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I can see the end of the chapter from here
Aug. 3rd, 2023 10:52 pmThere is still lots to do, but it is 23:00, so I am putting it down for tonight, but I begin to hope that I will be done this week...
a fun distraction
Jul. 28th, 2023 07:31 pmBecause my thesis chapter on the Swedish steatite (soapstone) artefacts in our museums is organised by Province, I thought it would be nice to include the Province borders on the map showing the locations the artefacts were found. However, I am using GoogleEarth for my GIS stuff (because I have it, and I haven't made the time to find out if I have access to a good GIS program through Durham, and I don't want to take the time to learn it if I do--those things have steep learning curves--I played enough with one at UTAS and another at LTU to know that they aren't exactly intuitive, and GoogleEarth is pretty much).
The downside is that while Google earth will show national borders, they no longer have Swedish Provinces. My first work around was downloading an .svg file of all of the Swedish Provinces, and, for each figure I would turn the relevant Province dark brown, and leave the rest off white, and have a small inset showing where in Sweden the close-up map is.
That seemed plenty, for weeks. Yesterday I got far enough along in building my spreadsheet of artefacts to have consistent names for what sort of artefact each is, what time period (if any) it is recorded as being, lat-long, etc. that I thought I would see if I could import that into google, and if so, what happens.
It turns out that one can then set it to have special symbols based on one field, and symbol colour based on another, automatically. I had been using a four-symbol system all along [1 = star (good location, V age), 2 = circle (parish location, V age), 3= diamond (good location, other age), 4 = square (parish location, other age)], but those symbols in Google Earth came only in white.
But if you import a csv file and apply those rules, suddenly one can get a range of colours for those shapes (red = Stone Age, pink = Bronze Age, Blue = Viking Age, light blue = Iron Age, green = Middle Ages, and yellow = not specified). I like the effect. A lot. I may also try doing the colour coding instead for types of artefacts, but I haven't decided yet.
Before I was putting each artefact into google earth as I wrote it up for the thesis, and had visible on the map at once only those artefacts that go with a given figure. However, most figures have the map at a zoom where one or more artefacts in a neighbouring Province would also be visible. When the CSV file imported it let me automatically group artefacts in folders based on their symbol. Before I had been grouping them in folders based on their Province. This means it would be considerably harder with the new version to have only the artefacts from a single Province visible at a time, and it occurs to me that it isn't actually needed--there is value in seeing where nearby artefacts that happen to be over the border are with respect to the ones which appear on this figure.
But then, to make it even more clear that the map symbols that don't have arrows attached to their photo and museum number aren't included in a given figure because they belong to a different Province, it would be nice to show those borders.
So today I spent a chunk of the day in CorelDraw, taking one to four provinces at a time and exporting their outlines as a png file. Then I imported the image into GoogleEarth as an Overlay. I first tried the whole country's worth of Provinces at once. However, we get a little too far north, which makes for a bit of distortion for image overlay--if you get a good fit to the borders and coastline in the north then they don't line up properly in the south, and vice versa.
But doing them a little at a time, I was able to get a pretty good placement, and now I have all of the borders imported into GoogleEarth, and I am pretty happy with the result.
PS does anyone know how to get the DW image embedding working with images from Google drive? In theory if I past the image address into the url spot in this code (with pointy brackets before and after)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kv1lw5aLFhzGR44WIj8DsgibrtWd0TPO/preview
Neither did it work if I used the code as google provided it.
The downside is that while Google earth will show national borders, they no longer have Swedish Provinces. My first work around was downloading an .svg file of all of the Swedish Provinces, and, for each figure I would turn the relevant Province dark brown, and leave the rest off white, and have a small inset showing where in Sweden the close-up map is.
That seemed plenty, for weeks. Yesterday I got far enough along in building my spreadsheet of artefacts to have consistent names for what sort of artefact each is, what time period (if any) it is recorded as being, lat-long, etc. that I thought I would see if I could import that into google, and if so, what happens.
It turns out that one can then set it to have special symbols based on one field, and symbol colour based on another, automatically. I had been using a four-symbol system all along [1 = star (good location, V age), 2 = circle (parish location, V age), 3= diamond (good location, other age), 4 = square (parish location, other age)], but those symbols in Google Earth came only in white.
But if you import a csv file and apply those rules, suddenly one can get a range of colours for those shapes (red = Stone Age, pink = Bronze Age, Blue = Viking Age, light blue = Iron Age, green = Middle Ages, and yellow = not specified). I like the effect. A lot. I may also try doing the colour coding instead for types of artefacts, but I haven't decided yet.
Before I was putting each artefact into google earth as I wrote it up for the thesis, and had visible on the map at once only those artefacts that go with a given figure. However, most figures have the map at a zoom where one or more artefacts in a neighbouring Province would also be visible. When the CSV file imported it let me automatically group artefacts in folders based on their symbol. Before I had been grouping them in folders based on their Province. This means it would be considerably harder with the new version to have only the artefacts from a single Province visible at a time, and it occurs to me that it isn't actually needed--there is value in seeing where nearby artefacts that happen to be over the border are with respect to the ones which appear on this figure.
But then, to make it even more clear that the map symbols that don't have arrows attached to their photo and museum number aren't included in a given figure because they belong to a different Province, it would be nice to show those borders.
So today I spent a chunk of the day in CorelDraw, taking one to four provinces at a time and exporting their outlines as a png file. Then I imported the image into GoogleEarth as an Overlay. I first tried the whole country's worth of Provinces at once. However, we get a little too far north, which makes for a bit of distortion for image overlay--if you get a good fit to the borders and coastline in the north then they don't line up properly in the south, and vice versa.
But doing them a little at a time, I was able to get a pretty good placement, and now I have all of the borders imported into GoogleEarth, and I am pretty happy with the result.
PS does anyone know how to get the DW image embedding working with images from Google drive? In theory if I past the image address into the url spot in this code (with pointy brackets before and after)
img src="IMAGE URL" alt="ALT TEXT", it should show up here. I have done this with images on FB many times, but those links all die after a week or three, and they don't stay in the post here. But if I use the address I can find for the Google Image, it doesn't work, even if I copy the one from the "embed this image" code that I managed to find on the google drive page for the image, which is this one:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kv1lw5aLFhzGR44WIj8DsgibrtWd0TPO/preview
Neither did it work if I used the code as google provided it.
now more than 25,000 words
May. 7th, 2023 12:42 amIf I don't get that funding I applied for, and I have to do this degree as a Master's thesis, the goal is 50,000 words. The document just past 25,000 words. This makes me feel better about the plan to stop doing data processing and writing up of sample results as of when we depart for Double Wars next week, and putting in something about how the data collection phase had been too ambitious for a Master's, and that further data processing is beyond the scope of this project, but the list of analyses run is retained to make it clear where one can pick up with "future work".
back in the swing of working
Apr. 11th, 2023 10:10 pmSince we got home from our road trip on Friday evening, but it was a holiday weekend my transition back into working was... gradual.
Saturday we got the car unloaded and did a bit of work spackling the wall in the cellar where we will put the new shower. It is starting to get closer to smooth--one day we will actually be able to get tile on it...
Sunday was mostly relaxing, baking, reading, naps, playing Qwerkel.
Monday, even though he was home from work, it being a holiday, I still managed nearly five hours of thesis related work while he watched movies or something in the next room.
Today I got off to a slow start. I worked a couple of hours, and then needed a nap, after which I managed about 45 minutes before getting hungry and spending nearly 2 hours on a lunch break (looking at FB while eating is fun, but tends to take more time than the eating part does), followed by another half hour work before I needed yet another nap. That last nap, however, did the trick, because when I sat down to work again (just after Keldor got home from work, and curled up to nap on the couch next to me) I managed nearly five uninterrupted hours of work (I didn't even notice him get up from his nap and go to the other room).
Then he came in and suggested that it was time for our daily sword practice, which we followed with a quick acroyoga session, a session of Bring Sally Up. I did abs/boat pose for about a third of it, then switched to pushups as I couldn't do more abs, then switched back to abs at the end as I couldn't do more pushups--he did the opposite, alternating two sets of pushups with one of abs. Clearly, it has been too long since we have done that workout, as we used to be able to one exercise for the whole three minutes, and then follow it with another set with the other body part. Then we did 15 minutes of yoga (Yin, with the twists boost).
The clock indicated that he should have gone to bed after yoga, but he'd been watching a documentary on Genghis Kahn, and wanted to see a bit more, so I returned to the computer and finished up the last few tasks for today's sample, bringing me to an 8.5 hour work day to take one sample from zero data processing done to figuring out which minerals are present and getting it completely written up, with one film, two figures done (one of which is the final scene in the video, the other of which is here).
( the sample write up, for anyone who wants to read it )
Just after I started typing this, he came in to say he was on his way to bed. Sleep sounds like a good idea, so I will leave this here. I promise not to share the whole thesis as I write it, but thought that a little glimpse would be reasonable to post, since, when not distracted by SCA stuff, thesis writing and the assiociated data processing is my main activity these days.
Saturday we got the car unloaded and did a bit of work spackling the wall in the cellar where we will put the new shower. It is starting to get closer to smooth--one day we will actually be able to get tile on it...
Sunday was mostly relaxing, baking, reading, naps, playing Qwerkel.
Monday, even though he was home from work, it being a holiday, I still managed nearly five hours of thesis related work while he watched movies or something in the next room.
Today I got off to a slow start. I worked a couple of hours, and then needed a nap, after which I managed about 45 minutes before getting hungry and spending nearly 2 hours on a lunch break (looking at FB while eating is fun, but tends to take more time than the eating part does), followed by another half hour work before I needed yet another nap. That last nap, however, did the trick, because when I sat down to work again (just after Keldor got home from work, and curled up to nap on the couch next to me) I managed nearly five uninterrupted hours of work (I didn't even notice him get up from his nap and go to the other room).
Then he came in and suggested that it was time for our daily sword practice, which we followed with a quick acroyoga session, a session of Bring Sally Up. I did abs/boat pose for about a third of it, then switched to pushups as I couldn't do more abs, then switched back to abs at the end as I couldn't do more pushups--he did the opposite, alternating two sets of pushups with one of abs. Clearly, it has been too long since we have done that workout, as we used to be able to one exercise for the whole three minutes, and then follow it with another set with the other body part. Then we did 15 minutes of yoga (Yin, with the twists boost).
The clock indicated that he should have gone to bed after yoga, but he'd been watching a documentary on Genghis Kahn, and wanted to see a bit more, so I returned to the computer and finished up the last few tasks for today's sample, bringing me to an 8.5 hour work day to take one sample from zero data processing done to figuring out which minerals are present and getting it completely written up, with one film, two figures done (one of which is the final scene in the video, the other of which is here).
( the sample write up, for anyone who wants to read it )
Just after I started typing this, he came in to say he was on his way to bed. Sleep sounds like a good idea, so I will leave this here. I promise not to share the whole thesis as I write it, but thought that a little glimpse would be reasonable to post, since, when not distracted by SCA stuff, thesis writing and the assiociated data processing is my main activity these days.
getting faster, when there aren't issues
Mar. 13th, 2023 11:15 pmWhen I first started doing data processing for the LA-ICP-MS trace element composition maps I made from samples from a variety of soapstone quarries, I didn't really know what the chemistry of the minerals likely to be present should look like in the results. The laser shoots at the sample, ablating a small bit of the surface into very tiny particles, which get carried up the tube on a stream of He gas, till it comes tot the ICP-MS, where it gets sent through the plasma, which is hot enough to ionize the particles, which continue rushing sorta forward, each ion deflected, just a little, depending on its mass, till they hit the counting wall, where, if the door is open for the right spot for the mass of a given ion, it will pass through the door and get counted. The door opening location cycles back and forth across the various points that correspond to the the masses that the operator (that would be me) told it were interesting for the experiment. The ICP-MS happily counts all the ions of each mass that it was looking for, cycling rapidly through the mass numbers, till the experiment is done. Then it spits out a report saying how many ions of each mass it saw every second.
