Waving goodbye to 2006

So 2006 is coming to a swift end. To close the year, our picture is of Kez and Muts on holiday at Titsikama earlier in the year, the cool chicks.

I apologise for the lack of posts recently. I know I didn't finish off my last post about "What is a maser?" I was holding back on posting anything else until I had finished that, but I think I will just have to finish it later. Watch this place.

I'm working on my new years resolutions. I never really make new years resolutions, because I never keep them, so why bother...? But I like to have some sort of general approach to the year to come.

Some general thoughts I have on going into the new year are...
* Being chilled out, no pressure.
* Focus on work, enjoying work and giving more time to work.
* Being more adventurous with my friends. I dearly love the friends I have, but I spend one heck of alot of time with the same people. So I think I need to start being a bit braver and hanging out with some different people.
* Worshipping God and loving people.

What is a maser?

What is a maser?
The word maser is an acronym for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
The word laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation - its the same process, but lasers work with visible light, whereas masers work with microwave frequency radiation.

Okay, so a maser is an invisible laser, working as microwave frequencies (frequencies quite a bit lower than those of visible light). Whats with the "Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" bit?

Well, lets start off by looking at what stimulated emission is. Say you have an atom or molecule - it has lots of energy levels (remember drawing electrons in the different energy levels of an atom at school?). Usually the lowest energy levels are all full, and the upper levels are maybe a bit full, but not much.

So we start off in a low energy state... Then a photon of light comes along - a photon of just the right frequency for the molecule - and the molecule absorbs the photon. Now it has more energy, and the higher energy level is more full. This is called absorbtion. Thats the first was atoms or molecules (particles, for the sake of brevity!) can interact with radiation, or light. The picture below illustrates two energy levels of a particle. The wave is a photon, that gets absorbed by the particle, moving it to a higher energy state.



The second way particles interact with radiation is called spontaneous emission. When our particle has absorbed a photon it is in a higher energy state, but its not really stable. It wants things to be back to normal, comfortable with all the lowest energy levels full. So the particle spontaneously emits a photon of the same special frequency for the atom, and drops back to a lower energy.

This is actually how scientists can tell what the sun and stars and the Milky Way are made of. We look out into the sky and capture the radiation from a particular object. Then we look for special frequencies that ony come from certain particles - we call emission or absorbtion of these special frequencies spectral lines. If we see those special frequencies, we know we are seeing that element or molecule. For example, I look at silicon monoxide, SiO, which is at a frequency of 43122.03 MHz. When we see emission at that frequency, we know it is SiO.

But I've got side-tracked from the main question - what is a maser? Tune in to the next post for the answer!

Too good

This book is great, I cant help myself, here is another quote:

... But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something deep inside of me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth because it carries responsability, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn't cool. I mean its cool in a Reality Bites, Welcome to Sarajevo, Amnesty International sense, but that is only as good as dreadlocks. Chicks dig it to a point, but you can't be all about it; you also have to want a big house and expensive clothes because in the end, our beliefs are about as enduring as seasonal fashion.

Its from a chapter entitled "Belief." He speaks about his friend "Andrew the Protester," who is a Christian, and politics wise, a liberal. Andrew goes to protests, he's an anti-Bush, anti-IMF kinda guy. And on Saturday mornings he feeds the homeless, hangs out with his homeless friends. The author, Donald, says of Andrew: "My Republican friends get frustrated when I paint Andrew as a hero, but I like Andrew because he actually believes things that cost him something. Even if I disagree with Andrew, I love that he is willing to sacrifice for what he believes."

Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

Blue Like Jazz

A quote from the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller:

"My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now its about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care. I don't believe I will ever walk away from God for intellectual reasons. Who knows anything anyway? If I walk away from Him, and please pray that I never do, I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything."

... not to say we shouldn't exercise out minds in our faith, but I think that this quote has alot of truth in it. It kindof reminds me of Psalm 131:
"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me..." (KJV) - I would have preferred to quote it from the NIV, but my Bible is at home unfortunately!

Its a great book, I recommend it. Very hounest, open, authentic. And because of his authenticity, I think, he leads you along with him into lots of amazing truths about God and Christianity. Rather than just informing you of them, or teaching you about them. Its a bit like what Gareth ways saying in "Apologetic of the heart" - you feel like you are a pilgrim on a journey with him.

