I've been struggling with my internet connection ever since getting it set up, back in October/November last year. I learnt fairly quickly that it's useless trying to call the Slingshot 'help' desk - they always seemed to think there was something wrong with the way I was connecting it (no!) or something wrong with the phone line (no!). The actual problem was the modem THEY sent me.
Dad lent me another modem, which would take about half an hour to connect, but at least once it did the connection would stay up for about an hour on average - much better than the 2 minutes the el cheapo Slingshot modem would. But getting that connection was driving me nuts, so yesterday I splashed out $130 on a new modem/router - wireless too (why not).
It took half an hour initial set up to get my computer to talk to it, and now it is working fantastically.
What's on today: soccer at Kilbirnie vs. Marist (the team I was kind of asked to play for). The weather hasn't delivered the rain promised, so the only thing stopping things will be if we don't get enough players and have to default. Again.
UPDATE: Soccer was defaulted. And it's raining now, so it wouldn't have been all that fun anyway.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The kangaroo route
That's right folks, I've been home less than a fortnight and in 12 days' time I'm off again back to Melbourne for the next round of beamtime. The time was only scheduled 5 days ago which has not given me a lot of time to arrange everything... this time it will be measuring anomalous diffraction of Bi-2212 superconductors, and then looking at the formation of Pd (and/or Pd-hydride) nanoparticles in solution, in situ.
No more technical stuff, I promise. At least for this post...
Both experiments have been scheduled over two consecutive weekends. It works out more cost-effective to stay over there than to return to NZ in between. So I may be able to spend a bit of time catching up with friends...
No more technical stuff, I promise. At least for this post...
Both experiments have been scheduled over two consecutive weekends. It works out more cost-effective to stay over there than to return to NZ in between. So I may be able to spend a bit of time catching up with friends...
Friday, August 15, 2008
Are you Olympic-ed out yet?
... because I'm not. Looking forward to Saturday, with so much NZ action hopefully we will come up with the goods. Also it's tri-nations rugby at 12 am so Mum suggested I stay the night... could be interesting with church and then rushing straight off to soccer, assuming it's on. At least it's at Fraser Park (i.e. across the road from my house) and not in Miramar or Waikanae.
Yeah so I got back home at 1 am on Tuesday, got some sleep and was at work by 10 am to try and get a bunch of stuff done. This week wasn't as productive as I would have liked, and it didn't help that I had basically all of Thursday doing PR stuff for IRL at the Vic science careers fair thing. It was fun though (playing with liquid nitrogen always is!).
Today I had a day-trip down to Dunedin, so that was a 5:30 am start. The visit was quite good value though; one of these projects introduced by someone else who doesn't communicate with us, so we have to now try and do something sensible on it.
Yeah so I got back home at 1 am on Tuesday, got some sleep and was at work by 10 am to try and get a bunch of stuff done. This week wasn't as productive as I would have liked, and it didn't help that I had basically all of Thursday doing PR stuff for IRL at the Vic science careers fair thing. It was fun though (playing with liquid nitrogen always is!).
Today I had a day-trip down to Dunedin, so that was a 5:30 am start. The visit was quite good value though; one of these projects introduced by someone else who doesn't communicate with us, so we have to now try and do something sensible on it.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
24 hours in Melbourne
Howdy there folks, so for those interested in taking a little ride with me on a typical day here at the synchrotron, this is what we got up to...
9 am: hit the road, we don't have to be at the lab until 2 pm this afternoon so spent a nice Friday morning wandering along the promenade at St Kilda. Lunch in some non-descript place next to one of the fantastical bakeries with a 7-tier cake in the window that was obviously a 'photo opportunity' given the number of people who stopped to take pictures of it.
Drove back to the motel to pick up our stuff, then to the supermarket to stock up on food for the next few days' worth of lunches (and whatever meal it is that you have at 3 am). Sandwiches, yum.
2 pm: off to the lab, put our stuff in the fridge, head over to the beamline and discuss with the beamline scientist what it is we want to try to do. Some of it is feasible and some isn't, but we'll try our best anyway. Get introduced to a bunch of new equipment and a crash course on how to set it up when we change experiments tomorrow, since it's Saturday and she doesn't want to come in. (What a slacker!)
4.45 pm: we put our first sample on, the test scan looks ok so we try tweaking a few parameters, then collect some 'real' data. One sample down, 71 to go!
6.30 pm: the others (whose experiments start tomorrow) head off for dinner and promise to bring back some pizza for us.
Some of the samples give good spectra and others are just background noise. Some are really quite puzzling. But this is not the time for wondering why; because we are just here to collect the best data that we can and worry about the analysis later.
7.30 pm: pizza arrives, meatlovers, mmmmmmm.
At the supermarket we also got some party mix lollies and chocolate to help us through the night.