That is when the data processing starts--I take that list, drop it into a program designed to handle large amounts of time-stamped data, follow that with the "laser log file", which explains when the laser was and was not firing, for how long, at what strength, and what spot size, and then help the program decide from the names in both files which bits of the signal correspond to the standard reference materials, which bits correspond to the maps of minerals in soapstone, and which bits are "blanks" (the ICP-MS was counting, but nothing but He was coming up the line.
Then one applies a "data reduction scheme", wherein the program compares the counts per second results for each element of the standard reference materials I analysed with the reported composition, then uses that information to calculate the amounts of those elements in my sample, reporting it in parts per million (ppm).
Because I didn't ask the ICP-MS to count every possible element (due to how long it would take--one wants it to have more than one time through the list before the laser moves on to the next spot), and there are differences between how deeply the laser digs into each mineral and into each reference material with each shot, the reported ppm doesn't tend to add up to exactly 1 million, and my results are considered "semi-quantitative", even though they are reported to several decimal places. Even so, the information is still useful, but it needs more steps...
The next step is to figure out how many phases there are in today's sample, and what they might be. For this step I look at the maps showing the relative amounts of each element in each location across the map, like this set, which shows that the S-shaped bright white crystal has more Fe, Ti, and Mn than the grey background matrix minerals (each small photo has a scale on the side, showing that the dark reds are the lowest concentration of that element, the brighter reds indicate a bit more, the dark blues a bit more, and if it gets all the way to the bright blueish green there is really quite a lot of that element). It also shows that there is more than one type of grey matrix minerals, all of which are richer in Al and Cr, but two small areas are higher in Y, Sr, and P than the rest of the map.
Now that I have some idea of how many different minerals there are in the map I need to figure out how to define their differences. One tool for this is a three-channel image, like the one labeled a. on this set of figures, which assigns P to the colour red, Al to the colour green, and Ti to the colour blue, and lets the ppm values for each of these elements in each spot contribute to the colour of the corresponding pixel. This three-channel map makes it obvious that there are three different matrix minerals, and that the large crystal is a single mineral.
Then it is a simple, if tedious, matter to apply filters to the data, in steps. At first I decided that the big crystal is all data points that are more than 6,500 ppm Ti. Indeed stopping that filter there shows that one has just selected every data point that corresponds to that phase. However, along the edges of that grain one is going to get "mixed data", where the laser ablated both the crystal of interest, and the surrounding matrix grains. To filter out those mixed data analyses I added in additional filters, to whit: P < 500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; and Si < 5,000. Once I am satisfied that the remaining grains, which cover a slightly smaller area than the crystal itself, as in figure c. in the above linked second figure are a good representation of the composition of that mineral, I am ready to do the next set of calculations on it: converting ppm into the mineral chemical formula.
For that step I prepared a spreadsheet containing the entire periodic table, showing each element by name, its atomic number, and its atomic mass. Below that I have a table set up into which I can drop the "average composition" for this mineral (which I get by using Excel's "calculate average" formula for all the data points corresponding to a single element for that mineral). Those amounts are then multiplied by appropriate atomic weight for each mineral, and then I have additional columns set up to show how many atoms of each element is present in the mineral if I set the element of interest to be exactly 1, or 2, or 3, or....
Since the main crystal in this map contains both Fe and Ti, and all of the other ingredients it contains are measured in very low amounts, the obvious choice for possible mineral is ilmenite, which contains one each atom of Fe and Ti for every three atoms of oxygen. The ICP-MS doesn't measure oxygen in the sample, so I look at the table to see how many Ti atoms are present when the total number of atoms is 2. In this case the spreadsheet replied that we get closest to a total of two atoms when there is exactly 1.1 atoms of Ti, at which point there is 0.7 atoms of Fe, and the remaining number of atoms is made up by very small amounts of Mg, Mn, Si, and Al, so my hypothesis that it is ilmenite is confirmed, those numbers being well within the reasonable range of ilmenite composition.
This approach is repeated for each of the other mineral phases, until I am happy that I know which phases are present. For this sample the defining limits I used were:
ilmenite: Ti > 6,500; P < 500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; Si < 5,000
apatite: Ti < 500; P > 2,500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; Si < 5,000
talc: Ti < 500; P < 100; Mg > 2,500; Al < 1,000; Si > 5,000
chlorite: Ti < 100; P < 100; Mg > 3,500; Al > 2,500; Si > 2,000
Once I have the list of phases, what is in them, and where they are located, I am finally ready to start writing up the sample, and finalize the set of figures for the sample.
When I first started doing this I often spent a week or more on the sample (depending on how complicated it was--some of the maps I did turned out to have more than seven different minerals). However, with my funding running out rapidly I need to get faster at this part of the project Luckily, this turns out to be possible. This morning I managed to complete several half-done other samples, and then did a whole new sample before my big lunch break.
After lunch turned out to not be so easy. The next sample on my list is one for which I failed to press the "make laser log" button on the laser before running the experiment (which, oddly enough one would have thought that making the logs should be the default setting, but that laser manufacturer doesn't agree).
Luckily, the program is still able to do a map from just the ICP-MS data, since that data comes in the form of a single row of the map at a time, with gaps of no counting in between, so it just presents the results sequentially, one row under the next. But the proportions are wrong, since it had no information of the X-Y data to work with. No problem: export the map as a jpg, and then stretch it to be the same height and width as the photo of the sample area that was mapped.
But what about the nice colour-coded maps that match the colours used for each mineral, like that in the second link above? How is that possible if one doesn't have the X-Y location data? Step one: look at the original notes from when the experiment was run, to determine that there are 17 laser lines that comprise this map. Step two look at the total number of data points exported from the program, and divide by 17. Of course it didn't come out to a whole number: 123.4 so try it anyway--in the spreadsheet number the rows 1 to 123, and then start over from 1, and so on, till you get to the bottom of the list. Call that column East. Then fill in the north column by counting each group of 123, then try plotting the data, setting the colours based on the mineral name for each row, and look at the result.
Decide that it is a mess, but it is only a bit of a mess--one can clearly see the small grain of ilmenite that looks like a cherry stem over the spinel crystal, but the two larger ilmenite grains that should be on each side of the ilmenite grain are instead between two separate halves of that grain. After staring at it and the original photo for a while, decide that he problem is that everything is offset by a few data points, which means a few the first row, then twice that many the second row, and so on till the offset is quite a bit for the last row.
But, being tired by then, my first attempt to fix it moved it even further the wrong direction.
I tried again, moving things the right way, but over compensating a little. At that point it was closing in on 22:00, and I had put in a 12 hour day. So I put it down and spent a little time with Keldor, who had just finished up his work for the day working on the sword in progress before doing my yoga and my 100 sword blows for the day, and then deciding to type up this. Now it is closing in on 01:00, and I had better get to sleep. I think I will be able to finish this sample tomorrow, and, with luck, be able to get two others done as well.
That is when the data processing starts--I take that list, drop it into a program designed to handle large amounts of time-stamped data, follow that with the "laser log file", which explains when the laser was and was not firing, for how long, at what strength, and what spot size, and then help the program decide from the names in both files which bits of the signal correspond to the standard reference materials, which bits correspond to the maps of minerals in soapstone, and which bits are "blanks" (the ICP-MS was counting, but nothing but He was coming up the line.
Then one applies a "data reduction scheme", wherein the program compares the counts per second results for each element of the standard reference materials I analysed with the reported composition, then uses that information to calculate the amounts of those elements in my sample, reporting it in parts per million (ppm).
Because I didn't ask the ICP-MS to count every possible element (due to how long it would take--one wants it to have more than one time through the list before the laser moves on to the next spot), and there are differences between how deeply the laser digs into each mineral and into each reference material with each shot, the reported ppm doesn't tend to add up to exactly 1 million, and my results are considered "semi-quantitative", even though they are reported to several decimal places. Even so, the information is still useful, but it needs more steps...
The next step is to figure out how many phases there are in today's sample, and what they might be. For this step I look at the maps showing the relative amounts of each element in each location across the map, like this set, which shows that the S-shaped bright white crystal has more Fe, Ti, and Mn than the grey background matrix minerals (each small photo has a scale on the side, showing that the dark reds are the lowest concentration of that element, the brighter reds indicate a bit more, the dark blues a bit more, and if it gets all the way to the bright blueish green there is really quite a lot of that element). It also shows that there is more than one type of grey matrix minerals, all of which are richer in Al and Cr, but two small areas are higher in Y, Sr, and P than the rest of the map.
Now that I have some idea of how many different minerals there are in the map I need to figure out how to define their differences. One tool for this is a three-channel image, like the one labeled a. on this set of figures, which assigns P to the colour red, Al to the colour green, and Ti to the colour blue, and lets the ppm values for each of these elements in each spot contribute to the colour of the corresponding pixel. This three-channel map makes it obvious that there are three different matrix minerals, and that the large crystal is a single mineral.
Then it is a simple, if tedious, matter to apply filters to the data, in steps. At first I decided that the big crystal is all data points that are more than 6,500 ppm Ti. Indeed stopping that filter there shows that one has just selected every data point that corresponds to that phase. However, along the edges of that grain one is going to get "mixed data", where the laser ablated both the crystal of interest, and the surrounding matrix grains. To filter out those mixed data analyses I added in additional filters, to whit: P < 500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; and Si < 5,000. Once I am satisfied that the remaining grains, which cover a slightly smaller area than the crystal itself, as in figure c. in the above linked second figure are a good representation of the composition of that mineral, I am ready to do the next set of calculations on it: converting ppm into the mineral chemical formula.
For that step I prepared a spreadsheet containing the entire periodic table, showing each element by name, its atomic number, and its atomic mass. Below that I have a table set up into which I can drop the "average composition" for this mineral (which I get by using Excel's "calculate average" formula for all the data points corresponding to a single element for that mineral). Those amounts are then multiplied by appropriate atomic weight for each mineral, and then I have additional columns set up to show how many atoms of each element is present in the mineral if I set the element of interest to be exactly 1, or 2, or 3, or....
Since the main crystal in this map contains both Fe and Ti, and all of the other ingredients it contains are measured in very low amounts, the obvious choice for possible mineral is ilmenite, which contains one each atom of Fe and Ti for every three atoms of oxygen. The ICP-MS doesn't measure oxygen in the sample, so I look at the table to see how many Ti atoms are present when the total number of atoms is 2. In this case the spreadsheet replied that we get closest to a total of two atoms when there is exactly 1.1 atoms of Ti, at which point there is 0.7 atoms of Fe, and the remaining number of atoms is made up by very small amounts of Mg, Mn, Si, and Al, so my hypothesis that it is ilmenite is confirmed, those numbers being well within the reasonable range of ilmenite composition.
This approach is repeated for each of the other mineral phases, until I am happy that I know which phases are present. For this sample the defining limits I used were:
ilmenite: Ti > 6,500; P < 500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; Si < 5,000
apatite: Ti < 500; P > 2,500; Mg < 2,000; Al < 1,000; Si < 5,000
talc: Ti < 500; P < 100; Mg > 2,500; Al < 1,000; Si > 5,000
chlorite: Ti < 100; P < 100; Mg > 3,500; Al > 2,500; Si > 2,000
Once I have the list of phases, what is in them, and where they are located, I am finally ready to start writing up the sample, and finalize the set of figures for the sample.
When I first started doing this I often spent a week or more on the sample (depending on how complicated it was--some of the maps I did turned out to have more than seven different minerals). However, with my funding running out rapidly I need to get faster at this part of the project Luckily, this turns out to be possible. This morning I managed to complete several half-done other samples, and then did a whole new sample before my big lunch break.
