I started off looking for a template/net for this sphere - 

I made that sphere in second year uni (1993) when I was off sick for two weeks with pneumonia.  I was too tired to concentrate on uni work, and this was technical but mindless, so provided a nice distraction from feeling pretty blah.  It's made from curved strips of paper folded into little triangles (5x12 for the pentagons and 6x12 for the hexagons).  The little triangles are all stuck together into the pentagons and hexagons, and then those building blocks are stuck together to make a nifty little geodesic sphere.  Quite simple really.  But of course I can't find the templates to make the strips of paper anywhere on the internet.  I could always create my own, but it's so much easier if someone's already created templates!  The closest I came to even finding anything like this on the web was this site but no templates there.

So meandered on from there and went looking for instructions for Jack Skillman's Jackstone.  This has been discussed previously on this blog here, here and here.  Still no closer to finding any decent instructions on the net though :(

So a pretty unsuccessful night all up.  But did look at *lots* of geometric origami pages so will probably do something from one of them soon.

Here's what I have decorating my desk at work now..

And now for something completely different..

Former Tropical Cyclone Yasi is still going.  It's made its way all the way across Queensland and is now raining all over the Northern Territory.

This picture, taken from Channel 9, stood out for me.  Even though the roof has been blown off this house in Tully, everything in the kitchen, from water bottles to eggs, is all just sitting there as if nothing had happened!  Freaky!!

Today I just felt blah though.  Dunno why.  

Didn't get much done.  Did play with my bucky magnets for a bit.

I was going to work some more on the wedding photo book but it was being a bumhead so gave up on that.

Went out in the arvo to drop off some old fluoro lights and a battery at the recycling place, then dropped in on Scott and Kerry before doing our food shopping.

Was still feeling blah when we got home.  I didn't feel like cooking and neither did the sweetie. 

So I had a TV dinner.

So not a bad year all up :)

Let's see.  Where to begin.

The year started with me away from the sweetie - I was visiting old Sydney friends.  First year since we met that we weren't together on New Years, which was a bit sad.

Did a fair bit of other travelling during the year.  

The big trip of course was to Japan and the UK in September.  It wasn't the best holiday I've ever been on.  Japan was 34C for five days in a row, and I didn't have shorts.  And the UK was grey and/or raining for a good chunk of the time we were there, plus we missed out on going to Legoland which was pretty devastating for me.  But on the plus side, everything "worked" in terms of bookings.  We didn't get robbed.  We didn't crash the car.  We didn't miss any planes or trains.  We did see heaps of cool stuff.  So really I can't complain too much heh.

Had quite a few smaller trips as well.  Spent a couple of days in January at the coast with all of Stu's family.  Would have been better if I'd brought stuff to entertain myself with heh.  Went to Mogo Zoo then.  There was a quick trip to Sydney for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary.  Went down the coast to DaveC's house three times in March, August over my birthday and October where we had a great whale sighting.  Went to Melbourne over the Easter weekend to see Cats with Nat&Andrew.  That was a cool weekend, we'd love to go back and do more Melbourney things.  In July we went to Queensland for a long weekend to visit Chay and David.  Decided that July/August is definitely the time to go to Brisbane, so will probably do that again this year.  And another quick visit to Sydney on Boxing Day. 

Had a very busy year at work.  Rolled out new proxies at the beginning of the year, but they were fraught with problems from the start and it was very stressful.  After several patches during the year, they finally settled down, only to have the upstream proxies start playing up.  Blah!   

Semi work-related were a ball in March where I managed to squeeze into a ten year old dress, but only just barely!   I also made a slightly drunken bet that I'd wear a dress to a Melbourne Cup lunch if all the boys wore suits.  Our director unfortunately decided to take it seriously and made all the boys wear suits.  Reluctantly I had to go buy a dress and wear it.  We also ran a trivia night that I think went really well.  And attended work drinks pretty much every week I was in the country ;)

One of the big projects at work took several months and was so stressful I'm sure it led to a high blood pressure reading in July.  I've been working on relaxing at work (and at home) and subsequent readings have been a lot more normal.

Otherwise healthwise I had a great year - just a cold early in the year but nothing else.

Spent a lot of time with Nat and Andrew during the year.  Those guys are always so much fun to be around, we really enjoy their company.  Also did a few Singstar nights with Windy and DaveO and saw Damien and Amanda a few times as well.  JamesC came to visit a few times, and the whole family stayed with us a couple of weeks ago.  The Hokins clan came to visit, as did the parents a couple of times and the little brother a few times.  We've spent a lot more time with DaveC in the second half of this year.  Seems I get on with him a whole lot better now that we're not working together heh.  

Had another heat wave early in the year which meant us putting quite a bit of ice into the four foot tank to try and keep the temperature down.  Seemed to work and we didn't lose any fish from it.  I'd moved the danios downstairs so they wouldn't overheat, and found a couple of months later some baby danios that had been surviving quite happily unattented.  When I later moved the danios back upstairs, there were more babies in the downstairs tank.  Win!  Stu got a colony of duboisis for the four foot, which are great fun, and will follow you around when you go to look at them in hopes that you'll feed them!  Stu's also gotten back into killifish and has been diligent at looking after his fish again.  We're back up to fourteen habitated fish tanks now!

