krazy kat's korner

The tv out here kinda exploded this afternoon. Well, a little explosion/pop, the screen and the little green power light disappeared, and there was a smell.

Called dad to find out where the spare little tv was (he's up Coonabarabran with my sister for 5 days). Much better little tv except for the fact the speakers are on the side.

The other tv served us well. Walls have been bending on it for a while and the remote was a pain in the arse (try to turn up the volume and it would often go to the sleep timer instead). I think the munchkin coroner needs to pronounce.

***

Marked 15 essays today, though most of them tonight. Need to get over the daytime laziness. 46 to go.

Am amused that a student who's struggling with English as a second language knows how to use possessives while so many native speakers can't.

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Have been naughty on ebay lately. A scrapbook of Margaret O'Brien clippings (many dating back to the 1940s) arrived today. Spent too much, but I so love her.

Getting together a list of addresses for reprints of my first paper...it's a little difficult to track down some people. Mostly scientists whose papers I've referenced, or who are in the research area. I can't find recent information (last 5 years or so) on four people...and I don't think I should be sending one to the UN Secretariat of the ISDR (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction).

Wild and wooly morning.
Woken around 5am by heavy rain, then just after 8am by a gigantic thunder clap. For the next 40 minutes or so there was continuous rolling thunder, with one clap barely ending (or in some cases not ending) before the next one started. The house shook, about half a dozen very close cracks (it's bad when you can see the lightening with your eyes closed) and more heavy rain.
Cousin at the front door at 9.30am. Then more thunder just before 11am.
So wasn't a good morning for sleeping. And my body is complaining.
A bit of damage across Sydney, some buildings hit, fires started, and powerlines down.

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Phoned about a casual secretary job on Friday but I'll be shocked if I get called back. The voice mail/answering machine answered after one ring and said leave name, number and quick summary of experience and then there was the beep, and I just didn't have enough time to form coherent thoughts. Totally flummoxed. Would've been easier if I'd been talking to a human.

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I wasn't sure if our tropical cyclone forecast was going to be accepted into the US-based publication (will be in an Oz one), they're hopeless with communication. But it was.
If anyone's interested, Experimental Long-Lead Forecast Bulletin, December edition. Click on the Table of Contents link, and it's the second last article.

BAMOS will be publishing our tropical cyclone forecast. It's nothing major, it's a small magazine and isn't sent out to reviewers (the editor read over it and got two others to informally review it, but since it's presenting already published work, they decided it was okay for publication as is).
But it's a little scary...we have an actual forecast that will be out there.

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The way to spend a couple of hundred dollars in an afternoon. But now organised for Chrissie, except for the local cards. And I treated myself to the Emma Peel Avengers dvds :drool:

And I have my Christmas present. Actually we got it Tuesday and only about half is my present, the rest I pay off. A wooden cabinet for my dvds. And I organised them tonight. I have alphabetical order and categories. Allison and Tim get their own :)

And I bought West Wing stamps off ebay...

Tropical Cyclone Seasonal Forecasts for the Australian-Southwest Pacific Ocean Region Using a New Poisson Regression Model has been emailed to the editor in Melbourne.

We were originally writing it for the Experimental Long Lead Forecast Bulletin in the US. Then on Tuesday Neil said he wanted it to go into the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society as well.

Ran into problems with the spatial prediction, abandoned that this morning after my meltdown last night (if anyone's crazy and interested in the spatial prediction map: http://atmos.es.mq.edu.au/~katrina/clim04.jpg - there's a bias towards the SW evident in (c)). And we decided to just target BAMOS at this stage (hadn't heard back from ELLFB after I emailed several days ago).

Hopefully it will be okay to go into BAMOS (they're right on deadline). And depending what happens and if the model develops further, we'll target ELLFB next December.

I'm tired and emotionally off.

Need to get some Chrissie cards posted tomorrow.

Note to self:
When wgrib doesn't work, check whether the name of the file you're trying to wgrib is too long.
Only after you've shortened the filename and it still doesn't work should you panic and consider leaving the country or possibly reading the instruction manual...