After lunch turned out to not be so easy. The next sample on my list is one for which I failed to press the "make laser log" button on the laser before running the experiment (which, oddly enough one would have thought that making the logs should be the default setting, but that laser manufacturer doesn't agree).
Luckily, the program is still able to do a map from just the ICP-MS data, since that data comes in the form of a single row of the map at a time, with gaps of no counting in between, so it just presents the results sequentially, one row under the next. But the proportions are wrong, since it had no information of the X-Y data to work with. No problem: export the map as a jpg, and then stretch it to be the same height and width as the photo of the sample area that was mapped.
But what about the nice colour-coded maps that match the colours used for each mineral, like that in the second link above? How is that possible if one doesn't have the X-Y location data? Step one: look at the original notes from when the experiment was run, to determine that there are 17 laser lines that comprise this map. Step two look at the total number of data points exported from the program, and divide by 17. Of course it didn't come out to a whole number: 123.4 so try it anyway--in the spreadsheet number the rows 1 to 123, and then start over from 1, and so on, till you get to the bottom of the list. Call that column East. Then fill in the north column by counting each group of 123, then try plotting the data, setting the colours based on the mineral name for each row, and look at the result.
Decide that it is a mess, but it is only a bit of a mess--one can clearly see the small grain of ilmenite that looks like a cherry stem over the spinel crystal, but the two larger ilmenite grains that should be on each side of the ilmenite grain are instead between two separate halves of that grain. After staring at it and the original photo for a while, decide that he problem is that everything is offset by a few data points, which means a few the first row, then twice that many the second row, and so on till the offset is quite a bit for the last row.
But, being tired by then, my first attempt to fix it moved it even further the wrong direction.
I tried again, moving things the right way, but over compensating a little. At that point it was closing in on 22:00, and I had put in a 12 hour day. So I put it down and spent a little time with Keldor, who had just finished up his work for the day working on the sword in progress before doing my yoga and my 100 sword blows for the day, and then deciding to type up this. Now it is closing in on 01:00, and I had better get to sleep. I think I will be able to finish this sample tomorrow, and, with luck, be able to get two others done as well.
slowly back to work
Mar. 6th, 2023 02:08 amI enjoyed the weekend, but acknowledge that it wasn't good for thesis progress, since I wound up spending Thursday getting ready for the road trip, then we were on the road from midnight Thursday evening to noon on Friday (including a stop for a nap for both of us, and a stop at a second hand store, where he bought some things for making knife handles, and some silverware for doing silver inlay in swords/axes.
That got us to site well before it opened, so we took another nap, and got up when the autocrats arrived. Friday evening we enjoyed hanging out with people (and I managed to get the gambeson done enough to wear, then did yoga and I went to bed around 22:00. Keldor, on the other hand, stayed up later, despite having done all of the driving (while I happily made progress on sewing my gambeson). Since I had gone to bed early on Friday, I wound up waking early on Saturday, so I used the time to mend the strap holding up my leg harness, which hadn't broken, yet, but was clearly about ready to break, so I riveted on a short extra bit of strap above and below the damaged area. I really need to completely replace the belt and straps--they were made from a second hand belt in the early 1990's. Now that the gambeson, fighting trousers, and quilted collar for under the gorget are done, I can start thinking about doing that, and all of the other upgrades the armour needs.
The armour more or less functional, I had time for breakfast and some yoga before the tournament. The day was cold and very windy. Therefore the did the court for the invocation of the lists indoors. When Keldor and I went up to present ourselves and fighter and consort for one another the prince and princess thanked us, and dismissed him to join the other entrants and bid me stay and kneel, and then presented me with Ljusorden (the order of the light, Nordmarks's arts and science award) for my enthusiastic participation in bardic arts, dance, and acrobatics at events.
The tourney went really quickly--they decided to do a full round robin list, so they had prepared in advance the list of who would fight who in each round, which meant that each fight begin promptly after the one before finished, and each round continued promptly after the one before, which meant that while it was really cold and windy we fighters stayed reasonably warm for the first part of the tournament. I did about as well as expected, given that I hadn't actually been in armor in months due to lack of time and not having gotten the gambeson etc. done before the event, which is to say everyone killed me, but I got to model the new pretty helmet my love made for me, as I fought, and died, for his honour. However, the new helmet was designed to be able to wear my hearing aids in side it, and, being patterned after the Vendel Valsgärde helm, has plenty of openings to let sound in. Guys, it was amazing. For the first time in my life, I could hear while fighting! I could talk to people between fights, and hear what they said! I totally recommend this. Now I just need to get glasses that are legal to wear while fighting (sports glasses), or contact lenses.
Keldor wasn't feeling on top of his game, with timing not working for him till after the tourney and during pickups, so he and I were the first two eliminated, and then they did a five person second round robin, since all of the other fighters had tied after the first one. Since I was no longer fighting at that point, I quickly became quite cold watching the next part of the tourney, even though my helmet was the only thing I took off (and I was wearing a coif--it wouldn't have been possible to be out in that wind wearing hearing aids without one).
Then the final round was between Valdamar and Erik Hane, the two people from whom I had gotten bruises during the tournament. They are both large fighters (Valdemar is pretty close to two meters tall, and while Erik isn't that tall, he is big), and very strong. When Erik hit me his sword first contacted my upper arm, right under the pauldron, and just over the top of the arm harness, and pivoted around to strike my back as well. I shouted "good", and he replied "wasn't that your arm?". I replied "också" (also), and everyone laughed. Perhaps the arm took enough of the force that the sword in the back might not have been a killing blow, but, believe me, it was good, and was happy to take it and not let him hit me again. When Valdemar hit me the sword contacted my sword arm, right on the shin bone. I called good arm, and then said since I can't switch due to not being able to hold a sword with my shield gauntlet, I would happily yield. Valdamar and the marshal both said I could just keep using the sword arm, but it was hurting enough I said that I would rather yield. Better arm armour is on my list of things that needs to be done.
After the tourney I went in to the hall, put out the knives and axes that Keldor and brought for the market (which many people admired, but no one chose to buy--we were not surprised--many of the items he has available are pattern welded and/or inlaid with bronze, and/or have decorative carving on the hilt, which upps the price), took off my armour, packed it, and got some lunch. Then the other fighters came in, and we soon wandered over to the other hall for a sauna.
After the sauna I returned to the main hall, and thought to take a nap. Then I realised that I had left the bag with my nålbinding project at the sauna building, so I switched back to outdoor shoes, put on my Viking coat, and walked back over. I got the bag, and then returned to the main hall, this time taking the scenic route through the forest and over the hill instead of taking the road. Then I noticed that the garter holding up my nålbinded socks was missing on the left leg. After checking the hall for it, I went back out and retraced my steps, without spotting the garter. Came out of the forest just after Keldor and one of the other fighters had walked past, so I called to them, and he accompanied me back to the sauna building (no garter there, nor on the road), and then back through the forest. When we came out of the forest in the parking lot of the hall he made his spot check and found the garter. Yay! But that used up time for a nap before court!
Investiture court went well. The new Prince and Princess hit the ground running, with awards to give out already, which is always a good thing (and kinda impressive, that they even had scrolls ready, given that they have so little time between tournament and investiture). It helps that Anna was the first Baroness of Aarnimetsä and has been Queen, so she knows how these things work. I wish that they had called for people to swear fealty to them, as I would have liked the chance to do so, but they didn't. I get the impression that that isn't often (ever?) done in Nordmark (I have not made it to every Coronet/Investiture here, and it is on a nine-month cycle, and the pandemic canceled a few, so there haven't been all that many I have been to, so I don't know if they ever let folk swear fealty during investiture court).
During the feast there were a few performances and much merriment. At one point I noticed Jovi and one of the jesters doing a little acroyoga out in the entry area, so I quickly changed out of the dress I had worn for court and put my Thorsberg trousers and a tunic on so I could join them. We did only one quick Candlestick before they went in for the next serving of food, but it was still worth the effort to change!
But given the early start to my day, I was feeling tired and started moving towards bed... and got distracted talking fighting with Erik Hane, who gave me a few lessons (fight like a boxer--moving your hands on the shortest possible path between the starting point and hitting the target, and the secret to moving someone much bigger than you are (him, for example), is to get low and then use the force of your legs to generate a push (which worked way better than I expected, given he is about twice my size). However, after that I went to bed, and managed to sleep before midnight.
The next morning it was pack, load the car, eat breakfast, take a couple of the left over boxes that were on offer, say goodbye to everyone, and start driving before 10:00 (I feel guilty that we don't stay to help clean the hall, but given the length of the drive, we didn't).
Long drives are more fun if one makes a date of it, so soon after we started driving we consulted the Swedish runestone map page to find a random one not far off the road home, choosing one that stands directly behind a very nice farm mansion that was built in 1816. We took a photo, and then started to walk back up to the car (we parked on the road, rather than driving up the nice tree lined long lane to the house).
However, before we'd gone more than a couple of meters we saw a group of people heading towards the stone. People we recognize! Four of our friends from the event, who also thought this stone to be located in a convenient location with respect to the road home. So we took a group photo and chatted at the stone a bit, during which time a guy came out of the house and explained that the 1816 inscription on the stone was from when the house was built. Back in the early 1800's people didn't think runestones were that special, so when they built the house they used the runestone for one of the door steps. During a more recent renovation they realized that that step was a runestone, so they stood it in the backyard, and used a plain stone to replace it in the steps. As one can read if one clicks through all the way to the detailed information on this stone, they painted in the runes in 1981, and again in 2005, to make them easier to see.
The other car full of people went to look for the other runestone in the area, and we decided to get back on the road. But as we started driving Keldor noticed an old oak tree that had come down, so he stopped to look, and found a large branch which still had some good wood, so he salvaged it. The farm right next to the oak had a sign saying "Vendel Gård", and while we know this isn't the location of the main Vendel grave finds, about 130 km to the north west, we still think that is cool, and the oak was thick enough to probably have dated from the Vendel period, and will likely make a good sword handel.
Our next stop was at the antique store associated with the Sala Silver Mine, which is a particularly good antique store, with lots and lots of interesting stuff to look at (we went home with a set of hand-forged shears for only 90 Kr (he couldn't make one that cheap--that would be less than 20 minutes work, and shears are much more than 20 minutes), and a small birch box that will be good for storing my old hearing aid with my helmet (while I trust the helmet to protect the hearing aids, I am nonetheless using the old ones when fighting, just in case).
The next stops were not as exciting, in part because it started snowing a bit before Gävle. Petrol and toilet at Tönnebro, toilet and a walk through the store just to stretch our legs at a random Biltema big box store (where we did buy more window washing fluid), a toilet stop at a gas station just before Sundsvall, and at grocery store in Örnskoldsvik (toilet, and buy more energy drink), and one side of the road stop about 45 minutes from home. The company on the drive was great, and I managed to change the sleeves on our new linen tunics--I had done them with straight arms, but we decided that it would be nice to taper them from the elbow to wrist so as to better fit under other tunics.
We got home at 22:30 and unloaded and put away only the bare minimum before doing yoga, taking a shower, and heading to bed.
Today I worked a little, did some laundry and vacuuming, took a nap, worked some more, took another nap, worked some more. Somewhere around there he got home from work, ate, and took a nap while listening to a documentary or something as I kept working, then he got up, I took a break to do yoga with him, and then I finished writing up the results for the sample I had done the data processing for this evening. By then it was midnight, and thought I would just do a "quick" write-up of the event. Now it is 02:00 and perhaps I should get some sleep before starting the next sample's data processing...
That got us to site well before it opened, so we took another nap, and got up when the autocrats arrived. Friday evening we enjoyed hanging out with people (and I managed to get the gambeson done enough to wear, then did yoga and I went to bed around 22:00. Keldor, on the other hand, stayed up later, despite having done all of the driving (while I happily made progress on sewing my gambeson). Since I had gone to bed early on Friday, I wound up waking early on Saturday, so I used the time to mend the strap holding up my leg harness, which hadn't broken, yet, but was clearly about ready to break, so I riveted on a short extra bit of strap above and below the damaged area. I really need to completely replace the belt and straps--they were made from a second hand belt in the early 1990's. Now that the gambeson, fighting trousers, and quilted collar for under the gorget are done, I can start thinking about doing that, and all of the other upgrades the armour needs.
