Queensland wins something!

If you are a Queenslander you probably know that the Queensland Reds and the Brisbane Lions have had a rough few seasons. Today the Queensland Bulls put a smile on this Queenslander's face by absolutely crushing the Victorians in the domestic cricket final in Oz (that is the *shudder* Pura Cup final).

In the first innings the Queenslanders scored 6 for 900, breaking a bunch of records in the process.

Nice work guys!

Very funny

Quite seriously, do not follow this link if you are planning on working in the next half-hour or so.

Cyclone Lazza

For anyone who is hiding under a rock - a bloody big cyclone hit my home state of Queensland yesterday. Apparently this was one of the biggest cyclones to hit Australia in 20, 30, 50, or 100 years, depending on your source.

Strangely I got the news on the morning radio here in Austria. I heard it first in German, and I understood enough to know that it was big and that it hit in Queensland. Not surprisingly, I panicked for about half an hour imagining all sorts of nightmare scenarios with cyclones hitting Brisbane or Cairns or wherever. After my half-hour freakout I listened to the English language bulletin which said that it hit in Innisfail - a town I never really imagined I would ever hear about on the radio in Austria (It was rare enough to hear it mentioned in Brisbane let alone in Europe) - and there was no mention of my hyper-actively imagined massive casualty list which fortunately turned out to be because very few people were injured and so far there has been no reported deaths. Sadly though, it seems there has been a huge amount of property and crop damage in the area which will have a massive economic impact on the region.

Oh and it took less than a day for people to start making the funnies comparing this to the tragedy in New Orleans. I guess that is actually a good thing.

Lame photo meta-posting

I haven't been posting much lately. Life has been interfering with blogging quite a bit.

I guess the best gossip that I can mention is that my girlfriend has moved here from Duesseldorf. Not surprisingly this has taken up a lot of my spare time. Not only have I been spending time actually having a real life (which has been great), but the move has involved a huge amount of furniture shuffling and general decorative mucking around (geez I'm bad with a screwdriver, who would have guessed it?).

Anyway, to satisfy those of you who still bother to check whether I still post at all, here is a photo of the view from my bed when woke up yesterday morning:

A must read for all aspiring theorists

Today Dave has posted a very honest account of one of the pitfalls of being a theoretical physicist, the research blues.

I strongly recommend that anyone thinking of becoming a theorist read the original post and the commments thread.