That’s Melbourne – 10 Degrees!

I can’t believe it was only a week when the temperature gauge was crossing 40 degrees mark regularly and now I wake up in the morning because of cold weather! It was only 10 degrees this morning. Just like in the winter!

Betting

With my last day at Sportsbet, I feel like I finally sorted out my relation to betting. Now I quite enjoy watching sports on TVs that hang around the office and I think I’m going to miss that from now on. I also don’t mind betting and see it as a fun activity. Nothing productive and/or special but at least it does not have negative connotations anymore.

Farewell, this is the end of an era. Also a beginning of a new and interesting one!

20 Degrees – What a contrast

After the 43 degrees the other day, there’s been a cool change and the temperature is pretty low and it feel a bit cold. It is such a contrast to Monday. The house still feels hot but outside is very nice and cool. It felt even cold this morning when I was off to work, with temperature even below 20 degrees Celsius.

82kg

Today, at the pool, I had an opportunity to weight myself, which I haven’t done in a while. So I used the opportunity to find out what my current weight is. And it is 82kg. I think it is well within some standard boundaries for the height of 185cm. Anyway, this is just a historical record so I can show to my parents that I *do* eat normally although I’m far away from home. :)

Another hot day

Today is forecasted to be quite a hot day with 43 degrees Celsius. Well, currently it is almost 40 and I feel like going out to see how it feels. :)

 

It has just hit 43 degrees and is quite hot in the room. The air is not that humid so the heat is bearable and quite pleasant. My washing will dry in a few minutes, I think. :)

 

Clairvision

For years I’ve been using the free Canopus Astrology Software to analyze the people I know. I found it to be pretty accurate in interpretations of the positions of the planets. Sometimes too accurate, for it’s own good.

Well, the software is retired for a long time now. But there is some good news. Clairvision has a new, online, version of the software available at http://astro.clairvision.org/

It is so much easier to use and can produce all the charts and interpretations as images and PDFs. The Clairvision Virtual Astrologer is located at http://astrology.clairvision.org/astro/switchboard. From this link you can load and save your chart files with individual’s details and go from there. All the options are easily available from the menu.

Avatar

The experience of watching a 3D movie in Imax theater was simply amazing! The Imax screen is 7 stories high and the seats are positioned so that the screen covers your whole viewing area. All you see is just the screen in front of you. It covers your peripheral vision so the viewing experience is complete.

This was my first 3D movie and the initial effect was stunning. I felt as if I could touch the actors in the first few scenes. Everything seemed so real.

I won’t go into details about the story but computer “effects” (if we can still call them that) are getting so realistic it is hard to distinguish what was animated and what was real. The nature, live beings and their movement, look so real. The colors in the imaginary world where Avatars live are so beautiful and so well animated that it gets very easy to imagine something like that is possible. Some parts of the movie felt like a dream, in fact.

The whole watching experience was so good that I noticed only in the end that the movie went on for more than two and a half hours. It ended past midnight and now it’s time to catch some sleep as I have to work Saturday. Fortunately, for the last time at my current job.

39 Again

The temperature hit 39 degrees Celsius again today. I noticed I’m quite attracted to go jogging at those high temperature days. Simply want to see how the body acts when exposed to physical activities in such circumstances. Well, I had a bit of a headache and using the oxygen was a bit more difficult than usual. Breathing could probably simply be caused by metabolism as opposed to heat but I’m sure the headache wasn’t. It wasn’t so much physically hard to run as much it was psychologically. I just had no motivation to run and I simply walked part of the way. Also felt a bit sleepy. However, I enjoyed the run. And, once again, noticed that 39 in Melbourne is not as bad as it sounds. When there’s some breeze or shade, it feels quite nice. I even like the waves of hot air at times. Body does not sweat as much as there’s almost no humidity. When I think of Indonesia, it is a very significant contrast. There, even at 25 degrees, the body sweats almost immediately as soon as you leave air-conditioned space. Humidity is mostly above 70%, sometimes close to 100%, and you can really feel it. The air, actually moisture particles in the air, are burningly hot. Whereas here, any air flow will cool you down, even if you jog or walk.

Solutions Architect

On Monday I accepted a position of Solutions Architect. Now I’m getting into a position whose description ideally describes the items I always wanted to do. Most of those things I actually did ever since I started to write programs. It’s just somehow that the architecture part, organization, project management, analysis and design, and similar things were always pushed aside when working in real-life projects. Most people I know did not pay too much attention to these things. So I’m glad that, at this age, software architecture is getting more and more popular and accepted as a discipline.

This is still a relatively new role, with yet not-fully-defined scope and tasks. In that regard, there is an open, unexplored, space in front of me and I feel excited. This is probably where I always wanted to be – no direct management of many people, yet close coordination with lots of parties at different levels (from managerial to very technical); no specific technology limitations, everything is open for consideration and I’m actually encouraged to do research and development with any possible technology out there, keep pace with the technology developments, research and adopt best industry practices, and so on. I could go on and on. But, enough said. Let’s see how it actually goes in practice, starting mid-January.

39 Degrees Today

Well, after a morning in which I had to take my warm cover at 5 o’clock because it was getting too cold in bed, the temperature jumped 20 degrees higher during the day. It hit the forecast 39 degrees at 4PM and is slowly going down. Now is time to go out from work and see how it feels at 37 or so. Today, during the lunch break it was not that bad as the air was quite dry so it was pleasant to find some shade or when there was some breeze it was actually cool (a subjective feeling).
Cool change is expected during the night.