The armour more or less functional, I had time for breakfast and some yoga before the tournament. The day was cold and very windy. Therefore the did the court for the invocation of the lists indoors. When Keldor and I went up to present ourselves and fighter and consort for one another the prince and princess thanked us, and dismissed him to join the other entrants and bid me stay and kneel, and then presented me with Ljusorden (the order of the light, Nordmarks's arts and science award) for my enthusiastic participation in bardic arts, dance, and acrobatics at events.
The tourney went really quickly--they decided to do a full round robin list, so they had prepared in advance the list of who would fight who in each round, which meant that each fight begin promptly after the one before finished, and each round continued promptly after the one before, which meant that while it was really cold and windy we fighters stayed reasonably warm for the first part of the tournament. I did about as well as expected, given that I hadn't actually been in armor in months due to lack of time and not having gotten the gambeson etc. done before the event, which is to say everyone killed me, but I got to model the new pretty helmet my love made for me, as I fought, and died, for his honour. However, the new helmet was designed to be able to wear my hearing aids in side it, and, being patterned after the Vendel Valsgärde helm, has plenty of openings to let sound in. Guys, it was amazing. For the first time in my life, I could hear while fighting! I could talk to people between fights, and hear what they said! I totally recommend this. Now I just need to get glasses that are legal to wear while fighting (sports glasses), or contact lenses.
Keldor wasn't feeling on top of his game, with timing not working for him till after the tourney and during pickups, so he and I were the first two eliminated, and then they did a five person second round robin, since all of the other fighters had tied after the first one. Since I was no longer fighting at that point, I quickly became quite cold watching the next part of the tourney, even though my helmet was the only thing I took off (and I was wearing a coif--it wouldn't have been possible to be out in that wind wearing hearing aids without one).
Then the final round was between Valdamar and Erik Hane, the two people from whom I had gotten bruises during the tournament. They are both large fighters (Valdemar is pretty close to two meters tall, and while Erik isn't that tall, he is big), and very strong. When Erik hit me his sword first contacted my upper arm, right under the pauldron, and just over the top of the arm harness, and pivoted around to strike my back as well. I shouted "good", and he replied "wasn't that your arm?". I replied "också" (also), and everyone laughed. Perhaps the arm took enough of the force that the sword in the back might not have been a killing blow, but, believe me, it was good, and was happy to take it and not let him hit me again. When Valdemar hit me the sword contacted my sword arm, right on the shin bone. I called good arm, and then said since I can't switch due to not being able to hold a sword with my shield gauntlet, I would happily yield. Valdamar and the marshal both said I could just keep using the sword arm, but it was hurting enough I said that I would rather yield. Better arm armour is on my list of things that needs to be done.
After the tourney I went in to the hall, put out the knives and axes that Keldor and brought for the market (which many people admired, but no one chose to buy--we were not surprised--many of the items he has available are pattern welded and/or inlaid with bronze, and/or have decorative carving on the hilt, which upps the price), took off my armour, packed it, and got some lunch. Then the other fighters came in, and we soon wandered over to the other hall for a sauna.
After the sauna I returned to the main hall, and thought to take a nap. Then I realised that I had left the bag with my nålbinding project at the sauna building, so I switched back to outdoor shoes, put on my Viking coat, and walked back over. I got the bag, and then returned to the main hall, this time taking the scenic route through the forest and over the hill instead of taking the road. Then I noticed that the garter holding up my nålbinded socks was missing on the left leg. After checking the hall for it, I went back out and retraced my steps, without spotting the garter. Came out of the forest just after Keldor and one of the other fighters had walked past, so I called to them, and he accompanied me back to the sauna building (no garter there, nor on the road), and then back through the forest. When we came out of the forest in the parking lot of the hall he made his spot check and found the garter. Yay! But that used up time for a nap before court!
Investiture court went well. The new Prince and Princess hit the ground running, with awards to give out already, which is always a good thing (and kinda impressive, that they even had scrolls ready, given that they have so little time between tournament and investiture). It helps that Anna was the first Baroness of Aarnimetsä and has been Queen, so she knows how these things work. I wish that they had called for people to swear fealty to them, as I would have liked the chance to do so, but they didn't. I get the impression that that isn't often (ever?) done in Nordmark (I have not made it to every Coronet/Investiture here, and it is on a nine-month cycle, and the pandemic canceled a few, so there haven't been all that many I have been to, so I don't know if they ever let folk swear fealty during investiture court).
During the feast there were a few performances and much merriment. At one point I noticed Jovi and one of the jesters doing a little acroyoga out in the entry area, so I quickly changed out of the dress I had worn for court and put my Thorsberg trousers and a tunic on so I could join them. We did only one quick Candlestick before they went in for the next serving of food, but it was still worth the effort to change!
But given the early start to my day, I was feeling tired and started moving towards bed... and got distracted talking fighting with Erik Hane, who gave me a few lessons (fight like a boxer--moving your hands on the shortest possible path between the starting point and hitting the target, and the secret to moving someone much bigger than you are (him, for example), is to get low and then use the force of your legs to generate a push (which worked way better than I expected, given he is about twice my size). However, after that I went to bed, and managed to sleep before midnight.
The next morning it was pack, load the car, eat breakfast, take a couple of the left over boxes that were on offer, say goodbye to everyone, and start driving before 10:00 (I feel guilty that we don't stay to help clean the hall, but given the length of the drive, we didn't).
Long drives are more fun if one makes a date of it, so soon after we started driving we consulted the Swedish runestone map page to find a random one not far off the road home, choosing one that stands directly behind a very nice farm mansion that was built in 1816. We took a photo, and then started to walk back up to the car (we parked on the road, rather than driving up the nice tree lined long lane to the house).
However, before we'd gone more than a couple of meters we saw a group of people heading towards the stone. People we recognize! Four of our friends from the event, who also thought this stone to be located in a convenient location with respect to the road home. So we took a group photo and chatted at the stone a bit, during which time a guy came out of the house and explained that the 1816 inscription on the stone was from when the house was built. Back in the early 1800's people didn't think runestones were that special, so when they built the house they used the runestone for one of the door steps. During a more recent renovation they realized that that step was a runestone, so they stood it in the backyard, and used a plain stone to replace it in the steps. As one can read if one clicks through all the way to the detailed information on this stone, they painted in the runes in 1981, and again in 2005, to make them easier to see.
The other car full of people went to look for the other runestone in the area, and we decided to get back on the road. But as we started driving Keldor noticed an old oak tree that had come down, so he stopped to look, and found a large branch which still had some good wood, so he salvaged it. The farm right next to the oak had a sign saying "Vendel Gård", and while we know this isn't the location of the main Vendel grave finds, about 130 km to the north west, we still think that is cool, and the oak was thick enough to probably have dated from the Vendel period, and will likely make a good sword handel.
Our next stop was at the antique store associated with the Sala Silver Mine, which is a particularly good antique store, with lots and lots of interesting stuff to look at (we went home with a set of hand-forged shears for only 90 Kr (he couldn't make one that cheap--that would be less than 20 minutes work, and shears are much more than 20 minutes), and a small birch box that will be good for storing my old hearing aid with my helmet (while I trust the helmet to protect the hearing aids, I am nonetheless using the old ones when fighting, just in case).
The next stops were not as exciting, in part because it started snowing a bit before Gävle. Petrol and toilet at Tönnebro, toilet and a walk through the store just to stretch our legs at a random Biltema big box store (where we did buy more window washing fluid), a toilet stop at a gas station just before Sundsvall, and at grocery store in Örnskoldsvik (toilet, and buy more energy drink), and one side of the road stop about 45 minutes from home. The company on the drive was great, and I managed to change the sleeves on our new linen tunics--I had done them with straight arms, but we decided that it would be nice to taper them from the elbow to wrist so as to better fit under other tunics.
We got home at 22:30 and unloaded and put away only the bare minimum before doing yoga, taking a shower, and heading to bed.
Today I worked a little, did some laundry and vacuuming, took a nap, worked some more, took another nap, worked some more. Somewhere around there he got home from work, ate, and took a nap while listening to a documentary or something as I kept working, then he got up, I took a break to do yoga with him, and then I finished writing up the results for the sample I had done the data processing for this evening. By then it was midnight, and thought I would just do a "quick" write-up of the event. Now it is 02:00 and perhaps I should get some sleep before starting the next sample's data processing...
This week I had two appointments in town, and we still haven't made time to fix the issue with the breaks on Keldor's ca, so we decided to bring the cats in and spend the week at his dad's house.
We also brought my new work recliner and lap-keyboard desk thingie, my computer, and a second monitor. As a result, I have worked quite happily here. I am loving the new set up (though it is, of course, better with the even bigger external monitor at home), But having good posture while I work matters, and that is easy to achieve in a recliner, and with the keyboard on my lap, and my mouse or computer pen and tablet on the shelf we attached to the armrest of the recliner my shoulder doesn't hurt when working, because it is neither too high nor too low for my body. As a result I have created lots of figures for my thesis, worked out the figure number scheme for all of chapter 5 section 3 (the laser-ablation ICP-MS trace element composition maps which form the backbone of the thesis), and created the correctly labeled figure pages for all of them, ready to drop the images into. I have also written all of the figure captions for the figures that exist, and some other text that ties into all the above. Bringing the thesis itself to 21,368 words, plus 1,515 words in the figure captions.
Monday's appointment was for an x-ray which I hope wasn't really needed. Back in December I noticed a little bony lump on the top of my right foot (the light hit it just right whilst I was doing yoga, so I saw it, and then poked at it to determine that it really is a lump). It isn't in any way uncomfortable or painful, and I might not have ever noticed it if I hadn't been looking at my feet just then. But one isn't meant to have a lump just there, so, this being a country with medical care available for everyone, I called the local health clinic to ask for an appointment. I made it clear when I called that since it didn't hurt or cause problems they didn't need to try to find time to see me before Christmas, but if they could put me on the list I would appreciate it. As a result I went in to see them on 1 February, and the medical student who first saw me did all of the interview questions (yes, I am healthy, no it doesn't cause me any problems, but what is it, and should I be concerned?). He called in the actual doctor to have a look, and her first reaction was "if it doesn't cause a problem, it is probably nothing to worry about".
Then she pointed out the calluses on the sides of my big toe, and said that they can be a symptom of my toes shifting their position into bad alignment, and that one can buy corrective things to help straighten them back into place, and if left unchecked it can cause your shoes to no longer fit and become uncomfortable, at which point they recommend surgery to scrape away the excess bone that develops along the side of the joint at the base of the big toe, and she showed me the scar from her surgery for just that problem. My big toes haven't yet shifted out of position so much that they interfere with comfort wearing my sandals or my winter boots, but it does explain the calluses that had started to form on the inner edge of my big toes, which had never been there before about a year or two ago. I had been trying to eliminate those calluses by wearing five toe socks and trying to make a point of flexing my toes wide whenever I think about it. Perhaps strengthen my feet muscles will also solve the symptom she pointed out, especially as now I am more aware of it. If not, I can try one of the thingies to encourage them to go back to better alignment.
While I was talking to both the docs I remembered that my right foot had been x-rayed in october of 2021 (when I hurt my toes falling from an acroyoga balance and landing wrong), and wondered if the x-rays happened to show the part of my foot that has the lump? They couldn't look it up, as the x-rays were taken when I still lived in Norrbotten county, and the local health centers in Västerbotton county can't access my on-line health records from Norrbotten, so they asked me to call Norrbotten and request a copy of the Xrays. I did, and was given the choice being snail-mailed either a paper printout (at no cost), or a USB thumb drive (for 200 SEK, but which would have better resolution than the printout). I asked "how about email", and they said "we don't email medical records" (which I think is stupid, but they didn't make that rule, which is likely a side effect of GDPR).so I asked for the usb version.
