Of trips and trivia

Last Friday was the date of the most recent IRL quiz night. Some colleagues and I mustered a team that didn't do half bad - in fact we tied for first place! (Unfortunately we lost the sudden death question, which was: How many tons does Nelson's statue in Trafalgar Square weigh?)

A shame the Hurricanes couldn't do better than second in their semi-final game either. Oh well, there's always next year... or the year after... or...

Next week I'm off to Melbourne for 2 days - I have a 3-hour meeting at the synchrotron on Tuesday. It may seem like a bit of a waste of time but I've made arrangements to meet up with some other people while I'm there re: stuff for our next experiments there in July, which are going to take some considerable co-ordination of chemicals and equipment.

It's a bit scary in some ways because July seems so close already - and two weeks after I get back from there, Mum and I are off to Scotland & Ireland. Life is starting to be measured in weeks again... not that I'm complaining, really.



Oh - and by the way, the answer is 18. (We guessed 6.)

Looking up

Things are looking up from last week.

We had a leaders' meeting for CKC which helped my enthusiasm for that immensely.

Work is progressing well and I am getting on top of stuff there.

Badminton interclub competition started last week so with 3 nights per week dedicated to that I am getting fitter and faster (I hope!). Looks like I am in the division V team by default; our first match is on 6 June.

My youngest brother getting engaged last week, I am still trying to get my head around. On Saturday night I went around to Mum and Dad's to watch the rugby, and felt like the seventh wheel. When I arrived everyone was playing Cranium in couples. Then sat together in couples and so it goes. Even Bob the cat wouldn't keep me company.
Our family has all been invited to the future in-laws' for lunch next weekend and I am not ready for it.
I had some advice from a close friend in an email who basically said, yeah, it hurts, but God has a purpose in all things. I just hope I can figure out what that is. In the meantime try to keep myself busy and not dwell on things.

Bottom of the barrel

Well the last few weeks have been one of those times, full of little niggles that just sap you dry.

First I had all the hustle of organising a conference and then heading off straightaway to Melbourne for 4 days of beamtime. Cue no weekend, followed by a lazy Monday and not quite getting back into the groove of working a full week.

Then I had a number of issues at church, particularly with the kids' programme - discipline problems with one or two kids who just set off the rest. No joy for anybody, especially me. On top of that I had a run-in with somebody else at church which left me even more deflated. Can't seem to find any support for the issues that exist already, meanwhile there are even more icky things coming along that somehow fall on me to deal with.

Then there was badminton rep training on Sunday - following the church blow-up, I figured that smacking a shuttlecock around would be a productive vent of frustration. Instead it left me with a killer headache, and the combination of too much water and not enough food meant when I got home I couldn't decide if I wanted to eat or throw up.

Then yesterday I was reminded all the more sharply about my single-ness...

I know I need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture in all of this. In my head I know that where I am in terms of my job, ministry, and shall we say 'relationship status' is God's will for me right now. But it's a bit harder to bring my feelings into line with that.

It'd be nice to find a way out of this hole I'm in.

Or at least to make it through until August when I'll be on holiday with Mum for a month...

The week that was, and is, and is to come

So this has been one of those weeks - and it's only Tuesday!

The last few weeks leading up to now have involved me organising everything for the second NZ synchrotron users' meeting. This was held on Monday and Tuesday this week. Overall it was a success, despite the late withdrawal of support from the Australian Synchrotron people (they were going to send 4 or 5 people across to give talks, and 2 weeks ago announced they would only be sending 2). This meant that I had 2 1/2 hours of speaking slots plus chairing a lot of other speaking sessions and directing discussions. Anyway people seemed to get a lot out of it and made some contacts so you can't ask for much more than that.

Now while I would really like a break following a pretty crammed two days, tomorrow sees me doing some last minute sample prep before flying over to Melbourne in the afternoon. We have two sets of experiments scheduled at the synchrotron from Thursday to Monday, the second of which involves some tricky sample prep that I've had to leave to a student who's never been to the synchrotron before, since I've been flat out with the meeting. So tomorrow it'll be head down to work, pick up all the stuff, come back home, pack, and leave... maybe the following week I'll be able to come up for air!

100 km Trailwalk

Last weekend was the Oxfam Trailwalk challenge. Teams of 4 walking 100 km inside 36 hours, at Lake Taupo.