12 am: need some more chocolate. 35 samples down, 37 to go plus a new in situ experiment we thought we'd try, since we have extra time. Log in to facebook for the 10th time in the last 4 hours; nothing much has changed. That's because no sane person is awake in NZ right now. Mind you it is Friday night, so they could be...
Searching for some standard diffraction patterns to try and match our peaks. I have a suite of online tools for this; one of my favourite diffraction pattern databases is Mincryst - the first option it presents you with is English or Russian. But it tells us everything we need to know.
2 am: time to take a nap for an hour...
3 am: a little bit better. I only have to last until 9 am or so, when the others will be getting back. 15 more samples to go plus a time series.
4.30 am: bored but functional.
6.30 am: just spent the last 2 hours playing quizzes on facebook... with every sample chugging away for ten minutes, I'm open to suggestions on how to spend the time! Maybe I'll go and make a sandwich.
8.15 am: the others just arrived, we're still waiting for the beam fill to finish before putting our last couple of samples on.
9.07 am: all done for today - back to the motel for some much-needed slee...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
9 am: hit the road, we don't have to be at the lab until 2 pm this afternoon so spent a nice Friday morning wandering along the promenade at St Kilda. Lunch in some non-descript place next to one of the fantastical bakeries with a 7-tier cake in the window that was obviously a 'photo opportunity' given the number of people who stopped to take pictures of it.
Drove back to the motel to pick up our stuff, then to the supermarket to stock up on food for the next few days' worth of lunches (and whatever meal it is that you have at 3 am). Sandwiches, yum.
2 pm: off to the lab, put our stuff in the fridge, head over to the beamline and discuss with the beamline scientist what it is we want to try to do. Some of it is feasible and some isn't, but we'll try our best anyway. Get introduced to a bunch of new equipment and a crash course on how to set it up when we change experiments tomorrow, since it's Saturday and she doesn't want to come in. (What a slacker!)
4.45 pm: we put our first sample on, the test scan looks ok so we try tweaking a few parameters, then collect some 'real' data. One sample down, 71 to go!
6.30 pm: the others (whose experiments start tomorrow) head off for dinner and promise to bring back some pizza for us.
Some of the samples give good spectra and others are just background noise. Some are really quite puzzling. But this is not the time for wondering why; because we are just here to collect the best data that we can and worry about the analysis later.
7.30 pm: pizza arrives, meatlovers, mmmmmmm.
At the supermarket we also got some party mix lollies and chocolate to help us through the night.
12 am: need some more chocolate. 35 samples down, 37 to go plus a new in situ experiment we thought we'd try, since we have extra time. Log in to facebook for the 10th time in the last 4 hours; nothing much has changed. That's because no sane person is awake in NZ right now. Mind you it is Friday night, so they could be...
Searching for some standard diffraction patterns to try and match our peaks. I have a suite of online tools for this; one of my favourite diffraction pattern databases is Mincryst - the first option it presents you with is English or Russian. But it tells us everything we need to know.
2 am: time to take a nap for an hour...
3 am: a little bit better. I only have to last until 9 am or so, when the others will be getting back. 15 more samples to go plus a time series.
4.30 am: bored but functional.
6.30 am: just spent the last 2 hours playing quizzes on facebook... with every sample chugging away for ten minutes, I'm open to suggestions on how to spend the time! Maybe I'll go and make a sandwich.
8.15 am: the others just arrived, we're still waiting for the beam fill to finish before putting our last couple of samples on.
9.07 am: all done for today - back to the motel for some much-needed slee...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Friday, August 1, 2008
I never knew I had so many 'friends'
That's right, I finally succumbed and signed up on facebook. Everyone I used to hang out with while I was at Calvary Chapel Mountain View was getting into it, so I'll blame it on them :)
As Al wrote on his blog a while back, it's a 'productive waste of time'. You can literally spend hours typing in names of people you used to know, and scrolling through hundreds of matches and trying to guess which 'Sarah Nicholson' you are looking for. Not that I'm looking for a Sarah Nicholson.
Still, I find the generic label 'friend' a bit off-putting, since I didn't have (m)any friends at school. And, I'm not clicking on people just because I recognise their name. As for the various applications and 'play against your friends' things, please don't feel offended if I decline your invitations... I'm trying hard not to waste any more time on there than I have to.
As Al wrote on his blog a while back, it's a 'productive waste of time'. You can literally spend hours typing in names of people you used to know, and scrolling through hundreds of matches and trying to guess which 'Sarah Nicholson' you are looking for. Not that I'm looking for a Sarah Nicholson.
Still, I find the generic label 'friend' a bit off-putting, since I didn't have (m)any friends at school. And, I'm not clicking on people just because I recognise their name. As for the various applications and 'play against your friends' things, please don't feel offended if I decline your invitations... I'm trying hard not to waste any more time on there than I have to.
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