In the meantime I got a call to the xray clinic in Skellefteå, which surprised me, since I thought we had only discussed obtaining a copy of the old xray to see if the lump existed already in 2021 and I just didn't notice. So I called the local health clinic, and the nurse said, yes, the doc really does want a new xray too.
Therefore I went in on Monday morning for that. I told the xray technician that I had the usb with the old xrays if they want to compare, but it turns out that while the local health clinics can't access my heath records across county lines, the xray departments of the hospital can access my old xrays across county lines. I guess that the doc will get back to me later about the results, and if either or both of the old and new xrays show the lump. But I just stuck a reminder on the calendar for mid April to call and ask if they haven't gotten back to me before then. (Given that I want to finish this thesis during March, April sounded like a good time to return to this question.)
My other appointment was with the hearing clinic at the hospital, to see how I like the new hearing aids they gave me a month ago and do they need any adjusting before we decide that they are keepers? I love them. They work much better than my last pair, and it is much easier to hear (the loudest loud setting is actually too loud for comfort for most things, so I mostly don't use it, unless I am trying to hear something quite quiet). They also connect directly to my telephone, and way faster than the external bluetooth adapter I needed for the last hearing aids. I had her make a minor change (turn down the volume when the hearing aids announces the name of the program I just switched to using the phone app, plus adding a couple of standard programs). She suggested that I come back in a month for final check in before deciding if I am going to keep them, and I countered that given how far away I live, I would be ok with skipping that visit. She said, ok, I will give you a month to decide you want to see me, if so, call us and book time with me, If you don't call before the end of that time I will assume that everything is good, and we will send you the bill for the new hearing aids (I think she said they will cost me 500 SEK each).
The big advantage for us living in town this week is that Keldor has been able to stay after work each day and make progress on my new helmet. He finished the construction today, all that remains is padding and strapping it. He has built it with a very open pattern, inspired by the Vendel period Valsgärde helmet, and he designed it so that I will be able to wear my hearing aids in there, without any part of the helmet coming into contact with them (I will use my old ones for this--they may not be as good as my current ones, but they will be way, way better than wearing my old helmet without any hearing aids at all, and then if something goes wrong and they are somehow damaged by a freak accident, it won't cost me my new ones).
So now we have one more work day, then we will head home for Friday evening and Saturday during the day. We will return to town for the Shire annual meeting on Sunday, and probably stay to help out a friend with projects on Monday.
We have till Thursday to have practiced enough with my new helmet that I have it well calibrated so I can fight in Nordmark Coronet on the weekend. We will drive down Thursday evening/night, sleep at his brothers house, and then do the last bit of drive on Friday during the day. It should be a good event, and I hope I get enough thesis writing done between now and the drive that I can enjoy the weekend without feeling like "I should be working".
We also brought my new work recliner and lap-keyboard desk thingie, my computer, and a second monitor. As a result, I have worked quite happily here. I am loving the new set up (though it is, of course, better with the even bigger external monitor at home), But having good posture while I work matters, and that is easy to achieve in a recliner, and with the keyboard on my lap, and my mouse or computer pen and tablet on the shelf we attached to the armrest of the recliner my shoulder doesn't hurt when working, because it is neither too high nor too low for my body. As a result I have created lots of figures for my thesis, worked out the figure number scheme for all of chapter 5 section 3 (the laser-ablation ICP-MS trace element composition maps which form the backbone of the thesis), and created the correctly labeled figure pages for all of them, ready to drop the images into. I have also written all of the figure captions for the figures that exist, and some other text that ties into all the above. Bringing the thesis itself to 21,368 words, plus 1,515 words in the figure captions.
Monday's appointment was for an x-ray which I hope wasn't really needed. Back in December I noticed a little bony lump on the top of my right foot (the light hit it just right whilst I was doing yoga, so I saw it, and then poked at it to determine that it really is a lump). It isn't in any way uncomfortable or painful, and I might not have ever noticed it if I hadn't been looking at my feet just then. But one isn't meant to have a lump just there, so, this being a country with medical care available for everyone, I called the local health clinic to ask for an appointment. I made it clear when I called that since it didn't hurt or cause problems they didn't need to try to find time to see me before Christmas, but if they could put me on the list I would appreciate it. As a result I went in to see them on 1 February, and the medical student who first saw me did all of the interview questions (yes, I am healthy, no it doesn't cause me any problems, but what is it, and should I be concerned?). He called in the actual doctor to have a look, and her first reaction was "if it doesn't cause a problem, it is probably nothing to worry about".
Then she pointed out the calluses on the sides of my big toe, and said that they can be a symptom of my toes shifting their position into bad alignment, and that one can buy corrective things to help straighten them back into place, and if left unchecked it can cause your shoes to no longer fit and become uncomfortable, at which point they recommend surgery to scrape away the excess bone that develops along the side of the joint at the base of the big toe, and she showed me the scar from her surgery for just that problem. My big toes haven't yet shifted out of position so much that they interfere with comfort wearing my sandals or my winter boots, but it does explain the calluses that had started to form on the inner edge of my big toes, which had never been there before about a year or two ago. I had been trying to eliminate those calluses by wearing five toe socks and trying to make a point of flexing my toes wide whenever I think about it. Perhaps strengthen my feet muscles will also solve the symptom she pointed out, especially as now I am more aware of it. If not, I can try one of the thingies to encourage them to go back to better alignment.
While I was talking to both the docs I remembered that my right foot had been x-rayed in october of 2021 (when I hurt my toes falling from an acroyoga balance and landing wrong), and wondered if the x-rays happened to show the part of my foot that has the lump? They couldn't look it up, as the x-rays were taken when I still lived in Norrbotten county, and the local health centers in Västerbotton county can't access my on-line health records from Norrbotten, so they asked me to call Norrbotten and request a copy of the Xrays. I did, and was given the choice being snail-mailed either a paper printout (at no cost), or a USB thumb drive (for 200 SEK, but which would have better resolution than the printout). I asked "how about email", and they said "we don't email medical records" (which I think is stupid, but they didn't make that rule, which is likely a side effect of GDPR).so I asked for the usb version.
In the meantime I got a call to the xray clinic in Skellefteå, which surprised me, since I thought we had only discussed obtaining a copy of the old xray to see if the lump existed already in 2021 and I just didn't notice. So I called the local health clinic, and the nurse said, yes, the doc really does want a new xray too.
Therefore I went in on Monday morning for that. I told the xray technician that I had the usb with the old xrays if they want to compare, but it turns out that while the local health clinics can't access my heath records across county lines, the xray departments of the hospital can access my old xrays across county lines. I guess that the doc will get back to me later about the results, and if either or both of the old and new xrays show the lump. But I just stuck a reminder on the calendar for mid April to call and ask if they haven't gotten back to me before then. (Given that I want to finish this thesis during March, April sounded like a good time to return to this question.)
My other appointment was with the hearing clinic at the hospital, to see how I like the new hearing aids they gave me a month ago and do they need any adjusting before we decide that they are keepers? I love them. They work much better than my last pair, and it is much easier to hear (the loudest loud setting is actually too loud for comfort for most things, so I mostly don't use it, unless I am trying to hear something quite quiet). They also connect directly to my telephone, and way faster than the external bluetooth adapter I needed for the last hearing aids. I had her make a minor change (turn down the volume when the hearing aids announces the name of the program I just switched to using the phone app, plus adding a couple of standard programs). She suggested that I come back in a month for final check in before deciding if I am going to keep them, and I countered that given how far away I live, I would be ok with skipping that visit. She said, ok, I will give you a month to decide you want to see me, if so, call us and book time with me, If you don't call before the end of that time I will assume that everything is good, and we will send you the bill for the new hearing aids (I think she said they will cost me 500 SEK each).
The big advantage for us living in town this week is that Keldor has been able to stay after work each day and make progress on my new helmet. He finished the construction today, all that remains is padding and strapping it. He has built it with a very open pattern, inspired by the Vendel period Valsgärde helmet, and he designed it so that I will be able to wear my hearing aids in there, without any part of the helmet coming into contact with them (I will use my old ones for this--they may not be as good as my current ones, but they will be way, way better than wearing my old helmet without any hearing aids at all, and then if something goes wrong and they are somehow damaged by a freak accident, it won't cost me my new ones).
So now we have one more work day, then we will head home for Friday evening and Saturday during the day. We will return to town for the Shire annual meeting on Sunday, and probably stay to help out a friend with projects on Monday.
We have till Thursday to have practiced enough with my new helmet that I have it well calibrated so I can fight in Nordmark Coronet on the weekend. We will drive down Thursday evening/night, sleep at his brothers house, and then do the last bit of drive on Friday during the day. It should be a good event, and I hope I get enough thesis writing done between now and the drive that I can enjoy the weekend without feeling like "I should be working".
a chapter draft
Feb. 19th, 2023 08:08 pmFriday I was having some issues with the program I use for data processing, so, while waiting for their support people to reply to my email I started writing the chapter of my thesis on the experimental part of my research on Viking Age Steatite (soapstone). They got back to me later that day, but I had come far enough along I finished the chapter yesterday. I thought some of my friends might enjoy reading it, so I will post it here. If you have any feedback for places it needs clarification or something, feel free to share. I will put it under a cut, as it is 4,870 words not counting references, but there are photos, so some of you might want to peak, even if you don't read it.
( Chapter 4: Carving Steatite )
( Chapter 4: Carving Steatite )
progress report
Feb. 13th, 2023 09:04 pmI am doing my best to focus on finishing up my thesis, so I can complete a Master's in Archaeology. Since my funding is either running low (what my supervisor and I think it should be), or used up (what billing, who charged the account for the months I wasn't enrolled having formally suspended my studies thinks), the goal is to get the writing done in a month, if possible.
Towards that goal I have worked 6 hours on Saturday, almost nine of Sunday, and more than 10 today. It will be interesting to see how it goes. It will also be interesting to see what billing responds to the spreadsheet I sent them showing my calculations of how much funding should be available for this term, and part of next.
Towards that goal I have worked 6 hours on Saturday, almost nine of Sunday, and more than 10 today. It will be interesting to see how it goes. It will also be interesting to see what billing responds to the spreadsheet I sent them showing my calculations of how much funding should be available for this term, and part of next.
making progress
Feb. 5th, 2023 08:12 amI never did hear from my supervisor on Friday. In hindsight when she replied to my message earlier in the week saying that she could meet me on Friday, but would need time to read the paper draft before then, rather than just working frantically on the draft as fast as I could, and sending it as soon as it was "done enough", I should have replied saying that I was and I would, and enquiring what time on Friday. oops.
I also haven't heard back from the university billing or records departments, so I still have no idea if that invoice they sent was in error or not.
In the absence of information I am operating under the assumption that I have to finish everything by the end of the term, on 17 March. This is probably an unrealistic goal, but if I give up most things between now and then and focus, I have a chance. Yesterday morning I woke thinking about what I should start doing for paper #2, but then decided I should add that last bit of info for the discussion section to paper #1, and give the whole thing a read through. This turned into a 7 hour work day, on a Saturday, when Keldor was home and I could have been doing stuff with him. This is the first time I have chosen to work on a day he was home (I would be much further along if I had done that on the days he was home sick from work, but I value time with him too much, and we get interesting things done on the house, or spend time reading aloud together, or play games, or just talk.)
While I was working he did laundry and mopped the floors that are moppable. Have I mentioned how much I love this man? He really is wonderful. (Note: he decided to do those things himself, I didn't suggest them.)
