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Sunday, October 30, 2011

Out of this world!? (and a few Other things)

... and Off to Mars ... and the next mission to Mars is scheduled to launch on Nov 26 (Australian time ... probably still Nov 25 in America,where it is being launched from ... but will be about 3am on the 26th here in Canberra ;-)  there is some info about it here - http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
... and why am I blogging about yet another spacecraft being sent off to explore Other plantes/Our universe?
well ... not only is it cool that "we" are exploring other planets and stuff ... but ... they are having a tweetup at the launch site in America ( http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23NASAtweetup ) ... and there is another tweetup here at the Canberra Deep Space Comminication Complex ( http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23CSIROTweetup ) ... and ... I  ( http://twitter.com/#!/UTLAU )  am going to be there! ;-)

... which means I get to sneak off from work an hour or 2 early (boss said that was ok ... as long as my work is done when it needs to be done, it doesn't really matter if I stay late one (or more) day and sneak off early another day ;-) and dash (keeping to the speed limit of course ;-) out to Tidbinbilla to the CDSCC (Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex) where we all get to meet the other "tweeps" and have a "behind the scenes" type tour of the place, and a free meal, and listen to a talk or 2 ... and then ... at a rather late hour of night (like that is a problem, how? - surely you have read the title of this blog? - lol) they do a live hook up to the other "tweeps" at the Kennedy Space Centre ... and then link up to watch the launch (sceduled for "stupid o'clock" in the morning Australian time) ... then we go just down the road for bed and breakfast ... then in the middle of the next morning we head back in to CSIRO Discovery Centre for some more talks and stuff ... and go home in time to take the dog for a wak before tea on Saturday (unless DH wants to leave early and go out somewhere- lol)

Am I excited? well ... yes ... I am "Over the moon" LOL  ... it sounds like it is going to be really interesting, and a whole lot of fun!

Actually I can't remember exactly how I found out about it ... probably from reading an e-mail newsletter thingy I get from CSIRO (one tends to subscribe to odd things like that when one works as a High School Science Assistant) ... but I noticed that people with a twitter account could sign up to go to the tweetup and they would randomly select 50 "tweeps" to go ... and I just happen to have a twitter account (which I sometimes fiddle around with) ... so I followed the link and put my name down ... and I am one of the 50 they selected ... how cool is that? LOL

... the fact that I (a 40 something year old Mum) am going to join a mob of people (who are all into the sort of technology that was only "science fiction" back when I was a kid) watching the launch of a mission to Mars is kind of weird actually ... seeing that when I was at school, my nickname used to be "Martian" - LOL
(I guess it had something to do with me deciding that Uncle Martin from the TV show "My Favourite Mattian" was my hero - becuase I didn't seem to fit in with the crowd at school so I figured maybe I was from Mars too - so, for a week or more in grade 6, I wore a pair of wire antennae to school ... lol)

Ok ... not enough O stuff for an ABC Wednesday letter O post?

[andrea heads Off to bed ... was meant to go that way ages ago - OOOOOps!?]
 ... I will see what O photos, Or Other O stuff I can think of/find, when I come back to finish writing this ... whenever that might be ;-) 

before I go ... just thought of something I read somewhere - "if you have a whole pile of "Odds and sodds" and you take away all but one of them - what do you call the thing that is left?"

[later]

Ok ... I scribbled a coupleof words in here before I went ... some O ideas I thought Of ... just in case I couldn't think of any when I came back ...

orangutans?
old?
offal?
Orange?
Odd?

Other stuff? (Zooniverse)

ok ... Orangutans?! ... er ... cute, engangered, and their name means "people of the forest" ... I am sure "aunty google" can tell you more about them ... so I don't need to ;-)
(besides - I have not taken any photos of any ... that would require me having been to a zoo lately ... sigh)

Old? ... OK ... yes I am getting Older ... and I found out recently that I am going to be a grandma next year sometime (kind of scary when your kids start having kids - lol) ... but I am still hoping taht I have at least a bit more than half a lifetime left (I want to live until at least 100 ... although I would need to live to 1000 to finish making all the quilts/crochet items/other weird creative stuff I have ideas for, and do all the other stuff i want to do before i die ... sigh)

Offal ... yes I DO have photos of what one could call Offal - photos I have taken at work - of left over half disected eyes and kidneys and liver and stuff ... I proably should spare you from those?

