Data, Data everywhere, but not a damn thing analysed

The biggest problem with doing a PhD as far as I can tell is the fact that everything seems to take a very long time, you start the day with a very simple check list of everything you want to do: take sample, analyse sample.

You wouldn't think that anything could happen between item a and item b that would prevent you from finishing your plan, but you would be wrong. It is amazing how the equipment will willfully refuse to work (to the extent that my automatic sampler literally blew up last week and I had to send it to the workshop for them to resolder the circuit board or something) or people will find something FAR more important for you to do, like help during practicals.

Which brings me back to my familiar gripe about the stupidity and laziness of undergraduates - I know I was one once but I am SURE I was never that dumb. For example:

idiot child: 'how do you work out the water content of the soil?'
Helpful Supervisor: 'do you know the mass of the soil prior to drying it, when it was damp?'
idiot child: 'yes.'
Helpful Supervisor: 'do you know it's dry mass?'
idiot child: 'yes.'
Helpful Supervisor: 'how do you think you work out the mass of water in the original sample?'
idiot child: 'dunno......'

That is a faithful reproduction ladies and gents of a conversation I had on friday. How depressing. But then there really is nothing like mind numbing boredom watching other people doing boring experiments, over time I am really learning the ability to suspend my conciousness in a place beyond time and irritation. Commonly people refer to this as short-term coma I believe.

when fate conspires against marriage

In order to get married outside of an anglican church within the UK it is necessary to obtain a marriage licence from a registrar, it is then displayed in the registry office for 3 weeks to give people the opportunity to expose the fact that you are proposing to marry your brother/father/uncle/other incestuous partner. The procedure in principal is simple, quick and painless.

On a blue, brilliant and beautiful summers day I prepared to make my journey to guildford in order to be allowed to wed my admittedly handsome and long suffering partner. The first mistake was spilling food over my carefully chosen and coordinated outfit. A lightening change into a rather less well coordinated but still carefully chosen outfit and I started packing up the car, it took three trips from house to vehicle and each time it was necessary to kick the door open with extreme violence in order to frighten Layonie into the next room, thus giving me sufficient time to make my enterance without her escaping into the road which she has developed a suicidal fascination with over the last couple of weeks. I then took the car key for my beloved rust bucket, and for adored partners orange chariot in order to nick a couple of his CDs. Accordingly I hastly shut the front door while threatening my toothless feline with my foot in order to prevent her becoming an unpleasant mess on someones bonet, and carefully locked the door. I then strode with purpose to the orange chariot, removed the cd's, locked it and posted the keys back through the letter box, thus preventing me having to run the cat gauntlet again. I then turned to the rust bucket and started searching for my keys in my handbag. I then empted my handbag on to the pavement. Finally in frustration I started searching the pavement, when my eye was caught by a glitter in the orange chariot. I had managed to put myself in the position where I was locked out of my house and my car.

At this moment your average weak man would start panicing, but not I! I sprang into action and kicked in the basement window (fairly difficult to do and painful in flip flops), which luckily was woodern slat rather than glass. I then slid down the coal shoot it covered and fell on some crockery in the basement. I rushed up stairs for the second change of the day into a really rather uncoordinated outfit which didn't benefit from any careful thought at all and then returned to the basement. I rearranged the wood covering the window so it looked less conspicously broke, cooly picked up my car keys and pelted for the front door, making my excit a split second before Layonie.

On entry to the rust bucket I put the key in the lock with relief, and prepared to move off. A critical part of the process was skipped. The car wouldn't start. It didn't even cough, or choke, or anything. It was as dead as a rabbit on a greyhound track. Quelling the anxiety I pulled out my RAC card and rung for help. Apparantly I wasn't covered for home start. I prepared to push the car into the next street when I decided that with one thing or another I wanted a quick moan first. I called my nearest and dearest who charitable offered the services of his own car. I re-entered the house, Layonie, delighted at all the fun with the door game escaped into the street. I chased her down and then lay flat on the pavement in a comfortable position with my head on my arms and started chiruping at the underside of a red and flaking polo. A passing old lady sniggered sympathetically as she arthritically hobbled up the road. A car drove past, and with impressive intelligence Layonie shot out from under the car, nimply lept over the reclining obstruction which was my own good self, sprinted up the street, cornered in an extremely sloppy manner and cantered up the steps back into the house. I philosphically got to my feet, brushed off outfit number 3, noted some......mud (?) on the skirt and trudged back to the house. Cue outfit number 4. I then recovered the other set of keys, moved everything from one car to the other, leaving the front door open at a jaunty angle (in order to prevent a repetition of the earlier experience) in the certain knowledge that Layonie was huddled under my bed recovering from the shock seeing a car in motion. Finally I located all my keys, locked all the doors. Entered the orange horror, realised that I had left the Cds in the other car, swallowed some curses and drove off.

