be sterile, but a large number of US paediatricians are not aware of this.
  • preterm infants are the most common users of donor milk. Other users take larger quantities, but there are more premmies using it (note: this is from US. Don't know what the situation with donor milk here is).
  • Pooled donor milk is still not as good a food for premmies as mother's own milk, because the donors tend to be mothers of healthy, term infants aged 3-7 months.
  • gastric emptying - different with fortified milk (I need to look at the Lucas study, see what they did with their stats)
  • there are advantages to babies just having contact with their mother's milk, even if they can't exist on it - exposure causes the body to produce lactose. Skin to skin contact helps too - antibodies developed by the mother can transfer this way.
  • problems: for pre-tem babies, their needs from the milk don't change as fast as the milk changes.
  • breast fed babies are more likely to eat a range of foods when complementary foods are introduced.


Randa Saadeh (WHO)

  • 6 month - 2 years are the ages when much of growth problems occur. This is presumed to be related to complementary feeding. However, there are problems with saying anything about this, as the research available only looks at infants 6-9 months.
  • There are new growth standard curves based on breastfed babies, which should be used when judging infant growth.
  • appropriate breastfeeding could prevent 13% of preventable childhood deaths. Appropriate complementary feeding could prevent a further 6%. (approx 2 million deaths per year for children up to 5 years old)
  • Obesity is part of malnutrition - just the other end of the spectrum from starvation/stunting.
  • There is a Global Data Bank with the targets, and every four years the WHO is supposed to report on this for all countries. There are some countries that not only have notable % of children that are undernourished/stunted but also a notable % that are obese.
  • Globally the rate of exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months is 34.8% (no data for Asia/Oceania, as China has not been reporting on this)
  • HIV is one of the reasons that the breastfeeding rates are still about the same as they were 15 years ago.
  • No Australian data on exclusive breastfeeding - apparently not being collected nationally.
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kaaaa-flop [Mar. 30th, 2009|10:01 am]
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( in which I whinge about eating, yet again )
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don't blink [Mar. 28th, 2009|10:34 pm]
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I'm rereading Watership Down, for any number of reasons, one of which is 'because it is time to'. I had remembered the commentary on social structures, and the way that things are dreadful and then dreadful, and then dreadful some more, albeit in a cheerful manner. What I hadn't remembered was the in-my-face racism. There are two that I've noticed:

1. "Rabbits, of course, have no idea of precise time or of punctuality. In this respect they are much the same as primitive people, who often take several days over assembling for some purpose and then several more to get started. Before such people can act together, a telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when theay allknow that they are to begin" (followed by then talking about flocks of birds beginning their migration.

I was startled. The implication that these people are primitive because they don't act in the way that the culture of the author does is one that I found hard to avoid.

2. "...a rabbit can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight."

I think I reacted worse to this than to the first. In part this is because the first had primed me, but also, the first is a nebulous 'they', whereas this is a specific racial/cultural grouping that is being denigrated.

I have lots of thoughts about this, but none of them particularly coherent, so I'm not going to write them all down - maybe if I can condense it all into a clear thought (or two) I will. I also have lots of questions: is this typical of Adams? Is there overt racism in his other books? (I'm going to reread, but if someone else has already noticed?). Is racism a common evil in anthropomorphic fantasy? I was expecting that it wouldn't turn up, because the story isn't about people. doh. Has this been corrected in later printings of the book? Is there any kind of systematic record of racism in literature? I'd be fascinated to have a look at something like that. I'm tempted to start such a record - for every book I read to note how many racist statements I encounter. Except, how likely am I to notice all of them? I'm certainly learning a lot reading the details of RaceFail09, and other commentary on racism, but I can't imagine that I'm particularly reliable at spotting racism yet.

There were other questions, but they have escaped while I put these ones down on pixels....
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on chocolate and slavery [Mar. 25th, 2009|08:33 am]
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I have been trying to educate myself about chocolate and slavery, and finding it very difficult. I buy fairtrade chocolate when I can get it, but I'm not willing to drive to either the city or Fremantle to do so - it seems rather a waste of fuel (there used to be a supply in Kardinya, but when they sold out, they didn't replenish). And while I would like to be strong enough to live without chocolate the rest of the time, I find myself tempted far too regularly.

