I learnt today that when the rest of the world uses the phrase “lucked out”, they mean exactly the opposite of what Australians mean when they do. For verification, check The American-Australian Slang Dictionary, and compare the entries in The Free Dictionary and usingenglish.com with the Macquarie Dictionary Book of Slang (unfortunately not online):

luck-out
verb to run out of luck; to have bad luck.

So there you have it.

On another note: Best. Pun. Ever.

… his name is Eric, and I’ve been spending all day, every day with him the last few months:

… because it was time for a change, and a new theme is easier than a whole new post.

I feel the need to link to this, mainly because of the quote:

“We were thinking about something that connects the industrial revolution and the digital revolution,” said Deller. Kane added: “They are worlds apart but there’s also a proximity. The steam age and the digital age are not so far apart.”

Perhaps the top hat is not so out-of-place after all.

though I never said it was…

I have been reading the following in the newspapers:

THE toll from yesterday’s horrific Burnley Tunnel crash and inferno could rise above the three people confirmed dead, authorities have warned.

Police are seeking surveillance footage of the accident, which began in the tunnel just before 10am. They said it was not yet known how many people had been travelling in the cars destroyed in the carnage.

The tunnel could remain closed until Monday as investigators examine the scene and engineers assess it for structural damage, police said.

Explosions rocked the tunnel, motorists told of a huge wall of flames and temperatures soared above 1000 degrees. Police Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby said some of the crash vehicles had turned into “balls of molten metal”. Investigators had still not identified the make of some of the cars.

In particular, I am driven to comment on CityLink’s response to the accident:

A motorist trapped in the tunnel, barrister Anthony Southall, QC, said the rescue effort was inadequate for those first frightening minutes when motorists were trying to walk out of the 3.4-kilometre tunnel unaided.

“There were no CityLink staff to direct us. In fact, there was a disabled lady in the car behind us and she needed some assistance.”

So what was CityLink doing?

CityLink spokeswoman Jean Ker Walsh said the initial accident had occurred very quickly, before a CityLink recovery vehicle could respond.

“We do know that immediately our lane closure system was activated. Regrettably, before an accident response team could get there, the incident occurred.”

“There are very strong practices to shut down a particular lane where necessary … it happened so instantaneously, emergency practices were just starting to occur when the second and third crashes occurred.”

Now, I don’t know if road engineers use the same buzzwords, but in the field of software engineering we make a distinction between ‘verification’ and ‘validation’ as types of testing. Verification testing checks that some process occurred as specified. Seems the “lane closure system” passed this test. Validation checks whether the process had the desired effect. Obviously this is the more difficult type of testing. And we also see that the “lane closure system” did not have the desired effect. So perhaps it would be more helpful to say “hmm, looks like we need better crash response procedures” than to say “well, our crash response procedures operated as designed, whoopeedoo!”.

He urged motorists to put the tragedy into perspective. “The tunnel’s been around a long time,” he said.

This one really gets me. A long time? Puh-leeze… the tunnel was opened in December 2000 – it’s just over 6 years old. CityLink have a contract with the government to operate the tunnel for 30 years [33 years and 6 months, in fact]- so the tunnel has just passed one fifth of its expected operating time. Tunnels that have been around a long time are:

• Kurikoyama tunnel, Japan (constructed 1880)
• Glenbrook railway tunnel, the Blue Mountains (constructed 1891-1892)
• Der Alte Elbtunnel, Hamburg, Germany (constructed 1907-1911).

I’d even give the honour to the San Bernardino Tunnel in Switzerland, constructed 1967. But 6 years?

At least they have some compassion:

CityLink also announced today that tolls would be waived for affected motorists yesterday.

Hot:
spring weather
longer days
no more exams
looking for PhD positions

Not:
painting the apartment
out-of-focus photographs
writing seminar summaries
broken CD-ROM drives
not updating a blog for months

Meanwhile, spoken Dutch makes me giggle. Dertien minuten later liet de aanvaller zijn tweede doelpunt aantekene. *giggle*

Notebook RAM comes in various form factors, but the basic standard (which Powerbooks use) is called “SODIMM”. RAM also comes in various speeds; PC-2700 (also called DDR333) and PC-4200 (also called DDR533 or DDR2). All this I have known.

I am the proud owner of a new 1Gb PC-4200 SODIMM. Currently my Powerbook contains 256Mb of RAM soldered onto the motherboard (wonderful design decision Apple, thankyou!), and a 256Mb PC-2700 SODIMM that I installed when I bought it.

I have now learnt (by bitter experience) that a PC-4200 SODIMM is not the same shape as a PC-2700 SODIMM. Oh, yes, they have the same, ahem, “form factor”, but the little slot in the PCB that aligns the pins with the motherboard is in a different place. Out by a good 3mm, I’d say. Not sure how “form factor” is defined, but it obviously doesn’t mean “specific enough to be able to buy RAM according to it”. I have since found an Apple document (down the ladder to the basement, with a torch, behind a sign saying “Beware of the leopard”) that says that 12″ Powerbook G4 (the 1.33GHz processor type, but without Gigabit ethernet – man, how many models are there??) takes PC-2700 RAM. I guess this implies, although doesn’t explicitly state, that PC-4200 RAM is not OK.

You may let your imagination run wild when imagining my frustration. I guess I shall just put this SODIMM back on eBay, and start bidding for another one…

… and that’s all I’m going to say on that topic.

Here’s a belated Christmas present to any readers… a new entry. I believe I may be outdoing my previous achievements at non-updating. In my defence, since my last entry my time has been almost continuously filled with uni work, and I can’t imagine many of you would find long entries about my studies scintillatingly engaging.