Christina (a good friend from ye olde physics olympiad days back in 1997) had entered a team and I came along to help as support crew. As it turned out the support was needed!

We had a (relatively) small campervan that we had to drive to each checkpoint and await the team, then put out chairs, prepare whatever food they wanted, rub feet, pass clothes, and so forth. The legs they had to walk varied from 7 to 20 km. The weather was perfect for the event - sunny days and not too hot; although it was bitterly cold at night. But the walkers said as long as they were moving it wasn't too bad.


A welcome break for the walkers - the inside of the campervan was warm and cosy

During the night the team suffered a couple of casualties, with Kat and Mac having to pull out due to injury. They promptly claimed the back of the van and crashed - just as well I had had a couple of naps while waiting at some of the earlier checkpoints.

Driving the van was not as hard as I had feared. While there were some challenging bits, like driving down a steep grassy bank to get to checkpoint 2, and navigating at 3 am, it was pretty fun and I'd be happy to do it again. Cooking food was also pretty straightforward and the further on we got through the event the less people cared about what was on offer.

At checkpoint 7 our final two members had arrived just as dawn was breaking. The previous three legs had all been around 7.3 km and the first two of those hadn't caused any major issues, but the last one left them complaining. So they let me join them for the last leg. Half of this was through paddocks, and half along the lake front along the main drag into town. We put our team t-shirts on (that had been prepared earlier while waiting at the checkpoints) - bearing the team name, 'Are we dead yet?'


Walking through Taupo, 200 metres from the finish line.

Watching Christina and Marama cross the finish line was truly inspirational. Even though the last few steps were at the same pace and with the same hobbling action as the previous ten thousand, they were the most significant. Well done - it's a fantastic achievement.


The team at the finish line, 29 hrs 23 min after beginning the event.

(To donate to Christina's team, please click here.)

Rewards at last?

So this is part of a package that arrived in my letterbox today. That's right, I've been flying with Air New Zealand too much, they are feeling sorry for me having to sit around crummy airports so they've given me a bunch of freebies. I'm looking forward to waltzing into the lounge next time I'm flying anywhere... checking in at the short line, extra baggage allowance (not that I ever take more than 1 bag), ... all the while taking none of it for granted.

Unfortunately Mum and I are flying Qantas to Scotland in August, so we won't get lounge access on that trip - when it probably would have been appreciated. But as much as the $1000 difference in prices between the Qantas and Air NZ fares? - probably not.

All the little jobs

Well I have a bunch of stuff that keeps getting put off and as a result they don't get done. Here's what I'd like to get done this weekend (if I had infinite time):

1. Finish painting the window frames of the house. Especially since we're starting to get into autumn, with more days windy and rainy than not - i.e. not conducive painting weather.

2. Clean my house. I can't remember the last time I vacuumed, and I can see the dust on the sideboard so that needs doing too. In the meantime I'm trying not to brush it too much, because then it becomes really obvious. It's not a big job but it involves moving all my knick-knacks and then putting them back, which is annoying.

3. Weed spraying in the front lawn. And they said, Let the weeds be gone and let green grass appear. And it was so.

4. Getting everything ready for CKC next week. This is probably what I will be doing all weekend - cutting out 120 cardboard people shapes for a craft.

5. Weeding in my flower garden. Sometimes therapeutic - an activity that doesn't require any brain power whatsoever.

6. Tidying the house. Find a place for every piece of paper on the table to live, and every bag or piece of clothing lying on the floor. But then I wouldn't be able to find anything.

7. Back up my computer. It's been a while. Also sort out all the sermon files that I've listened to and copy some more over from my super-sized external hard drive to listen to next.

8. Go for a run or a bike ride. But if it's fine I'll feel guilty for not painting, see #1.

9. Start planning next term's activities for CKC. And the holiday programme for (eek!) three weeks' time.

10. Wash my car. It's filthy. And it needs to go for a warrant next weekend.

Publish or perish

So I have a trip to Melbourne on Monday for a beamline proposal access committee (PAC) meeting to discuss the recent submissions for the next round of beamtime on the x-ray diffraction beamline.
I've been on the PAC for a little under a year so I've come to know its inner workings. Last December when I was in Melbourne for the Australian Synchrotron users' meeting, the chair of the PAC admitted that as chair he had control over who the reviewers for each proposal would be, so to bump new users up the list he would assign their proposals to 'soft' reviewers and more experienced users, like myself, to harsher reviewers.
Which is all fine if you get the time. But it made me a little mad then, and especially now that some of the scores are coming in.

