Miscellaneous Updates

Life has been quite busy since we've arrived back in Australia. We finally dropped our old ISP due to poor reliability and tech support only being available during weekdays. However, because this is Australia we are talking about, it's taking nearly two weeks to activate our connection with our new ISP. Fortunately, our neighbors have broadband, and we are borrowing some of their bandwidth (I just plugged our wireless router into their modem).

I've done some cleaning up of our tiny backyard, and started a garden. While we were away, we got a clover infestation in the yard, so I had to pull all that. Then I laid down eucalyptus mulch. The seedlings I planted a couple of weeks ago are ready to transplant. The garden this year will consist of tomatoes (traditional, black, roma, and cherry), bell peppers (called capsicum here), jalapeno peppers, Thai peppers, basil (Thai, Genovese, and purple), rosemary, oregano, cilantro (called coriander here), and yellow beets. That selection may very well grow (*groan*) if we have room for more, since the warm season here is 6-7 months.



We've got beneficial creatures in our yard to help manage the pests, too. Our resident blue tongue lizard was on patrol for awhile recently. In addition, there are also a few skinks about.

At campus, my project this year has finally come to enough of a conclusion that results can be written up, so I've been busy writing my next paper. These results are good enough that we are hoping the paper gets published in a fairly decent journal. On top of that, the director of our group is excited enough about what I was able to accomplish in Massachusetts that he wants me to build a similar printer robot system here. In fact, I've been able to source two distinct systems for a reasonable cost and will be ordering both. Putting these machines together and getting them working will be my first project after the holidays.

And getting to the holidays... We will be driving to Brisbane to visit Michelle's cousin, Jenny, and her husband. It will be nice to spend more time with them, as they were obviously quite busy last year for their wedding. I got us a decent (but cheap) stereo for the car that has an auxiliary port for an mp3 player or iPod. That way we have an abundant source of music for the duration of the drive.