The authors note in the beginning says "Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way." Beautiful.

Wonderful

from here.

Water followup

Just a followup on the Grahamstown water situation. To quote from the email with water test results:

In summary, the tap water on campus was safe (if unpleasant) to drink.

The tests the Biochemistry & Microbiology Department did on the water all came back as safe for humans, but not safe for trout. Trout are apparantly alot more sensitive to changes in the water and ickiness in the water. Not suprising, I guess, considering they live and breathe in the water, and they are alot littler than us!

Anyway, in all the water upheavel my geyser has stopped working. And my landlady is away, so I will just wait till she returns to sort it out. Life without hot water, arg.

On a triumphant note:
I have now parallel parked twice with Chloe! *woot*
And my external hard drive is back so I can back up my work. *woot*
And life is good :)

Public Service Announcement

THIS IS AN URGENT MESSAGE
TO ALL STAFF AND STUDENTS

Please be aware that serious concerns have been voiced over
the toxicity levels of the municipal water supply. According to
Martin Davies of the Department of Ichthyology and Fisheries
Science, over 35 000 fish at the University's Experimental Fish
Farm have died over the last few days as a result. He says that
trout fingerlings are seen as an accepted early warning system of
polluted water. The deaths of these fish together with behavioural
abnormalities which has been observed are indicative of the
presence of heavy metal pollutants in the water.

The particles are extremely toxic to human beings and cannot be
removed through cooking or boiling water. Samples of water are
currently being tested in the University's Biotechnology
Department but results of these tests will only be available by
tomorrow.

In the meantime you are requested NOT to drink water from any
taps on campus (or at home) and not to cook with this water if
your home or residence was affected by the recent water outage.

The University is making plans to bring further supplies of bottled
drinking water to Grahamstown for distribution to residences.

Please also note that all food served in the residences has been
prepared with 'safe water'. The University has been forced to
adjust menus and serving timetables as a result of the current
problems and regrets any inconvenience.

Those affected as asked to be patient as we attempt to manage
the situation.

Director: Communications & Development Division
Rhodes University

Math tutoring

A tutor is not a teacher in the usual sense: it is not his job to convey information. The student should find for himself the information. The teacher [sic] acts as a constructive critic, helping him to sort it out, to try it out simetimes, in the sense of exploring a possible avenue, rejecting one approach in favour of another. Moore, 1968, pg 18

I've been tutoring math to these kids from Nombuleo for a few weeks, and its been on my mind for the last few days. I read this quote in a paper, and it echo's my thoughts (in part). I have been using the phrase tutoring, rather than teaching, deliberately for some time. I 've put a fair amount of thought into how to approach teaching/tutoring these kids, and these are some of the thoughts/principles I have come up with:

• "First, do no harm" (Innoxa) - At the very least, let me not confuse them, not undermine their confidence, not undermine what they already know, and not undermine their teachers!
• The Baard method - In University Physics tuts, we are encouraged to use the Baard method - named after one of our previous HODs. You get small groups to work togther at different sections of the board, and you walk between them, helping as necessary. I try and use a similar method for tutoring high-school math, where possible. We usually sit around the board and the kids take turns doing problems on the board for us, but the whole group helps and advises, and does calculations on their calculator for the person at the boad when necessary. I was actually quite suprised this method worked - its usually remarkably difficult to get university students up to the board to answer questions for the class, or even in groups! Sometimes it gets a bit difficult when there are quite a few kids - 4 is a comfortable maximum to use this method. Thankfully Brent has been helping me out, so we can sometimes break into two groups.
  
• Tutoring, not teaching - These are kids writing matric math in a few weeks now. Frankly, there is not really time to teach them anything new. And perhaps more importantly, they already go to school, sit in math classes, have a math teacher and learn math. My goal isn't to teach them new things, my goal is to help them apply (unpack!) what they already know, and to help them grow in confidence. The goal is that they can actually *do* math problems. On occasion I have to teach them things (you need to know the special triangles, for example), but that is not the primary goal of my meeting with them. Its much easier to stand at the board and explain the answer to a question to them, much much easier than getting them to figure it out for themselves! But at the end of the day the goal is them being able to do things themselves, not me feeling good about my explanation. Which is part of my motivation for making them do things on the board themselves.
  