Some of the comments I've received are:

Proposal 1
"The proposal represents quality science, with potential for publication in respected journals, but it is not really a novel and exciting application of synchrotron radiation... “Precise experimental conditions” should have already been determined by some of the “extensive prior electrochemical testing” given that the proposal has been carried over from 2009-1 cycle! More effort should have been made to complete and include these data... Synchrotron radiation is necessary for the work, but although being up with contemporary science, it is not a completely novel and exciting application of synchrotron radiation. The team is a good one, but the outcomes of previous synchrotron radiation experiments are mediocre at best, or poorly portrayed – perhaps new criteria have been applied in the current round of reviewing?"

Proposal 2
"...However, whether or not the time resolution afforded by the microstrip detector is necessary, based on the timeframes over which the experiments are expected to take, is debatable. A lab instrument incorporating a PSD might do the job adequately. Track record - no description given about outcomes of previous Australian Synchrotron experiments. Also, no publications arising from four AS allocations in 2008, so no basis on which to give a score above 0."

If we were allowed the right of response (which we're not) I would say to the reviewer on proposal 1, there's a 600 word limit! As for outcomes being 'mediocre'... well, see below.

and to reviewer on proposal 2, the four allocations were not all for this work, you dork. Oh, and a lab source? Are you joking? We couldn't get the information needed from the Stanford synchrotron, how are we going to get it with a lab source? Idiot. No description, because - oh yes, there it is again - 600 word limit. Fool.

Still, the overwhelming message I'm getting is that it's going to be hard to get time in the near future without publishing. Which itself is hard because often you don't get all the info you need in the first visit, also most of the work I have done has been with PhD students, who are more concerned about writing their thesis than writing papers - the only measure of 'success'.


Contrast these comments I received, with some others.

This about one of the chair's proposals:

"XX has a track record second to none..."

And this about someone whose beamtime was cut short last time:

"This proposal should not have needed to be resubmitted, if they lost a substantial portion of time resulting little data being collected it should have been passed over to the next round."

In my proposal 1 I wrote that it was granted time in the last round but because of a student's visa issue we could not take it up - and got slammed for not having done more lab work.

It is so frustrating. But I don't know whether to complain or not. Or who to. I guess I'll wait and see if the scores turn out to be a problem.

I guess I could always do what other people do, and get one of your collaborators to submit the proposal so it doesn't go against your name. But that's cheating, isn't it? {sigh}

Home again

Well I arrived home from Chicago this morning. We had two rather tight connections at San Francisco and then at Auckland (because one of my colleagues' bag failed to arrive) but all is well now, for me at least. Still, if you're going to be without luggage it's much better to have it happen going home than going away.

In my absence I think the NZ summer disappeared. Which is a shame, because it'll make finishing my painting job a little bit harder. I don't even want to think about it right now - feeling rather grotty after some 48 hours with only a few hours' sleep here and there - and most of that on a plane.

Still, tomorrow is the only day left this week that I'll have to go in to work. Hopefully I'm coherent by then.

Cccold Chicccago

Just as well I've spent a total of less than about half an hour outside since I arrived here - it's bl***y freezing here. There was snow on the ground on the day we arrived, but the following day it had all pretty much melted as the temperature got a smidgen above freezing, now it is clear skies and all the puddles have frozen (but no more snowfall).

Boy am I glad I live in Wellington with such a mild climate!

The experiments haven't gone as well this time as last; although we are managing to iron out some of the problems and more importantly, understand some of the issues with regards to interpreting the results (or the artefacts, as the case may be).

Each time we come here they have made some improvement or other to the beamline. This time we don't have to change detectors to change the kind of measurement we do (reflectivity or diffraction).

The latest problem we are having is a computer one: the network between the computer that we are doing the analysis on, and the computer that has all the data stored on it, is getting rather flaky. Not only is this really annoying, it's affecting our ability to do the experiments. If we can't analyse the data, we don't know if it's good (yay) or bad (so we know to go back and repeat things).

All in all we have had to deal with a lot of frustrating things and it's taking its toll on the group dynamics... anyway we are in the home stretch now, only 3 nights and 2 days to go.