# hello again



## punktech (Oct 26, 2007)

hey just saying hello again, i was on a bit before but i wandered off during the summer (mmm, summer stock!) and i'm finally all set in at school now for this year, so i'm finally back everyone. HEY *waves*!!!


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## gafftaper (Oct 26, 2007)

Welcome back Punk. 

While you were gone, the Aussies have been busy multiplying. Van wants a pet Wombat... I want to cook one in a pie. Charc's been doing all kinds of dangerous things without any assistance or supervision. Rigger's still grouchy about safety... what do you expect from a rigger. The new addict in the booth is Derek from Vegas. While we've had several new folks join over the summer he's clearly the one wasting the most time here. Derek also built a lamp... it's awesome to us tech geeks but it'll never fly with the S.O. Check out Derek's webpage for a cool photometric spreadsheet. Ricky is thinking about changing schools and majors. Avkid and I had a brief fight but I think we are over it now...  The booth got shut down for a day because of some idiot hacker. Icewolf got quoted in a trade mag. Logos the Aussie got a pirate bath mat and pirate duckies to go with his pirate shower curtain. A lot of us bashed a 15 year old kid for being a moving light specialist... then we got to know him and we sort of like the whole family now. And of course Ship knows more than he knew before... plus he got married and built a lamp.


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## Logos (Oct 26, 2007)

WEhat an amazing round up. It reads like the synopsis at the beginning of the new series if your favourite soap. Will Gafftaper find happiness in his new theatre. Will Logos finally drop dead of old age and terminal flippancy. Will Hughesie ever get a job. Stay tuned for this weeks episode of the young and the techie.


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## gafftaper (Oct 26, 2007)

In an earlier draft I even outed a couple of our members as secretly in love but decided Grog might be ticked off about it so I deleted it. Oops


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## punktech (Oct 27, 2007)

thanks for the update. i missed this place over the summer and past few months, so it's nice to hear everything is going well (perhaps, you never know with love...XD). only news from me thus far is that i'm getting further into my program (some set backs because my liberal arts school doesn't seem to get that this is going to be my career until i die and/or that it an actual and viable career choice), my main professor is working on making my personality more compatible with this work, i'm good for it in his opinion but he says i've begun to develop some bad habits . i'm having a great time and i'm hoping to get invited to this huge Western Mass. tech party in December. otherwise having a fun time and more over looking forward to my 24 hour work call tomorrow!!!


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## gafftaper (Oct 28, 2007)

punktech said:


> my main professor is working on making my personality more compatible with this work, i'm good for it in his opinion but he says i've begun to develop some bad habits .



I've talked about it a lot but I'll say it again your personality is CRITICAL to you getting work. If people like you and say there's a hard worker who knows there stuff. You'll get work from places you never expected. If you are a hard worker but there's something about your personality that just turns people off, you will have a really hard time getting consistent work. NEVER underestimate the importance of having good relationships with others on the crew. It only takes one phone call from the right person to either give you the job or take away your chance of getting a job. If you've got a prof telling you to work on some things listen closely. You don't need to be everyone's best friend and the life of the party, but you do need to be someone that people remember as a good tech that they enjoyed working with.


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## Hughesie (Oct 28, 2007)

gafftaper said:


> Welcome back Punk.
> 
> While you were gone, the Aussies have been busy multiplying. Van wants a pet Wombat... I want to cook one in a pie. Charc's been doing all kinds of dangerous things without any assistance or supervision. Rigger's still grouchy about safety... what do you expect from a rigger. The new addict in the booth is Derek from Vegas. While we've had several new folks join over the summer he's clearly the one wasting the most time here. Derek also built a lamp... it's awesome to us tech geeks but it'll never fly with the S.O. Check out Derek's webpage for a cool photometric spreadsheet. Ricky is thinking about changing schools and majors. Avkid and I had a brief fight but I think we are over it now...  The booth got shut down for a day because of some idiot hacker. Icewolf got quoted in a trade mag. Logos the Aussie got a pirate bath mat and pirate duckies to go with his pirate shower curtain. A lot of us bashed a 15 year old kid for being a moving light specialist... then we got to know him and we sort of like the whole family now. And of course Ship knows more than he knew before... plus he got married and built a lamp.




