Week in advance: 26 April-2 May

This week I want to continue the trend of refining my methods through running experiments.  I am moving out of the "ideal" programming phase, where I now have to get my techniques to work in real life.  Of course this is rarely trivial and despite your best effort you find bugs and glitches in our code.  Currently I am calibrating my techniques using a system material (water), but by the end of the week I hope to have moved on to measuring the response of a complex sample.  I am pleased with how things have been moving along the past couple weeks, but with the end of my trip in sight it's important that I stay on track.

Week in review: 19-25 April

I am to the point, where I can start running suites of experiments, which was my goal for the week.  The instruments are set-up and I have a few layers of code to help automate/streamline the data collection process.  The results generally are looking reasonable, but there are a couple issues that need to be looked; with the biggest concern the post-processing routine.  I mentioned earlier in the week that I have a lot of experiments to run which makes me nervous about time, but once we dial in the current process, I'll be able to knock out half of my run pretty quickly (2-3 days).  Ultimately that would leave me almost a week for the rest of my work which isn't too bad, but it doesn't allow for many curve-balls.

Some experiments

Today I continued working on code to help set-up and automate my experiments.  When it comes to collecting my "real" data in Montana, I have 10 physical set-ups which need to be measured with at least two different fluids and at a dozen or so different shear rates (and each sample holder/fluid/shear rate combination will require a couple different types of measurements).  All together that means I have lots of experiments to run.  The good news is that a single experiment might only take 5-10 minutes.  The bad news is that by hand it can take 5 minutes to set-up a single experiment.  Automation scripts help to speed up data collection, allow me to measure overnight (or other times I am not in the lab) and reduce human error.  That's why I am taking a few days to create some robust time saving code, but alas there's still work to do on this front.  To make sure I don't forget about the "science" behind my trip, I did set-up a few dozen experiments to run overnight which will help me dial in what parameters I can use and what types of measurements will be feasible for my work.

Moving forward

It's been another long day in the lab, but things are moving forward.  Based on some feedback from the instrument manufacturers, I've been able to clean up my programming and now the code works as expected.  Today I wrote an automation program to make experiment set-up an easy process.  Once I had these two pieces of code working, I modified them so we have an additional two variants.  For those keeping track that's 6 new programs (3 pulse programs each with its own automation program).  I ran a single test for each and the results quantitatively matched expected results.

For the past couple hours I've been trying to get a fourth program working, but unfortunately this one is more complex and utilises functions not found in any of the working programs.  I'll self this last piece of code for tonight and come back tomorrow morning.

Sick day

Just a quick update from Tuesday, I did stay home to rest (and prevent spreading my illness).  I had optimistic hopes of doing computer work from home, but instead I sleep most of the day.  This morning (Wednesday) I am back at work and will give another update this evening.

Losing steam

In the spirit of enthusiasm and optimism, I've labelled today a "2" (referring to how well I feel the day went).  I seem to be reaching a wall, both mentally and physically.  One reason I am posting this evening (and the reason I am home before it's dark) is because I am starting to feel sick.  Now I was careful this past weekend (when visiting family) to get a decent amount of sleep and last night (when I returned to Bozeman) I fought off the instinct to go into work.  However, despite my conservative attempts, I still worry I am coming down with something.

My work in the lab is slowly progressing.  Today we tried a fresh approach to our problems from last week, but arrived at the same dead-end.  We have a couple emails out to the equipment manufacturer, hoping for some insight, but with those folks in Germany responses are delayed.  We have a couple workarounds in mind, but we're waiting for a response before we move in any direction.  All the while I lose measurement time.  Also, it doesn't help that today makes 100 days until my thesis submission.  Right now I am so focused on the work at hand (which isn't working) that I am not feeling confident in my thesis.

For now I hope a long night's sleep and a fresh attitude in the morning will help see things move along.

Week in advance: 19-25 April

Tomorrow I'll be back in the lab after a long weekend away. When I left last week things were looking up, but I had yet to run any experiments. Over the coming days I still have work to do tweaking my software, but regardless I need to start collecting data.