... not sure I really want to spend the next 2 hours looking through folders Of photos for things that are Orange, Or Other Odd stuff either ... (I am tired, and have to do stuff/go places in the morning, and it is already later than I was intending on still being up)

(and the "Zooniverse" thing can go in my R post, if I Remember)

I should post some recent photos ... which I guess i should put Onto the computer? lol

[andrea goes and finds camera cord (camera is already in here - in my pocket, as usual ;-)  ... found some wine in the fridge too ;-]



Ok ... maybe it is time I mowed the back lawn?! (actually I did that just after I took this photo ;-)



closeup of some of the grass on the back lawn ... see - grass does have flowers - lol


A very close up of a microscope slide on my desk (taken as an experiment to see what sort of stuff I actually can take photos of with this new camera


while I was messing around taking that last photo (and a couple others) I heard a buzzing noise over in the direction of the window - and saw this spider dragging it's freshly caught lunch across the web and into a crack in the window frame ...

one of the hazards of owning a Golden Retriever - they tend to drool all over your leg while you try to eat stuff!
a little while after the last photo - the drool has dried, and my lap has been invaded by a cat ;-)

... a lap full of cat fur was another handy thing to use to experiment with the camera.



I like taking Odd photos ... at Odd angles ...


more colours ... I keep seeing interesting colours ... lol



a redback spider ... that doesn't actually have the red back! (some don't - but to someome like me, who has grown up with these things and seen as many as I have, and likes spiders, the shape/etc is still instantly recognisable ;-)
... it was also in a usual place to find redbacks - in/under something that was lying around Outside in the garden.


this bit of fabric, and the wire that is now in the bucket beside it, is what I had picked up from the garden - the spider crawled out of it while I was untangling it from all the bits of wire/etc - which I had wrapped up in it in order to "rust dye" the fabric ... I was only going to leave it a few days ... but I forgot ... so it was more than a few weeks! ... so it is also a bit rotten - oops!  the water on the ground is because I also rinsed the dirt/etc out of it after I untangled it from the bits of rusty wire and stuff.

yellow flower in the garden - with some Orange in the middle ...
(well - I am still sort of trying to keep this post at least slightly O related ;-)


a flowering bush catching the evening light ...
I was going to add more photos ... in fact i did ... but the uploader thingy kind of crashed/froze and only some made it here ... so I started again with some of the others ... and it died again after a couple more ... so I went to bed, got up, went out, came home, went out again, then came back in here and tried again ... still not working that well, and it is now bed time again and I still have not walked the dog, or done anything else that useful ... except read a pile of stuff on Twitter - LOL  ... and mess around with a few silly colour websites ...


... someone blogged about one - http://www.palettefx.com/ - where you can upload a photo and it picks some colours from it, so I went and had a play ... actually the thingys it did, that I saved, are small enough that they might upload ok/quickly ...


oh good - they only took a few seconds!



In fact it took longer to fix up the silly formatting it did, that stuffed things up so I could not type down here without the text being in the middle like the captions on the photos ...
(actually ... looking at the preview and being reminded what the photo captions lool llike once this is posted - it probably was trying to be the caption on the bottom photo ... which is not what I wanted - lol)
The photos I uploaded to that colour website were a lot smaller than the other photos on this blog, and are even smaller in these things it gave me back - with the photos are on the left and the colours it chose beside them ... I am sure I can see more colours in the blue photo! LOL (yes - there is a couple different yellows for a start) ... I guess this just picks a few main ones ... might be handy for website colour schemes/etc ... but for choosing what fabric/yarn/thread to use in something I might want to make - I would rather just use the photo (and whatever else might be floating around in my brain?) to inspire me as to what colours to use ... or just start digging things out of my stash and see what bits of fabric/thread/yarn tell me they want to play with each other ;-)


I also did a quick search to see what other similar things I could find (while waiting for those other photos to upload, or not ... ) and I fell over a whole list of colour picker/etc websites - http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/05/24/45-color-tools-and-resources-for-choosing-the-best-color-palette-for-your-designs.html  ... I had some fun playing with a few of them too - LOL




Ok ... this post is definitely Odd ... and anyone who actually read it probably thinks I am Off the planet ... so On that note ... goodnight ...

2 comments:

  1. Well a packed contribution for ABC Wednesday - thanks so much.
    Love the replacement of the dog drool with the cat! lol!
    Denise ABC Team

    ReplyDelete
  2. yes - a nice soft furry cat is way better than slimy wet dog drool ;-)

    ReplyDelete

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