1. nice summary you should do these monthly and put them on the main page......Gaff's updates
2.what about "the metric war"


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## gafftaper (Oct 28, 2007)

Hughesie89 said:


> 1. nice summary you should do these monthly and put them on the main page......Gaff's updates
> 2.what about "the metric war"



I was trying to not brag too much about the victory of imperial measurement over the metric system. But since you bring it up... After a great battle I caught Logos not using metric in a post. In his explanation of why he didn't use metric, he stated that sometimes it was "easier" to use the imperial system. It was a great day of celebration and victory over the metric menace.


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## Hughesie (Oct 29, 2007)

that's crap, metric is way better, i will stake my entire collection of australian mammels on it


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## Logos (Oct 29, 2007)

Yeah well, I have to say that Gafftaper has a point. I'm doing some work on my car and I have a torque wrench graded in foot pounds and the instruction manual specifies newton meters???????


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## soundlight (Oct 29, 2007)

newton-meters is a unit that you will only use in physics class. I think that it's the SI unit.


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## gafftaper (Oct 29, 2007)

I win again... hand over your mammals Hughesie!


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## Van (Oct 29, 2007)

Newton-Meters? Isn't that how far away you have to stand from someone eating fig bars to keep you from gagging ?


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## Logos (Oct 29, 2007)

soundlight said:


> newton-meters is a unit that you will only use in physics class. I think that it's the SI unit.



It is certainly used in the calculation of force in the use of torque wrenches under the metric system. I am replacing the rocker cover gaskets on my V6 Holden Commodore.

And we like to think of our small (and not so small) furry creatures as marsupials. A sub class of mammals I know but our own special things. Then there's the monotremes. Warm blooded furry egg laying one of them has a beak for god's sake.


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## gafftaper (Oct 29, 2007)

Logos said:


> Then there's the monotremes. Warm blooded furry egg laying one of them has a beak for god's sake.



What the... words fail to describe how odd the inhabitants of your continent are.


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## avkid (Oct 29, 2007)

Van said:


> Newton-Meters? Isn't that how far away you have to stand from someone eating fig bars to keep you from gagging ?


It's not a fig bar, it's a Newton!!!
You have a problem with figs?


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## Hughesie (Oct 29, 2007)

You can have a wombat, for your pie


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## Logos (Oct 30, 2007)

gafftaper said:


> What the... words fail to describe how odd the inhabitants of your continent are.



And then you start to meet the animals.

Oh and we're an island not a continent. Well, subcontinental mass really. (My wife is a geologist and gets precise about these things.)


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## gafftapegreenia (Oct 30, 2007)

And I'm always here, doing whatever it is I do.


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## gafftaper (Oct 30, 2007)

Logos said:


> And then you start to meet the animals.
> Oh and we're an island not a continent. Well, subcontinental mass really. (My wife is a geologist and gets precise about these things.)



Well, I don't know what your wife is teaching you but the rest of the world seems to think there are seven continents: North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Antarctica, and Australia.


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## Logos (Oct 30, 2007)

The seventh continent which should be called Oceania, or Australasia consists of the sub continental mass known as Australia and then all the unimportant bits like Tasmania and New Zealand and so on and so on. (As well as being a geologist my wife comes from the undiscovered country known as Tasmania.{She is now scowling at me, I think I am in trouble. Can I get asylum in Melbourne Hughesie.})


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## gafftaper (Oct 30, 2007)

Logos said:


> The seventh continent which should be called Oceania, or Australasia consists of the sub continental mass known as Australia and then all the unimportant bits like Tasmania and New Zealand and so on and so on. (As well as being a geologist my wife comes from the undiscovered country known as Tasmania.{She is now scowling at me, I think I am in trouble. Can I get asylum in Melbourne Hughesie.})



Ahh I see the problem now. All the lesser land masses you have mentioned are so unimportant that they have been rounded down to zero in our text books and Australia has been rounded up to one.

