Spot the odd one out

One of these things is not like the others...

Lapses of time

Time has been passing quick. I'm already in week 6 of my 8 week prac block at State High, and every week seems to be shorter than the one before. I'm really enjoying teaching science, and am impressed with the school - the kids are really quite good, behaviour-wise, and I feel like most of them respect the teachers and are actually interested to learn. I'm not sure how I'd fare in a school with tons of behaviour problems, but we'll see what happens. It's all in God's good hands.

I'll miss the school though, that I know.

Another thing I'm currently missing is my phone :( Not because I lost it, but because it's currently being tied up in video making!


See my phone? It's on the left, sticky taped firmly to a box.

I should explain. If you've seen any of my recent videos, you'd know that my latest interest is in time lapse videography. That is, taking really long videos and speeding them up a million times :p On one hand, its appeal reflects our arguably shallow instant results culture that hasn't the patience for enjoying the beautiful though 'slower' things in life. But there is something really special and magical about seeing things sped up...like flowers blossoming, or the sun taking its quick course through the sky. And, as I am finding out, producing these time lapse videos takes so much patience too!

Anyhow, what I decided to do was to create a time lapse video of a seed germinating. Courtesy of Australia Geographic, I got myself a completely prepared seed, all set to grow; just add water! (and sunlight, and oxygen etc.) The beautiful set-up (as pictured above) is currently located in the cupboard under my staircase, closed off from the cruel world. Everything has been firmly stuck in place. I have positioned a bright desk light above the planted seed to provide warmth and light, and my phone has been programmed to take one photo every 10 mins until the memory runs out (it'll last 2 weeks, I calculated). Later, I can put all the photos in sequence and play it as a video. Oh, and the phone is also being charged, so it won't run out of battery or anything.

The reason why I'm using my phone is that most normal digital cameras (would you believe it) aren't clever enough to provide the option of taking continuous shots at certain time intervals indefinitely. The Canon Ixus 70 (Claire's) allows me, at most, to take 10 shots at 30sec intervals. Useless! The Nokia N82, on the other hand, brilliant thing that it is, is perfect for time lapse videography, allowing me to take photos at 10 sec, 30 sec, 1 min, 5 min, 10 min & 30 min intervals indefinitely. What a beauty.

The only down side is that my phone is now unavailable to me until this project ends, which I imagine will be in a week. I have reverted back to my Nokia 6230i, but I sure miss the N82 :( I can make a very strong case for it being by far the most superior mobile phone in the world!! :p

Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I'm actually rather worried because I just have this bad feeling like it's not going to work (seed won't grow, phone not positioned accurately/steadily etc.). And it'll be a whole week (or more) wasted if it doesn't work! But it'll be a learning experience, I guess. I'm just going to have to wait and see.

I can't wait till someone finds a quicker way to create time lapse videos :p

Purposeless purpose

"Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?"

Sir John Templeton

Fixing Hercules

Claire and I had an eventful weekend with our car, a Mazda 2 affectionately named Hercules. Late on Friday night, Hercules broke down on our driveway and refused to start up, making terrible clunky noises whenever I turned the key in the ignition. We called RACQ to get it towed out of the way of other residents in our set of units, but were informed that we only had one free tow per breakdown, and would need to pay heaps for another tow the following day to a service center (none of which were open that night). So we employed the help of my sister, aunty Suyan, and Ben (my cousin), and pushed the car out of the way. My only thoughts on that are that I wish I had had my phone on me (to take photos) and I really appreciate having power steering now :p

The next morning (armed with my Nokia N82 with which I took all these photos), we got RACQ to come and tow Hercules to Centenary Mazda, which was fortunately only a few km away from our house. Claire and I followed along in a car aunty Suyan lent us.





We were prepared to be Hercules-less for several days (Monday was a public holiday), but the guys at Mazda said that if we could wait a bit, they could just have a quick check to see if it's a problem they could solve on the spot. In the meantime, we could head over to the sales department to wait, where we could have a free breakfast. Guess what we did?


Yum. After about 20 mins (while we were eating coco pops) we were informed that the problem was simply with Hercules' battery! It had run dry. However, it was closing time for the service department and they did not have any new car batteries. Their suggestion was for us to drive home (they would jump start Hercules) and they would get the "Marshall" to come to our house soon to deliver the battery. We weren't completely sure what that meant, but we thought it sounded like a good plan. An hour or so later, who should turn up at our house but the Marshall!



It took less than 5 mins for the Marshall guy to replace the old battery with a brand new one. Now it was time for Hercules to be tested.


And Hercules started just fine; in fact, heaps better than before. The Marshall explained that car batteries typically last 2-3 years, or for about 50,000km. Hercules was 4 years old, but had only just passed 50,000km recently. We reckon he lived up to his name, though. Hopefully we won't be having anymore car troubles for a while.