Week in review: 24-30 May

This week has not gone as expected.  This week I exposed a mountain of work that I, previously, had greatly underestimated.  Last Sunday I stated my goal was to move on from my current programming tasks by today, but even with an extra afternoon today, I am still far from completing this task.  It's my own fault to find myself in my current situation and main for one reason, poor planning.  Making things up as you go along is bad news, especially when you're months from submitting you PhD thesis.  The problem came when I desired to update my documentation for the communication protocol I use for controlling my custom built hardware.  This isn't a bad idea as I frequently refer to my previous notes and I had recently made some significant changes.  Also, next month I'll be headed overseas to a lab where I plan to hand off copies of my instruments to other researchers.  For their benefit, decent documentation is welcome.  After cleaning up this portion of my user manual, I got a wild idea to update all my documentation.  This is a good idea, because it's been nearly a year since I wrote the original documents and much has changed, however, this is a bad idea, because it's been nearly a year since I wrote the original documents and much has changed.  At this point, I have the option to continue with my task, which will make it easier for other to reproduce my work and take advantage of the hardware I've developed.  Or I can fall back to preparing/writing my thesis.

Focus

I admit it... today I had trouble keeping myself focused.  Throughout the day I chipped away at a mountain of writing, but numerous times my attention was drawn elsewhere.  The biggest distraction of the day occurred in the afternoon when I helped another student design and print a new part for their project.  What can I say, somethings just seem so much more interesting that creating user guides and help documentation.  Bahhh.

A beast of its own

Today I spent more time preparing my hardware's "user's guide" which is starting to turn into its own mini thesis.  Earlier this week, my thought was only to update the documentation that I use (the codes for communicating with the instruments), but I am now focusing on documenting the entire system. Part of my inspiration comes from the fact next month I'll be lending out some of my equipment to another lab.  This means that as I sit down and focus on finishing my studies, other researchers and students will be able to continue using the hardware to generate data.  To me this is a welcome thing as I have always wanted my recent work to not just fuel my thesis, but to also become a legitimate tool that outlives my studies and can continue to be used in the years to come. Besides, a great deal of what I use in this manual can be slotted into my actual thesis (a bit of a win win).

Impromptu day at home

Today I stayed home to take care of personal jobs.  No work related news to report.

Writing of a sort

Having accomplished nearly everything on my "wishlist" for updating the firmware programming on my homebuilt instruments, I've started to update the documentation and help files.  Although these pages are not fit for slotting straight into my thesis, I believe the output will be of value when it comes to sitting down and finishing my dissertation.  Additionally, I will be handing off some of my devices on my trip overseas next month and it's important to not only have working hardware, but support for future users.

A broken record

Even I am getting tired of hearing the same story each and every day, but the fact is today I continued developing my software.  In the lab, hidden away in my little closet, glued to my computer, writing a line at a time.  I am still thoroughly enjoying my work and I am pleased to report I am still moving forward, making great progress.

Week in advance: 24-30 May

This week I will continue working to prepare for my new trip overseas; at this stage the work in mainly with software and programming.  While there is plenty to do and numerous projects that could side track me for days, my goal is to move on from these jobs by the end of the week.  I have plenty of data stacked up for in depth analysis and I have a thesis that needs to be written.

Week in review: 17-23 May

This week my preparation for next month's trip has gone quite well.  I have a number of work streams underway and each one is tracking well; prints are in to the machine shop, I have a order in for electronics components and a PCB design to verify once I have the parts in my hand and finally I've started to tackle my mountain of programming chores.  Compared to this point prior to my past trip overseas I have a firmer grasp on the prerequisite workload.

A stride

Today I continued my work, finishing a number of a programming jobs and printing two new parts (after a few prototypes throughout the week).  Triumphantly, I'll be bold enough to declare I've found a stride at school, but of course this comes at the end of the week.  And here's the challenge I've been faced with numerous times over the course of my PhD... continue my work into the weekend, potentially burning myself out for the coming week -or- take a weekend to rest and start fresh on Monday.  Neither is a good decision; I can say this with plenty of experience of both scenarios.  Frankly I don't know which choice is the 'right' one, but I will admit this is not an uncommon decision for a postgraduate student.  At the end of the day, it's best to look at the coming weeks/months to see if there's an urgency to your work or if it's best to pace yourself for the days ahead.  One of the most difficult tasks over the past three years has been to reign myself in, limiting the length of my workday or work week, but I've come to realise that while there's a certain short term gain to long work hours, these can wear one down in the long run; a most unwelcome occurrence during a PhD.