• They lack confidence - For the most part, they lack confidence to a detrimental degree. Part of the motivation for tutoring, rather than teaching, is to show them that they actualy know quite alot. And they are more capable than they thought. There is little as empowering as realising you actually *can* do something you initially thought was impossibly difficult. And with a bit of prodding in the right direction, they often can do math questions they really thought they couldn't.
  
• They are generally mentally lazy - So am I. Most of us are. Especially in areas we we lack confidence... there is just no motivation to mentally apply yourself to something you think you have no hope of figuring out! So I have to provoke them to think, allow them to get things wrong and have their class-mates correct them, just wait while they stubbornly refuse to ask questions, try and think of leading questions that will give them just enough of a clue to get started, and then they are engaged and its much easier.
• Helping each other - I try to leave them to correct, encourage and help each other as much as possible. In fact I keep my involvement as minimal as possible. Their first language is Xhosa, so ideally I would like to speak to them in Xhosa, but alas I cannot. So when they all discuss a problem together in Xhosa, thats great. Also, they are all learning the same way, and they have roughly the same information/way of understanding in their heads. I did matric maths yonks ago, so in many respects they are more qualified to help each other than I am to help them. And referring back to the first point - at the very least, I don't want to confuse them. Rather let them explain to each other in a way they are all familiar with, than me giving an explanation that works for me, but that is unfamiliar and intimidating to them. Also, it pulls them all in to engage with the questions. When someone gets things wrong on the board, I often leave it for a while to give someone else in the group a chance to see the error and correct it - which often happens. Sometimes I do step in and correct something, especially if it is a fundamental error/misunderstanding, but I try to keep this to a minimum.

One of the reasons I have thought this through alot is that I heard that you have to be quite careful when to teach kids from non-former-model-C schools (jeepers, what a mouthful). Also just because I'd like to actually be making a difference to these kids, not just wasting 3 hours of their and my lives every Saturday!
If you have any advice or thoughts on the matter, I would love to hear them!

Mutsa's party

It was Mutsa's party on Friday evening - it was her birthday on Friday. Minz cooked about a billion kilograms of curry, and we spent Wednesday and Thursday evenings rolling roti. Altogether we made about 150 rotis for the party, and Claire and Sizwe and Verashni made a some batches too.

It rocked... says Minoshni :) And it did!

"Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten." Lilo & Stitch

A lesson

When I was in about standard 6 or 7, I heard that when my friends did well in class their parents paid them. I was in the 'A' stream class so most of my friends did well academically, and I had been doing pretty well too at the time. So I figured I should be rewarded with money too! After all, most of my friends were...

So one day I went and told my dad that I reckoned I should be financially rewarded for good work. So my dad thought about it and gave me what, in retrospect, was a wonderful answer.

He thought about it and answered: "Well, I tell you what, if you come first in class I'll give you R xxx, if you come second in class I'll give you R yyy, if you come third in class I'll give you R zzz. But if you come fourth in class, YOU have to give ME R zzz, if you come fifth in class you have to give me R yyy and if you come lower than fifth you have to give me R xxx."
heh.
So I thought "!!!!!!"
And responded "no thanks, I don't like that arrangement" and my desire for (and expectation of!) reward was thoroughly gone :)

It was the best lesson because in a few words he managed to express how silly it is to place too much importance on academic achievement. And how silly it is to expect rewards for everything!

Kepler, Kepler

I'm in the lab for no good reason at 10:30, arg. I am waiting for Kepler (my physics pc) to finish running something so I can start something else. I am very attached to Kepler, but he is getting a bit old and sluggish, prone to erratic break downs. On Sunday all of his usb ports died, for no good reason. So I'm trying to back things up, but it looks like my external hard-drive might be poked. Fun and games :)

So what shall I do with my time Lord? Just waiting here.

I've been browsing through some blogs (Verashni, Natalie, Binks, Vicky, Biance, Ralph, James, Neels, Rebecca, Lindsey, Nathan etc etc.) I must make myself a little Blog Boxi al la Twitch. Something I really enjoy about reading all of your blogs is that you realise that people are even cooler than you think, and more hectic than you think, more creative than you think... you guys are so great :)

And just a final thought, before I try make good use of my waiting time:
Hear ye, hear ye: It is John (Richter)'s birthday on Monday, and Mutsa's birthday next Friday.

