Spring! Such excitement! Now please warm up a bit.

1 September 2010

You don't need lead in this!

Just what every child needs, a lead pencil, coated in 24 carat gold with a matching pencil case which could be taken for a gold bar.

Grave matters

If I hadn't donated my body I would have liked a grave just like the one above.

29 August to 31 August 2010

If I lived in Johannesburg, South Africa I would only ever fly by Kulula Air. How could I possibly bypass an airline with a sense of humour? The plane, above, is not the only aircraft on their fleet which is very different to the usual passenger plane. And the frontpage of their website even has a section called fun stuff. I enjoyed the two videos where a hostess, clearly a transexual, gives a very interesting twist to the usual talk on safety features. Above is their newest plane, a Boeing 737-800 which represents the sticker which is placed on boxes which have fragile contents, the inference being that their passengers are fragile and need to be protected.

The Flying 101, above, was designed by the Kulula graphic design team as part of the strategy to demystify airtravel. Below is the Camo plane, so beautifully camouflaged that 'no one saw us coming'. Kulula has been operating for nine years.

The airline doesn't only paint its planes green, it espouses greening in all forms and to this end is has supported Food and Trees for Africa to help reduce the atmospheric carbon loads and greenhouse gases released by their aircraft and has planted indigenous trees and grass at schools in rural communities throughout South Africa.

One Central

More than a dozen vertical gardens, sheathing the towers above, will be a feature of One Central Park being built in the heart of Sydney. The $600 million project, designed by Jean Nouvel, has two towers, six retail levels and will retain and reuse 32 heritage items which exist on the site. The architect collaborated with French artist and botanist, Patrick Blanc, to provide a green facade including garden boxes and vertical wires which will hold more greenery.

The cantilevered heliostat has a system of mirrored panels which capture sunlight and direct it into the retail atrium and onto the landscaped terraces. Lighting artist, Yann Kersale, is responsible for the integrated lighting on the heliostat which will illuminate the towers at night. Construction of the park and roads began in March this year. Construction of the One Central building is planned to begin in December.

24 August to 28 August 2010

New page

I have begun a new page on this website called Diana's Health Matters which will echo health related stories from this blog and which will include further information. Many thanks to Ben for stimulating me to provide this page which I had been thinking about for some time.

Warning to Pregnant Women

The US site, DrugWatch, has warned that pregnant women should never take Accutane, a medication that is prescribed to treat severe acne when other treatments have proved to be ineffective.

American statistics show approximately one in every 33 babies is born with a birth defect and a large number of these are caused by the use of dangerous medications during pregnancy. DrugWatch says it is very important for pregnant women to understand which medications should not be taken during pregnancy in order to avoid harm to themselves or the baby.

Accutane is linked to the onset of severe adverse reactions, including ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease, prompting many patients to file Accutane lawsuits against the manufacturer of the medication.

22 August to 23 August 2010

Don't Hurt Me!

There needs to be an equivalent of the RSPA for vegetables. Now potatoes are the next in line for brutal treatment. I would assume they were prepared to be viciously uprooted (please note emotional language) however they are now to be shocked, either with ultrasound or with electricity, in order to boost their antioxidant content.

Dr Kazunori Hironaka of Japan's Obihiro University,found that shocking the innocent vegetables for between five and 30 minutes boosted the amount of antioxidants by as much as 50 percent. He presented these research findings to the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Almost 8000 reports are to be presented at this meeting. One hopes there will not be any more papers which involve torture of vegetables.

Past research has shown that when potatoes are under stress from drought, physical trauma, or other climate changes, they produce more antioxidant phenols and chlorogenic acid to ward off the damage these natural assaults cause to the tissues.

Bone art

I am in a quandary, as a pacifist I am opposed to guns, however as someone who is fascinated by the human body and enjoys many forms of art, I am attracted to the above reproduction of a gun made from human bones. I shall have to bone up on the subject.

Love and Peace

To balance up the gun above is a photo which is doing the rounds on e-mail. It is heartwarming, I hope Photoshop was not involved to produce it.

19 August to 21 August 2010

What do I dream about? Jewellery, clothes, restaurant meals, expensive wines, holidays? No. I dream about the book sales held by the CQU.Each time one is held I become very excited, my heart rate increases, my breathing speeds up.

This year the sale was held for the first time in the marvellous new library and it was also held on a Saturday which coincided with the CQU Open Day, not to mention a tiny election or two. Weird new electoral boundaries meant I put in an absentee vote although the polling booth was only a few kilometres from my home. Below,left, Pam mans a stand for CQU and below, right, Ros helps with the MDGP display.

14 August to 18 August 2010

Dear Miss Joy Sly
She never ever does cry
She's my very best friend
And I'll be sure to send
Her a piece of my first apple pie.