I am glad I decided to do that readthrough. When I did that total re-write before Christmas, restructuring the introduction especially, somehow the old version of the introduction stayed, meaning that there was lots of redundant text (I guess that I must have accidently pressed the "reject" button instead of the "accept" button for that deletion in Track Changes Mode.) So Now I have double checked to see confirm which bits really belong, and have deleted those that don't. Keldor was nice enough to let me read much of the paper aloud to him, which let me find lots of little changes that needed to be made for clarity. He drew the line at listening to the results section though, as it is skit tråkigt (he has a point, but it isn't easy to make chemical results interesting when one types about them--the figures, however, he enjoyed looking at.
I also haven't heard back from the university billing or records departments, so I still have no idea if that invoice they sent was in error or not.
In the absence of information I am operating under the assumption that I have to finish everything by the end of the term, on 17 March. This is probably an unrealistic goal, but if I give up most things between now and then and focus, I have a chance. Yesterday morning I woke thinking about what I should start doing for paper #2, but then decided I should add that last bit of info for the discussion section to paper #1, and give the whole thing a read through. This turned into a 7 hour work day, on a Saturday, when Keldor was home and I could have been doing stuff with him. This is the first time I have chosen to work on a day he was home (I would be much further along if I had done that on the days he was home sick from work, but I value time with him too much, and we get interesting things done on the house, or spend time reading aloud together, or play games, or just talk.)
While I was working he did laundry and mopped the floors that are moppable. Have I mentioned how much I love this man? He really is wonderful. (Note: he decided to do those things himself, I didn't suggest them.)
I am glad I decided to do that readthrough. When I did that total re-write before Christmas, restructuring the introduction especially, somehow the old version of the introduction stayed, meaning that there was lots of redundant text (I guess that I must have accidently pressed the "reject" button instead of the "accept" button for that deletion in Track Changes Mode.) So Now I have double checked to see confirm which bits really belong, and have deleted those that don't. Keldor was nice enough to let me read much of the paper aloud to him, which let me find lots of little changes that needed to be made for clarity. He drew the line at listening to the results section though, as it is skit tråkigt (he has a point, but it isn't easy to make chemical results interesting when one types about them--the figures, however, he enjoyed looking at.
and... sent
Feb. 2nd, 2023 07:34 pmMy thesis supervisor replied to my last message saying that we could meet on Friday, but she would need time to read my revised draft before then. Yah, the one I have been doing XRD data processing for, so that I would be able to write it. So I put in nine hours yesterday and 11 today, and I have the XRD results section written. I had hoped to also write a new bit in the discussion section about the XRD results and how they do and don't relate to the LA-ICP-MS results, but instead I added a highlighted note there saying to write that part, and sent it off to her. Now, if she checks mail till tonight (I sent it at 18:30 UK time, which is a bit late for reading work email, but impossible) or early tomorrow there is a chance she will have time to at least glance at it before we meet, which means that we may meet.
I hope so. We should have had a meeting months ago, but it hasn't happened, for reasons.
I hope so. We should have had a meeting months ago, but it hasn't happened, for reasons.
that took way longer than it should have
Jan. 31st, 2023 08:49 pmmonths ago I turned in what I hoped was the final draft of my paper in progress to my thesis advisors, and the only feedback I got was "you should add some XRD data to the paper".
Since then I have spent many hours remote connected to the one computer at Durham which has the program and database needed to process that data, working with the XRD data for the six samples in the paper, slowly and painfully learning both how the program behaves, and how to ask the database for things in order to see if the mineral phases one expects in these rocks are present.
Eventually I worked out a consistent colour code for each mineral family (Spinel, Fe-Oxide, Ilmenite, Pyrite, Chalcopyrite, Pyrrhotite, Galena, Talc, Chlorite, Carbonate, Amphibole) I expect to be present in one or more of these soapstones, figured out which variants of each mineral from the database are the best match for the peaks in my sample, took notes on this, and exported pretty pictures of each sample's peaks with the expected peak locations for the specific mineral compositions that matched that sample.
This should not have taken this long, but, learning on one's own, long distance, flailing about some days, making progress on others...
Tomorrow I can try to add this information to the paper and make figures to illustrate it. If I am lucky, I can do that with the data that I have already copied over to this computer, and I don't need to log into the remote computer again.
However, I don't know if I am going to be able to finish this degree. Today I got an invoice for tuition fees, something that has never happened. It could be a mistake, or I could have run out of funding in that account. I am in contact with the university to figure out which, and, if that funding is out, what my options are, but I really don't feel I can afford to pay my own tuition, unless it is possible to do so once, and once only, and get the degree, and even then I would think 20 times first, as it is a lot of money, and I don't have much of an income right now (because I am trying to finish the degree, which I wouldn't be able to do if I had a job). Right now I wish I had enrolled in a Scandinavian degree program--getting paid to study sounds way better than no income and high fees...
Since then I have spent many hours remote connected to the one computer at Durham which has the program and database needed to process that data, working with the XRD data for the six samples in the paper, slowly and painfully learning both how the program behaves, and how to ask the database for things in order to see if the mineral phases one expects in these rocks are present.
Eventually I worked out a consistent colour code for each mineral family (Spinel, Fe-Oxide, Ilmenite, Pyrite, Chalcopyrite, Pyrrhotite, Galena, Talc, Chlorite, Carbonate, Amphibole) I expect to be present in one or more of these soapstones, figured out which variants of each mineral from the database are the best match for the peaks in my sample, took notes on this, and exported pretty pictures of each sample's peaks with the expected peak locations for the specific mineral compositions that matched that sample.
This should not have taken this long, but, learning on one's own, long distance, flailing about some days, making progress on others...
Tomorrow I can try to add this information to the paper and make figures to illustrate it. If I am lucky, I can do that with the data that I have already copied over to this computer, and I don't need to log into the remote computer again.
However, I don't know if I am going to be able to finish this degree. Today I got an invoice for tuition fees, something that has never happened. It could be a mistake, or I could have run out of funding in that account. I am in contact with the university to figure out which, and, if that funding is out, what my options are, but I really don't feel I can afford to pay my own tuition, unless it is possible to do so once, and once only, and get the degree, and even then I would think 20 times first, as it is a lot of money, and I don't have much of an income right now (because I am trying to finish the degree, which I wouldn't be able to do if I had a job). Right now I wish I had enrolled in a Scandinavian degree program--getting paid to study sounds way better than no income and high fees...
where did the last two weeks go?
Feb. 24th, 2022 07:43 pmI seem to have fallen into not posting often, mostly because I haven't spent much time at all near a computer. While I *can* post from my phone, I rarely do so. Therefore I need to see how much I can remember now...
The first week of February Keldor had a number of colleagues down with Covid/Omicron. First one of them was feeling a little under the weather after getting his third dose of vaccine, and, thinking it was the vaccine to blame, chose to go to work anyway (stupid!). Then he felt worse, went home, took a test: super positive. The same week a couple of other colleagues choose to go to work despite feeling a bit sick, and then later felt worse and tested positive. Idiots. Keldor had worked with them the days they were sick, too. Luckily, Keldor's three vaccines plus having survived Covid November of 2020 seems to have done the job--he never got any symptoms, and tested negative. However, on the following Sunday morning he felt dizzy right after getting out of bed, and spent the rest of the day with periodic dizzy spells when he moved his head certain directions.
Therefore he called in sick on Monday and went to the doc instead, where they confirmed that it was "kristallsjuka" (vertigo) and gave him some exercises to do to help shake the crystals in his inner ear into a better position. He took the whole week off of work, because otherwise he would have been working at a great height, and one doesn't do that when one could get dizzy just from turning one's head to look at what one is doing. Therefore I also took the week off of work, and we accomplished a few things around the house, and did lots of art. It was great.
Of course, in my case, I didn't take time off of work, just changed which days I would work. Since I work half-time I normally work two days one week, and three the next. Instead I worked zero days that week, and five the next.
The timing for that was good, as my friends N & B in Luleå were going out of town, and had asked P, who lives in Skellefteå, to house and dog sit for them, and said I could stay there, too. (the timing was even better, since my friend L, upon whose couch I "normally" sleep when I am back in Luleå for work, had a cold.
So I had P's company for the drive north and south, and during the week last week, which was nice, especially as she drove.
Then this week I choose to work only Thursday and Friday, which gave me five days in a row at home, which was nice. Especially as this meant that we made some good progress on cleaning the cellar and hauling away some of the previous owners junk. It also meant that on Wednesday I had the energy to sit down and work on the paper I started months ago to publish some results of my research.
By "work on", I am delighted to report I mean "finished a complete draft". I was so excited. I had gotten it pretty close before I took the suspension of studies some months back, when I went to nearly full time work at the archives, because I wanted to save up a bit more cash before I bought a house.
Now that I have a house, and have gone back to 50% work, I am hoping to get this paper published, and then sit down with my supervisor and see about down-grading my PhD to a Master's degree, and then getting it done. Would I have liked having a second PhD? yes, of course. But with first losing lab access, and then having funding issues, plus pandemic, plus death in the family. Really, it isn't going to happen with this degree. But it would still be great to get a Master's.
Tonight would have been folk dance--our Sunday dance session has switched to Thursdays, and therefore I will normally work on Thursdays (+ whatever other days are needed to bring me to the right number of hours for the week). Sadly, our dance teacher caught a cold, so dance was canceled this week, which gives me a chance to check in here.
the SCA calendar has been filling back up, and we are doing stuff again. But now I watch what is unfolding in Ukraine, and I worry that instead of having pandemic related event cancelations we might have war related event cancellations. I hope it doesn't come to that. [edited to add: which is a very selfish sounding viewpoint. Even more than that I would like countries to quit going to war and invading one another. Wouldn't it be great to live in peace, with no one needing to die in war, or flee from their homes?
I can remember first hearing the term "the information age" back in the 1970's, but, guys, really. We. Had. No.Idea. I mean really. Live maps updating play by play what is happening in the Ukraine, and everywhere else that is related to that. who could have predicted such a thing?
The first week of February Keldor had a number of colleagues down with Covid/Omicron. First one of them was feeling a little under the weather after getting his third dose of vaccine, and, thinking it was the vaccine to blame, chose to go to work anyway (stupid!). Then he felt worse, went home, took a test: super positive. The same week a couple of other colleagues choose to go to work despite feeling a bit sick, and then later felt worse and tested positive. Idiots. Keldor had worked with them the days they were sick, too. Luckily, Keldor's three vaccines plus having survived Covid November of 2020 seems to have done the job--he never got any symptoms, and tested negative. However, on the following Sunday morning he felt dizzy right after getting out of bed, and spent the rest of the day with periodic dizzy spells when he moved his head certain directions.
Therefore he called in sick on Monday and went to the doc instead, where they confirmed that it was "kristallsjuka" (vertigo) and gave him some exercises to do to help shake the crystals in his inner ear into a better position. He took the whole week off of work, because otherwise he would have been working at a great height, and one doesn't do that when one could get dizzy just from turning one's head to look at what one is doing. Therefore I also took the week off of work, and we accomplished a few things around the house, and did lots of art. It was great.
Of course, in my case, I didn't take time off of work, just changed which days I would work. Since I work half-time I normally work two days one week, and three the next. Instead I worked zero days that week, and five the next.
The timing for that was good, as my friends N & B in Luleå were going out of town, and had asked P, who lives in Skellefteå, to house and dog sit for them, and said I could stay there, too. (the timing was even better, since my friend L, upon whose couch I "normally" sleep when I am back in Luleå for work, had a cold.
So I had P's company for the drive north and south, and during the week last week, which was nice, especially as she drove.
Then this week I choose to work only Thursday and Friday, which gave me five days in a row at home, which was nice. Especially as this meant that we made some good progress on cleaning the cellar and hauling away some of the previous owners junk. It also meant that on Wednesday I had the energy to sit down and work on the paper I started months ago to publish some results of my research.
By "work on", I am delighted to report I mean "finished a complete draft". I was so excited. I had gotten it pretty close before I took the suspension of studies some months back, when I went to nearly full time work at the archives, because I wanted to save up a bit more cash before I bought a house.