Another job

Today I laboured through another task on my programming to do list.  This job in particular has been on my radar for months.  Thus I felt mentally this would be a good start to knocking out this moutnain of work.  I don't know if I can take away any momentum from today as it was difficult to stay focused on the work at hand.  It's interesting because I typically enjoy writing and troubleshooting code, but for reasons unknown I stuggled to stay on task.

It's a start

Today I've started to attack my (long) list of programming jobs.  At a high level, I have code which runs on all my instruments, then I have a complete graphical user interface to control my hardware and finally there are analysis scripts to process experimental data (plus there's code for the NMR instrument and for those experiments, but I am not concerning myself with these programmes at this time).  What this means practically is that if I wish to make a change in part of the chain, I need to account for this edit in my other programmes.  For instance, you can't change the user interface to give new options, if the firmware on the instrument can't do anything this that information.  And it's no point in telling the hardware to record additional data, if the analysis scripts don't treat this information.  Now for big "problems" it's easy to solve these issues one at a time in each piece of programming, but when I have a punchlist of approximately two dozen small changes it becomes difficult to track.  Anyway, that's the work I have cut out for me over the next few days.  Trying to improve my product without breaking the system.

Another check

Today I was able to sort out my electronics projects; wrapping up revisions and ordering new parts.  Also during the day I started printing parts using our 3-d printer.  I didn't get a chance to work on anything else, as these jobs are highly technical and are quite time consuming.

One down

Today I believed a prioritised set of blue prints to the mechanical workshop.  Although there are only four weeks to fabricate my parts, it sounds as if my requests were reasonable enough to expect all the work to be complete in the allotted timeframe.  However, in case there are any hiccups (which can happen) I've rank the parts to make sure the most mission critical jobs are completed first.

With my plans submitted to the machine shop, I moved onto my printed circuit boards.  I am in the process of revision and I hope to finish my updated versions tomorrow.  I'll need to create a bill of material for the new boards, but once this is completed I'll be able to move on to other work (namely programming) until the PCBs come back from manufacture.

Week in advance: 17-23 May

Looking forward to this week there's a bit of déjà vu because my goal this week is to get prints to the machine shop and send circuit board designs to the printer.  Hummm, sounds familiar, well that's because I am preparing for a trip overseas once again.  Based on the plans for next month's work, I need to modify some of my existing hardware, hence the prints to the mechanical workshop.  Also, from using (and stress testing) my gear over four weeks of intense use, I've found some bugs/issues with the current electronics/software.  I have plenty of programming to do, but I need to set other work in motion first; once fabrication has started on my parts and I am waiting for the finished products, I can focus on fixing my code.

Week in review: 10-16 May

It's been a full on week.  Having both just returned from a month working overseas and learning that in 4 weeks I'll be heading off again.

At this point in my studies, I should have my work flow/methods pretty dialed in, so I am almost embarrassed to say I spent time getting organised this week.  Yet that's exactly what I did; I spent time setting up a new laptop and cleaning up my files on my work desktop.  I've also compiled a list on my whiteboard with a punchlist that stems from hands on experiences working with my hardware in another lab.  Add to this the "wishlist" of preparations for my next round of work in Montana and it looks like I've got a full few weeks ahead of me.  The good news is I've already started to dive into my jobs and not only am I getting some done, I am culling the list of things that simply can't happen in a month.

New opportunity

Over the past couple months new collaborations have started (the result of a student visiting our lab in March and my trip overseas in April).  As a result, I sit on the edge of new research questions with the tools to explore these ideas.  What this means in the near future is that I'll be heading back to Montana in June.  This will most likely mean that my submission date for my thesis will be pushed back as I will not be focusing on writing over the next two months, but will instead be continuing developing new hardware and research methods.  In the even more immediate future, I have four weeks to work on new hardware, electronics and software.  My first plan of attack is to finalise my mechanical designs and figure out what can be produced in the available time.  This is a touch tricky, because I am relying on my collaborators to drive the science questions while my job will be to design the equipment and experiments to tackle these problems.  Thus before I can finish any blueprints, our group needs to prioritise our goals.  And this is where we sit today.  After a Skype chat late last night, emails throughout the day and a long phone conversation this afternoon, it's still unclear how we want to proceed.  As it's the weekend now, it's a perfect opportunity to take a moment (for all involved) to review our strategy, but come Monday morning it will be time to finalise our ideas.  Four weeks is very little time when it comes to fabrication (either machine work or electronics) so it's essential we begin the process as soon as possible.