Busi's party #2

This is a continuation to the "Busi's party" post, because I really can't do her party justice with just one picture. Above is my friend Emma, and her foster/adopted child (I'm not sure which), busi. Emma was in Dingemans with me way back, before Spar was Pick 'n Pay, and The Blue Room was The Red Cafe. It was Busi's birthday party. She had a jumping castle, which was awesome. The top picture is of Busi and some of her friends on the jumping castle. The little girl in yellow is Emma's other child, Thandi. Thandi is very sweet, she has a lovely happy disposition.

Busi likes tomato and chicken and mashed potato and pretty much nothing else. She does not like sweets, bizarrely enough. She loves barbies, and has about three thousdand million of them, as well as a Barbie car and a Barbie house. She feels that it is inappropriate to cut hear Barbie's hair, even though some of her friends cut their Barbies hair. And it was her birthday party.

Emma says that "fancy shaped party cake" is one of the skills you have to master as a mother :)

Mother abuse

Oh dear, I have not posted in a *long* time!

Yesterday I was tutoring math to some kids (well, matric scholars I suppose!) from Nombulelo. Nombulelo is a school in Grahamstown. Anyway, there were six of them, two guys and four girls. Towards the end of the session we were discussing when to schedule our next meeting and I suggested next Saturday morning. One of the guys commented that Saturday afternoon was better for him, because he does chores on Saturday morning, like washing clothes. So one of the girls advised him that his family should be washing his clothes to help him out, because he is writing matric exams. He was agast: "That would be mother abuse!" "Yes," chimed in the other guy "we couldn't do that, thats mother abuse!"

My mother was washing my clothes well into my degree... even when I lived in another town and had access to a washing machine in my res!!! How embarassing - they put me to shame! :)

PhD comics

I love PhD comics. The strip above is so like me its embassing.

Busi's party

Back in Grahamstown

So I am back in Grahamstown from my stint in Cape Town.

In my absence, my Church had a prayer vigil, Christians@Rhodes had a mission, my brother went on camp, my flat got broken into, my car battery died and my former digsmates went to the Greek ball (as you can see in the pic above!)

Thankfully, it seems nothing was actually taken from my flat - the burglers were probably disturbed by the armed response people. Hooray.

Being in CT was fun, but its good to be back and get into the swing of things again!

Gratitude

I'm eating a haddock and broccoli woolies microwave meal for dinner. Yummy.

I was thinking yesterday/this morning how I have lots of things to be grateful for. I am grateful to be at Rhodes, to have learned fourier transforms via flipping-and-shifting methods. I am grateful for two great supervisors, tons of resources at my disposal, a great lab of people, a great staff in the department. I an really grateful that I have had the chance to travel and see other universities, and go to a few conferences. I'm grateful for having gone through an undergrad programme which developed lots of practical skills I use now. I'm grateful for people who believe in me and encourage me.

I often get discouraged academically, but the truth of the matter is that the Lord had put me is such a favoured place, in terms of the background I have, and the place I'm in now. And I am very grateful to him. I commit it all to Him.

Great quote

I just found a great quote:

"How easy it would have been in South Africa for the natural feelings of resentment at white domination to have been turned into feelings of hatred and a desire for revenge against the white community. Here, where every day in every aspect of life, every non-white comes up against the ubiquitous sign, "Europeans Only," and the equally ubiquitous policeman to enforce it - here it could well be expected that a racialism equal to that of their oppressors would flourish to counter the white arrogance towards blacks. That it has not done so is no accident. It is because, deliberately and advisedly, African leadership for the past 50 years, with the inspiration of the African National Congress which I had the honour to lead for the last decade or so until it was banned, had set itself steadfastly against racial vain-gloriousness."
- Albert Luthuli

A week in Cape Town

I've been in Cape Town for a week now. So far, I:

• Have given 5 lectures. Its hard.
• Went to the inaugural lecture of Prof Ian Scott, entitled "Equity, Merit and Development: Critical Tensions in Higher Education in South Africa and Abroad." Very interesting - "equity related educational strategies are a central component of development."
• Have hung out with Taryn, Emma, Linda, Roshni.
  
