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Feb. 5th, 2010 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaI've been busy the last couple of days. Wednesday we started my next experiment running, which process took most of the afternoon. Since my boss was busy one of my other colleagues helped me get the machinery doing what it need to do. I *might* have been able to manage on my own, but it has been a couple of months since I've seen this, and there are an awful lot of steps required, some of which involve an old dos-prompt program. Because of the erosion incident wherein I destroyed the sample from the last experiment I decided to run this one at the same conditions as the last one. However, when I looked in the lab's log book to see what oil pressure in the piston cylinder corresponds to the pressure I needed I miss read my boss's handwriting. Instead of reading it as 139.9, I saw the not-quite closed final figure as a 2, so we set the machine to run at an oil pressure of 139.2. This is not really a problem, since the one corresponds to a pressure on the sample of 2.20 GPa, and the other to 2.19 GPa, which, within error of our measurements, is pretty much the same thing, but it could have been a problem. I must remember to check the typed notes on my computer, or my own lab book, which duplicates the information in the official lab book any time I need to look up numbers--the Italians (and, I gather, most of Europe) forms some numbers a bit differently than we do in the US (especially 1, 7 and 9) and it is easy to get confused as to what the numbers are.
Wednesday evening![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t and I went out to the SCA meeting. Alas, once again, our seneschal didn't make it (he's been busy with his wife and new daughter only just having moved up to join him--they had been doing the long distance thing), but, undaunted, the rest of us have chosen a tentative date for our first local event. If we do hold something on the first weekend of May, would anyone reading my words come to Milan for it? At the meeting I finished the construction of clovis_t's new herringbone wool tunic, and started the establishment for the cuffs, using the same style of Carolingian knot-work as I have used previously to paint the wooden box in which I store my armour. It is an effective style, and I regret that we lost the scan of the photograph from which we got the pattern during a disk reformatting session.
Today one of my colleagues summoned a bunch of us down to the lab to help him celebrate his finding a new phase in the results of their latest experiment. Apparently they first found it in another experiment, and it being something they didn't recognize, they made up a new batch of stuff for the next experiment whcih contains only those ingredients as in the new phase. Sure enough, they grew even more of that phase in this sample. They showed it off on the TEM, whcih is a tool I've not yet had a reason to use, but which I found quite impressive, since it can be used to determine the crystal structure of the sample. It is amazing how small the detail we can resolve with such tools. And they've got a program on the TEM computer which draws a diagram of the crystal structure as they work it out. You know those lovely diagrams which show up in chemistry books, with circles and sticks and diamonds to represent the various atoms and molecules. The sort that would have once take people many hours to draw by hand are now generated in real time with the push of a single button.
After that partyclovis_t and I walked to one of the local grocery stores to stock up on a few things, and I then spent the first part of the evening playing in the kitchen. First I mixed up a yummy pie-crust dough using real butter for the fat, and egg in with the water for the liquid. I then made myself a spinach with zucchini and carrot tart, using just enough egg and milk (an a hint of parmesan cheese) to hold it together. While it was baking I made up a small batch of pasties (beef, potato, carrot, garlic, and a bit of grated cheese) for him. Then I steamed the rest of the huge bag of spinach I'd purchased and turned it into a green sauce (with ground almonds, milk, parmesan cheese, garlic butter, and spices, this time). Once I'd cleaned up that mess I mixed up more ground almonds with cornstarch and milk and boiled them in the microwave to make a savoury pudding, since I've been hungry for one of those for a while. I then had time to get all of my food into the fridge for tomorrow (it being way too late in the day for me to be interested in actually eating anything) and for us to do our yoga for the day before his pasties came out of the oven.
At that point I decided to return to uni to try to make some progress on that paper I had wanted to send to my advisor for comment by the first of this month. However , once I turned on my computer I saw a note from the editor of Tournaments Illuminated, letting me know that the article I'd just submitted didn't meet their requirements because one can't have more than 15% of an article as quotes. Since the article, written in conjunction with a reigning Queen, focuses upon the inspirational quotes she gave her champion before each round of the tournament he won, it is rather quote heavy. It hadn't occurred to me that would be an issue, and therefore I hadn't noticed that part of their submission guidelines. So, rather than doing the Uni article, I returned to this one, adding more in the way of introduction and conclusion (and, truthfully, I like it better now) and I sent it off to HRM for further comment before we submit the article again. So, why am I neglecting the paper summarizing my PhD research in favour of this one? Possibly because I feel guilty. I wrote the first draft of the SCA article right after October Crown, and She'd sent me back her comments on that draft back in November. And I didn't even reply to that e-mail, but instead focused upon getting things ready for the confrence I attended in November. Then I took off for a month of travel, and did I deal with the SCA article while I was enjoying several weeks off hanging out with SCA friends? No, I did not. I thought of the article once or twice, but never when I was near my computer. And, in the mean time, my personal in-box filled up, and the letter with the comments to the last draft fell off the end of the screen, out of sight, and out of mind. It wasn't until yesterday that I finally made the time to actually take the article and e-mail it off to the editor (after checking to see if HRM would be willing to do the printing and posting of the required hard-copy, since I've been having technical issues printing here). I don't normally leave things "to do" sit in my in box that many months.