Back to work

After a couple days back at work, today I finally felt like I was back on track.  This morning I finished a draft of an abstract for a conference and circulated this to my fellow authors.  In the afternoon I spent some time in the workshop, brainstorming a design ideas with the machinists.  The rest of the day I tinkered with some electronics and worked to organise my next steps in the lab.

Re-group

Today was mostly spent re-integrating into the lab in Wellington.  I made the rounds and caught up with various staff members, worked on unpacking my equipment and sorting out my computer.  In particular, I have a new laptop and I plan to use this device as my primary computer moving forward.  My desktop is starting to age and on my recent trip overseas, I found it was difficult to move to a completely different computer for travel.  The plan is to use my current laptop in the lab and on the go, keeping the system up to date regardless of the working environment.

Back at work

After my flights back to NZ and a long weekend off, I returned this afternoon to the lab.  For the most part my time was spent catching up with folks and getting my bearings after 5 weeks away, but I did manage to spend a couple hours soldering up a new PCB which I had ordered just before leaving Wellington.  I figured tackling my to do list with a relatively easy job was a great way to just start my return.  Tomorrow I hope to keep up my pace.

Out the door

My experiments are done, lab equipment packed and I leave for the airport in 2 hours.  I am very pleased to have finished my last measurements yesterday morning.  This gave me an afternoon and evening to get organised and pack.  I was also able to sit down with a couple of my colleagues from Montana to continue training them on the hardware I am leaving in Bozeman.  I appreciate having a low pressure afternoon and evening to clean up in the lab and pack up.  Rather than working until the very last minute and rushing out the door, I was able to account for all my gear.  Now I just need to travel back to Wellington and dive into my analysis.

Sigh of relief

Yesterday (Monday) I spent some time processing and reviewing my data.  I was particularly concerned that working up to the very end of my time in Montana Iran the risk of collecting data that turned out to be no good, but I wouldn't know this until I had returned to New Zealand and started my analysis.

Knowing I would have to spent a lot more time with the data in the future, I wrote a couple scripts to give me a general idea of the quality of measurements.  After reviewing this information with a professor here we identified a couple runs to measure again, but overall the data looks very promising.  Not only is the quality high enough to believe the techniques were working correctly, but we are even seeing differences between samples which match with our initial hypotheses.  That said, I have a lot of work ahead of me in performing a thorough analysis, but for now I am content with our results and I feel positive leaving Montana to return to Wellington.

Week in advance: 3-9 May

Today I was able to finish my measurements, but now I need to crunch data as quickly as possible to see if there are any experiments I need to re-do.  I leave Montana on Wednesday afternoon so I worry about how much time I'll need for my analysis and what time will be left if I still have data to collect.

Week in review: 26 April-2 May

This week has been extremely busy, but I feel I've made so great progress.  I am only to my last batch of samples, which I've been running today.  I still want to look over the processed data before I start packing my bags, but so far things seem to look good.

False starts

Today I was ready to start knocking out measurements, but after a couple hiccups I wasn't able to make as much progress as I hoped. A few silly errors are costly as I am dealing with a sensitive sample. While the sample doesn't get ruined, I do need to remove it and let it sit (nearly overnight) before I can try another test. I was able to complete one run so I have nine remaining. I am not under too much pressure as I still have a number of days, but I don't want to push my luck. Finishing these tests is my number one priority.

Home stretch

As my departure date approaches, I can't help but feel that I am into the home stretch.  Not necessarily because of my scheduled flights, but because I am checking jobs off of my to do list.  Today I gave a talk for the group here; my presentation was sufficient, but I would have preferred to spend more time practising.  I realise this was a good exercise for me as I typically get wrapped up with each and every chore; potentially spending more time on a project than I can afford.  While I try to hold all my work to a high standard, I also need to learn how to manage my times across simultaneous tasks.

Earlier this week I had drafted an abstract to submit tomorrow, but now the deadline has been extended until the middle of May.  As the abstract is based upon my current work, I've decided to put the draft aside until I finish in Montana.

This morning I spent time analysing my data and being happy with what I've seen so far I am ready to move onto my second (and final) sample series.