• Went to Busisiwe's 7th birthday party! There was a jumping castle! Woot.
• Went to a lunch time lecture organised by the UCT YCL (young communist league), where the SA minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils, spoke about the conflict in Palestein. Very interesting.
• Went to Taryn's cell group - great bunch of girls. We did a Bible study on a passage from Romans.

It has been quite an eventful week!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Choosing a picture to represent a preson is a significant thing. A few months ago there was some scandal in the news involving Bill Cosby, and the article in the Daily Dispatch that covered it included the most horrible picture of him - he looked... smarmy. He looked like the kind of person who could have done what he was being accused of. And I thought: "Now, is that fair?" They must have tons of happy Bill Cosby pictures on file, but they chose the one that made him look like a creep." Because they wanted people to think "hey, we thought this oke was a nice guy, but actually, maybe he is creepy..." I suppose. So the picture we choose to represent someone says alot about how we view them and how we want others to view them, even if our choice may not be deliberate.

So anyway, I saw these two pictures of the new Rhodes VC in the "this Week at Rhodes." These pictures are definately saying something! Something good.

UCT: Pro's and cons

Pros:

• great coffee
• great food - so much choice!
• its beautiful
• the smell of the sea

Cons:

• expensive coffee!!!
• no drosty lawns
• you can't really walk safely through middle to upper campus at night
  

A post

Minoshni poined out that it has been a while since I have blogged. I have been saving up all my blogging thoughts for next week when I will be in Cape Town, probably with a fair amount of free time and not all that much access to work. So I will be free to spend my life blogging.

Nonetheless, let me post here to break the blogging silence before I go.

Thought for today is a quote from the book Dune:
"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration."

When I actually allow myself to realise it, I see that I am afraid of alot of things. And fear often motivates what I do. Unacceptable! Perfect love (God's perfect love) drives out all fear, and humility (or correct identity) drives out fear too. The two are strongly linked I guess :)

To security!

The cool kids

Oliver and I, the cool kids at the back of the bus. On the way back from the mayoral dinner at SAIP. On the other side, at the back, were Richard (taking the photo) and Sean.

I'm such a girl

I was walking down High Street today feeling tired and bleh and I bumped into a guy I know. Who said "How are you? You are looking radiant..."
:)
I felt instantly cheerful. I'm such a girl!

I can do it too!

I can do the salt trick too!

In the background, Nicole. With hot chocolate and a marshmellow. Nicole and Romona came over for dinner - they are great.

SAIP

Last week I was at the SAIP (South African Institute of Physics) conference at UWC. I heard some good talks, some completely-over-my-head talks and gave a talk myself. Posters for preference in the future!

I also met a great bunch of people - some UKZN guys (Sean and Angela and Michel (sp?) and some undergrads too) and some UJ people, a couple of old Rhodians (Ingle Gledhill and David Roux) and saw the Hermanus people and HartRAO people.

"Science is sometimes a very human interpretation of nature." Harm Moraal

The picture at the top is Richard Grant's party trick, from the Banquet on the last evening!

The power of the arts

"When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake"
- Plato

Its the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown at the moment. Today I went to see a play called Prodigal, written and directed by a couple of people I know. I just went to support really, but I was actually so... impressed is the wrong word. It was really moving, the story was good, the acting was good. It made me cry and it made me think and feel. I reccommend it.

Kim

This post in about Kim McAlpine. Kim is my travel partner at the moment - we are in Cape Town to see our supervisor, Dr Athol Kemball. Kim is the intrepid driver who whizzes us around Cape Town in our rental Citi Golf and endures my apalling navigation skills with good cheer. We are staying in her sister Susan's house. The picture above is Kim with her sister's cat, Possm. Possm is somewhat psychotic. He is a wild panther trapped in the body of a stripey kitten. Which is no good for the couches :)

Anyway, Kim is doing a Physics/Astronomy MSc. You can see her Physics page here. She is very with it when it comes to things Physics/Mathsy and she has even approx. mastered AIPS, quite a feat. I admire how she is determined to figure things out properly, to understand things properly.

What else? Kim has an adorable dog named Max, who she dotes on. She is a stirling pet owner, which says alot about a person I think. Kim is also into all sorts of cool things like scuba-diving. She is adventurous like that. She has a cute house which she invests hours into making pretty. In fact, I think Kim is into beautiful things. From her house to her clothes, to enduring with eye makeup.

