Money to Spend

Now this sounds great!! Life Drawing with Wendy Sharpe (she has won the Portia Geach Memorial prize (twice), the Archibald Prize, the Kedumba drawing prize, the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship and the Mercedez Benz Scholarship)

An Art Retreat in Fiji!!

So do some of the other courses; the Seascape and Landscape painting, and the Textile one - The Quilted Landscape : Gloira Loughman

Ooh the Sketching and Watercolour one runs from July 10 till my birthday next year, that would be a great way to spend it ......

Damn what a decision, which one to do ...  rotfl!!

This is where I wish I had a spare $3000 laying around (lol - haven't even got a spare $300) so I could splurge on something for myself.

What would you spend $3000 on if it was given to you on the proviso that it was just to be spent on you?


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GOES-11 Watching a Low Pressure Area Near Central America

There's a broad area of low pressure located a couple of hundred miles south of Guatemala with clouds and showers and forecasters are keeping any eye on it using imagery from the GOES-11 and other satellites.

The latest visible image from the GOES-11 satellite taken on July 29 at 1500 UTC a small area of clouds and showers in the Eastern Pacific, a couple hundred miles south of Guatemala. NOAA manages the operation of the GOES series of satellites, and the NASA GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. provides imagery and animations from GOES satellite data.

The National Hurricane Center noted that the system has changed little in organization during the early morning hours today, July 29. Any development of this disturbance is expected to be slow to occur as it moves westward or west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph.

As of today, the NHC only gives this system a ten percent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours.

NASA Chat: Getting a 'GRIP' on Hurricane Forecasting

Every summer, tens of thousands of people follow the spinning, counterclockwise drama that plays out across their television screens. Satellite images show a tropical depression forming off the coast. Will it become one of the most powerful storms on Earth? Will it turn into a hurricane?

The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, will use 15 cutting edge instruments to get a daring new look at some of the world’s fiercest storms. Scientists will study how storms form, strengthen, and weaken, and try to better understand how tropical storms develop into major hurricanes.

On Thursday, July 29, atmospheric scientist Tim Miller from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will answer your questions about hurricanes and the upcoming NASA study. Joining the chat is easy. Simply visit this page on Thursday, July 29 from 3-4 p.m. EDT. The chat window will open at the bottom of this page starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT.

See What's Brewing in 'Hurricane Alleys' Live Online, on iPad and iPhone via GOES Satellite

Scientists working for NASA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. have developed continually updating "movies" of satellite imagery that allows online, iPhone and iPad viewing of any cyclone's movement in the Hurricane Alleys of the Atlantic Ocean or Eastern Pacific Ocean.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-13 satellite captures visible and infrared images of the weather over the U.S. East coast. These images are overlaid on a true color background map, and fed into small and medium-sized videos of the Gulf of Mexico and the nearby Atlantic Ocean for the last 3 days. The GOES-11 satellite provides similar coverage of the U.S. west coast and Eastern Pacific.

The GOES satellites scan further into the oceans twice per hour, offering the opportunity to watch storm development in the swath called "Hurricane Alley," from Atlantic to Pacific. The bigger scans are used to make large-scale Hurricane Alley movies for the last three to five days, illustrating the life-cycle of subtropical storms, as some of them spin up to become hurricanes.

The GOES satellites also scan the entire disk of the Earth every three hours. These are used to produce "full disk movies" from the last five days of satellite imagery data from GOES-13 in the Atlantic and GOES-11 in the eastern Pacific. With just eight frames per day, time flies by quickly as weather circulates across the Western Hemisphere.

Death of a Machine

Well it finally happened - my washing machine died.


Actually it didn't die, it committed suicide - it was in the middle of a wash when with a deafening bump and a thump, thump, thump it launched itself across the laundry floor then died.


When I opened the lid the agitator was in about 20 pieces intermixed with the wet clothes .... oh joy, oh bliss ..... NOT!


This happened the beginning of last week when I was ill so I have been without a machine for almost a week and a half and the dirty washing is mounting up fast. Yesterday I went out and got the cheapest 'known' brand (6kg) I could find. It gets delivered tomorrow and the poor thing won't even have a chance to settle into its new home - it has about 4 loads of work to do at once .... lol!!


PS. Should have known things wouldn't be THAT smooth - got it all set up and set off the first load - 5 mins later .... water everywhere. The cold water hose connection not crimped tight. AArrrgghhh.

Female logic - I never wash in hot water so I took the hot hose and swapped it with the cold one - now the bugger works!!

Rang the company and they were extremely nice and helpful and are sending me TWO new hoses and a technician to install them!!!  


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Remnant Low of Bonnie Over Louisiana and Western Mississippi as Seen by GOES-13 Satellite

The GOES-13 satellite captured a visible image of the clouds associated with the remnants of former tropical depression Bonnie, now over Louisiana and western Mississippi. Bonnie's remnants are producing scattered showers and thunderstorms today and tonight in those areas.

The GOES series of satellites are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. creates some of the GOES satellite images.

At 8:30 a.m. EDT Bonnie's remnants generated an area of showers and thunderstorms north of Lake Pontchartrain in eastern Louisiana and western Mississippi. One of the thunderstorms spawned a tornado warning for Wathall and Washington Counties in western Mississippi at that time.

Bonnie's center is located inland south of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the bulk of the showers and thunderstorms associated with it are mainly to the west and north of the remnant low's center.

NASA Infrared Satellite Imagery Sees System 97W Ripe for Tropical Development

When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over System 97W in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean on July 19 at 0417 UTC , it captured temperature data on some very high thunderstorms and strong convection happening inside. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center who utilize that data noted that System 97W has a good chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next 12 to 24 hours.

NASA's infrared satellite imagery was captured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder . The convection it detected in the center of System 97W was strong as evidenced by high, cold thunderstorm cloud tops, colder than 63 Fahrenheit .

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that System 97W's maximum sustained winds are estimated between 20 and 25 knots . The center is estimated near 27.9 North and 125.0 East, which is about 175 nautical miles west northwest of Okinawa, Japan. System 97W is moving northwest near 10 mph .

System 97W is forecast to track northward into the Yellow Sea. The Yellow Sea is the name given to the northern part of the East China Sea . The Yellow Sea is located between mainland China and the Korean peninsula.

As it continues northwest, System 97W could strengthen into a tropical depression before tracking over cool sea surface temperatures between 75-79 Fahrenheit 24 hours. A tropical cyclone needs sea surface temperatures of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit to maintain intensity.