Thank goodness shortening the filename worked, though there was some panic when it was telling me the data was 6 hour averaged when I wanted the monthly mean, but re-wgribbed a past file and that's what the code is supposed to say :wipes brow:
And for the first time just read what the fields in the inventory mean (I could work out most of them) and the mean (the average type) is now clear in my head (it's just telling you that it's a monthly mean of the 6 hour averaged data).

And possibly even the computer people are scratching their heads now.
wgrib is a program to read grib (format used to store binary data) files that were created by the NMC/NCAR Reanalysis Project (the atmospheric data I used for my thesis and papers).

And I'm just having a giggle at this:

usage: wgrib [grib file] [options]

options:
-v verbose
-V even more verbose

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And I have Mulan on dvd!!! I so love that movie.
Need to track down the Gone with the Wind special edition.

And mum went to the Met Bureau in Sydney yesterday and bought me the book Drought, Dust and Deluge: A Century of Climate Extremes in Australia. I sent down to Melbourne for it a couple of months ago, but the envelope and cheque got damaged in the mail so they had to send it back.
Some great photos and history.
Early 25 July 1986 there was snow in much of Tasmania (some of the heaviest falls on record), Hobart was isolated due to road closures until noon, snow fell in Melbourne and many suburbs, and melting snow (melted on contact with the ground) occurred in metropolitan Sydney. I remember that, was in high school and there was snow falling as dad drove me to school. Quite an event.

The government has control of the Senate...not happy, Jan.

And before anyone says that I wouldn't be complaining if Labor had control, I would. I don't believe either major party should have control, because then it becomes a rubber stamp rather than the house of review.
Though there's some little part of me that rathers that instead of Family First having control...I shudder to think what deals may have been made.
If only the government were more like Fraser's mob...his government senators would cross the floor to vote against various bills, so control of the senate didn't mean everything would get through unaltered.
But Howard has drummed any resistance out of his.
Though maybe with the Nationals essentially having the balance of power...

It worries me...the committee review system did allow the government senators to speak out on some issues (eg. the anti-terrorism laws) and together with Labor and the minors change things. But with government control of the senate, would those government senators still speak out and demand changes if they didn't agree with something?

Actually it's a problem I have with both major parties. I'd like some more independent thought on behalf of MPs. I give kudos to the NSW Liberals. They, including the opposition leader, have crossed the floor to vote with the government on some issues.

Disunity is not death, it's democracy in action.

***

If anyone is interested in looking at my paper, my co-author has put it up:
http://penman.es.mq.edu.au/~holbrook/pubs/mcdo_holb_2004b.pdf

The first article is at:
http://penman.es.mq.edu.au/~holbrook/pubs/mcdo_holb_2004a.pdf

And we have a 2004a and a 2004b article!
:geeky moment:

My article has been published online...not sure when it will be in the paper edition, and with Geophysical Research Letters citation style, I'm not even sure what month or page numbers etc it will be in hard copy...except it will be issue 20...

Only the abstract is generally available (and there's a coding error near the end, should be '~99% level'):
A Poisson regression model approach to predicting tropical cyclogenesis in the Australian/southwest Pacific Ocean region using the SOI and saturated equivalent potential temperature gradient as predictors

Anyone with access to uni libraries and their electronic journals would probably be able to look at the article if you were feeling particularly masochistic.

Trying to finish the assignment marking and the damn uni website which has the figures I need to do the marking is down.

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I'm resigned to another term of Howard. Really wondering what the hell the point is anymore. The Australia I believe in is dead and buried.

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I've actually written something...well only a dozen lines or so on a fic that's been sitting here for months. But it's something I guess.
But I don't think I'll be posting it or anything else I may write. I can't deal with the disappointment anymore and I need to stop being so masochistic. And hence the reason I'll never be a writer.

Revision has been done satisfactorily in accordance with reviewers' comments and it is acceptable as is.

Such a pretty sentence :pets it:

Now have to submit final files, transfer of copyright form, work out what's being done with the financial form (Australian universities do not provide money for publication charges, so I think Neil has to write his "We're destitute" note).
Don't know how long before it's published, I'm guessing two-three months.