The M25 was closed as luck would have it, right where I needed to go. I then had to go cross country, thinking it was a cunning plan. Amazing how many creatively minded people there are who commute every day. An hour and a half journey morphed into a five hours and a half journey. I even got to get out of the car on a duel carriageway to stretch my legs. Very refreshing. And with one thing and another, forgivably, I was rather late to the registry office having failed to have any lunch. I hate missing meals.

That would have been bad enough, but to add insult to the considerable injury of the day I was harassed at the registrar as well. I managed to register, and grasping the hard won piece of paper I stepped out of the building among a positive crowd of simpering newly weds. My face must have reflected the irritation I had been feeling all day, and in response one of the kindly old ladies who must have been on her next multiple wedding caught my arm and grimaced at me in smug sympathy intoning 'didn't he turn up then love?'

Field Trip Bliss

somewhat later than is probably polite I finally feel able, and stong enough, to grasp the metaphorical nettle and talk about the Undergraduate Upland Ecology Field Trip to Loch Lomond. *head held in hands and brandy is applied*

I should have smelt a rat (or the vile sour odour of the unwashed undergraduate) within the first hour of landing in Glasgow. The dead giveaway for the tone of the trip was when we (Tolis-the-greek and I) loaded up our people carrier (people meant in the loosest possible terms) and started to stuff undergrads in. We shut the doors, put on the radio, prepared to go with Tolis at the wheel when one of them says.....'can he drive?'. No genius, he is a shaved monkey who I have suicidally brought to drive and I am taking all of you with me.

To be fair the accomodation wasn't the most inspiring or beautiful you will ever have seen, if and when someone bothers to rate all the buildings in the world in order in terms of beauty, cleanliness and space you will find it around the same area as the slum towns of south africa. I was fortunate enough to have my own room, located right next to the kitchen which is how I account for the un-cannily strong scent of cabbage within the carpet, the walls and distressingly the mattress, so I rose every morning with a wiff of old cabbage about me. Despite my depressing sleeping conditions I was one up on the undergrad who had two communial dorms which Tolis and I had helpfully assigned them to on the basis of sex. Upon seeing my 2m by 1.5m paradise by the kitchen I was subjected to wails about the unfairness of the supervisor having their own room and WHY did the they have to be treated like this? My answer would probably be censored by this website so I leave the blanks for you to fill with expletives of your choice: 'unfair? UNFAIR?! If I am going to put up with this for an entire week with you ...... around and giving me ..... grieve about your ......... then you can ..... a ...... lampost and sleep in a ..... .......... and I hope someone comes and ..............................'

I rather think I got of on a bad start, it had been a long day, I had had 3 hours of sleep the night before (Tolis and I had a bit of a mini party at his place with much drinking and film watching) and they were probably tired too.

But to be honest it only got worse, they were extremely hardworking and dissapproving of the supervisors late night drinking (they were all in BED by eleven on the first night). They didn't like climbing hills on an UPLAND ECOLOGY course and had failed to bring waterbottles or any water proofs into the field in SCOTLAND in APRIL.

Probably the highlight was the friday when they were doing their lab work and I was excuse for the afternoon to go paddling, sunbathing (I fell asleep and got some magnificent sunburn on one side of my face, if you look carefully you can still see the damn tan mark) and rowing on Loch Lomond. Flippently saying I had been off skinny dipping lead to a combination of disgust and horrified speculation amongst the undergads, niether of which was particularly flattering.

The up side is I got paid £600 pounds for the misery and I am pretty sure that I learned a thing or two about mosses. Also the second years now respectfully press themselves against the walls when I walk the corridors of my department now, which always gives me a nice warm feeling.