Now that I have a house, and have gone back to 50% work, I am hoping to get this paper published, and then sit down with my supervisor and see about down-grading my PhD to a Master's degree, and then getting it done. Would I have liked having a second PhD? yes, of course. But with first losing lab access, and then having funding issues, plus pandemic, plus death in the family. Really, it isn't going to happen with this degree. But it would still be great to get a Master's.
Tonight would have been folk dance--our Sunday dance session has switched to Thursdays, and therefore I will normally work on Thursdays (+ whatever other days are needed to bring me to the right number of hours for the week). Sadly, our dance teacher caught a cold, so dance was canceled this week, which gives me a chance to check in here.
the SCA calendar has been filling back up, and we are doing stuff again. But now I watch what is unfolding in Ukraine, and I worry that instead of having pandemic related event cancelations we might have war related event cancellations. I hope it doesn't come to that. [edited to add: which is a very selfish sounding viewpoint. Even more than that I would like countries to quit going to war and invading one another. Wouldn't it be great to live in peace, with no one needing to die in war, or flee from their homes?
I can remember first hearing the term "the information age" back in the 1970's, but, guys, really. We. Had. No.Idea. I mean really. Live maps updating play by play what is happening in the Ukraine, and everywhere else that is related to that. who could have predicted such a thing?
10 hours work on the house today gets us up to 190 hours total work. Now the big room downstairs is scrubbed enough to carry the furniture and stereo equipment and lamps, paintings, knicknacks etc from the livingroom there till we either sell, give away, or get rid of it.
The livingroom has been cleaned, the floor polished, and the furniture we haven't yet carried downstairs is arranged usably.
Lots more cleaning done, but now to sleep!
The livingroom has been cleaned, the floor polished, and the furniture we haven't yet carried downstairs is arranged usably.
Lots more cleaning done, but now to sleep!
(no subject)
Jan. 17th, 2022 04:45 pmSince last I posted we have made good progress on the house. Now both the bedroom and the office have their new floors and their walls painted. We've set up my bed and put back together the pair of free standing IKEA closets that David didn't want to keep. We've finished cleaning the kitchen, and have unpacked most of my kitchen stuff, and the clothes I'd used as packing material. We have emptied the big room in the basement and cleaned the floor, so it is now ready to store all the extra stuff the house came with that we don't want to keep, untill we manage to sell it, doate it, or otherwise get rid of it.
We even slept at the house on Friday and Saturday nights. Last night we drove back to Skelleftehamn and stayed at his Dad's, and this morning I drove north as he went to work.
The drive was so pretty, with a very full moon out, making the icy snow covered fields glitter (we have had quite a few days in a row with temperatures just above freezing, and now it has dropped to just under freezing again).
I worked a partial day today, and will work a full day tomorrow and Wednesday, then work however many more hours Thursday as are needed to get me to the equivalent of three day's work this week (since last week was two days) before I head south again.
Now I am curled up on a friend's couch with a book. Having just reached a chapter break I am debating either unpacking the computer or the nålbindnig...
We even slept at the house on Friday and Saturday nights. Last night we drove back to Skelleftehamn and stayed at his Dad's, and this morning I drove north as he went to work.
The drive was so pretty, with a very full moon out, making the icy snow covered fields glitter (we have had quite a few days in a row with temperatures just above freezing, and now it has dropped to just under freezing again).
I worked a partial day today, and will work a full day tomorrow and Wednesday, then work however many more hours Thursday as are needed to get me to the equivalent of three day's work this week (since last week was two days) before I head south again.
Now I am curled up on a friend's couch with a book. Having just reached a chapter break I am debating either unpacking the computer or the nålbindnig...
More progress
Jan. 6th, 2022 09:26 pmToday we were back at the house for an 8 hour work day.
The kitchen is now nearly done. All of the cabinets and drawers are now clean and such of the previous owner's kitchen stuff that we will keep (or make use of until we bring the rest of my stuff here) is washed and back in the cupboards, along with such of my stuff as is already there (the things I had kept at David's after packing everything else because I use them often and he didn't have an equivalent). I've scrubbed the wall raditor and (on hands and knees) most of the floor (he made me stop for the day because it was getting late and he wanted to come to work to get some scrap metal plate to make new thresholds for the two doorways into the kitchen to replace the damaged wooden ones. The new ones will be much easierfor that robot vacuum cleaner we don't have yet).
He took down painted the boards that go along the base of the office wall and cover the floor edge while I took all of my things that have been stored in the bedroom to the office, so that tomorrow we can start painting in there.
A friend of the previous owner's daughters came by today and picked up a trailer's worth of tires and (possibly) car parts from the basement. So tjere is that much less to deal with.
The kitchen is now nearly done. All of the cabinets and drawers are now clean and such of the previous owner's kitchen stuff that we will keep (or make use of until we bring the rest of my stuff here) is washed and back in the cupboards, along with such of my stuff as is already there (the things I had kept at David's after packing everything else because I use them often and he didn't have an equivalent). I've scrubbed the wall raditor and (on hands and knees) most of the floor (he made me stop for the day because it was getting late and he wanted to come to work to get some scrap metal plate to make new thresholds for the two doorways into the kitchen to replace the damaged wooden ones. The new ones will be much easierfor that robot vacuum cleaner we don't have yet).
He took down painted the boards that go along the base of the office wall and cover the floor edge while I took all of my things that have been stored in the bedroom to the office, so that tomorrow we can start painting in there.
A friend of the previous owner's daughters came by today and picked up a trailer's worth of tires and (possibly) car parts from the basement. So tjere is that much less to deal with.
Happy New Year!
Jan. 1st, 2022 12:20 amWe did 11 hours of cleaning and work on the new house today. The office is now empty and ready for the floor to be installed. We would love to paint the walls first, but we don't expect a paint store to be open tomorrow. We took one of the nice cabinets, which had been in the bedroom and put it in the kitchen to serve as a pantry holding all the glass jars of food.
We installed a shelf in the space where there once had probably been a small inset fridge, and mounted the microwave in there, at eye height. We cleared a space in the little room off the fridge for the bookshelf Caroline gave me, which is now the pantry for canned goods and refills for the jars.
We shoveled the driveway down to the garage door, so that when the late owner's step daughter comes to take away some of the tires and stuff in the basement it will be easier. Whilst outside we met some of the neighbours, who seemed really nice, and who also seemed glad to learn that we are cleaning out the house and that the cars in the yard will be going away.
We also cleaned a bit in the laundry room to make room for the dryer I brought with me, my tricycle, and my kick sled. In the process I discovered a mummified frog. I don't cope well with corpses, so I squealed when he picked it up to take a photo.
Once we were done for the day we took away the day's trash and recycling and tried to donate some of the former owner's clothes, but the container at the second had store was too full to take more.
We got back to Keldor's dad's house on time to watch the midnight fireworks out the bedroom window. Happy New Year!
We installed a shelf in the space where there once had probably been a small inset fridge, and mounted the microwave in there, at eye height. We cleared a space in the little room off the fridge for the bookshelf Caroline gave me, which is now the pantry for canned goods and refills for the jars.
We shoveled the driveway down to the garage door, so that when the late owner's step daughter comes to take away some of the tires and stuff in the basement it will be easier. Whilst outside we met some of the neighbours, who seemed really nice, and who also seemed glad to learn that we are cleaning out the house and that the cars in the yard will be going away.
We also cleaned a bit in the laundry room to make room for the dryer I brought with me, my tricycle, and my kick sled. In the process I discovered a mummified frog. I don't cope well with corpses, so I squealed when he picked it up to take a photo.
Once we were done for the day we took away the day's trash and recycling and tried to donate some of the former owner's clothes, but the container at the second had store was too full to take more.
We got back to Keldor's dad's house on time to watch the midnight fireworks out the bedroom window. Happy New Year!
and there was much rejoicing!
Aug. 24th, 2021 06:26 pmI have just sent a reasonably complete draft of my paper in progress to my thesis supervisors!!!!!! (there are not enough exclamation points to properly convey my joy in this accomplishment). True, I do still need to create figure 4 and then fill in more in the results and discussion sections based on what it shows, but it is mostly done!
let me sum up
Feb. 10th, 2021 12:35 pmWhen last I posted I had just completed a Thursday that was nice, but so full I hadn't managed to get to any of my uni work. That Friday wasn't much better, with only 44 minutes uni work accomplished, but I did spend a half an hour playing on the sledding hill, which is both fun and counts as exercise.
That Saturday (30 Jan) was the Around The Known Bardic, which ran for 24 hours, starting at ~01:00 my time. I was wise enough NOT to try joining then. Instead I went to sleep just before midnight, slept till 07:30, and managed to join the bardic by 07:40. I then spent the rest of the day in the zoom meeting, and enjoyed every minute of it. Well, I did switch my hearing aids over to the telephone for one 40 minute call with E., but I didn't disconnect from the bardic to do that--I just didn't hear whatever was sung then. It was really a lot of fun. Sure, I would prefer an in-person bardic and the possibility to sing together. However, living where I do I wouldn't be able to sing with the people who attended this one anyway, since Sweden is rather far from the US, Canada, Australia, and even the UK. I made some great progress on my sexy viking cloak during the bardic.
Sunday I decided to spend the day doing useful stuff, including lots of loads of laundry, and some cooking and didn't touch the computer again after the bardic ended. My acroyoga partner came over for some sledding on my hill--the first time we had seen one another since the second wave of the pandemic started, but they say outdoor activities are safer, so we decided it would be fun. It was! We even tried a little outdoor acroyoga. Yes, it does work to balance upon winter boots instead of bare feet. It isn't quite as comfortable, but the thick winter coat provides enough padding that it is much more comfortable than I had expected. Eventually he decided it was time to head home, and eyed the snowy field, saying that it looked fun to cross. I pointed out that if he did cross the deep snow across the field he could pick up the snowmachine tracks on the ice and take that all the way to his place, thereby cutting about half a km from the trip (comparing with going around by the road).
He thought that sounded like fun, and I decided to go part way with him. At first he lead, and I just followed along in his footprints. Eventually he got tired of breaking the path, and I switched to leading. At that point I decided that walking through that deep of snow was too much work, and I switched to crawling. J. reports that my crawling broke the path enough that he had no difficulties walking behind me. Once we reached the snow-machine super-highway that is the wetlands between my house and the nature reserve the walking was easy, and I followed him about half way home before deciding that I was tired and should return home.
Before J. departed we agreed that since we aren't meeting for acroyoga, and we still need to do something in the way of exercise, we would meet every weekday morning over zoom, at 06:00, and do both a DownDog HIT and a DownDog Yoga app workout.
The next week (also known as last week, I only had to go to the archives Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wednesday and thursday I attended a conference for work (from home, of course, there being a pandemic on).
Some of those evenings I spent doing stuff for Coronation and never got to Uni work, but others I made good progress on my data reduction. I did, however, need a nap after getting home from the archives most days, to make up for getting up on time for that workout.
On Saturday E. got out of the hospital, so I picked her up, and we went to Gammalstad for a picnic. I had baked a really yummy treat for the occasion:
*********************
68 g butter
2 c oats
0.5 c almonds
1 T rosehip powder
2 T Norlandsbär powder
1 t sugar
Dash each of cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon
0.25 c yoghurt
2 c grated carrot
1 c grated apple
1 c frozen raspberries
1 egg
Mix butter and oats and powders, spices and sugar till everything is completely blended.
Grate the apple and carrot
Mix everything together, bake in a buttered pan at 160 C
*************************
After our picnic we strolled around Hängnan a bit, looking at the old houses, and then went past the paddock with sheep and ponies. The biggest pony came over to say hello, and was really friendly. So friendly that it started licking my hand. When it started gently nibbling I said no and took my hand away. Silly pony--the sign says we aren't supposed to feed you, that includes not feeding you the body parts we want to use later.
