Love is in the Air

Laura gave me a ring yesterday morning to say that she is now engaged to her boyfriend (now fiancé), Paul Wilson.  It's pretty exciting news.  They seem to go really well together and I'm sure they'll be happy.  He proposed when they went out for dinner on their anniversary.  The wedding is being scheduled for some time in June next year.

Laura and Paul

Ponderings on a Sunday morning

The sky was dark when I awoke from my slumber.  The wind howled outside, shaking the trees and screaching through the buildings.  It was quite loud.  A continuous groan, coming with peaks and troughs, but always there.  I lay in snug in my bed this morning looking out the window at the trees thrashing about.  It was like winter had come to us overnight.  The sky at that time was a dull grey but over the past hour and a half has turned to its usual deep blue.  As I've watched it change, it's got me wondering.  More of sitting here in wonder I guess, just thinking about the world and how it is able to support life such as ours.  I was thinking about what I new and what there was still to know.  I wondered about...

1. Wind.  How gusts can flow across the land.  If wind is caused by pressure then are the gusts caused by pressure on a much smaller scale?
2. The colour of the sky.  The shorter blue wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere and then radiated across the sky while the longer wave lengths such as the reds, yellows and oranges are not affected by the air.  The colours of sunset however are caused by the change in refraction of the light as it bends across the atmosphere.  The light takes a longer route through the atmosphere and less of the light reaches you.  Shorter wavelengths are scattered out leaving only the longer wavelengths.  Is the grey that is seen in the mornings due to the blue wavelengths refracting around but due to the position that they are hitting the earth causing even the blue, at that stage, to be refracted out.
3. Colour vision.  What would the world be like if humans didn't have colour vision?

I'll have to find out the answers to these questions.  Of course, there's always questions, it's just getting the answers that the hard part.

Buffer Practical Write Up

A buffer solution, or so Wikipedia tells me, is a solution "that resists change in hydronium ion and the hydroxide ion concentration (and consequently pH) upon addition of small amounts of acid or base".  I read that and immediately thought "WHAT?"  Now, three weeks after being told about them and learning all I could I am slowly getting it.  At the moment I am having to write up a lab report on an experiment we did with buffer solution and testing the buffering capacity of the local lake water (sodium carbonate solution).  I have one day to do it and so the race is on.  Well, actually it isn't as I'm instead writing this addition to my blog as head through procrastination valley all the way to panicsville.  I'm sure I'll arrive there later on tonight as these reports take about 10 hours (non stop - yes I've timed it) to write up.  They are only worth 3% and with all the other things that are due at the moment are quite a low priority.  This morning for instance I handed in an assignment for Cell Biology that was worth 20%.  I'm actually sitting here nibbling on a few almonds and a few raisins (I probably shouldn't mention that they are incased in a chocolate bar) and planning the report.  I'm confident that I'll finish it by tomorrow afternoon (it's due at 2 pm) so I guess that is the reason I'm not yet worrying.  I've just got to make sure I get off before Fail City.  Now where's that map?

Sleepless Nights

The clock has just ticked over 3:25 am and I am still sitting here, wide awake.  I just can't seem to get to sleep lately.  Of course, when I finally do I don't like to get up early either.  Usually I get up about 9 or even 10.  So why can't I get to sleep at night.  I'm not worrying over anything that I know of.  I don't know what it is but I do wish that I could get to sleep.  These nights aren't the best.  Lying awake in the darkness, waiting for sleep to overtake you.  I read the other day that sleep has been described as the dove that will only land when you pay no attention to it.  I like that analogy.  It's kind of true.  You can' t make yourself fall asleep, you just do.  Odd that.  

When you can't get to sleep you mind becomes more active.  In the darkness your mind becomes more alert, throwing up questions, situation and scenarios at you that you don't think about in your everyday life.  It is sort of like dreaming, only without the refreshing sleep part.  Take tonight for instance.  In the 4 or so hours that I've been trying to get to sleep my mind has covered things like:

1.  my movie collection and why I like the movies I buy
2. my uni work and which subjects I may choose next semester
3. my housemates party on the weekend and whether I should go
4. how I can get past the stage I am in playing GTA 4

5. that I really need to tidy my room and do my washing tomorrow

These are weird things.  What's more you don't just think about the subject, you go in to depth. What time I should do my washing and which coloured sheets I should put on my bed while these ones are getting washed.  Why people leave odd socks in the dryer and why is it always socks that you loose.  Then I went on to contemplate my odd sock collection and why I keep them even though their partner probably won't be found.  Then I wonder whether I should just wear them anyway.  After all, if you are wearing trousers then who really sees your socks.

These thoughts just went on and on.  Maybe that's what keeping me awake.  Worrying about my odd socks.

Underwater World

This weekend me and a couple of people from Varsity went to Underwater World.  It cost $19 to get in (using my student id for the first time), and was pretty busy.  The queue was actually out the door.  The displays that they had in there were quite impressive.  They have whole aquatic landscapes in each enclosures.  

A grey nurse shark that is in the tank.

Here is me standing in one of the tubes downstairs.  These tubes go through 3 large underwater tanks with lots of sharks, sting rays and other fish in there.  The walls are about 5 inches thick and their curve makes all the fish look approximately 20% smaller.  Even so, they looked pretty big to me.