Many decades ago, when I was about eight, I wrote the ditty (above) for one of my best friends at the time, Joy Sly, who lived over the back fence in South Caulfield, together with her parents and siblings, Rodney, Louise, Helen and Norma. We lost touch in our late teens and I never sent her any apple pie mainly because I have never made one. I am clearly not a true Australian because I have never made lamingtons either. My mother, however, made the most marvellous range of apple pies, eclairs and sponges. Clearly not a genetic trait.

Shoe of the Week

I need a pair of these shoes, I might be able to reach stuff on the high shelves in the supermarket if I owned them. It wasn't until I was playing with the photograph in Photoshop that I realised not only was there a frog in the background, but it is an exact match for the one I have in my garden which was bought for me by my daughter Amanda who lugged it up the back stairs. The frog is large, and it is solid concrete. Needless to say it has its home in the garden and I don't move it very often.

Elderly photograph of Kayaker Jonathan

I took the photograph (above) of English friend, Jonathan Tolhurst, at an event on titration which we jointly ran in Mackay for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists some years ago. Jonathan has now completed his amazing six week marathon of kayaking from Land's End to just 150 km short of John O'Groats. Foul weather prevented Jonathan from reaching his goal however he still managed to kayak for 1200 kilometres and reached Inverness. When he lived in Mackay Jonathan undertook a kayak trip from Mackay to Townsville.

9 August to 13 August 2010

A French visitor to our area, when asked about his favourite tourist location, named the Blue River Lagoon. It is a very well thought out area however I think the man may have been a tiny bit off his trolley as he said the reason he liked it was because it kept him cool. In Mackay those of us who are not mad, consider the weather to be freezing. There is absolutely no way we need to be kept cool.

Family Photograph

Pictured above is my son-in-law, Michael, with his children, Tahlia and Isabella, during a recent visit to Townsville. I felt so sorry for them as, together with my daughter, Suzanne, they went all the way to Townsville but instead of going to the chamber concerts they were forced to go to a footballing thing.

I enjoyed finding the above diagram which was a general cartoon on universities. Whomever designs university websites has absolutely no idea about what students want. I know I ground my teeth countless times while a recent student of Central Queensland University when I tried to find a variety of things. None of them were on the front page of the site and the search engine laboured and had great difficulty finding any answers for me.

As a Bachelor of Multimedia Studies student, I was taught, during web design subjects, to find out the identity of my target audience before I designed any sites. Clearly the designer/s of the CQU site did not speak to any students.

Let's hear it for commas

What a difference a day makes. Sorry, I have that song stuck in my head. I meant what a difference a comma makes.

5 August to 8 August 2010

Five architects have come up with six very different rooms for a new tree hotel in Harads, Sweden, which is 60 kilometres south of the Artic Circle. Four rooms are open which include a mirrorcube, nest, blue cone and a cabin. The mirrorcube (below) is a box four metres by four metres which is clad entirely in mirrored glass. The idea is that it should be nearly invisible as it will reflect everything around it. An initial problem, that birds would crash into the walls has been solved with the addition of a lamination of a transparent ultraviolet colour which is only visible to birds.

The intention is that the area, which is untouched forest, should retain its virginity. The rooms include an evironment friendly incineration toilet and a water efficient handbasin. All the rooms are made from wood and glass and include an electric floor heating system which would be vital due to the area being so close to the Arctic.

The plan is that within five years the tree hotel will have 24 rooms, each one designed by a different architect.

Below

John Morgan's energy efficient house at Lexton

My father was born at Lexton, which is near Ballarat in Victoria, so I am always interested in happenings in that township. A house has been built there which is considered, by the Alternative Technology Association, to be the most energy efficient home in Australia. It has a nine star rating, is 80 square metres in size, and was built for less than $150,000. New houses in Victoria have six stars as the benchmark.

Owner John Morgan has been interested in renewable energy since reading about solar hot water half a century ago. His new home has 12 solar panels and the inner walls are made from 90 mm concrete blocks to aid with thermal efficiency. Obviously the house works as when the temperature outside was 45.4 degrees celsius, Mr Morgan's house was 33.9 degrees celsius. During the past two years the internal daily temperature has averaged about 16 degrees in winter and 25 degrees in summer.

The building has a northeast orientation to capture maximum winter sun and to avoid summer rays, with extensive glazing along the face to heat the living area.

A new 359 bed children's hospital, which is due to open at parklands at Southbank in Melbourne in 2014, has been designed with trees in mind.

The project is designed around the idea of a 'living tree' - a network of 'trunks and branches' which punctuate the building and connect inside and outside.

Above is the architect's view of the new $1.28 billion hospital which includes specialist acute and sub acute services as well as facilities for research and teaching. It has been designed by Lyons and Conrad Gargett Architecture.