Kim is the social coordinator of the Physics department, and is (to use a terribly cheesy phrase, which is nonetheless true) "loved by all." She only had to complain of the heat and our lab got two airconditioners! :) She is very friendly and hospitable.

She is great to travel with because she makes up for me being shy :) And she is fun. And interesting. And is brave enough to drive in Cape Town.

C.S. Lewis quotes

Some fantastic C.S. Lewis quotes:

"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading."

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable."

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

"Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

"I gave in, and admitted that God was God."

For Oliver & Nathan:
"The real Oxford is a close corporation of jolly, untidy, lazy, good-for-nothing humorous old men, who have been electing their own successors ever since the world began and who intend to go on with it. They'll squeeze under the Revolution or leap over it when the time comes, don't you worry."

"There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way.""

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

And the grand finale:
"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."
:)

(from this page)

Minoshni

Over the weekend I was chatting to someone (Donnae!), and Minoshni's name came up as one of my digs mates. And Donnae asked "Who is Minoshni??" Presumably she was intrigued by references to Minz on this very blog.

So this post is about Minoshni, or Minz (or Doo, if you are Mutsa). You can see her on the right in the picture on the top, its a pic of the grad garden party.

Minoshni is very cool. She likes her feet, she had fuzzy pink gloves but now they are gone :(
She is an uber-cool DJ. And a journalist. She may become an investigative journalist and go undercover as a janitor. She looks after a beautiful work web page and a blog. Check out her blog for info on India, cricket, and the life of Minoshni.

She runs the yearly RMR Cuppa for CANSA, she runs the Ad team for Cue, she does the RMR ABSA Top 40. Evidence of the fact that she is multi-talented! And a brilliant leader, I alway love listening to Minoshni's Leadership Tips.

She may or may not start an exciting training business which we came up with in the kitchen, some years ago. She is learning french. She is very grown up with all sorts of things like life insurance. She likes princess movies, like me.

I'd better get back to work, so I'll wrap off with "Minoshni is cool." :)

Graduation 2006

This year John and I graduated together, which was rather nice. This is the best photo from my brother's camera (the rest are not that great), especially for Minoshni :)

The Breakfast Table of The Lord

I've been doing some blog surfing recently, having found Dilly's blog, and Carla's and Danie's and, heck, Natalie's and Lindsey's and Donnae's and so on and so on. Which has made me feel that my blog is decidedly unspiritual. Which is fine, Fridges and Kepler are important too. There is no sacred/secular divide!! :)
Anyway, last night in Bible School I got thinking about... the breakfast table of the Lord. So this is my semi-spiritual post on... The Breakfast Table of The Lord.

"You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies" Psalm 23:5
I have this image of The Table of The Lord in my head. Its really long, there are lots of people at it, they're having a great time and celebrating. Kindof like Christmas dinner with the family. Except with goblets and stuff. I don't know why, but tables with kings have to be partially medieval. Sounds great. Like the Audio Adrenalin song Big House: "A big big table, with lots and lots of food" :) (Also, a big big yard were we can play football.)
Anyway, then I got thinking, what about the breakfast table of the Lord? As opposed to the party/dinner tbale of the Lord. The atmosphere at the breakfast table of the Lord must be completely different. A breakfast table is alot smaller, for one. More intimate really, at breakfast its mostly just family. And its me as I am at the breakfast table. Still kindof groggy from sleep. Maybe still in my PJ's, in my glasses, hair a mess. Probably haven't brushed my teeth yet. But thats fine, because its breakfast. And the breakfast table is very chilled out. You don't have to even talk really, if you don't want to. Breakfast is a good time for comfortable silences. Or if you do want to chet, you can chat about your day to come, your yesterday. Just livin' life stuff.

So as for me, I want a place at the dinner table of the Lord, definately. I want to celebrate and laugh and praise and rejoice. But I also want my all bran and tea at the breakfast table of the Lord, in my blue bunny pyjamas.

