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.

Pass

Today was a public holiday and with the university closed, I decided to take the day off.  No work, papers or writing, just some time away.

Not bad

Today was my first day trying out my new strategy of uninterrupted writing.  And for the most part it will very well.  I made sure to close all of my email tabs in my browser and I wore headphones to help "excuse" myself from the lab atmosphere.  For the most my biggest challenge will be training my colleagues to leave me alone.  Also, I need to figure out how to move the telephone away from my desk so I am not the default answering service.  Today I worked on slides for next conference and, working from existing material, I was able to knock out a good portion of the talk.  I have a couple figure/plots to make tomorrow, but otherwise I'll be done.  Outside of my writing time, I delivered my stack of prints to the machine shop, so this work is now underway.  At least the material will be ordered and the work will be added to the queue, but at least this has moved off of my desk in a timely fashion.  After lunch I had a final look with my supervisor at the final draft of a grant application before I headed off to volunteer.  Not too shabby for essentially a half day at school.

Good start

Today was a great start to the week.  I started the morning by discussing my data from last week with my supervisor.  I was able to bring him up to speed and share my plans for future work.  Being on the same page we had a nice discussion and we're on the same page for moving forward.  Afterwards I took down my experiment from last week, cleaned the cell and loaded a new sample as part of preparations for tomorrow.  This was all I finished in the morning and in the afternoon I was off campus to volunteer.

When things are working

When things are working... don't leave the lab!

That's the advice I've heard a number of times over the past couple years and today I am taking the message to heart.  So far it's been a big day and I say "so far" because it's not over yet.

This morning I made some awesome progress revising some parts and I think I've sorted a big issue that's been looming for the past few days.  I haven't finished my prints, but I was able to get a jump start on a handful.  Not exactly what I wanted, but there's no point in having a blueprint if the part would not work!

In the afternoon I moved on to testing my latest sample.  It takes some time to run a suite of experiments as there are a number of temperature steps followed by equilibration.  I am on to my second go, as there were a few bugs the first time around.  What data I did get from the preliminary series looks pretty good.  There's definitely something of interest going on and hopefully today or next week I'll capture a reasonable data set.

Moving on

Today I brought closure to my latest project in the lab.  I had a lengthy chat with my supervisor regarding my work over the past week and the recent results.  We're both happy with the data and talked about moving forward.  As I mentioned yesterday, there's a couple remaining experiments I'd like to run before the break.  Additionally, I am ramping on preparations for a trip overseas; with my job being to design the necessary equipment, source the material and get the prints to the machine shop.  Now the last step, engaging with the workshop, will not take place until work resumes after the holidays (it's a matter of time).  While that makes for a tight schedule next year, it will give me a chance to review the plans over the break.

Half day, full fun

As always my Monday was a short day. 

To the keen reader you might ask what happened to the plan of taking Monday off or at least working from home?  (I mentioned these ideas last Monday)  Well I was just too excited to stay home today, plus as reasonable as it seems to not go into work for only about five hours it's tough to imagine waiting until Tuesday to start the week. 

Anyway, based on the programming from the past week I was able to set-up some actual experiments and the results are beautiful.  At this point, remember, I am only looking to generate proof of concept data sets to demonstrate a new methodology.  At the beginning of last week I was ready to move on to other work, but I wasn't content to leave work unfinished.  I am pleased that I now have solid results and I can look to tackle the remaining experiments needed for my current draft.  I'll probably spend one more day on this type of experiment before moving on.  That will give me a week and a half before school closes for the break and the goal is to collect all data for my draft so that I can focus on writing over the holidays.

Catch-up

As I mentioned yesterday, I am travelling through a rabbit hole of work with the goal of debugging my experiments.  Before I can focus on my experimental set-up, I am determined to improve the methods behind the scenes.  It's a mentally challenging job because even though you're making progress, in the back of your mind you know you're not even to the "important" or "hard" work. 

That said, today was a fun day and although I still need to focus on the experiments and collecting data, I am very pleased with my progress today.  So what kind of work was it?  Programming.  Pure code.  Specifically Python code on two levels, a user interface (using the PySide Python bindings for Qt development) and a back-end to give the UI functionality.  Additionally I worked on the code that sits on my instrument, which is currently compiled using through the Arduino IDE.

Another day off

I guess the title says it all...

I am headed back in to work tomorrow which means I'll be playing catch up.   It's the dark side off time off, but I'll take things one job at a tine.

Day off

Rating today (it got a 4) was probably the easy job ever.  See I took the day off to spend time with my wife who recently returned from a conference overseas.  Although the plan is to take off tomorrow as well so I guess I'll have just as easy of a time then.

Pass

Today I took the day off so that I could send time with my wife before she heads overseas for a conference.  I'll make up the work when she's away.

