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Entry tags:
capsules and fabric and travel...
Today I finally purchased my train tickets for next week's trip to Zürich for the writing workshop. While there I determined that yes, it would make more sense to purchase plane tickets for the confrence in Vienna in May than to take the train--the train is a 12 hour trip for about twice the cost of a flight. Now I just need to find the energy to wrestle with airline web pages.
While I was at the train station I decided to head to the fabric store that is just across the street. This was the first time I'd been in there, and I was quite impressed with the quantity of natural fibres they have available--silk, linen, and wool. I managed to talk myself out of getting anything on the rolls of fabric, even though the prices were on par with what I've seen in Berkely, San Franscisco, and Sydney in the past year, but the bins of remanants were a bit too tempting. They have them sorted by fibre type (yay!) and I found several nice, Medieval looking wools, in the bin labeled "1.55 €". When I went to pay, it turns out that the remnants are priced by mass, not length (which makes it easy on them, just dump it on the scale. So the roughly 7 or 8 meters of 150 cm wide wool (three different colours/patterns) came to only 36 € total. I'm looking forward to measuring it later and working out exactly what I did pay per meter...
Today's big scare was opening up the collection of salt/graphite/MgO in which my little gold capsules were nested for the experiment and not finding the capsules. I broke it into very small pieces and ruffled through the pile several times, to no avail. I looked at the pile and decided there was less MgO than I thought there should be (that is the part which is in direct contact with the capsules), so I went and checked the little padded chamber under the piston-driven machine with which we push the nest out of the large metal "bomb" in which it gets subjected to pressure during the experimental run. Nope, nothing got left there. Checked the trash can nearest that machine, on the off chance that something had been left there and someone else tossed it. Nope, nothing. Checked the pile of graphite/salt/MgO debris on the piece of paper again. Still no little gold capsules (recall that by "little" I mean a pre-deformed size of 2 mm diameter, and not more than 6 mm long). Checked the padded catching box under the piston machine again. Nope. Checked the trash can again. Nothing. Checked the pile of debris on the paper again. Nope. Checked the floor in that area. Nothing. Gave up, carefully folded the debris into the paper and put it into a box in my drawer of experiments and went looking for a co-worker. Couldn't find him either. E-mailed said co-worker a worried note asking him to please check with me when next he is in--that I'd like nothing better than for someone to say "Are you blind? They are right here".
Shortly thereafter![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t came in to uni, and I told him of my plight, and persuaded him to come be a second set of eyes. Showed him the machine (still nothing), and got out the paper, carefully unfolded it, and demonstrated how most of the bits are chunks of compressed salt, and too small to hide the capsules, even if they'd been in contact with them, whcih they weren't. Then, as I pushed aside a really small bit of MgO, pointing out that it was too small to hide the capsules, I suddenly spotted a small hard white thing (the MgO is whiter than is the salt), poked at it, and realized that it was one of my elusive gold capsules. Poked around a bit more and found the second. Yay, clovis_t to the rescue--the darn things weren't there before, I swear it, but they came back when he came to look for them...
Other good news for the day includes receiving the check from the Tasmanian shipping company to pay for the repair of my trike tire. This makes me very happy. Other than the one damaged item I was pretty pleased with their service, and wouldn't have liked it if they'd tried to get out of making that good.
Other work progress includes creating another slide for my talk for the April confrence in France. Yes, one. When one wishes to add a scale bar to the photos, and wants the photos to all be in the same scale these things take longer than when one only wants the slide to be pretty.
It is only 18:30, and I think I'm going to be different and head home and enjoy some non-uni time with the rest of the day. I'm currently averaging 36.7 hours/week of uni work (not counting any breaks to check mail or heat up food or any run to the toilet), so I think I can afford the break.
While I was at the train station I decided to head to the fabric store that is just across the street. This was the first time I'd been in there, and I was quite impressed with the quantity of natural fibres they have available--silk, linen, and wool. I managed to talk myself out of getting anything on the rolls of fabric, even though the prices were on par with what I've seen in Berkely, San Franscisco, and Sydney in the past year, but the bins of remanants were a bit too tempting. They have them sorted by fibre type (yay!) and I found several nice, Medieval looking wools, in the bin labeled "1.55 €". When I went to pay, it turns out that the remnants are priced by mass, not length (which makes it easy on them, just dump it on the scale. So the roughly 7 or 8 meters of 150 cm wide wool (three different colours/patterns) came to only 36 € total. I'm looking forward to measuring it later and working out exactly what I did pay per meter...
Today's big scare was opening up the collection of salt/graphite/MgO in which my little gold capsules were nested for the experiment and not finding the capsules. I broke it into very small pieces and ruffled through the pile several times, to no avail. I looked at the pile and decided there was less MgO than I thought there should be (that is the part which is in direct contact with the capsules), so I went and checked the little padded chamber under the piston-driven machine with which we push the nest out of the large metal "bomb" in which it gets subjected to pressure during the experimental run. Nope, nothing got left there. Checked the trash can nearest that machine, on the off chance that something had been left there and someone else tossed it. Nope, nothing. Checked the pile of graphite/salt/MgO debris on the piece of paper again. Still no little gold capsules (recall that by "little" I mean a pre-deformed size of 2 mm diameter, and not more than 6 mm long). Checked the padded catching box under the piston machine again. Nope. Checked the trash can again. Nothing. Checked the pile of debris on the paper again. Nope. Checked the floor in that area. Nothing. Gave up, carefully folded the debris into the paper and put it into a box in my drawer of experiments and went looking for a co-worker. Couldn't find him either. E-mailed said co-worker a worried note asking him to please check with me when next he is in--that I'd like nothing better than for someone to say "Are you blind? They are right here".
Shortly thereafter
clovis_t came in to uni, and I told him of my plight, and persuaded him to come be a second set of eyes. Showed him the machine (still nothing), and got out the paper, carefully unfolded it, and demonstrated how most of the bits are chunks of compressed salt, and too small to hide the capsules, even if they'd been in contact with them, whcih they weren't. Then, as I pushed aside a really small bit of MgO, pointing out that it was too small to hide the capsules, I suddenly spotted a small hard white thing (the MgO is whiter than is the salt), poked at it, and realized that it was one of my elusive gold capsules. Poked around a bit more and found the second. Yay, clovis_t to the rescue--the darn things weren't there before, I swear it, but they came back when he came to look for them...Other good news for the day includes receiving the check from the Tasmanian shipping company to pay for the repair of my trike tire. This makes me very happy. Other than the one damaged item I was pretty pleased with their service, and wouldn't have liked it if they'd tried to get out of making that good.
Other work progress includes creating another slide for my talk for the April confrence in France. Yes, one. When one wishes to add a scale bar to the photos, and wants the photos to all be in the same scale these things take longer than when one only wants the slide to be pretty.
It is only 18:30, and I think I'm going to be different and head home and enjoy some non-uni time with the rest of the day. I'm currently averaging 36.7 hours/week of uni work (not counting any breaks to check mail or heat up food or any run to the toilet), so I think I can afford the break.