Rubénerd!

Being a hopeless nerd, whenever I'm on a medication of some description for an illness, I look it up on Wikipedia, the Book of Knowledge. Remind me not to have the cops give me a urine test!

The chemical diagram

I did Chemistry for my senior years of high school, and my father is a chemical scientist. Still, the most complicated diagram we ever had to draw was for polyurethane polymer chains XD.

And if you think that's complicated, check out the systematic name:

(3R,4S,5S,6R,7R,9R,11S,12R,13S,14S)-6-{[(2S,3R,4S,6R) -4-(dimethylamino)-3-hydroxy-6-methyloxan-2-yl]oxy} -14-ethyl-12,13-dihydroxy-4-{[(2R,4S,5S,6S)-5-hydroxy -4-methoxy-4,6-dimethyloxan-2-yl]oxy}-7 -methoxy-3,5,7,9,11,13-hexamethyl -1-oxacyclotetradecane-2,10-dione

Would make a great name for a band.

Japanese FTW

This is really cool, clarithromycin was developed in Japan.

Clarithromycin was invented by researchers at the Japanese drug company Taisho Pharmaceutical in the 1970s. The product emerged through efforts to develop a version of the antibiotic erythromycin that did not experience acid instability in the digestive tract, causing side effects, such as nausea and stomach ache. Taisho filed for patent protection for the drug around 1980 and subsequently introduced a branded version of its drug, called Clarith, to the Japanese market in 1991.

For this reason, I like to think the medication capsule is releasing millions of kickarse little moe soldiers to fight this illness. That reminds me, I still haven't seen Tiger and Bunny.

Cocaine... dun dun dun dun... dun ♫

But now we come to reason why I had JJ Cale as the first image on this here post thingy.

Clarithromycin may cause false positives on urine drug screens for cocaine.

Hi there Mr Police Officer, I'm on Clarithromycin. Yeah, that must be it.

Less common side-effects include headaches, hallucinations (auditory and visual), dizziness/motion sickness, rashes, alteration in senses of smell and taste, including a metallic taste that lasts the entire time one takes it.

I suppose only having everything tasting like metal is the most agreeable of those to have! Then again, I have been hearing more voices lately... what's that? You want me to sing The Bird is The Word in public? I dunno, my throat is probably still too sore for that!

For what it's worth though, I was as sick as a dog yesterday morning, but I'm already on the mend since taking this stuff. Ain't medical science great? ^_^

Makes sense, it's not as though Kindles have titles on them or anything.

Normally I wouldn't blog about such stuff, but with the sudden reversal of Sydney's weather, it seems inventions like this might be a great idea for those with more fashion taste than common sense.

That's no heels

While sneezing my arse off from an impending flu this morning, I was reading The Guardian. For those not in the know, while also being the technical term for a legal caregiver, as well as a chain of highly successful Singaporean pharmacies (erroneously referred ton as Chemists in Australia), The Guardian is also a British newspaper that has an excellently designed site. Not that I'd usually know, for I read their RSS feeds, or Atom feeds, or whatever feeds they have.

Isn't it funny we still call them newspapers even when they're online? I suppose one could print them to keep the term from becoming archaic. But I digress

What should appear on the sidebar than an offer for Mighty Ice Grips:

Mighty Ice Grips for high-heels provide truly effective traction on ice and packed snow. Made of strong rubber, Mighty Ice Grips for high heels simple stretch over the toe of your shoe. Small non-slip studs for great grip. One size fits all. Don't let the fear of slipping keep you indoors this winter.

Certainly, the thought that most preoccupies me is being stuck inside given I can't wear my high heels in snow. But what would they most be useful for?

Ideal for emergencies, walking to work in snow or ice, or shopping.

But of course! Nothing says stylish practicality and emergency preparedness like high heels in snow.

And short skirts, allegedly

Ah Yuki, as a computerised entity I would have thought you'd have more common sense than to wear such garb in those conditions. Even Haruhi and Mikuru realised sometimes you need longer socks. But I digress.

My head hurts. Not from the content of this post, but from this flu. Perhaps it's time to make like a pair of ice shoes and skate. Hah, get it? I thought it was funny.