A bit more challenging

Today I continued my work from yesterday and have pretty much the same story to tell.  Only now my computer work is a touch more challenging after knocking out the "easy" problems earlier in the week.  My morning and part of the afternoon was spent setting up some analysis scripts to analyse my recently collected data.  I am very happy to have kept at the programming today as the analysis routine was extremely efficient and made it very convenient for examining my data.

A touch sidetracked

This morning, admittedly, I worked on some projects that are less of a priority.  Why, because I've been putting off working on them for more than a week and I wanted to start organising my ideas other than my scribbles on scratch paper.  To be fair, I've talked about most of these with my supervisor, at some point, and we both think they are worthwhile, the issues are time and priority.  As long as I finish a thesis and submit the papers we've discussed before my imposed deadline at the end of next July, there's no stopping me from taking on extra work.  Well there's money, but that's always an issue.

After lunch I got back with the game plan and worked on setting up experiments to collect data, which will contribute to my current paper draft.  Later on I left school to read a stack of material for one of my remaining PGSA obligations.

Traction

I started today with 3 hours of scheduled writing.  During this time I ignored email, shut myself off to distractions in the lab and as difficult as it was I resisted the temptations to wander off to more "interesting" work.  The result was a significant amount of writing, albeit not the highest quality prose, but certainly a first step in crafting a manuscript.  In the process I was able to identify missing data/work necessary to tell our story and in the afternoon I double checked my list with my supervisor.  I now have a clear idea of the essential work required before I can complete this article and I plan to start ticking items off this list tomorrow.

In addition to speaking with my supervisor, in the afternoon I spent time on formatting figures.

Hallo aus Deutschland

I have missed a couple posts over the past few days, due to the fact I am in Germany to attend a Rheo-NMR workshop.  Travelling to Europe from New Zealand and vice versa takes about 25 hours worth of flights and an additional few hours during layovers on route.  Additionally, at this time of the year, there is a 11 hour difference between New Zealand and Germany.

This trip was particularly exciting because although I arrived the day before the workshop, when I arrived I still need to finish my slides.  And I need to practice and fine tune my presentation of the material.  Building my slides wasn't an issue, it's just a time consuming process to get the formatting and layout just right.  While it was easy to finish the slides in time and I didn't mind working on these the day before, my big mistake was not giving myself enough time to practice my talk.  Additionally, I had 30 minutes at the conference, with a goal of speaking for ~25 minutes and leaving some time for questions.  This is a much longer talk than I am use to, and longer by a factor of 2.  What this means is that practice runs for this talk took twice as long as a "typical" conference presentation.  So even with 2 hours to practice there was only time to run through 3-4 times.  Additionally, it's exhausting to speak for 25 minutes straight, so with the night to prepare I was only able to run through the slides a handful of times.

Despite finishing the slides at the last minute and the limited time to practice, the workshop today went very well.  There were some fabulous talks from leaders in the field.  And when it came to my turn, I was pleased with my presentation.  I did not go over time, but with the amount of questions I received, I did pass the 30 minute mark.  Using questions as a gauge of how effective my talk was and how interesting the material was to the audience, I would say people were interested in my work.  I received questions, which is always a good position to be, meaning that others engaged with the talk and felt my research was relevant.  Also the questions I received indicated that folks understood the key points of my research and that I was able to communicate these ideas sufficiently during my presentation.

Tomorrow night I begin the day and half voyage back to New Zealand, but after a fantastic session today, I am more than happy I made the trip.

Full on

As my Kiwi colleagues would say, today was "full on."  Before work, I ran a couple errands to prepare for my upcoming trip overseas.  Then I went into the lab where I ran through my talk with my research group.  At that point my presentation was still at the 70% stage, so I had to arm wave through a couple of blank slides.  I have a 30 minute session next week and my first run ever (at this morning's group meeting) took me ~32 minutes.  I've taken out a slide and will tighten my narration with the goal of trimming down to 25 spoken minutes, with the extra time available for questions.

After my practise talk I had to run to the PGSA office for a retreat/monthly Executive Board meeting. 

... whoa whoa whoa, I thought you finished with the PGSA?

Well I am no longer President or a member of the leadership group, however, I am still committed to help the Association, as time allows.  Additionally, I'll be working with the new board, over the next month or so, to prepare for next year.

This afternoon and into the evening I made sure I had all the material to finish my slides as I travel.  I'll fine tune the presentation in airports and hotels, but I am confident I've prepared all the animations, collected all the data and snapped all the necessary photos.

Also today I am starting a new rating system to track the daily ups and downs of PhD life.  You'll see this as a number in the labels.  Moving forward, each day I'll tag my progress as an integer 1-4 (including the end points); with a 1 being a "bad" day and 4 being a "great" day.