A Fridge

I bought a fridge today. Scary stuff, very Grown-Up. But the Lord is good!
"The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." Proverbs 10:22

Now I just need to make a plan to get it delivered to my flat. Any ideas anyone? Apparently you should transport it upright. Its a Defy fridge, which I am really happy about because they have 2 year warantees and apparantly they are very good about fixing things if the need arises. Hooray.
I looked for a picture of it to put here for y'all to see (google images!). I battled to find the right one by gooling "defy fridge," so I just tried "defy." And then I didn't find any pictures of fridges! Certainly not in the first rew pages of results anyway. And aweful lot of "Defy Gravity" though :) Its funny how we figure out these "laws" about the world and then we are excited about the thought of breaking them.

As good a place as any

This is as good a place as any to note down a few linux commands I always manage to forget:

• How to untar afile.tar
• tar -xvf afile.tar
• How to untar and unzip afile.tar.gz
• tar -xvzf afile.tar.gz
• How to see how much memory is taken up by certain directories or what not
• du
  
• du -h (Human readable - using K and M)
• du -m (Gives size in Megabytes, M)
  

Thinking God's thoughts after Him

Kepler still only has half a brain, I am afraid. Hda is in hospital. Fortunately, Kepler is hardy and I can still do most things with but half a brain... especially considering the half I have is still 80 Gigs :)
Kepler, incidentally, was the one to use the phrase "thinking God's thoughts after Him."

On another note, I have to do a short talk for the Physics 1E1 students tomorrow about... problem solving skills?? I have to think about it now -> back to work!

My poor Kepler

My poor computer Kepler is sick. His second hard-drive, my data drive (which, strangely, is hda), is on its way out. You can see him undergoing open heart surgery in the picture. And you can see the scary error messages on the screen on the left. Like "Uncorrectable Error" "Input/Output error".

I realised after the Bible School quiz last night that I really hadn't learned hard enough for Life of Faith. Its funny, but I think if I had to redo my undergrad now I would not do nearly as well. Tests and stuff just don't motivate me anymore. But it actually isn't good enough, and I need to learn properly for ENLI quizzes. And of course, work on my academic work ethic too :) Its not that I have a terrible work ethic, although its not the best at the moment, but as things change and goals change and the way you work changes, and studies become a heck of a lot more flexible, it becomes quite difficult. To motivate yourself, and to work to SERIOUSLY long term goals. Why work 9 - 5 today for a project only due in 2 years? But I must, because I enjoy it and because I want to work in a way that glorifies God, and because there are still standards, although they are less tangible now.

One runs the risk of weeping a little

"One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed"
-- The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I re-read The Little Prince yesterday, and its sadder than I remember. But perhaps its just because I was sad at the time of reading.

Boas from the inside and boas from the outside.

On an entirely different note, I was thinking about this verse recently:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (NIV) Romans 8:28

Amazing. Does that mean that God will really use all of my mess-ups, my selfish acts, things I have done with terrible motives and so forth... for good? Wonderful. Freeing.

My poem

A poem I wrote some years ago... :)

"for my best friend:

The Toffy-Apple Song

You are sweeter than toffy-apples
and sticky sticky like
i couldn't get rid of You
even if i wanted to
like to be without you would
not to be me
You are yellower than a
scribbled sun
6 lines and a circle
waxy bright
You are lighter than a red
fizz-pop
You make me implode
explode
implode into a ball of mirth
and i love you like marshmellows.

-- LL Richter"

Laura and I

Laura and I get along rather well, its great. Especially considering we have to spend alot of time together.

We like the same kinds of books. We laught at the same types of jokes. Although I think she can be a bit silly sometimes. We both love companionable silences. And Nicole Nourdeman. We like the same kinds of foods... although, sometimes she is too lazy to cook. So I cook for her, once in a while :) And of course, she shares my love of tomatos. And chocolate.

We even have the same favourite colour. Its bizarre. I like having her around :)

The rape of Mr Smith

I was going through a pile of my old papers a while back and I found a mock interview I had written out (from the net), of a guy who had been mugged. The interview is making a point about rape and how rape victims are treated. I looked about and found a similar interview on the net here. Its worth a read, I think.

Photo Blogs

I love photo blogs. Roger's blog is an excellent example. But then, he takes spectacular photos too, so maybe his blog isn't typical. At any rate, I don't have a digital camera so a full photo blog is not viable (and I recently lost most of the data, including photos, on my laptop due to a monumentally stupid "upgrade" attempt). Nonetheless, let me entertain you with the few photos I have hanging around on my hard drive.