Everyone else already made their eels days ago, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to create a severely sleep deprived one for myself. I haven't uploaded it yet, what you see here is a photo of me taken mere minutes ago.

Of course, one would risk churlishness if the the opportunity to quote Ogden Nash were not seized here. Like a... senior manager.

I don't mind eels
Except as meals
And the way they feels

Guilty Crown has copped flack (even from me) as sounding rather like a Code Geass clone, though already they can boast having two things the other series didn't: an epic logo, and an entirely useless post written by Ruben on the train in a half-asleep daze.

I did logo programming back in the day

As is evidenced by the images in my sidebar (which are being replaced soon!) and various other posts on the subject, I am somewhat enamored with logos. Particularly ones that show my allegiances, such as Houkago Tea Time, the now infamously retro SOS-Dan, the Federation's Starfleet Planetary Sciences Division, and presumably many more.

Having only seen Guilty Crown in passing in the UTS Anime club (I was too busy transferring legitimately purchased content across laptops to watch), I can't be sure whether this logo is their official one or not. For all I know, someone on one of the larger image boards could be having a lend of me, which I thought only libraries could do. Bad pun sorry, I could have done better.

My other point

Point is, several in the aforementioned club have heaped nothing but praise, and I have every intention of watching it. Especially if the logo is that cool. I'm sorry, but it has that retro futuristic vibe, the shape is eerily Star Trek-esque in it's appearance and... wait, hold on a minute. Of course a shape is something in appearance, shapes have nothing but appearance!

See what happens when I go for two nights with 4 hours sleep?

Oh yeah that reminds me

Are you still following this fractured post? If you're not, that's okay, fractured posts sound rather painful. The only time I've ever broken a bone was in high school when a friend of mine inadvertently whacked me in the foot with a hockey stick. I earned new found respect for Canadian athletes that day.

So I was doing a Google search for Guilty Crown to get a feel for the art style, and one of the first results I got was this:

While the colour in this image is rather nice, and the house it depicts looks perfectly hospitable, unfortunately it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Judging from the text that accompanied the photo it was easy to see why I was directed to this post:

AND a big head from the Crown Royal. AND a guilty conscience [...]

While I believe they may have a point regarding nice colours in Guilty Crown's art and character designs, I hardly think the characters have big heads. Impossible clothing maybe, but not big heads.

Which reminds me, Talking Heads is an awesome band. David Byrne should have learned Japanese and sung the opening theme.

Thank you, and goodnight.

I'm waiting for confirmation before believing it given The Herald Sun and The Australian are reporting it, but apparently insulting the Victorian Gaming Minister Michael O'Brien will now land you a fine of roughly $12,000. I'm safe given I'm in New South Wales, right?

Interestingly enough, if you do a Google search for $12000 fine O'Brien, you get to this Wikipedia article that states that: "during his imprisonment at Crow Hill, O'Brien's mother died and left him $12,000." I'm not sure if this is related.

Normally I refrain from self-absorbed blog entries, but today marks the three week anniversary of having these recurring headaches. They feel like I'm wearing a tight band around my head, and just as they seem to go away, another one starts in their place. It's like there's a sine wave in my head.

While they haven't impacted my work and studies as much as the migraines I tend to get, suffice to say they're starting to wear me down. I have a followup visit to the doctor on Monday to see what's going on; given family history the hypochondriac in me assumes something awful, though I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation.

Thank you for letting me vent :).

Finally have a name for the bay in my town ;).

By 花谷にな on Pixiv. Adorable ^_^

Now HERE was a story I thought looked interesting on TODAYOnline this afternoon:

TPG to move Australia head to Singapore: Report

TPG? Really? Would his head be moving to Singapore to learn how to run efficient ISPs, presumably with the rest of his body?

SINGAPORE - US private equity firm TPG is relocating its Australia head Ben Gray to Singapore from Sydney as it seeks growth in Asia, the Dow Jones reported Thursday.

Okay, so it's this TPG not this TPG. Another pitfall of registering your company with a TLA, or to a lesser extent with an ETLA. IMHO.