Analyse on what?

did you know analogue outputs from analytical equipment still exist? I didn't. To clarify a printer type thing spews out paper with those charming holed edges at a rate of 1 cm per minute while a pen scratches on the results. Then you have to tear it off, get out your ruler and work out in the old fashioned way what the hell it means. It is so gloriously low tech.

my particular gripe is that yesturday I nipped out for half an hour to have a drink and a short sit down, and by the time I had come back the ink had run out and I had lost a load of data. I had to stick a pen onto the writing arm thing using gaffer tape to get some more data since the correct pens for the gizmo had all disappeared/run out of ink. Oh joy. I am now sat at my desk with a crayon so I can shade over where the traces should be to see if the pen at least indented the page so I won't have to do it again. Ridiculous!

It is hard to live up to your self image of standing at the forefront of groundbreaking science when you lose data when the pen runs out of ink.

Conference Bliss

The funny thing is the more you go to conferences the more aware you are of how crap everyone is.

I remember in my days of youthful naivity being terrified of asking questions, assuming it would only prove to all and sundry my intense ignorance. I would marvel at the clear brilliance of the speakers, and their assured self-confidence when presenting and their quick responses to questions which demonstrated the deep of understanding and thought of the questioner. Now I know better.

The knots of old men giggling over the free fish paste sarnies are not old collaborators with years of lab work and experiance enjoying shared company, they are senile. No one likes to ask questions ergo the only people who do are either pointing out something blindingly obvious that any fool could see (although most the audiance would not dare question) or those trying to steal the limelight by discussing at length their own research before absently mindedly taking a 'don't you think at the end'. Either way the response is 90% bullshit on the part of the speaker, or his cronies in the audiance who pipe up in his defence.

The wonder of a not inconsiderable number of the presentations is that they are allowed to continue speaking after the first ten minutes and not heckled and driven off stage. Most the presentations I have seen are crap; I have seen school assemblies with better studied arguments and more audiance engagement. You get the basic three types: the stuttering fool, the over-confident bore and the decent intelligent human being. Unfortunately in academia, along with many other walks of life: these are few and far between.

Junior Hoodies

I am completely outraged!

Last night I was walking to a salsa club in Nottingham Town Centre. Whilst walking past a hotel with my friend Emma we saw four kids who looked like their ages ranged from 12 - 14 sat on the wall outside. They were listlessly tossing pebbles from the ornamental garden into the water of the oramental fountain and looked bored out of their tiny minds. We carried on walking and as we passed by we heard a high pitched, unbroken squeak of 'nice arse' followed by a second even more squeaking 'nice breasts'. As one woman we stopped dead, spun on our heels, looked at each other and marched back to them. 'What did you say?', absolute total absorption into the throwing pebbles game, the two perpertrators looked unbelievably guilty and physically shrunk. I rolled my eyes and said 'I could be your mother!' and Emma helpfully sniggered that I am probably older than their mother. The four of them flinch. 'Where did you learn the word breasts? From a text book?', 'Did your mum forget to sew your hoods on' , 'Not in the town centre because the big boys told you to home to your mummies and come back when your voice was broken?'. A perfect barrage of abuse. An elderly couple creaked past and the old man snorted with laugher. The four wannabe dilinquants clearly wished they were dead. Emma was hitting her stride but I thought the job was done and so we marched on to the club with a shocked and awed silence behind us.

We rounded a corner and entered the town square to a cry of 'nice tits' and 'would you like to sit on me with that butt?' from the 20 years olds at the central fountain.

The Sky is Blue, and so is Layonie....

Yesturday I didn't go into work, due to that dread appointment: the cat's dental. Although the appointment was technically at 9.30 am I still got up at the crack of dawn to prepare the way for what turned out to be a remarkably stressful experiance.

The first couple of hours went thus: cat whinges of starvation due to horrible harsh evil owner refusing to feed it in preparation for its general, owner ignores highly vocal cat's complaints with gritted teeth, cat complains louder, owner ignores harder, cat suddenly goes quiet, owner fails to notice due to working so hard at ignoring the cats existance, owner notices cat has taken the intiative and is trying to eat left overs out of dustbin/lick dirty plate/chase peanut under dresser/break into cupboard. Food souce put out of reach, cycle begins again.