The picture at the top is of my third year "Control and Optimasation" math class. From the left: Me (not the best picture!), Dr Remsing (lecturer), Harold, Adam, Razvan. Sitting upstairs in the math library, after a lecture. Aaah yes, back when I was an undergrad. Adam used to bring jelly math shapes to tuts.

Public Service Announcement

This announcement brought to my blog-reading public, dedicated to Jateen in response to his comment on my previous post.

I am, in the eloquent words of Oliver, a parsimonious shopper. I feel
strongly about paying the smallest possible amount for any given product.
This leads me on trails through Checkers, Clicks and Pick 'n Pay in search
of the cheapest possible All Bran Flakes, for example, or specials on Lux
Soap.

Last week my quest was for toilet paper. I usually get the plain 1-ply
Twinsaver, and that was my plan on this occasion. Since I was doing a big
bi-weekly shop, I thought I may as well buy bulk and keep costs down. So I
found sets of 4 rolls of toilet paper, and put one in my basket. I casually
looked at the single rolls to see how much money I was saving by buying in
bulk.

To my horror, I saw that it is, in fact, cheaper (per item) to buy single
rolls of Twinsaver toilet paper than the packets for four. We are being had.

Let me repeat that, as a warning to you all:
It is cheaper, per roll, to buy single rolls of 1-ply twinsaver toilet paper
than to buy packs of four.

Do not be taken in! Buy single rolls!

Umbrellas

I've been meaning to post this for an age and a half, so here goes.

The other day (now probably a month back), I was walking in a light rain, under my umbrella. As I was walking, I heard swish-swish, swish-swish coming from above me. I noticed that the swish-swish-es were in time with my steps, so I thought it may be the umbrella clasp swishing against the unbrella as I walked. I look at the clasp and it wasn't moving, so I discarded that explanation. So I thought, perhaps the rain is swishing off the umbrella with the up-and-down motion of my steps. I looked carefully and there really wasn't enough water on my umbrella to be doing that. So I was thouroughly stumped. I tried turning my umbrella different ways and all sorts, and couldn't figure it out.

Until I realised that the sound I was hearing was from my shoes, that had absorbed a bit of water and were somewhat squishy. Why was I hearing it from above me then? I can only assume that my umbrella was acting as a bit of a lens for the sound of my shoes, reflecting it back to my ears... so it sounded like it was coming from above.

Bizarre. Or can anyone else offer another explanation?

Wallpaper

A month or two ago I saw a friend of mine (Lester) had a world map inside the back cover of his diary. Naturally, I now need to own a diary with a world map inside the back cover. Unfortunately, it appears that these diaries cost of the order of R100, as opposed to other diaries with similar functionality which cost around R30. So the miser in me won and I bought the ~R30 diary. I resolved to draw a pretty world map to stick inside the back cover, but never got around to it. Also, it would be difficult because it would be alot of detail in a smallish map, if I wanted country and capital names, which I do.

Anyway, I put it behind me. But a couple of days ago it occurrec to me that I could get a world map (with country names and capitals!) as a wallpaper for my laptop. And actually, thinking about it, I only really want Africa, not the whole world. So I downloaded an appropriate picture off the web, altered it a bit so it didn't distort to fit on my screen. And now I have a map of Africa (with country and capital names!) for my wallpaper (at the top of this post).

I've already learned 3 capitals:
Mozambique - Maputo
Malawi - Lilongwe
Tanzania - Dar es Salaam

Global warming?

Global warming... it is us pumping gas into the atmosphere, or is it nature just getting on with things? Try this interview.

This post is the short version of a post which I accidentally deleted... Please let me know if you have any thoughts on the interview!

Peas and Sweet Corn

I was making cottage pie for supper tonight (it was yummy) and I made some veg to go with it. I was boiling the frozen pea-and-sweet corn mix, when I noticed that the peas and corn seemed to separate into pea regions and corn regions. So I thought maybe they just came out of the packet in frozen pea clumps and frozen corn clumps... So I swished the peas and corn around a few times in the pot and true's bob, every time they soon separated into pea regions and corn regions again. Bizarre. My theory version 1.0 is that the corn is lighter than the peas, so it gets caught in the currents in the boiling water and ends up together.