Actually I found this interesting quote: "Many modern atlases and geography experts now consider the long-established continent of Australia to be better defined as Australia/Oceania, which then combines and includes all of (Australia), the large island groups of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomons, and the countless volcanic and coral islands of the south Pacific Ocean, including those of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia."

Any changes to world history and/or geography will not take effect in U.S. textbooks and school maps for several decades. My last classroom had a world map with East Germany, the U.S.S.R., and half of Africa had different names.


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## gafftaper (Oct 30, 2007)

I'm wasting too much time here on this continent of Oceania/Australia but it's kind of interesting. First off every definition I can find of continent involves a large continuous mass of land surrounded mostly by water. Which of course Oceania isn't. It's a group of islands. I looked at the tectonic plate maps for an answer but that just made it worse as India and Australia are on the same plate while many of the small islands of Oceania are on separate plate. It appears that Oceania started out as more of a geographic people grouping relating to the lands of the Polynesian people. I believe that the native australian people were NOT Polynesian... correct? Thus, some people don't consider Australia part of Oceania. Some consider Hawaii part of Oceania. At the other extreme it appears some people consider the islands of Alaska part of Oceania. 

So Australia is a sub continent part of a larger unconnected group of thousands of islands that are a continent? What is Oceania anyway? How is New Guinea part of the Australia/Oceania continent but the Indonesian half of that island is part of Asia? Why isn't Indonesia part of Australia/Oceania continent? How is a continent defined? Until about 20 years ago everyone seemed to agree that Australia was a continent on its own. It sort of looks to me like the Polynesian cultural society lobbied the geography people to get a piece of Australia's "continenthood". I'm curious what your wife's scientific geological explanation of all this is, because the more I read the more confused I get. Some how I have the feeling a bunch of Geographers (who are a lot less scientific than geologists) are at fault for this mess.


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## Logos (Oct 30, 2007)

Actually this is quite interesting. I was taught Lo these many years ago when we slaved at our slates by the light of candles that Australia was the worlds largest Island not it's smallest continent and my wife (who really only did geology at secondary school but who has kept reading in the area all her life) says she was similarly taught this. 
My son who is now also grumpy at me because I disturbed his favourite TV show by ringing up with stupid questions says he was taught that Australia is a continent.
I'm going to bed.

In answer to another question, the indiginous (sp?) population of Australia are not polynesian. They fall into three racial groupings, the mainland aboriginal races, the Torres Strait Islanders and the Tiwi. The latter group are a very small group who live on some tiny islands to the North of Aus. It is possible that the Tasmanian aboriginal race was a different grouping but as the last full blood member of that group (Truganinni) died a very long time ago (over a 100 years) it is now difficult to establish that.
These groups seem to have split from the original racial group who seem to have crossed a land bridge from Asia about 40,000 years ago. Incidently they would seem to have brought the dingo with them from Asia. Bored yet?


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## gafftaper (Oct 30, 2007)

Not at all bored. Ancient history and Dingos... it's a breathtaking combination. 

So you had a landbridge from Asia to Australia many years ago? I didn't know that. 

That reminds me of the turmoil here in the Americas over ancient people. It's been a well known "fact" that the first Native Americans crossed a land bridge from Asia in the last Ice age... at least that's what we've been teaching our kids in school for years (along with Australia being the 7th continent). Except we have now found multiple sites that predate that ice age by 10,000 years or more. The archaeological evidence is overwhelming at this point that there were two waves of migration... one by boat and one by land bridge.


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## Van (Oct 30, 2007)

gafftaper said:


> Not at all bored. Ancient history and Dingos... it's a breathtaking combination.
> 
> So you had a landbridge from Asia to Australia many years ago? I didn't know that.
> 
> That reminds me of the turmoil here in the Americas over ancient people. It's been a well known "fact" that the first Native Americans crossed a land bridge from Asia in the last Ice age... at least that's what we've been teaching our kids in school for years (along with Australia being the 7th continent). Except we have now found multiple sites that predate that ice age by 10,000 years or more. The archaeological evidence is overwhelming at this point that there were two waves of migration... one by boat and one by land bridge.