Then came the unveiling of the cat carrier; there was absolutely no doubt that Layonie had worked out what that meant. She shot under the sofa faster than should have been physically possible unless siamese come with a hidden turbo drive for just such an occassion. Trying to sweet talk her out met with a chilly look and a squark that clearly stated that she wasn't that gullible and it would take more than that to shift her. Next I tried cunning, bringing out a bag of cat treats and rattling them encouragingly, possibly cruel since I wasn't going to give her one. I was treated by a dark look and sarcastic chirp. At this point I lost my temper and dived under the sofa after her, arms flailing. The cat neatly avoided my grasping hands, demonstrated the effectiveness of the siamese turbo again and shot up stairs. I then had to unwedge myself from under the sofa which unfortunatly was somewhat undignified; it is hard to back out when you are completely underneath with your backside pointing heavenwards. I then chased her upstairs, and started looking under furniture until thundering footsteps informed me that the little beast had run downstairs again. Oh the fun. The cat tired of it long after I had. When I finally managed to lay hands on her I shoved her in the basket and started to shut the door, she stuck her head in the gap, I pushed it in and started to close, just in time to catch her at the neck. I pushed her in again, repeat preformance. I tiped the basket up in the end so she was squashed uncomfortably at the bottom with the blanket looking up at the door at which point I slammed it (in so far as you can on a cat basket) in triumph. She then started complaining.

She complained all the way through the house, on the doorstep, to the car, when I was driving, when I was walking to the vet, and most especially at the vet. We came through the door to an oasis of calm and pastel blue. The waiting area contained two dogs looking very sorry for themselves; a scruffy mongral and what looked like a Jack Russel which was so over-weight its stomach dragged on the ground. As well as the miserable dogs was a big ginger tom, blissfully asleep in his carrier and an old woman with a chicken in a basket. No that wasn't her lunch, it was literally a big brown hen in a basket on her lap which she kept talking to and feeding bits of corn. And in I walked with Hell-mog.

She complained while I booked in with the receptionist in the way that only a siamese can, the loud rising yowls making the conversation difficult. The ginger tom woke up, the dogs pricked up their ears. I then sat down near to the weird old bird with her chicken who made the fatal error of saying 'oh a pussy cat, how sweet, may I see'. She then bent down to dimly gaze at Layonie, who when offered a decent target for her fury took a swipe at her through the bars. The old lady the gave a quiet gasp and sat up, rocking her chicken basket, which caused it to squark. The dogs started looking rather excited, and the tom started twitching its tail.

Layonie now certain of an audiance took it to the next level and started having hysterics, screeching and throwing herself around the carrier which began moving across the floor with the more energetic collisions. The rotund little dog started yapping and moving in excitment, but being so fat it kind of rocked back and forth on its front paws side to side over its stomach. This further upset the chicken which fluffed up its feathers and started pecking its basket and the crooning old lady. The mongual looking self concious but unwilling to be left out gave a couple of experimental barks but was shushed to dejected silence by its owner. The Jack Russel was having a whale of a time and actually shuffled forward a few steps and started taking an active interest in the Tom whose owner, with mistaken confidence in the Jack Russels ability to move further than a foot without needing a heart surgury, clutched the tom's basket to her chest causing him to meow plaitively. Layonie in the meantime was not about to tolerate any rival for the most noisy and disruptive pet award and having worked out how to make her carrier move by ramming it was making for the legs of the old lady. The receptionist reached for the telephone. I dragged the cat basket back, planted a foot on it and pulled out a copy of cosmo pretending the racket and over-excited animals had nothing to do with me. To my relief a tthat point a smart looking nurse called my name, showed me to a treatment room and told me someone would be there in a minute. Layonie kept up the row up to the moment the vet walked into the room when she settled immediately looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Which ironically was the problem in the first case, rather than taking my adored fiance's advice and having her vocal cords cut the reason for the visit was to have her teeth seen to. Or rather extracted. She had all of them removed except for the canines which make her look a little bit like miniture sabre tooth tiger. Interesting to speculate if she can hunt any more: I daresay we will know when we find a mouse corpse with two fang holes in the throat, or else she will probably have to hang on to it until it dies of old age.

The pick up in contrast was a much more sedate affair: the vet explained I was now the proud owner of a toothless cat and that she would probably be fairly quiet for the rest of the day. In response to my incredulous look she looked nervous and asked which cat was mine. When I told her it was the small stripy one she corrected herself and informed me most cats were quiter after surgury. There is nothing worse than a siamese with a grudge.