And another earthquake.

Just felt another earthquake here in Melbourne CBD on Bourke Street, less than 2 weeks after the last one. Caused a cascade of prairy-dogging as people asked if everyone else felt that.

Confirmed it was felt at the Rialto Towers, and out near Caulfield.

The Age has a 2 line post up noting the earthquake, the geological websites seem to be down again, too many hits I assume.

I'd say it was shorter and weaker than the last one, which was a 4.6/4.7.

Interestingly, we've had a fair bit of rain recently...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13371

My brain dredged up a synaptic connection reminding me of this article. Basically it seems in certain circumstances, heavy rainfall can trigger small earthquakes. I wonder if those circumstances apply here...

Earthquake in Melbourne

Well, we just had a little earthquake here in Melbourne, very bizarre, it's the first one I've felt, we had one a couple of years ago, but I didn't notice it that time, but this one was pretty strong. No damage or anything as far as I can tell, although The Age's website went down shortly afterwards so I've not been able to find out any news about it so far. Oddly I was sat here on the net at the time, so maybe I got first post on it. :)

9Squirrels

Well, I finally bought my first domain name this weekend.  I am now the proud owner of www.9squirrels.com.

Why 9Squirrels?

Well some years ago, back when I was still living and working England, the country of my birth, a girl who was working reception as a temp, and was studying Japanese at uni, translated all our names into Kanji script.  The idea is to pick out kanji that read like the components of our names and put them together.

My name, read in Japanese is KuRiSu (the closest approximation we can get to Chris).

Ku is 9.

Risu is apparently Squirrel.

And so I gained the online name of 9Squirrels.  This one is starting to become my favourite Nom-de-net, as ChrisW75 is starting to become a little too obvious and business like, and CodeMonkey is just a little generic.

I'm currently in the process of trying to get the domain name to divert to this here blog, and get myself an @9squirrels.com e-mail address set up, which is proving to be a little more tricky than expected, involving setting up CNAMES and MXNAMES and all kinds of jarong and insider lingo I've not had to worry about thus far.

I worry that A- once I've set it all up and gotten it working, I'll quickly forget how I did it and not be able to even log in to make any further changes, and B- that perhaps that this is yet another sign that I'm getting "old".

Goddammit - Whatever happened to posting chat messages on Talker using raw html tags to change the appearance of your posts?

What happened to Gopher?

It's weird that, as the net has become simpler and more "userfriendly", the stuff in the background has become increasingly complex, if not outright abstruse.

Shit.

I am getting old.

Another sign of age is people's response to the fact that I fell out of a tree at the weekend and badly bruised my ribs (a singularly painful experience, which has not yet reached it's peak as far as I can tell) , and that is "What were you doing up a tree?".  I'm 33, why should that automatically preclude a desire and ability to climb trees?

Of course, a younger person would probably have started to heal by now, rather than still being in the "increasingly painful, bruising still developing" stage.

Oh, and finally, congratulations to the Yanks for a successful election, and for choosing the guy who actually seems a particularly intelligent and above all, reasonable man for the job.

Now with added progeny!

So, now I'm a Dad.  It's a bit weird.  For the last 3 weeks, Ms Monkey and I have been wandering around the place occasionally stopping and saying "We have a child!".  For the first time this weekend, I stopped and said "We're parents!", which suddenly felt alot more real.

Alex (my son, and from now on, Little Monkey), for the record, was born on September 1 weighing 7lbs 3.5 ozs (3.28Kgs) by caesarian, and everything went superbly well.  Walking out of the operating room, trailling the paediatrician as he pushed the little cart containing my son was a pretty surreal moment.  I was still with it enough to wind up Ms Monkey's mother when I saw her in the hall and greeted her questioning "Well??" with a blank "Well what?" as if I was just having a casual stroll and had bumped into her.  A response that nearly got me killed on the spot I think.

Since then it's been a rollercoaster ride of dirty nappies, mild sleep deprivation (he sleeps so well, we're really lucky) and staring at him in equal measures of wonder and disbelief.

  Little Monkey seems to be growing well, gaining weight within the guidelines, [edit: I've just been informed that he's been re-weighed and has been hitting almost DOUBLE the usual weight gain for the last week or so, so that's nice] and generally seems pretty happy with his lot in life so far (who wouldn't be? He's got someone to wait on him hand and foot, shoving food in one end and taking it away from the other).  He's mostly sleeping well, though has occasional periods of rapid fire feeding frenzies where he ups his intake from every 4 hours to every 2 hours.  Apparently this is all normal.

  Apparently "normal" covers a very wide range of statuses and situations now.

I'll post again when I damned well feel like it. :)

PS - Two other items.