 
Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite areas of interest. If I had my druthers, I'd go back to school and get my degree in PaleoAnthropology. If you take a look at Kennewick Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man
You'll find that in Facial reconstruction he looks a lot more like Jean-Luc Picard than Sitting Bull, and most folks who have examined him seem to think he has ancestry similar to the Ainu < Eye-nu > or the indigenous peoples of Japan. One way or another He way pre-dates the "piedmont" layer so stupidly imposed on modern American Anthro and Archaeologist. I believe he probably shares a common ancestor or two with both the Ainu and the Indigenous peoples of Australia. 
Right after Politics and right before Religion this has got to be one of my favorite topics.


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## Logos (Oct 30, 2007)

The prehistoric landbridge came down from the Malay peninsula through modern Indonesia and across the Timor Sea. Tasmania was at that time also a part of the landmass and Bass Strait (between Melbourne and Devonport) was dry. 
I have actually exhausted my knowledge of the background and history of prehistoric Australian Indigenes. I am a modern historian by interest. This is the stuff I picked up in my readings relating to the treatment of Aboriginals by white folks, a truly contentious subject here as no doubt it is with you.
Your earlier guess Gafftaper about the creation of Oceania being a geographer rather than geologer driven concept is probably correct. I had not heard that clims went as far as the Alaskan islands though although I knew that the inclusion of Hawaii was an issue. 
The racial mix throughout Oceania is stunning, Indonesia and the Phillipines seem to have a basic racial mix related very closely to SE Asia while Papua New Guinea and the Timorese are yet another group also apparently unrelated to the Australian Aboriginal. The Maori of New Zealand are Polynesian and related to the residents of Tahiti Samoa Tonga and Hawaii but I am not sure where the Fijians fit in all this, they seem to be a different group.
I've run out again.


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## Van (Oct 30, 2007)

Logos said:


> The prehistoric landbridge came down from the Malay peninsula through modern Indonesia and across the Timor Sea. Tasmania was at that time also a part of the landmass and Bass Strait (between Melbourne and Devonport) was dry.
> I have actually exhausted my knowledge of the background and history of prehistoric Australian Indigenes. I am a modern historian by interest. This is the stuff I picked up in my readings relating to the treatment of Aboriginals by white folks, a truly contentious subject here as no doubt it is with you.
> Your earlier guess Gafftaper about the creation of Oceania being a geographer rather than geologer driven concept is probably correct. I had not heard that clims went as far as the Alaskan islands though although I knew that the inclusion of Hawaii was an issue.
> The racial mix throughout Oceania is stunning, Indonesia and the Phillipines seem to have a basic racial mix related very closely to SE Asia while Papua New Guinea and the Timorese are yet another group also apparently unrelated to the Australian Aboriginal. The Maori of New Zealand are Polynesian and related to the residents of Tahiti Samoa Tonga and Hawaii but I am not sure where the Fijians fit in all this, they seem to be a different group.
> I've run out again.


 
Hmm Sounds like we might have to start a whole new forum area, "History,Politics & Religion for the Amateur: no fighting allowed" just to satisfy all we could share on these subjects.


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## cutlunch (Oct 30, 2007)

Logos said:


> The seventh continent which should be called Oceania, or Australasia consists of the sub continental mass known as Australia and then all the unimportant bits like Tasmania and New Zealand and so on and so on. (As well as being a geologist my wife comes from the undiscovered country known as Tasmania.{She is now scowling at me, I think I am in trouble. Can I get asylum in Melbourne Hughesie.})



As I come from one of your so called "unimportant bits", New Zealand, I am now also scowling at you.

Some recent research suggest the Maori may have a connection to Taiwan.


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## gafftaper (Oct 30, 2007)

Van said:


> Hmm Sounds like we might have to start a whole new forum area, "History,Politics & Religion for the Amateur: no fighting allowed" just to satisfy all we could share on these subjects.



Forget that. This is the most intelligent hijack in the history of the booth. Let it Roll!!

I believe I remember reading somewhere that the first wave of native people were probably fisherman who followed the coast line from somewhere in the neighborhood of Japan. 

Another interesting point is that there are ancient statues in South America that have facial features typical to sub Saharan African. They have broader flat noses, more sloping foreheads, round eyes and even braided hair all of which combine to look very African... and not the least bit Native American or Asian. So some speculate there were people who came by boat from Africa to South America LONG ago. 

