I recently installed Mac OSX 10.6 aka Snow Leopard onto my PC in a valiant feat of crazy nerdiness. Just to see if I could. I was an instant convert to the world of OSX – luckily, because I haven’t got round to trying to get my dual boot working back into my Windows 7 installation (I think I’ll just stick with Parallels Pro).
Anyway I wanted to get my old mail from Outlook on the Windows 7 system disk into my Mac Mail program. What a drama! Explored paid software, crazy “export it all to Gmail and then import it all again” schemes (1.5GB of mail! Not!) and various other schemes. I spent quite a bit of time figuring this out. Here’s what eventually worked, for my own records.
1) Install demo version of Parallels Pro and use Windows 7 disk to set up a virtual install
2) Install Thunderbird on the virtual Windows 7 machine and import Outlook PST file into it
3) Install Thunderbird on OSX
4) Copy Windows Thunderbird profile folder over the OSX Thunderbird profile folder
5) Open Thunderbird, delete any unwanted email (could be done at step 2) and then compact the folders
6) Install an incredibly useful FREE utility, Eudora Mailbox Cleaner
7) Close all mail apps and drag OSX Thunderbird profile folder over the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner icon
8) Once it’s finished, open Mail and rebuild each of the imported mailboxes (Mailbox — Rebuild)
Voila! All the Outlook mail will now appear in Mail. Do yourself a favour and get Eudora Mailbox Cleaner if you’re trying to get mail from anything into Mail on OSX. I highly recommend it.
I have FINALLY decided what units I am going to do this semester. Not a moment too soon as the semester starts on Monday! I have already got special permission to enrol in 2 senior (3rd year) units and am just waiting on the official stamp of approval for my degree transfer, from Bachelor of Medical Science to Bachelor of Science.
The great thing about this plan is that I don’t need to decide yet what my second major will be (Neuroscience is the first). I can investigate a bit more and then decide before 2nd semester whether it will be Immunology, Cell Pathology or Biology/Genetics.
For those of you who give a stuff, here are the units I’m doing. If you don’t give a stuff, it’s quite understandable!
PCOL2011 – Pharmacology Fundamentals
This unit of study examines four basic areas in Pharmacology: (1) principles of drug action (2) pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism (3) autonomic and endocrine pharmacology, and (4) drug design. The delivery of material involves lectures, practicals, computer-aided learning and problem-based workshops. Practical classes provide students with the opportunity of acquiring technical experience and teamwork skills. Problem-based workshops are based on real-life scenarios of drug use in the community. These workshops require students to integrate information obtained in lectures in order to provide solutions to the problems.
IMMU2101 – Introductory Immunology
This unit of study will provide an overview of the human immune system and essential features of immune responses. The lecture course begins with a study of immunology as a basic research science. This includes the nature of the cells and molecules that recognise antigens and how these cells respond at the cellular and molecular levels. Practical/tutorial sessions will illustrate particular concepts introduced in the lecture program. Further lectures and self-directed learning sessions will integrate this fundamental information into studies of mechanisms of host defence against infection, transplantation as well as dysfunction of the immune system including allergy, immunodeficiency and autoimmune diseases and cancer.
NEUR3001 – Neuroscience: Special Senses
The aim of this course is to provide students with an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system and to the main concepts of processing of sensory information. Understanding basic sensory transduction mechanisms and the function of the sensory systems is necessary to understand how perceptual processes work in normal and disease conditions and provides a gateway to unravel the complexity of the mind. Basic aspects of low and high level sensory processing in all sense modalities will be covered, with a special emphasis in the auditory and visual systems. The relationship between sensory systems, perception and higher cognitive functions will be addressed.
NEUR3002 – Neuroscience: Motor Systems & Behaviour
The aim of this course is to provide students with an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system. Our current knowledge of how the brain works is based on the analysis of the normal structure of the nervous system and its pathways, the functional effects of lesions and neurological diseases in different parts of the nervous system, and the way that nerve cells work at the molecular, cellular and integrative level. This course focuses on to the neural circuits and the mechanisms that control somatic and autonomic motor systems, motivated behaviours, emotions, and other higher order functions. The lecture series addresses the different topics, each of which offers special insight into the function of the nervous system in health and disease.
Now I am just crossing my fingers that the vestibular migraines stay far far away. I’ve got an MRI on Saturday just to rule out any kind of cerebrovascular malformation so they can put me on migraine medication if the migraines come back. I hate MRIs! Luckily my nice neurologist is prescribing me Valium this time. Maybe it’ll even be fun!
If you haven’t seen the web series “The Specials” yet, you should check it out! It’s a reality show about five housemates with developmental disabilities living together in a share house in Brighton (four of the five have Down Syndrome).
