London

As you can see from the post below, I recently spent two days in London. Here are a few pictures of the trip. 

An Apple II I found in a display at London Science Museum

I found more entertainment in this projection on my hand than in the game I was playing, come on London Science Museum, surely you can get this working?!

I made my own star and named it Sagan, a fitting tribute! 

Postcards that I found in the same section of the London Science Museum's shop. If you don't know what they are, shame on you!

and finally, me. 

London: an evening with Richard Dawkins

Not even a month into our relationship and my boyfriend had surprised me with tickets to The Magic of Reality: An Evening with Richard Dawkins and an overnight stay in London. Here is what happened on the night I was so lucky to have shared the same room with Dawkins.

I have been a fan of Richard for over two years now, in a way I owe him quite a lot. His 1991 lecture, Waking Up in the Universe was the first thing to get me to reason with myself; I became an Atheist on the back of that lecture, which started my love of Physics. 

We got to the Royal Albert Hall at around 8pm and found our seats. Richard Dawkins kept us waiting an extra half an hour or so, but I didn't really mind, I was too busy soaking up the atmosphere. Matt chose our seats very well when booking, as you can see from the photo below we were in a great spot. 

The chairman of the night, James Harding, who is the editor of the Times introduced Dawkins up on stage. I was too excited to listen to what Harding had to say. I can compare it to when you get to see your favourite band live in concert only to have to sit through the support act. One thing that caught my ear was that Richard Dawkins was the third Scientist to give a talk in the Royal Albert Hall, the other two being Hawking and Einstein. 

Out he came and the whole hall resounded with applause. He had his trusty MacBook Air, iPad, and a huge screen above his head. 

He started straight away on The Magic of Reality, choosing snippets of chapters to read out to the audience, adding in his famous whit. Forty five minutes later and at the end of his slides he thanked the audience and exited stage left. The people around me were a tad baffled, I could hear people saying "is that it?". As we were about stand up and leave a voice over the PA system told us there was a twenty minute interval. I was slightly relieved. 

For the next twenty to thirty minutes James Harding had a Q&A session with Richard Dawkins. There were a few things thats disappointed me about this; one being the no audience participation in the questions, and two the fact that James Harding made several mistakes throughout his questioning and his questions would be more suited being aimed at a physicist. 

All in all the night was a success and I wish I could have stayed in London a little while longer. I've already read quite a bit of The Magic of Reality, it is a easy to read book and I hope he continues on making books like this. 

Desktop tour

Menu bar, from left to right; smcFanControl: lets you control your computer's fans; Thoughtback: type a personal note into the pane and get it back when you least expect it; Free Memory: this is a free application for Mac OS users, basically does as it says, find it in the App Store; GeekTool: lets you personal your desktop a little more, some great tutorials for it on youtube. I don't use it anymore but keep it just in case; Twitter for Mac: is a must-have for Twitter users, shoots back into the menu bar when icon is clicked, pretty neat; iStat Menus (HD, MEM, CPU): an advanced system monitor for Mac OS X.

The rest are the default menu items for Mac OS; Time Machine, bluetooth, wifi, volume control, day and time, character viewer, battery, users, and Spotlight. 

Dock, from left to right; Finder: a default file manager on Mac OS, cannot be removed from dock; Launchpad and Mission Control: I'll lump these together seen as they're both new features of Lion, Launchpad is an easy way to find and launch your Applications, very similar to what you would find on iOS. Mission Control is similar to Spaces, lets you set up a desktop for each thing you're doing, I usually put each application I'm running into a new window; System Preferences: lets you modify system settings; Mac App Store: find and download Applications for your Mac, an Application hub of sorts; iTunes: I hope everyone knows what iTunes is, I love my iTunes more than anything!; Mail: default mail application for Mac; iCal: a calendar, which is so much more fun since Apple introduced iCloud; Twitter for Mac: same as the one in my menu bar; Adobe Photoshop CS5: a graphics editing program, which I used a lot more when studying Graphic Design; Audio Hijack Pro: lets you record from any application, I use it for something else; Dictionary: I used to access this from Spotlight but then realised I use it way too much and slipped into my dock for easier access; Raven: a freaking sweet browser for Mac. GET IT NOW!

Blue folders; Applications, Documents, Downloads, and Trash. 

Desktop wallpaper is a NASA image of Jupiter.

Space Shuttle icon is my hard drive. 

Star Stuff is my secret. Teehee! 

(click images to enlarge)

Update

I haven't been on here for a while and a lot has changed.

I broke up with Paul, it's funny looking back at my older posts and identifying that we were having problems, even last year when I thought we were relatively happy. 

I am now in a new relationship with a wonderful man, his name is Matt and very special to me. He makes me a very happy girl. 

I'm now a bigger fan of NASA than I ever was before. I want to adorn my body with their logo. (I already do this).

I have a space shuttle tattoo. Exciting, huh?

Steve

It has been almost two weeks since the death of Steve Jobs. To say this man was my idol would be an understatement. I followed his life, his career and towards the end his dwindling health. 

I woke up to thirty new email notifications from MyAppleSpace (Apple social networking site) all saying what I didn't want to hear. I was shocked, mostly because he kept his life so private. 

The night of his death I did the only thing I could do to remember him, I drew some portraits of him and the following morning took them to my local Apple and hung them in the window. I then proceeded to watch his keynotes and speeches; something that at one point was a regular occurence in my life. 

You will be missed, Steve! 

(photo by http://twitter.com/#!/rhymehorn)

A day late: Happy Father's day!

ABC

A. Age: 21

B. Bed size: Queen, I think.

C. Chore that you hate: Dishes.

D. Dogs: I had several dogs growing up, the most memorable were Juke the Rottweiler and my sisters Jack Russel.

E. Essential start to your day: Turning the alarm to snooze.

F. Favourite color: All of them mixed together.

G. Gold or Silver: Gold right now.

H. Height: 5'4"

I. Instruments you play: Guitar, Bass and Ukulele

J. Job title: I am unemployed as of Friday :(

K. Kids: not in the near future.

L. Live: Wherever the wind takes me.

M. Mother's name: Christina.

N. Nicknames: Chris, Apple, ooitch, Pixie.

O. Overnight hospital stays: Yes!

P. Pet peeve: I don't have many, I'm a very tolerant person, not much gets to me. 

Q. Quote from a movie: "Bullshit" sonny - Dog Day Afternoon.

R. Right or left handed: Right.

S. Siblings: 2 brothers and 2 sisters.

T. Time you wake up: Early-ish 

U. Underwear: ...

V. Vegetable you hate: Celery.

W. What makes you run late: I'm never late, if I am, it's never my fault. 

X. X-Rays you've had: Chest xray and one when I cut my artery. 

Y. Yummy food that you make: I don't really make yummy food. 

Z. Zoo animal: Forest Giraffe! (Belinda)