Aaron Irving – Nightshadow

Well what can I say – well done everton. Chelsea has been a bit of a juggernaut this year and congrats to everton for a solid win over them. Louis Saha is an amazing finisher. Cahill did his usual solid job but no goals – ahh well. Baines is essential to the team and welcome to the English Premiere League Landon Donovan – he has fitted in well to Everton and the EPL. Anyway they did well. and made the fight for the winner more interesting for the Chelsea/Man UTD battle. Everton should have been playing like that all year.

Man city has done alright – winning matches though not looking top confident. Definitely good to see them into the champions league (most likely anyway).

Wayne Rooney is a damn good player but a draw was all they deserved. Arsenal certainly aren’t the best team this year (sorry daz) but they are better than liverpool. so yeah – that’s fitting anyway. Liverpool without Torres just isn’t right.

Will be an interesting finish to the year and a good welcome to the world cup in South Africa…. speaking of sporting events – did you see the photos in the paper of the indian children shovelling dirt at the commonwealth games sites?. Seriously sad photos – but awesome journalism. New Dehli will really struggle to finish the venues on time for the games – so good luck to them!

On another sports note we are back to indoor net week. Go Monash UTD or whatever the hell we are called this year.I need to get my ass into gear for the victorian universities cup – since I am organising it.

Anyone want to sponsor us? The financial crisis sucks in that regard.

Why must one walk up a rampfrom the footpath to get to “lower ground” in my complex?

Why was there one supra, one mitsu Evo X, one GTI, one skyline GTR, 2 HSV coupes a WRX STi, a civc type R (rally prepped) and 2 highly modified nissan patrols in my apartment carpark at midday? Why spend lots of money on a car then leave it parked in the garage all week long.

Why does the name “Craven Cottage” sound so cool?

Why did the butcher let me down? (Worst lamb shanks ever for diner tonight, I swear the sheep must have been 20 yr old reject stock).

Merlo or Di Bella?

Why does the microscope work fine when your cells don’t express the protein properly, but screws up when you get good clean expression?

Enough questions for now anyway…..

On another note, I’m going to cross post my ResearchGate Blog posts from their to hear aswell. Starting with this one on Gene therapy to restore color blindness.

A recent Nature letters paper by Mancuso et al details the use of a recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) in gene delivery to restore the function of photo-pigments in squirrel monkeys. The male monkeys, red-green color-blind from birth, obtained the ability to process red-green color information via the delivery of the L-opsin gene into the retina. 

While this research opens the door for further hope of gene therapy involved in human eye conditions, including blindness, it also raises some interesting questions. It was previously thought that the brain of adult monkeys would be too "hard-wired" to gain a beneficial effect from the restoration of deficient pathways. The recent paper proves that gene therapy can be utilized in "middle aged" monkeys, and is not solely an avenue to be pursued during early development. This adds a lot of significance to work already begun in human patients, to restore an enzyme involved in a type of hereditary blindness.

Original Article:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08401.html

Gene therapy for red–green colour blindness in adult primates

Katherine Mancuso¹, William W. Hauswirth², Qiuhong Li², Thomas B. Connor³, James A. Kuchenbecker¹, Matthew C. Mauck³, Jay Neitz¹ & Maureen Neitz¹

Well, if our teams last efforts in indoor soccer are anything to go buy – I suck. But I like to watch. Premier league and A-league have started again and this year is looking interesting. As ashamed as I am to admit it – I have traditionally been a Man Utd fan. (maainly from visiting man when my bro lived there). This year they are looking crap and it is good to see Man City starting off so well. Arsenal are also looking hot this year, and even the wolves have potential. Liverpool need a bit of help and we’ll see how chelsea end up doing (off to a good start). Even newly promoted burnley beat Man Utd. So yeah – I am going for man city this year I think… but hope arsenal or chelsea take out the crown – Man Utd has just won too much.

In the A League – I am a melbourne victory supporter. This year, however, they look shit. Need some serious help. I am curious to see how well the new gold coast ends up doing.

For those looking for a new internet provider use iinet (use me for a referral). 4 live premier league matches (in HD) a round and 5 pre-recorded (via fox sports online). Free and quota free.

If you have a digital tv you can see serie-A and bundesliga LIVE in HD on that new sports channel ONE HD (ch 10 sports). They also show UFC wired, which is a crack up.

anyway, off to work.

SO – priorities. Trying to finish thing that NEED to get finished and sorted. Also trying to organise time better so there is minimal waste. Getting there.

Now some random thoughts – TV: is crap, especially in australia. There are very few shows I like to watch. Bones, rush, nciis and occasionally csi. SO there is now a new tv channel (on freeview) called GO. It is basically a second ch 9 tv channel – where they show all the shows they canned. I like the crap shows!

Cars: So, I’m a little sad. The proton is gone. traded in. But i’m over it. Got a used 5yr old peugeot 307 xse (2l, 5dr hatch, 100kw). It’s nice. the leather seats a tiny bit cold when your skin touches them after work and melbourne is 8 degrees. – but it warms up fast enough.

Melbourne is awesome – still love being here – even with the sporadic weather patterns. Last weekend was so beautiful on the saturday arvo at a chilli cookoff in a brewery in the yarra valley. The sunday was bucketting down in rain. c’est la vie. Still managed to visit one winery. p.s. coldstream brewery rocks.

Sitting in the lounge room watching soccer, chatting to steph, chilling (feel too sick to do any work) and yeah – the soccer is streaming through the mac onto the TV c/o iinet/telstra fox sports online. In case you haven’t guessed – the new premier league season has started. It is lookig interesting. Arsenal and liverpool are both playing well now, and Man utd is playing crap. WIll be interesting.

Haven’t watched b’ham or the wolves play yet – burnley was looking ok though.

Well, what can one say. Poor Villa. Aston villa played so well only to be slaughtered by man utd right at the end. Macheda has skills.

hey wow, gladiators is as crap as the original series. even in HD on my 32" it is still crap. haha, correction – it is MORE crap.

I have been watching a lot of sports lately. delayed telecasts (streamed from iinet) of premier league matches, asia cup, soccerroos friendly’s, euro championship and even the AFL. It is impossible to avoid it down here… "football" (soccer) is still better though.  Hopefully I will start playing soccer down here aswell.

The variation of the HD channels is cool, especially with the extra doco’s they seem to show. 

Not liking steph working night shifts, but ahh well, that’s life.

I want to go to the Werribee zoo/safari park, before village roadshow spends $220M screwing it over.