On the opposite end of the weather spectrum, we had a very cold winter.  This year the pool froze over probably a dozen times (it only froze over twice last year).  One of the days the ice was a full 3mm thick in places!  We even had snow in October.  Go figure!

On the Lego front, a whole stack of Toy Story Lego was released so had to get all of that.  And six new Harry Potter sets as well, although really only one of those is "new".  There's a few other cool sets I want to get too.  Went to BrickExpo in August which was very cool, and made me wonder if I should put anything in one of these years.

Other toys included an iPhone for me, a Blackberry for Stu, a video camera for Stu, a Canon 500D for me and a PS3.  

So I've had the 500D for four and a bit months and have already taken 15000 photos on it!  The majority of those in the UK of course ;)  I still haven't sorted my UK photos *at all*.  I did however manage to sort enough of our Japan 2009 and Europe 2008 photos to get the highlights into the blog entries.  One of my next projects will be making photo books of those trips.  I did make a photo book of our wedding as a Christmas present for parents.  Having seen the finished result (which I was stoked with) there's a few little changes I want to make and need to fix up some of the images before we get our copy printed.

Around the house, we bought a whole stack of bookshelves for the downstairs room and set those up.  So that room is quite well setup now.  The garden has gone slightly feral though, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

Shows seen this year:

Movies seen this year:

Books read this year:

And a few other bits and pieces:

Phewf.  Yup, busy year :)  I'm actually amazed I got this thing written *before* the end of the year - that never happens!! :)

Six hours to go.  Have a great 2011 peoples!  Happy New Year!!

Friday night built Lego

I loved the mist coming off the pool edge and damp towel

I must have looked at them funny..


We have these gorgeous bean plants growing.  Unfortunately they're completely sterile (grown from leftovers of the original crop) and not a single bean on the plants :(  So not taking any care of them, but they're still growing like crazy..




Even had some eastern rosellas down

Nat and Andrew came over after dinner for some wiiing. That was a bit of fun.  Tried to get the sweetie to play Billionaire with us but he wouldn't so we didn't play (cause you really need at least four to play) :(  Had a repeat of the Robert Pattinson conversation that we had at Shogun, which was pretty darned funny ;)  Edward from Twilight is Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter people! :)  Baked a coconut cake, but had the oven up too high, so it was sufficiently burnt around the edges that we had to cut them off - doh!  And I also attempted to make icing, which I probably haven't done since I moved out of home ten years ago :)  First batch was a bit of a fail cause I put wayyy too much water in it (it's not like making gravy! heh).  And then just before midnight (oops, we didn't realise the time) we put on Toy Story.  Nat & Andrew fell asleep by the end (and I have photographic evidence mwoooahahah)

Got to bed very late (after 1:30), then woken up by stoopid alerts at 3:20 and 8:20, so no sleep in for me.  Got up to feed the birdies and found the beans somewhat destroyed by frost and the pool frozen over (it'd been below zero since 9:30pm last night).  Super awesome day just being at home.  Emptied, organised, rehomed and repacked ten storage boxes I'd had in the dungeon so that it would be clearer for the sweetie to have as a retreat.  The sweetie made a nice (but a bit too spicy for me) lentil dish for dinner.  Made more Lego.  Watched a very stoopid movie (cause Kristen Bell was in it and the sweetie wanted to watch it). 

At this point I'd be feeling a bit blah cause it'd be the end of the weekend.  But oh the bliss of a long weekend!! :)

The first half of the long weekend was great.

Friday night we went over to Nat and Andrew's and met Suki.  Soooo cute!  Had pizza for dinner, then played some Wii music (some bits of it were fun, others were tedious), Singstar, Wiiracas and Mario Kart.

Saturday we went to Belco markets for breakfast and to look at fish shops.  Got back and got some housework done then spent a good chunk of the afternoon doing fish stuff.  Stu did a big tidy of the fish stuff in the garage and I cleaned out the danio tank and took the five danios back upstairs.

Sunday was doing more housey stuff when I started having an immune reaction.  So went and lay down around lunch time for a couple of hours.  The rest of the afternoon went in slow motion.  Did do a little tidying of my hobby room, so at least the day wasn't a complete waste :/

Today was just a mopey blah sort of day.  Did a jigsaw.  Ripped some of my cds.  Did the food shopping cause we had to.  That was about it really.

I did freecycle a couple of inkjet printers which was good.  Although a bit sad giving away a printer I spent $300 on back in the day.  Nowadays it's practically cheaper to buy a new printer than it is to buy new ink.  So stoopid.

Can I go home now?

Much more relaxing day today, although I still don't have anyone (except me) using my proxies.  

And not even getting a full weekend.. *sigh*

After ten years e-tax is *finally* resizable!!  Sheesh, how hard could it have been?  But as per usual, every year I get something that makes my tax complicated.  Like this year, the very trivial closing off an old mortgage and starting it up with another lender.  Blah.