It’s hilarious! I like Sam the best, he is really out there. Here’s one of my fave episodes where he falls for the Lady Boys of Bangkok:
I think it’s great to have something like this that shows people with disabilities just going about their regular lives – socially, romantically but NOT medically. The creators are trying to get money together for Season 2, so support them any way you can!
In December we bought a new Panasonic plasma TV, and of course, as happens these days, we got something free with it. That free thing arrived today after much form filling and waiting – a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT1. These rugged little beauties cost $600 in the shops so I was very happy to get one for “free”. Also I am sick of lugging my giant Canon EOS around with me on family outings!
I particularly like that it is shockproof to 1.5m – perhaps even Janproof? She has dropped 2 of our digital cameras and destroyed them in the past. Also it is waterproof to 3m, so if Archie tries to flush it down the toilet, it may survive, unlike Jan’s iPod. And it shoots HD video as well, not sure what the quality’s like, but hey! HD in your pocket’s gotta be good. And did I mention that it is ORANGE? How cool is that?
My brother Jake Walker is a painter extraordinaire and has put a whole bunch of his recent work online for the enjoyment and edification of the world. He’s based in Melbourne at the moment but his work definitely has a New Zealand flavour. He does some fantastic stuff, I suggest you check it out and even better, go to one of his shows if you get the chance!
Just received a couple of Lego books in the mail that I ordered 6 weeks ago from Amazon. Very exciting!
The first is one I actually bought for my dad for his birthday in December. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and had to get it for myself…
It’s called simply “The Lego Book” and is a history, guide and tribute to Lego. Did you know that the Lego company was founded in 1916 by a Danish carpenter? At first he made furniture, but in 1932 he switched to children’s toys. The company did really well out of pull-along toys before inventing the Lego brick in 1949. Anyway there is a lot of good stuff in it as well as beautiful full colour photos. And if that wasn’t enough, it comes with a BONUS book “Standing Small” which is a tribute to 30 years of the Lego mini-figure!
I’ve had a fun four days with my friend Annemiek visiting from New Zealand. I took her around the tourist traps of Sydney. Now I have sore feet and a happy but exhausted demeanour. Here’s a few of the highlights we took in:
Phew! No wonder I am a little sleepy. Lots of fun though – especially Wicked – what a show!! God, I don’t remember the Zoo being that expensive though. $41 for an adult? Really Taronga Zoo? Really?
I recently bought a Canon video camera, the FS100. It’s a handy little thing, records straight to an SD card, and has a number of groovy features. I particularly like the built-in light for shooting in darker environments. It records videos as MPEG files, but in a strange container called a MOD file. When you copy the videos to your hard drive using the included Canon software, they are renamed as MPEGs. Kind of annoying, as you can’t just rename them yourself because they have another small file with the suffix .MOI that apparently holds metadata for the video file. Strange!
My first problem was when I wanted to copy the video files without the Canon software, which I had lost and couldn’t be bothered finding again. After a bit of searching I discovered a great little utility called SD Copy. It’s just a little exe that will convert .MOD files into .MPG. You can download it from here, or have a Google.
So I’d copied all my files from the SD card, and all seemed fine when playing them back in VLC. I then decided to have some fun editing them together in Adobe Premiere. But there was a problem – all the camcorder files were coming into Premiere at the wrong ratio. I’d recorded them in 16×9 but Premiere was reading them at 4:3. So annoying! For some reason the widescreen flag doesn’t come across with the video file.
Thank god I found this incredibly useful post “Working with MOD Files in Adobe Premiere CS3“. I didn’t bother installing the dll for Premiere, since my files were already MPEGs. All I had to do was right click the file name in the Project window, select Interpret Footage, and change the Pixel/Aspect Ratio to “Conform To: Widescreen 16/9″. Bingo! Everything was at the right ratio, and all the edits I’d already made had automagically transformed as well.
Just thought I’d post this in case it helps anyone else. Apart from these teething issues, I really like my FS100, especially shooting in bright light. After dark, it gets quite grainy – thank god for the built-in light eh?
I’ll be posting my first creation on YouTube soon.
UPDATE: Here’s the creation in question! Not Oscar worthy but cute :)
I got a bass guitar a couple of days ago and have been having heaps of fun with it. I’m using a groovy book called “Rock Bass: Beginner To Pro in 40 Days”. Well, we’ll see about that, but certainly it is coming quite easily to me so far and I am even developing calluses already! Now, what other mature absolute beginners want to sign up for my “Old People’s Mediocre Cover Band” (working title)?
” and is a history, guide and tribute to Lego. Did you know that the Lego company was founded in 1916 by a Danish carpenter? At first he made furniture, but in 1932 he switched to children’s toys. The company did really well out of pull-along toys before inventing the Lego brick in 1949. Anyway there is a lot of good stuff in it as well as beautiful full colour photos. And if that wasn’t enough, it comes with a BONUS book “Standing Small” which is a tribute to 30 years of the Lego mini-figure! 
