Hmm

Weekly updates seem to be getting later and later.

Well, nothing really exciting has occured.
Besides my brother deciding he is going to get engaged to his current girlfriend in the near near future, say, before next august, and married before the end of 2006.
So, yeah.... ~speechless~

Anywhoo, lets see, work has been going alright.
Did my second plastic trial for the wall deposits, however it kind of died with the plastic browning and curling like all buggery, completely useless.
Thus due to such a spectacular failure, I have resorted to metal, metal from Glad disposable baking pans.
They are fantastic. From one pan, you can get 24 strips measuring 2cmx4cm.
Which means you can do 6 runs before you have to chop up some more baking pans.
The initial metal trial worked fantastically well. The metal didn't warp or anything, and the PVA exhibited the same "burnt to a brown hard crud on my beaker" behaviour as with the plastic pieces (read = a absolute biatch to remove even after soaking in water for a weekend....)
It's not a great problem as it still comes off (thankfully ~sigh~). So, I will be using metal plates in the future for the wall deposit experiments, as soon as there are any and they are approved.

I'm currently also working on a proposal to use maltodextrin as a additive for the hibiscus extract to aid the drying properties. More on that once that is finalised.

Kirsten went up to her sister's place for the weekend, and basically chilled out for the weekend, literally.... the weather was a bit cool over the weekend, so instead of a nice beach weekend, it was more of a "rugged up" at the beach weekend. Still, her sister lives in a very nice idillyc (?? is that the right word??) environment of the central coast. Sure, the community is a little less educated, less rich, less healthy, and more criminal, but hey, the scenery and air quality is fantastic. Except for the salt content in the air that will rust nails off your house in no time....

I finally got a string for my bow, so that I can use my 70inch FX (Fast eXact) limbs.
Yikes, damn they are fast.
They are so nice to shoot though. My old limbs, being wood core, stacked heaps.
When I say stacked, I don't mean it is well endowed in the mammary glands, but it gets much harder to pull back when you get to a certain draw range. This is due to the compression rates of the material that the limb is made from as you need to exert more energy to more the material as it compresses. Kind of like a upper limit.
The foam core of the FX makes so much of a difference.
I shot 43lb with the wood limbs, with the FX I am shooting 46lb and it feels the same, but with 3lb more power.
The downside is my left deltoid (muscle that is attached at the arm and shoulder, assists in lifting your arm) kills because it isn't used to the amount of straing in drawing 46lb, while my right arm is fine as the strength is the same as 43lb, just a lot more efficient.
As for the speed. Same arrows used, my sight settings were 48.5 with the 43lb. Now, with the 46lb, the sight setting is 38. 10 sight marks is huge, especially since my 60m setting (the 38 is for 50m setting) is now at 48.......

I'm house sitting from Thursday this week, looking after the cat again. So, I'll get a little bored I think. But they have a nice collection of books, so I can read, or just watch disney classics on DVD that they own.... =)

Got Need for Speed Underground 2...
It's really good.
Fantastic engine, fantastic graphics.
Really hard gameplay in some races and I'm only about 10% into the game or so....
Well worth it for car nuts as they allow you to tune your car, like, fully tune, like fuly sick mate.

I'm sure it'll keep me occupied and frustrated for a while to come hehehehe.