But given the opportunity of the Christmas break, there are a few things I should record. Not least of course, Christmas. Saarbrücken had its version of a Christkindlmarkt throughout December, and a less-kitch more-craft Weinachtsmarkt on the first weekend. On the weekend of the 16th/17th, L trained up from her exchange in Lyon to visit, and on the Sunday we went to Strasbourg to be tourists (and investigate the sprawling Marche du Noel). Photos (naturally) at the usual place.

And then on the 22nd, lectures finished for two weeks, giving me (or so I thought) some precious time to recover from the hard work, and an opportunity to get a head start on a few assignments before lectures begin again. Not so. It seems all our lecturers also saw this as an opportunity to do more work before lectures begin again, and dealt out assignments correspondingly. But I’m not writing to complain about my work… I did after all get a bit of a break. After opening all the Christmas mail on the 22nd, R and I caught a train to some of my relatives for 4 days of Christmas food, relaxing, a little laid-back sightseeing and more Christmas food; and following this we moved on to Berlin to visit J and U (and family), see some of the sights (R had never been) and to celebrate New Years Eve.

We were greeted in Berlin with a layer of fresh snow, and some flakes still gently falling from the sky… perhaps not strictly speaking a “White Christmas”, but certainly better than nothing! After that first day though the snow melted away and the weather became a bit more mild (give or take some rain), which we were quite glad of during our sightseeing.

Having weighed up the excitement of the Brandenburger Tor party against the prospect of being crammed into the “Party Meile” with one million other people, we decided to wander past the Party Meile early-ish in the evening to see how it was, and make a last-minute decision. At 7:30 there were no real crowds to speak of (at least, nothing unpleasant), three stages with live music and a festival atmosphere (complete with blinking party hats) in between, so we determined to come back later on (since the prospect of 5 hours outdoors didn’t really appeal!) Although at 10:30 there were considerably more people – in fact the Brandenburger Tor gates were closed at various points because of overcrowding – the crowd at the Siegessäule end was quite bearable, and so we got to see the famous fireworks after all. Well, the famous fireworks and lots and lots of private ones – most of them only confirming that the Australian ban on private fireworks is a very sensible idea… alcohol and gunpowder is not a good mixture! And since (in theory) fireworks weren’t allowed inside the Party Meile zone, everyone was just setting off their fireworks around the perimeter before entering the party… lighting little whirlygigs and throwing them into the bushes at the side of the road, or setting off rockets at dangerous angles… the Aussie bushfire season is bad enough, thankyou very much! (According to official reports, the fire brigade was called out 1800 times that night.)

Once again, photos where you’ve come to expect them.

On Monday lectures start again, so I fear we may be in for another little stretch of “nothing to report”. But at least y’all know I’m still alive, and still (occasionally) capable of something exciting!

Some of you may be wondering why I’ve disappeared for the last few weeks. Answer: I have been doing lots of running around (and some travelling). At the end of September, I visited family in Munich, managing at the same time to fit in some sightseeing (and of course Oktoberfest). We didn’t get inside the tents at the big O, since it appears they fill rather early in the day, and once you leave they won’t let you back in (if it’s full). We also spent quite some time wandering around trying to find a seat in the beer gardens outside the tents, since the Rules say that they’re not allowed to serve you a beer unless you have a seat. But eventually we found a seat and a beer (and a couple of Aussie soldiers on leave from Iraq). Was also rather impressed by the Olympic Park in Munich, possibly partly because my comparison is Homebush (100km out of town, and therefore deserted). Lots of greenery, nice lakes, stadiums (stadia?) etc that were in constant use, and lots and lots of people wandering around and making use of the public areas. Mind you, this is 15 minutes out of town on the U-bahn, instead of (see Sydney) over an hour, give or take a few train changes. (High-density living. Heh.)

Upon returning to Saarbrücken, I had a day to unpack, do laundry, clean up, etc, and then the following Monday I took receipt of R at the station, who has arrived after the usual 20+ hours on a plane plus train plus whatever to write a PhD at uni. Since then, we have: opened a bank account, signed a lease, registered at the town hall, enrolled at uni (a process taking several days and uncountably many secretaries, until we asked the International Office who told us what to write in which box and then took the form and enrolled us), bought kitchen appliances and a washing machine, and spent half a fortune at Ikea (the apartment is pretty large, but somewhat empty. Sans kitchen. Or ceiling lights.) Nice big strong men will come tomorrow and carry everything up the stairs. (We hope that’s what they mean by “delivery”. I don’t like the idea of us carrying it all upstairs ourselves.)

This last weekend, because R had been noticing the distinct lack of a holiday between submitting her masters thesis (the previous Friday) and starting her PhD thesis (last Monday), we spent two nights in a little town called Bacharach in the middle Rhine valley, which has as its main attractive features that it is surrounded by vineyards and small wineries, and that the youth hostel is housed in the (somewhat rebuilt) ruins of the castle. Saturday and Sunday were then spent variously tasting wines, eating lots of very good food, visiting the Federweisser festival, and walking up and down and up and down the track to the youth hostel. On Sunday we took one of the cruise ships along the Rhine to St. Goar, where we then looked at the ruins of Burg Rheinfels, the largest castle on the Middle Rhine, as well as the Teddy Bear And Doll Museum. We then bought some bottles (of various things we had tasted or drunk with a meal throughout the weekend), and caught the train home.

This coming Monday, lectures start at uni. I have also in between all this been chasing up some seminars (after learning my lesson last semester by missing out on one), and juggling a timetable together so I can pick my subjects next week. Once that is over, life might take on a slightly more normal pace again, and people who try to catch me might actually have a chance again…