Finally when Louis and Clark first reached Van's Backyard in the Willamette valley they found Native Americans with RED hair. Theory is that Vikings came over explored and merged into native society after 100's of years.


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## Logos (Oct 30, 2007)

cutlunch said:


> As I come from one of your so called "unimportant bits", New Zealand, I am now also scowling at you.
> Some recent research suggest the Maori may have a connection to Taiwan.


I was being ironic but never mind. 

That is interesting about the Maori. I hadn't heard that. I know we can trace the diaspora of the Polynesians out from Tahiti to Hawaii and I thought also to the land of the long white cloud. Does this mean that all the Polynesian peoples may have come from Taiwan. Pushed out perhaps by proto chinese.

Gafftaper: There was of course Thor Heyerdahl and his reed boat that he crossed the Atlantic in. I'm not talking about Kon Tiki. He suggested that African and Egyptian peoples were able to sail that far and as far as the Norse go we know that they regularly sailed to Vinland from Greenland for timber is there any reason that some of them could have decided to go exploring. Despite their interesting reputation we know that the Vikings were primarily farmers and herdsmen who went out sailing during the winter. Maybe they liked the look of the country and decided to settle. No women, interbreed. Voila red hair. That's how it got to Ireland.


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## Hughesie (Oct 30, 2007)

Logos said:


> Tasmania was at that time also a part of the landmass and Bass Strait (between Melbourne and Devonport) was dry
> 
> 
> Thank god there is now water


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## Van (Oct 31, 2007)

Well, There are also quite a few statues, and statuettes found in South America that have distinctively "Asian" characteristics. There is also a story from China, of a Court Clerk who was caught in a storm and dissappeared for severals years, upon his eventual return he told a story of a land where gold was extremely plentiful, the people were dark skinned. They Emperor had him executed for lying. Unfortunately "Science" often locks itself into decisions which are simply unfounded. Again the Peidmont Layer in American Anthro-Archeology limits scientists to what I believe is a false assumption that "If an artifact is found in North America and it's found in a layer of earth older than 5k years ago, it is an anomoly." I think there have been enough discoveries over the last few years to poke plenty of holes in that little theory. Besides Kennewick Man, there is Crystal cave Man, and a womans remains that were found somewhere in the mid-north all of which date to well over 5k years ago. < I believe Kennewick Man was dated to at least 9k> Recently there were spear points discovered in North Carolina < I believe> that are exact copies of ones found in Northern Europe and date to the Early Stone age, late Neanderthal period. 
I find the "caucasion" facial characteristics of Kennewick Man, the Ainu of Japan, and the Aboriginal peoples of Austrailia to be to coincidental to be genetic drift. I think there was an earlier migration that perhaps sience has missed. I feel the foolish clining to an artificially imposed date at which people moved to certain area, truly limits the potential of human beings. Now to get really wierd I also find it fascinating that all the Pacific Rim peoples have a word for the "lost" continent of Mu, and that that word is consistent theough most of those cultures. It is heartening, however, that more individuals are begining to emerge from modern schools that are much more willing to push those boundaries, and push into areas that might have been considered "outside the norm" just a few years ago.


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## Hughesie (Oct 31, 2007)

wow this became a bit historic for the "new" members section


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## gafftaper (Oct 31, 2007)

Van many of my Professors while I was getting my History Degree 15+ years ago were very comfortable saying that there was a much earlier wave of migration. It's certainly interesting to hear the geologists and archaeologists not agreeing on this. But even in the early 90's it was definitely becoming acceptable to say that there were perhaps several pre-ice age waves of migration from multiple locations.


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## Logos (Nov 1, 2007)

Actually there is quite a wide range of facial charcteristics among the Australian Aboriginals. They tend to range from fairly straight nosed high forehead through too wide nosed with lower forehead. And it's not always the influx of Anglo saxon genetics. Although it's getting harder and harder to find a genuine full blooded australian aboriginal.


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## Hughesie (Nov 1, 2007)

way to factual for the new members area


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