A time to complain

So yes, its another Friday lunchtime, I both love and hate this time, so nearly finished and yet so much left to do.

I think I might make another mini blog and put physics in it, so that if people want to know why I'm so busy/angry/stressed they can see exactly why. Mostly I think I would put up my drawings and such. Although, I think there are copyright things about my work... so maybe I'm not allowed publish things... I will have to look that one up. But if I ever publish any papers I will be sure to post a link up here.

So I've been doing nothing but data analysis for a long while now, waiting to get started on the next experiments, have to have stuff built and set up before. Non-stop issues to get by too, and now Prof.Lunney wants a different setup, so more drawings to do (I do like doing them, I just want to show them off to people too). To explain what my next experiment is I shall say this: I have thus far worked with previously used experimental setups, ( http://www.springerlink.com/content/vh6516r63272x551/fulltext.pdf ) don't know if that link will work but it goes into a lot of the things I do. So anyway, now I am going to be using a different geometry such that the plasmas collide and this is the medium for the discharge rather than a plamsa rushing through a discharge cell. It's quite a physically complex setup, especially now that I will be using a rotating target.

I'm sure I've just lost any possible readers, so now I can really get into the good stuff. Except I'm really quite tired right now. Haven't been that motivated this week, really hate all this BS holding me back from starting the next experiment, if I could just have access to the material myself I could bring it home and build it, I know it wouldn't be as accurate but its the initial experiments they don't need to be built to the micron. (sorry back to work again, it's mostly all that's on my mind).

Brought M out for a birthday pint with Josh on Wednesday in Mulligan's (best pint of Guinness in Dublin apparently) and then went out after for Josh's birthday in Mac Turcaills. Had a lot of pints... thus totally ruining my new years resolution, not that I hadn't put some dents in it already. Was a good night though, also out that night was the JF science pub crawl, I ran into lots of my students, hassled them about having lab reports done for Thursday's lab and got a free pint from a guy I had in Maths Methods last term.



Odette has started a job in a café in Dalkey, so with that goes much of the time we spend together. Which is a shame, I do miss her alot and it's not like we spent much time with each other as was but I'm glad she's working and she seems to enjoy it.

I also have another old camera to play with. So I think I'm going to put in some time cleaning them up and then test them out the next sunny day I have out and about, be good to see if I can get back into photography, I have a scanner so I don't mind not using digital and I look forward to cleaning their optics and looking at how their workings have aged. Off I go now, to draw.



*edit* Forgot to put images in, must do that for the readers sake ;) */edit*

Isaac Tobin And The Weeks End

Here we are again, another lunch time Friday.
Another week flown by. It really is quite scary, already a lot more than 1/12 through 2010. Almost finished my 22nd year breathing for myself (rather than the previous 22 someone was breathing for me?).

Watched a TED talk this morning from Jamie Oliver, regarding obesity and bad food habits in the USA. Very interesting stuff, but not much I didn't know before.



But it really does keep me thinking about my nasty habit of chowing on nothing from one end of the day to the other, literally. I'm a devil for coming into work at 10am, eating a big bowl of cereal and then nothing but water and tea till 9-10pm when I have dinner at home. Now I do do lunch sometimes, now for example I'm having 2 bananas and a mug of milky, delicious tea. The problem has been that I've just not been hungry for the last 2 weeks. Most days I eat my breakfast too late then by the time I am hungry it's for dinner and I know there is one at home for me. (not mentioning at all my addiction to chocolate, because there is obviously nothing wrong with that...)

Mostly again this just comes back to needing to get up early and get my ass into college. The rest of me also having to get in too.

Still no luck finding a Wii board so I can do Wii Fit in the mornings like I did last year, I do miss it, good fun for an hour and a handy way to wake myself up, get motivated and all that stuff. I've also decided that 2 evenings a week I'm going to spend in the Postgrad. Reading Room, that way I wont check my emails, Twitter, Facebook, TED, YouTube, Google Reader... etc. etc.
Now I'm not saying that's all I do, but it does take 10mins out of every hour. Add to that all the tea and water I drink, then have to refill bottles. I waste a lot of time, like a pro I'd say. Always thought my PhD should be in wasting time.

Finally for this post I shall mention my lovely girlfriend who makes me so happy and I really don't thank her enough. Every text brightens my days, every smile makes my week.

Odette: "That tiger is thinking 'Oh you would be sooooo tasty'" <3

(also, putting images in blog posts makes everything nicer, thanks to Jane, Marc and their amazing blogs for that one.)

Once a day you say?