The local supermarket has started stocking lots of Whittakers chocolates, with a large variety of dairy free flavours. I checked the back of the packet - sourced from Ghana. Some research on the internet gave me the impression that Ghana is not a source of slave grown chocolate, which I found reassuring. So, I happily bought some of the chocolate. Now, I'm no longer convinced. So, I've done some more reading.

And I'm no longer comfortable about it. I have found several sites that talk about slavery (both in Ghana, and elsewhere. see also here, here), and while 'chocolate' and 'ghana' and 'slavery' don't all come up together, given that any two of those come up commonly, I'm not convinced that the three don't go together. So, I went to the Whittaker's site, and read the FAQ, and it says nothing about where the chocolate comes from. If it says so elsewhere on the site, I didn't fin it either - I'm not willing to sit around and watch a flash presentation about the production of the chocolate, just to find out whether it says anything, especially at the rate that the flash animation was downloading.

Aside: this page talks about which brands of chocolate were slave free in 2005 - it has a large table of chocolate manufacturers believed to be using slave-free chocolate, as well as whether it was organic or fair-trade. Unfortunately, mainly products available in the US. Also, out of date - I believe that Green & Black's has been bought out, and while some of the bars still have fair-trade labelling, the others don't.

Action taken today - I contacted Whittakers to ask them about the source of their chocolate, using their web form.
Further actions - not sure. Further reading definitely. Depending on reply from Whittakers, various possibilities. Possibly contact other companies and ask about the slave component of their chocolate? Start sending queries of companies as to why they aren't using slave-free/fair-trade chocolate? (yes, I understand that these are different, but they seem like different aspects of the same problem - people aren't being paid a living wage to produce the chocolate. same goes for a lot of coffee). I'd also like to do something to encourage the school to stop asking for donations of chocolate at Easter - to get people to think about what they are getting. But I have no idea about how to go about this in such as way as to not be too confronting (mostly for myself - I'd like to confront people with the information without feeling overwhelmed)

And if you want to read something a little cheering, go and look at the site about Garstang, the world's 'First Fair-Trade Town' - the "Go Global, Go Ghana" page in particular. I liked this site because it talks about what other people are doing in the promotion of abolition of slavery/fair trade.
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dear lazyweb [Mar. 20th, 2009|10:47 pm]
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tonight, we showed kids a matched pair of episodes of the Sarah-Jane adventures. Eldest is just coping, middlest refused to stay in the room, and youngest managed to get through it sitting on my lap and panicking mildly.

This is a show aimed at kids, yes? And it is more than they can cope with. Can anyone suggest anything with a lower level of stress/suspense, that runs in up to one hour stories, that we might be able to sit and watch with them? Would need to be something that is acquirable either on dvd (preferably borrowed) or other suitable-for-computer format.

would original series Star Trek be suitable? and if so, does anyone have some we could borrow?
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phantom of the opera [Mar. 19th, 2009|10:52 pm]
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went to see phantom of the opera this evening at Burswood. came home at interval - when the details of the staging, and the way that the scenery is moving around, and the idea of meta-opera are taking all of my attention, I'm probably not that interested. And the seats were uncomfortable.*

and I have one thing to say about the whole thing: WHY has no-one ever told me there was morris dancing in Phantom????? **

* not nearly as uncomfortable as they are in St George's Cathedral, where we went to see the Koln Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra a few weeks back, but I was absolutely riveted, and didn't notice how uncomfortable I was for minutes at a time. (Vivaldi, Four Seasons, some other stuff I should remember the names of but don't, encore of Canon by Pachabel (I think))
** Rose Garland Dance. And if anyone reading this understands what I mean when I say Fitton, just imagine her up there, drunk as skunk, telling them they're DOING IT WRONG. I suffered from fits of uncontrollable giggles that I tried to keep quiet.
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breast milk research [Mar. 19th, 2009|09:32 am]
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I was intrigued to read the summary of a study where the researchers investigated the effect of the smell of breast milk on pain responses in newborns. I haven't read the article, just the abstract (below) but was intrigued by the finding that the smell of the mother's milk decreased the measurable responses to pain.

