I love it when that happens
Jan. 29th, 2010 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaAll too often recently I've experienced instances when someone pushed the "fast forward" button and it was suddenly hours later than I thought it was, but all I had to show for the missing time was the pleasure one obtains from reading e-mail/livejournal/facebook/blogs/etc. and not much progress happened on the work I was meant to be doing.
Today, on the other hand, I experienced that sensation while working. I've been procrastinating on learning to use Perple_X to create Schreinemakers diagrams for a very long time now. In part because I have only been able to understand the simplest versions of said diagrams when I see them in textbooks, but get lost looking at the full versions of them which show up in the geologic literature (where they often look like a plate full of spaghetti).
Yesterday I saw a paper which had one of those diagrams in figure 2 and one of the sort of diagrams I've been making with Perple_X all along in figure 8. So this morning I e-mailed the author of the paper and asked him if he'd be so kind as to share the files with which he created figure 2 (explaining that they way I learned to use the program to to the other diagrams was by first using someone else's data to duplicate a diagram they'd published, then editing the files to reflect my own data). The author replied very soon after I wrote to him, with the files I needed and a description of which menu choices were needed to make the diagram. He also pointed out that the diagram I was about to learn to make is much easier than the ones I've been making all along.
He was correct. It took only a few minutes of playing with the program to duplicate the diagram from his figure two, and from there very little time at all to learn to make one which applies to the experiments I've been doing. I was having so much fun first playing with the program, and then playing with the resultant diagram in coreldraw (editing it so that the various lines are colour coordinated and it is easier to distinguish one from another) that five hours slipped by without my noticing them. This brings today's total to more than eight hours work, despite having spent more time than I should have done reading mail etc. this morning.
Time to call it a day and go for a walk--my poor legs are cramping up from doing nothing today.
Today, on the other hand, I experienced that sensation while working. I've been procrastinating on learning to use Perple_X to create Schreinemakers diagrams for a very long time now. In part because I have only been able to understand the simplest versions of said diagrams when I see them in textbooks, but get lost looking at the full versions of them which show up in the geologic literature (where they often look like a plate full of spaghetti).
Yesterday I saw a paper which had one of those diagrams in figure 2 and one of the sort of diagrams I've been making with Perple_X all along in figure 8. So this morning I e-mailed the author of the paper and asked him if he'd be so kind as to share the files with which he created figure 2 (explaining that they way I learned to use the program to to the other diagrams was by first using someone else's data to duplicate a diagram they'd published, then editing the files to reflect my own data). The author replied very soon after I wrote to him, with the files I needed and a description of which menu choices were needed to make the diagram. He also pointed out that the diagram I was about to learn to make is much easier than the ones I've been making all along.
He was correct. It took only a few minutes of playing with the program to duplicate the diagram from his figure two, and from there very little time at all to learn to make one which applies to the experiments I've been doing. I was having so much fun first playing with the program, and then playing with the resultant diagram in coreldraw (editing it so that the various lines are colour coordinated and it is easier to distinguish one from another) that five hours slipped by without my noticing them. This brings today's total to more than eight hours work, despite having spent more time than I should have done reading mail etc. this morning.
Time to call it a day and go for a walk--my poor legs are cramping up from doing nothing today.