Why yes, I do have a blog.
I wonder how many millions tell themselves to post blogs more often every day.
Always do like finding I fit perfectly into the middle, snug and warm, of a mass statistic. Nothing wrong with being one of the bell curve extremes either mind, but I do like being mediocre in lots of ways. Brown-ish hair, brown-ish eyes, average-ish height, average-ish weight. Makes for lots of: "well I guess I'm not the only one who likes a chocolate coated chocolate".

I have had a pretty busy day today if I do say so myself.
Have got quite a bit done, but a Lot more to do. Group meeting called this morning, 3 hours notice. Not the nicest thing for a Monday morning but certainly gets you on your toes! Have a lot of model working to do to get the fit with the data to match well, looks like 3 different regions of temperature, possibly one very hot dense core surrounded by two cooler, sparser regions. If that makes sense in plasma physics beyond the sun's interests then I'm set, otherwise I'm back at square one and my assumptions have wasted a lot of my time.

Have this magnetism course thing, it's a pain, have to do homework. Hate homework. Answer the questions at the end of each chapter...

Chapter 1, question 1) As a rule of thumb, a (magnetic) field 3 times greater than the spontaneous magnetisation is needed to magnetise a permanent magnet. Given that the current in a lightning strike is 10^6 A, make an estimate of the time that will elapse before a particular outcrop of lodestone becomes magnetised.
(Should this be an infringement on copyright then please inform me and I will remove it, my most sincere apologies if I have breached any publishing rights in this.)

Now to me, that question is just looking for someone to get confused, why can't I be asked something that makes sense to me, like say: how does one go about making a nice cup of tea.

Anyway, that's what the next 2 evenings will be spent on. I think it will be 20 questions like that, 10 a night eh? Off I go.

FREEDOM! YEAH!

God I love my big headphones... And RATM. ^_^
Rocking out, chowing on some fruit (a banana and an orange) waiting for my PrismSPECT simulation to finish. That has to be my favorite thing about computer intensive physics, lots of time which you actually have to just waste.

I THINK I HEARD A SHOT!
Hah, so yeah, day went fairly well today, woke up at 9:15, bagged up the rest of the clothes I decided to be rid of, which made it one very full black bin bag, not to mention the faded/torn clothes for the bin. I really do horde too much junk, but I love my junk, all the bits are parts of me... or at least that's what I tell myself until I can't actually find anything that still fits me and doesn't have Nirvana on it.
Would like to have a week to just go through Everything in my room, and go buy tons of boxes and sandwich bags so that I can sort and order all the stuff I want to hang on to. I think I'm going to do something like that with my cable drawers and computer parts boxes. Maybe make a list of what I have aswell, because off the top of my head I know I have 4 floppy drives, 2 CDRW drives, 1 DVD, 1 DVDRW, 2 HD-IDE, 1 HD-SATA, 3 graphics cards, 1 motherboard, 2 1GB-RAM and 1 TV card... and that's not to mention the cables for all that junk... Most of it is for the scrap heap but some is good to go, should anyone need stuff to put together a crap PC anytime soon.

Aswell as that I think I want to store my Warhammer, just so I can #1 have it out of the way and #2 stop it getting broken when it gets In the way. I may not use it but it still cost a bomb all those years ago, don't want it turning to scrap plastic.

So much for the blog a day eh? I don't think that's ever workable though, not really for me. I don't think I have enough to talk about. Not that that ever stops me.
Starting to plan holidays, which is always a relaxing thing to do, the simple idea of a holiday is enough to make everything feel warm and sunny. Was thinking of 3 different holidays, 10 days in NY/NJ, 10 days in Italy somewhere, and a long weekend down the country. As well as this I want to visit Jane in Kerry and visit Cian in Belfast. So I might start putting those together soon, maybe book some flights. Maybe.

Elsewhere in my life things seem pretty rosey, I'm feeling a lot better for the mid-month crisis I went through, needed a good kick as I've heard a good few times now. Have some things setup which should help me continue to be cheery and I know I'm going to stay away from the beery (I didn't even really want to say that, just had to say beery). I should be able to get more in the swing of work now. What I'm going to try doing, once I have some of this list of tasks completed, is reading up on physics some more, writing out notes and such. I've DLed MIT's plasma physics lectures ( http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/index.htm ) and have some other bits and bobs so I think I should be able to get a better grasp pretty quickly. Am going to do their assesments too, just for the craic. I can't wait to see Odette again though, I think it's just that time seems to go so slowly during some of these hours, makes the week feel long, and yet they're just flying by.
Bye.