I like the implication that calming a baby by people not the mother might be improved by supplying the odor of her milk, and thus increasing the options for the mother to take a break, if she needs/wants one.  I haven't thought about it more than that, but would be interested in hearing other people's responses. 

The calming effect of a maternal breast milk odor on the human newborn infant    
LSC   09-01   8853829  NDN- 122-0361-2824-9 

( in which details of the publicaton/study can be found )
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pls hlp [Mar. 18th, 2009|11:17 am]
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(note: this was written yesterday, but due to problems with getting online, I failed to post)

Please, dear flisters wot know about food related problems, please read through the following, and tell me if there is something that you would point the finger at as something to investigate (by which I mean wait until I've had a week of recovered time, and then challenge, or other research protocol if someone has a more reliable one)

( in which there is long rambly details about what has been eaten... )
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on children at cons [Mar. 16th, 2009|06:04 pm]
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*disclaimer*. This is not a reasoned statement. This is a rant, based on my gut reaction. Do not try to discuss this logically with me. */disclaimer*

I've been catching up with lj, and I've just got back as far as [info]angriest's post about children at cons. And while there is a lot of reasoned debate, I'm also feeling a lot of woman hate coming through, carefully disguised as 'this is not an appropriate environment for children'.

When eldest was born, I was on a con committee. I was also a single parent, with *no* family on this side of the country. I could not have handed zer off to anyone for more than an hour, had I even wanted to.

Pretty much similarly the following year. Eldest was a bit over a year old. I could have kept my child away from the con, but only by keeping myself away from the con. Which would also have meant not doing anything at the con (and I did stuff. organisation stuff, a bit of helping here and there. nothing much, the con would still have gone on without me, and maybe no-one would have noticed my absence except me, and the rest of 'my' committee).

While I now have a partner, and my kids are older, in some ways that still applies. I *do* organise for my kids to be elsewhere for much of the con (except youngest, who isn't yet ready for stay-overs at any except one place, and they are away for Easter). But SwanCon is part of my kids' lives. They look forward to it as well.

I work hard on not letting my kids disrupt other people's con experience (and my partner works a lot harder at it). Just because I'm not necessarily very good at it isn't a reason to kick me out of the con - I can think of other people who shit lots of people off. But one thing that is shitting me about this fight - almost no-one has ever said 'this behaviour of your child was inappropriate' or 'that was more disruptive than is acceptable'. I've had to judge it on my own. The most I've ever got from people is blanket statements that kids don't belong at cons. And I don't think that that is right.

I'm not interested in being part of the same fight every sodding year. I've been listening to [info]callistra and [info]mynxii talk about running a feminist based sf con in Perth, and right now, I'm so over the whole discussion that I'm tempted to just about gafiate, and walk away from Swancon, and maybe WASFF, and the lot.

I have stopped going to the smaller cons, because the whole juggling family and con got too hard.

And I am, to some extent, putting my money where my mouth is. I've been supplying kid entertainment stuff on and off for years. I ask the committees to make a space where kids won't be disruptive, and parents won't be ghettoised. I may not have been very keen on that (&*(& hotel on Hay street, but the balcony was wonderful - kids were able to play without being disruptive, and lots of people were out there socialising. Kids kept to one end, and people who didn't want to be around them were able to be at the other end, and as far as I could tell no-one pissed anyone off.

Last year, I thought we did well, in the end (once we realised that the room put aside for parents didn't work). The small room with the kids stuff was close enough to the action that parents weren't completely excluded, and it kept the noise in. My kids, who like to be indoors, had fun. (plus, we took them walking). I'm pretty sure that our kids, at least, got a fair bit more one on one time with both their parents and other adults than they would have had chucked outside in the garden - and while I'm wholeheartedly in favour of kids having adult-free time, they also really like to have the attention of adults focused on them (in a positive manner).

And people who complain about others' behaviour, and don't do anything about it - you are part of the problem. This goes for kids being disruptive, as well as the bug-eyed monsters of fandom.

I'm going to stop here, because I suspect that I could go on for several pages of incoherent ranting, and I'm not sure that it will be any more cathartic than it has been so far, and I'm not sure that anyone will get anything out of it (I'm hoping that some people will have read at least a little of it).
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