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kareinaWhile I've made an effort to post here on a semi-regular basis recently, I haven't been doing the sort of daily progress reports which were so helpful keeping me on-track and working whilst doing my PhD. Today's arrival of the "testamur*" in the mail, combined with the vague feeling that I'm not making fast enough progress on my work (both for the post-doc position for which I am being paid, and for completing papers from my PhD project) prompts me to resolve to return to doing daily progress reports. It is my hope that the need to report "no progress today" if I don't do anything will, once again, keep me actually doing things. Therefore, to that end:
Today I returned to a task I should have completed three weeks ago. My last session using the microprobe to analyze my data was the 25th and 26th of January. Once we do the analysis the procedure should be 1) organize the results by phase, rearrange the columns so that the results are in the correct order, and then run the data for each phase through a program called "normj" which converts the microprobe results into a listing of the number of cations of each element present in the mineral based upon the crystal structure for that element and then creates a file ready to run through MatLab to create the various graphs and do other tasks necessary to interpret the data 2) look at the results, determine if any of the data is "bad" (e.g. has too much or too little of one or more of the elements, which tends to happen if the electrons hit two different phases at once, rather than a single phase) and if so delete them. 3) run MatLab and look at the resultant graphs etc. 4) decide what it all means and add the data to the growing collection 5) repeat for the other phases in the experiment. Alas, though I did try to do it straight away after the probe session, I encountered a problem wherin the results I was getting from normj for the micas gave results which are nothing like the data generated by a previous member of the research team for the experiments he did years ago. As in his micas have ~8.8 cations per formula unit, and normj is calculating ~6.8 for the micas I analyzed. Including the ones from his experiments (which we did some re-analysis on because the microprobe we have now is much better than the one which was available back when he did his research here). Clearly I've not been using the correct settings in normj, and after trying quite a number of different possibilities, I decided to try it again using his data, and still I'm getting ~6.8 cations compared to the ~8.8 that his post-normj file reports. Given all of those complications, it is no surprise that I didn't complete this task weeks ago. Today I gave it another try, then gave up and e-mailed my boss asking what I'm doing wrong. A bit later he stopped by my office with a packet of mail for me (including the above mentioned testamur!) and I asked him about it in person. I showed him the files and ran the data through normj (using one of the options available) and he agreed that it isn't working right, and asked me to please send him the files so that he can play with it later and get back to me. That much has been accomplished.
This evening, after taking a walk with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t and helping him make a pizza for his dinner (and setting some bread dough aside to bake rolls in the morning for breakfast), I returned to uni, where I added a few more words to the draft of the paper summarizing my PhD research, and did some work on a figure to illustrate that part of the text (the version of the figure as it appears in my thesis isn't suitable for publication, but the revised version is just about ready to go). That paper is now up to ~2500 words, and it shouldn't exceed ~5000 total. I'm not really certain how I'm going to get the rest of the information that I think needs to be there into that small of a space, but I guess that is why they call it a "draft".
I've done some work--this month's average hours per week spent on uni work is currently at 32.8 hrs/week, I've read my 1000 words a day (40 days in a row, this time), now I just need to go home and do my yoga and get some sleep before tomorrow, when I hope to accomplish more and encounter fewer challenges to the tasks at hand.
*I learned a new word today. I'm accustomed to the word "diploma" for the offical pice of paper one obtains from a university proclaiming to all and sundry that one has comepleted one's degreen. However, the letter accompanying mine refered to it as a "testamur", which, according to the on-line OED is:
testamur: In University use: A certificate from the examiners that a candidate has satisfied them. Also, A certificate generally.
1840 J. T. J. HEWLETT P. Priggins xvii, Balamson and Drinkwater..though it certainly was a ‘shave’, got their testamurs.
1860 J. BATEMAN D. Wilson I. vii. 115 The result was a refusal to grant the required testamur.
1863 W. C. DOWDING Life & Corr. G. Calixtus xxvii. 269 A formal testamur from the leading Lutherans at the Congress.
1897 ESCOTT Soc. Transf. Vict. Age xiv. 182 In the place of the ‘Smalls’ testamur..the special student was tested closely.
Today I returned to a task I should have completed three weeks ago. My last session using the microprobe to analyze my data was the 25th and 26th of January. Once we do the analysis the procedure should be 1) organize the results by phase, rearrange the columns so that the results are in the correct order, and then run the data for each phase through a program called "normj" which converts the microprobe results into a listing of the number of cations of each element present in the mineral based upon the crystal structure for that element and then creates a file ready to run through MatLab to create the various graphs and do other tasks necessary to interpret the data 2) look at the results, determine if any of the data is "bad" (e.g. has too much or too little of one or more of the elements, which tends to happen if the electrons hit two different phases at once, rather than a single phase) and if so delete them. 3) run MatLab and look at the resultant graphs etc. 4) decide what it all means and add the data to the growing collection 5) repeat for the other phases in the experiment. Alas, though I did try to do it straight away after the probe session, I encountered a problem wherin the results I was getting from normj for the micas gave results which are nothing like the data generated by a previous member of the research team for the experiments he did years ago. As in his micas have ~8.8 cations per formula unit, and normj is calculating ~6.8 for the micas I analyzed. Including the ones from his experiments (which we did some re-analysis on because the microprobe we have now is much better than the one which was available back when he did his research here). Clearly I've not been using the correct settings in normj, and after trying quite a number of different possibilities, I decided to try it again using his data, and still I'm getting ~6.8 cations compared to the ~8.8 that his post-normj file reports. Given all of those complications, it is no surprise that I didn't complete this task weeks ago. Today I gave it another try, then gave up and e-mailed my boss asking what I'm doing wrong. A bit later he stopped by my office with a packet of mail for me (including the above mentioned testamur!) and I asked him about it in person. I showed him the files and ran the data through normj (using one of the options available) and he agreed that it isn't working right, and asked me to please send him the files so that he can play with it later and get back to me. That much has been accomplished.
This evening, after taking a walk with
clovis_t and helping him make a pizza for his dinner (and setting some bread dough aside to bake rolls in the morning for breakfast), I returned to uni, where I added a few more words to the draft of the paper summarizing my PhD research, and did some work on a figure to illustrate that part of the text (the version of the figure as it appears in my thesis isn't suitable for publication, but the revised version is just about ready to go). That paper is now up to ~2500 words, and it shouldn't exceed ~5000 total. I'm not really certain how I'm going to get the rest of the information that I think needs to be there into that small of a space, but I guess that is why they call it a "draft". I've done some work--this month's average hours per week spent on uni work is currently at 32.8 hrs/week, I've read my 1000 words a day (40 days in a row, this time), now I just need to go home and do my yoga and get some sleep before tomorrow, when I hope to accomplish more and encounter fewer challenges to the tasks at hand.
*I learned a new word today. I'm accustomed to the word "diploma" for the offical pice of paper one obtains from a university proclaiming to all and sundry that one has comepleted one's degreen. However, the letter accompanying mine refered to it as a "testamur", which, according to the on-line OED is:
testamur: In University use: A certificate from the examiners that a candidate has satisfied them. Also, A certificate generally.
1840 J. T. J. HEWLETT P. Priggins xvii, Balamson and Drinkwater..though it certainly was a ‘shave’, got their testamurs.
1860 J. BATEMAN D. Wilson I. vii. 115 The result was a refusal to grant the required testamur.
1863 W. C. DOWDING Life & Corr. G. Calixtus xxvii. 269 A formal testamur from the leading Lutherans at the Congress.
1897 ESCOTT Soc. Transf. Vict. Age xiv. 182 In the place of the ‘Smalls’ testamur..the special student was tested closely.