Tomorrow (ok, later today by the clock) I had better spend the day getting lots of uni work accomplished, as we've got a D&D game planned with the SCA family who live across town, and on the way to their place we want to stop by a couple of stores to pick up things we haven't seen available in the stores in our neighbourhood. This weekend I'd like to actually finish up that article on my thesis work and send it to my advisor in Australia because this coming week I'll be off at a short-course, and I don't know yet if I will have e-mail access whilst I'm out there. (Some hotels charge extra for that service, others are more reasonable.)
Wednesday evening
clovis_t and I went out to the SCA meeting. Alas, once again, our seneschal didn't make it (he's been busy with his wife and new daughter only just having moved up to join him--they had been doing the long distance thing), but, undaunted, the rest of us have chosen a tentative date for our first local event. If we do hold something on the first weekend of May, would anyone reading my words come to Milan for it? At the meeting I finished the construction of clovis_t's new herringbone wool tunic, and started the establishment for the cuffs, using the same style of Carolingian knot-work as I have used previously to paint the wooden box in which I store my armour. It is an effective style, and I regret that we lost the scan of the photograph from which we got the pattern during a disk reformatting session.Today one of my colleagues summoned a bunch of us down to the lab to help him celebrate his finding a new phase in the results of their latest experiment. Apparently they first found it in another experiment, and it being something they didn't recognize, they made up a new batch of stuff for the next experiment whcih contains only those ingredients as in the new phase. Sure enough, they grew even more of that phase in this sample. They showed it off on the TEM, whcih is a tool I've not yet had a reason to use, but which I found quite impressive, since it can be used to determine the crystal structure of the sample. It is amazing how small the detail we can resolve with such tools. And they've got a program on the TEM computer which draws a diagram of the crystal structure as they work it out. You know those lovely diagrams which show up in chemistry books, with circles and sticks and diamonds to represent the various atoms and molecules. The sort that would have once take people many hours to draw by hand are now generated in real time with the push of a single button.
After that party
clovis_t and I walked to one of the local grocery stores to stock up on a few things, and I then spent the first part of the evening playing in the kitchen. First I mixed up a yummy pie-crust dough using real butter for the fat, and egg in with the water for the liquid. I then made myself a spinach with zucchini and carrot tart, using just enough egg and milk (an a hint of parmesan cheese) to hold it together. While it was baking I made up a small batch of pasties (beef, potato, carrot, garlic, and a bit of grated cheese) for him. Then I steamed the rest of the huge bag of spinach I'd purchased and turned it into a green sauce (with ground almonds, milk, parmesan cheese, garlic butter, and spices, this time). Once I'd cleaned up that mess I mixed up more ground almonds with cornstarch and milk and boiled them in the microwave to make a savoury pudding, since I've been hungry for one of those for a while. I then had time to get all of my food into the fridge for tomorrow (it being way too late in the day for me to be interested in actually eating anything) and for us to do our yoga for the day before his pasties came out of the oven.At that point I decided to return to uni to try to make some progress on that paper I had wanted to send to my advisor for comment by the first of this month. However , once I turned on my computer I saw a note from the editor of Tournaments Illuminated, letting me know that the article I'd just submitted didn't meet their requirements because one can't have more than 15% of an article as quotes. Since the article, written in conjunction with a reigning Queen, focuses upon the inspirational quotes she gave her champion before each round of the tournament he won, it is rather quote heavy. It hadn't occurred to me that would be an issue, and therefore I hadn't noticed that part of their submission guidelines. So, rather than doing the Uni article, I returned to this one, adding more in the way of introduction and conclusion (and, truthfully, I like it better now) and I sent it off to HRM for further comment before we submit the article again. So, why am I neglecting the paper summarizing my PhD research in favour of this one? Possibly because I feel guilty. I wrote the first draft of the SCA article right after October Crown, and She'd sent me back her comments on that draft back in November. And I didn't even reply to that e-mail, but instead focused upon getting things ready for the confrence I attended in November. Then I took off for a month of travel, and did I deal with the SCA article while I was enjoying several weeks off hanging out with SCA friends? No, I did not. I thought of the article once or twice, but never when I was near my computer. And, in the mean time, my personal in-box filled up, and the letter with the comments to the last draft fell off the end of the screen, out of sight, and out of mind. It wasn't until yesterday that I finally made the time to actually take the article and e-mail it off to the editor (after checking to see if HRM would be willing to do the printing and posting of the required hard-copy, since I've been having technical issues printing here). I don't normally leave things "to do" sit in my in box that many months.
Tomorrow (ok, later today by the clock) I had better spend the day getting lots of uni work accomplished, as we've got a D&D game planned with the SCA family who live across town, and on the way to their place we want to stop by a couple of stores to pick up things we haven't seen available in the stores in our neighbourhood. This weekend I'd like to actually finish up that article on my thesis work and send it to my advisor in Australia because this coming week I'll be off at a short-course, and I don't know yet if I will have e-mail access whilst I'm out there. (Some hotels charge extra for that service, others are more reasonable.)