1 - This weekend I disassembled and reassembled my PC after it stopped working in a pretty serious fashion over a week ago, and it now works just fine.  Go figure.  (Apparently Jonny 5 would have had nothing to worry about)

2 - I've formed a playlist on my iPod called "Getting shit done", which I can now use as a soundtrack for when I need to focus on my programming.  It also make me feel really cool in the process.

-Track 1 - Mission Impossible Theme (Adam Clayton...).

-Track2 - Spybreak! (Propellerheads) AKA the theme from the lobby scene in The Matrix.

- Team Fortress 2 - Theme music from the game of the same name, similar feel to the above 2.

- Playing with Danger - As above.

- On Her Majesty's Secret Service - David Arnold and the Propellerheads - updated and remixed version of the theme music from the Bond film of the same title (crap film, good music).

I need some more tracks for this one I think.

Birth Classes.

Things are proceeding, as they are apt to do. Last night K and I went to our first birth class, a two hour session at the hospital where we'll be delivering our "bundle of joy" in a couple of months time. Our midwife, henceforth to be named Nurse Placenta, seems a little nuts, but nice and competent, so I'm quite OK with "nuts". She seems very fixated on placentas and all the "wonderful" things that people do with them. Ones she's seen so far include stir frying it, using it to paint on a canvas, and leaving it attached to the baby till the umbilical cord drops off of it's own accord (around 3-5 days). This last is apparently called a "Lotus Birth". Weird. And in a hot climate, not particularly hygienic I'm sure.
We won't be going for any of those options, if I have to pick one, there's options for freezing it for use later, I think it was something to do with stem cells for treating leukaemia in the baby later if necessary. I might need to check that one out again. I imagine it's something that is rather expensive to do.
At one point, while watching a video of some couple from the 80's going through the birth process, K and I lost the plot and started giggling. For some reason the fact that part of my role is to provide "background music" set us off. K had a mental image of me standing in the corner clicking my fingers and singing Sinatra songs, while I pictured the Bazouki player from Monty Pythons Cheese Shop sketch. It took her a while to pull herself together, during which time she had to leave the room for a while. Poor dear.

I'm STILL playing Team Fortress 2, though I've been pretty good at making sure I balance duties around the house with having fun playing games, so it's OK... At least, I'm pretty sure it is.

And following on from the last post, recently I saw The Incredible Hulk, and rather enjoyed it. I don't think they did as good a job as they did with Iron Man, but still a pretty reasonable film and plot, with only a few really odd things that made me think "Noooo! That's crazy!", which when you consider that the main character turns green and grows to something like 5 times his original size when he gets annoyed, and I accept THAT, is pretty impressive.

The year continues.

Well, I've not exactly been keeping up with my posting have I? So here's a recap of the year so far.
1 - Still going to the gym twice a week, currently weighing in at about 71Kgs, so that's good. It's the heaviest I've been without a beer gut. I'm lifting bigger weights, but a 2 week break for a holiday has set me back a little and I'm hurting like I didn't think was possible. Yesterday I could barely walk, today I can just about manage to stroll without looking like I've had an accident, but running is definitely not on the cards which leads us to...
2 - The aforementioned 2 week break was a holiday to the US (Chicago and Decatur Indiana) to visit friends of K. Decatur needs to be qualified with it's state as apparently there's one in every state in the US, which leads us to...
3 - K is pregnant, so I'm soon going to be a dad. Due date is around mid September and I'm VERY happy. All in all, life is good.
4 - Valve went and released Team Fortress 2, and I'm addicted. Barely a weekend goes past without me dedicating a couple of hours to it. I'm getting reasonably good at it I think, but still not in the same league as these people who spend every waking moment on it. These people are kind of scary, but don't worry, you'll never meet them, they don't get out much. I may have to curtail this habit once the baby graces us with its presence...

Saw Iron Man last night, and it's goooood.

Fitness.

Well, it's been just over a month since we started heading down to the gym twice a week to be tortured trained by Nick our personal trainer. It seems to be working and my weight is gradually increasing (albeit slowly). The weight I'm lifting is frankly increasing at an alarming rate, and this weekend I was doing squats with 60Kgs on my shoulders. Another 10 Kgs and that would be me lifting ME. During the process of squatting and standing, I was of course glaring intently at myself in the mirror, as I believe is traditional, whilst gurning and sweating. I also noticed a large bulge appearing on each thigh, I've been reassured that these are called "muscles" and that this is in fact, a "good thing".
It's nice being able to look in the mirror and not see a toast rack with a head on top looking back at me, and the morning after pain is no longer crippling between sessions.

At the current rate of increase, I should be bench pressing double decker buses by the end of the year...

Onwards and upwards!