That evening my friend M. came over with my birthday present--a stack of beautiful hard-bound Folk Stories collection (in Swedish), we fed him dinner, and then he took E. back to his place, where she can enjoy the healing attentions of his two dogs and one cat.
This week we are still managing to meet for that morning workout each day, and both Monday and Tuesday I needed naps after getting home from the archives, but, both days I managed to do uni work in the evenings. Today after work, on the other hand, I had the energy to run errands. Back in December my former boss at LTU let me know that even though my job had ended, the university was still giving me a Christmas gift, and how should she give it to me. I suggested that N. could pick it up when he was next in the building, and he could pass it to D, who he sees regularly, and D could bring it here when next he was as the house. This form of delivery worked well, though some time elapsed, and I finally got the card on Monday.
The gift turned out to be a present card, good at a large variety of shops in the area. I am not much of a shopper, but I logged in to see which shops are participating, and one of them was the Shop in Lapland--the high end gift shop in Gammelstad from which my mother bought me a really pretty snowflake necklace when she was last here on a visit, and which, sadly, vanished entirely too soon thereafter. Their web page said that they are closed due to the pandemic, but anyone who has ordered something to be picked up can drop by in the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and knock loudly on the door. So I sent them a quick email asking if I could come by and use that present card to get the snowflake necklace, and they said yes.
Therefore, after work today, instead of going straight home for a nap, I did the 7 km detour and got the necklace (for which I needed to pay 180 SEK over and above the amount on the card). Since it was a beautiful day I took a short walk, and stopped by the paddock with the sheep and ponies, but they had recently been given fresh food, and showed zero interest in saying hello. Since it was a little on the cold side I just returned to the car and came home.
Now I need to decide if I have enough energy to do some uni work, or if I need a nap...
That Saturday (30 Jan) was the Around The Known Bardic, which ran for 24 hours, starting at ~01:00 my time. I was wise enough NOT to try joining then. Instead I went to sleep just before midnight, slept till 07:30, and managed to join the bardic by 07:40. I then spent the rest of the day in the zoom meeting, and enjoyed every minute of it. Well, I did switch my hearing aids over to the telephone for one 40 minute call with E., but I didn't disconnect from the bardic to do that--I just didn't hear whatever was sung then. It was really a lot of fun. Sure, I would prefer an in-person bardic and the possibility to sing together. However, living where I do I wouldn't be able to sing with the people who attended this one anyway, since Sweden is rather far from the US, Canada, Australia, and even the UK. I made some great progress on my sexy viking cloak during the bardic.
Sunday I decided to spend the day doing useful stuff, including lots of loads of laundry, and some cooking and didn't touch the computer again after the bardic ended. My acroyoga partner came over for some sledding on my hill--the first time we had seen one another since the second wave of the pandemic started, but they say outdoor activities are safer, so we decided it would be fun. It was! We even tried a little outdoor acroyoga. Yes, it does work to balance upon winter boots instead of bare feet. It isn't quite as comfortable, but the thick winter coat provides enough padding that it is much more comfortable than I had expected. Eventually he decided it was time to head home, and eyed the snowy field, saying that it looked fun to cross. I pointed out that if he did cross the deep snow across the field he could pick up the snowmachine tracks on the ice and take that all the way to his place, thereby cutting about half a km from the trip (comparing with going around by the road).
He thought that sounded like fun, and I decided to go part way with him. At first he lead, and I just followed along in his footprints. Eventually he got tired of breaking the path, and I switched to leading. At that point I decided that walking through that deep of snow was too much work, and I switched to crawling. J. reports that my crawling broke the path enough that he had no difficulties walking behind me. Once we reached the snow-machine super-highway that is the wetlands between my house and the nature reserve the walking was easy, and I followed him about half way home before deciding that I was tired and should return home.
Before J. departed we agreed that since we aren't meeting for acroyoga, and we still need to do something in the way of exercise, we would meet every weekday morning over zoom, at 06:00, and do both a DownDog HIT and a DownDog Yoga app workout.
The next week (also known as last week, I only had to go to the archives Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Wednesday and thursday I attended a conference for work (from home, of course, there being a pandemic on).
Some of those evenings I spent doing stuff for Coronation and never got to Uni work, but others I made good progress on my data reduction. I did, however, need a nap after getting home from the archives most days, to make up for getting up on time for that workout.
On Saturday E. got out of the hospital, so I picked her up, and we went to Gammalstad for a picnic. I had baked a really yummy treat for the occasion:
*********************
68 g butter
2 c oats
0.5 c almonds
1 T rosehip powder
2 T Norlandsbär powder
1 t sugar
Dash each of cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon
0.25 c yoghurt
2 c grated carrot
1 c grated apple
1 c frozen raspberries
1 egg
Mix butter and oats and powders, spices and sugar till everything is completely blended.
Grate the apple and carrot
Mix everything together, bake in a buttered pan at 160 C
*************************
After our picnic we strolled around Hängnan a bit, looking at the old houses, and then went past the paddock with sheep and ponies. The biggest pony came over to say hello, and was really friendly. So friendly that it started licking my hand. When it started gently nibbling I said no and took my hand away. Silly pony--the sign says we aren't supposed to feed you, that includes not feeding you the body parts we want to use later.
That evening my friend M. came over with my birthday present--a stack of beautiful hard-bound Folk Stories collection (in Swedish), we fed him dinner, and then he took E. back to his place, where she can enjoy the healing attentions of his two dogs and one cat.
This week we are still managing to meet for that morning workout each day, and both Monday and Tuesday I needed naps after getting home from the archives, but, both days I managed to do uni work in the evenings. Today after work, on the other hand, I had the energy to run errands. Back in December my former boss at LTU let me know that even though my job had ended, the university was still giving me a Christmas gift, and how should she give it to me. I suggested that N. could pick it up when he was next in the building, and he could pass it to D, who he sees regularly, and D could bring it here when next he was as the house. This form of delivery worked well, though some time elapsed, and I finally got the card on Monday.
The gift turned out to be a present card, good at a large variety of shops in the area. I am not much of a shopper, but I logged in to see which shops are participating, and one of them was the Shop in Lapland--the high end gift shop in Gammelstad from which my mother bought me a really pretty snowflake necklace when she was last here on a visit, and which, sadly, vanished entirely too soon thereafter. Their web page said that they are closed due to the pandemic, but anyone who has ordered something to be picked up can drop by in the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, or Friday and knock loudly on the door. So I sent them a quick email asking if I could come by and use that present card to get the snowflake necklace, and they said yes.
Therefore, after work today, instead of going straight home for a nap, I did the 7 km detour and got the necklace (for which I needed to pay 180 SEK over and above the amount on the card). Since it was a beautiful day I took a short walk, and stopped by the paddock with the sheep and ponies, but they had recently been given fresh food, and showed zero interest in saying hello. Since it was a little on the cold side I just returned to the car and came home.
Now I need to decide if I have enough energy to do some uni work, or if I need a nap...
a slow start to the day
Jul. 4th, 2020 11:38 amI didn't get the last load of wash out of the machine last night till well after midnight, and didn't manage to put down my phone and go to sleep till nearly 02:00, so it was no surprise that I slept till nearly 09:00. I have been making it to bed well before midnight all week, since J needs to be at work by 07:00, and I try to go to bed when she does, so that I can get more accomplished with my morning.
But this weekend her aunt in Kalix (about 45 minutes drive north of here) is getting married and J and the Priest's daughter are the only two witnesses. So she took off Friday after work, and I spent the evening mostly being useful (and a little reading DW and FB) and stayed up considerably later than has been my habit since she arrived in early June.
I woke up thinking about my research and the program fotoalbum, which will let one set it up so that it automatically assigns key words to the photos based on the names of the folders in which they are in. I haven't been using photoalbum for my laser maps yet--so far I have only used it to organise the museum artefacts. But, of course, it is a great tool, and if I really want to have a good understanding how how the different quarry samples are similar and how they are different I really should use it.
So instead of starting my day with a workout, as I have for the past seven days, I sat down to the computer and started creating the folder structure. I already have a table which organises the samples first into the orogeny (mountain building episode) in which the rocks were formed, their sub unit, which county, which quarry, which sub quarry (if any), the sample name, the sample number, and the date(s) they were analysed, so I just followed that structure from left to right, making a folder for everything in the first column, then opening each folder in turn and making a sub folder for everything in the next column, and so on. Till I got to the hard part, when I got down to the level of the folders for each analytical session. Then I have to pay attention, because, often, I analysed more than one sample on a given day, and for this to work for getting the sample name into the keywords, I need to have the data for each sample in its own appropriately located folder. This means opening each folder and copying over the relevant files to the new folder (better to copy, so I don't risk losing anything by getting distracted somewhere in the middle of this).
I managed to get the first seven (of 34) samples copied over, and then got hungry, so I took a break to eat, at which point I opened DW to read the new posts while I ate the last of that yummy Pear and Mango Custardy cake that I made the other day. Somehow that lead to also having some cheese, and some thinbread (the paper-thin Swedish yeast bread that I eat like crackers, but David breaks into small chunks and covers with milk for breakfast), and also reading one set of FB (till I hit the note from SocialFixer saying that if I want to keep reading another 50 posts I should press this button). I opted not to press that button, but instead commented on a couple of posts here, and decided to do my own post, as a way of letting myself know that I am done with social media for now, and should do other things next.
My alarm has been going off for a while to remind me that I should still do that workout, so my plan is to do that, and then either resume the coping of data into those folders straight away, or, perhaps, carve a bit on my soapstone pot first. Wish me luck that the rest of the day is a bit more productive.
But this weekend her aunt in Kalix (about 45 minutes drive north of here) is getting married and J and the Priest's daughter are the only two witnesses. So she took off Friday after work, and I spent the evening mostly being useful (and a little reading DW and FB) and stayed up considerably later than has been my habit since she arrived in early June.
I woke up thinking about my research and the program fotoalbum, which will let one set it up so that it automatically assigns key words to the photos based on the names of the folders in which they are in. I haven't been using photoalbum for my laser maps yet--so far I have only used it to organise the museum artefacts. But, of course, it is a great tool, and if I really want to have a good understanding how how the different quarry samples are similar and how they are different I really should use it.
So instead of starting my day with a workout, as I have for the past seven days, I sat down to the computer and started creating the folder structure. I already have a table which organises the samples first into the orogeny (mountain building episode) in which the rocks were formed, their sub unit, which county, which quarry, which sub quarry (if any), the sample name, the sample number, and the date(s) they were analysed, so I just followed that structure from left to right, making a folder for everything in the first column, then opening each folder in turn and making a sub folder for everything in the next column, and so on. Till I got to the hard part, when I got down to the level of the folders for each analytical session. Then I have to pay attention, because, often, I analysed more than one sample on a given day, and for this to work for getting the sample name into the keywords, I need to have the data for each sample in its own appropriately located folder. This means opening each folder and copying over the relevant files to the new folder (better to copy, so I don't risk losing anything by getting distracted somewhere in the middle of this).
I managed to get the first seven (of 34) samples copied over, and then got hungry, so I took a break to eat, at which point I opened DW to read the new posts while I ate the last of that yummy Pear and Mango Custardy cake that I made the other day. Somehow that lead to also having some cheese, and some thinbread (the paper-thin Swedish yeast bread that I eat like crackers, but David breaks into small chunks and covers with milk for breakfast), and also reading one set of FB (till I hit the note from SocialFixer saying that if I want to keep reading another 50 posts I should press this button). I opted not to press that button, but instead commented on a couple of posts here, and decided to do my own post, as a way of letting myself know that I am done with social media for now, and should do other things next.
My alarm has been going off for a while to remind me that I should still do that workout, so my plan is to do that, and then either resume the coping of data into those folders straight away, or, perhaps, carve a bit on my soapstone pot first. Wish me luck that the rest of the day is a bit more productive.
