day one of the workshop

[kareina]

The workshop for which I flew to Prague is a "how to" for the program iolite, which was created to take data with a time-stamp (like a laser-ablation ICP-MS system like I am now managing) and "reduce it". Today we learned how to manually look at the graphs of the data and tell the program which "peaks" are from analyses of standard reference materials (and which standard reference material), which are from analyses of the unknowns, and which bits of data are the "background" noise that exists when there is no sample flowing through the system at all.

Then he showed us how to automate these tasks for large data sets, and begun showing us how and when to use some of the many built-in "data reduction schemes", with hints as to how to develop our own. In theory I could have learned the same thing by reading the manual, but I also strongly suspect that attending this course is a MUCH faster way to learn the same information, so it is totally worth flying over here, even if it means missing out on a lovely summer weekend at home.

The class was scheduled to run to 17:00, but we wound up breaking a bit earlier than that, since most of us were looking pretty vacant that late in the day--it could have been only information overload, but I suspect that the heat, which had been building in the classroom all day, was also a factor.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to go only till 15:00, and I need to leave a bit before then no matter what, as my flight is at 16:55, and the taxi web page says I should be picked up two hours before my flight.

In other news: when I was a little kid I desperately wanted to sleep in a hammock, just like Gilligan and the others. However, in all these years an opportunity hasn't presented itself, till this trip. Here, the guest bed is a hammock. My child-self would be so pleased. I wish there was a way to tell her that she got her wish.

Comments

[katerit.livejournal.com]

That's a good wish to have come true. When I was growing up we had these large Guatemalan-weave hammocks and would put them up when camping (as well as at home). I would sleep in a hammock while camping, since I don't like tents, and I loved that.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

What a cool camping experience. I would ask if you ever got rained on whislt camping in a hammock, but I know you lived in California, so I am guessing the answer is "what is that?"...