Thoughts about pies

So I was going to do a Shepherd's pie for dinner, turns out that minced lamb doesn't exist in France, however. So we'll be cottaging it up instead.

Amazingly, I did find a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. All is not lost.

On the other hand, I have attempted to use the washing machine for the first time. It was a weird device. Took me forever just to gain access to the drum.

Really, I wish I had taken this yesterday

...because yesterday this was a full blown winter wonderland. Today though, it had mostly melted, meaning I was jogging over lovely slippery mud. It's still quite pretty though. Even if it is a maze. The trees are occasionally numbered, but the numbers sometimes repeat. So the tree 123 that I thought marked the spot I arrived turned out to be a different tree 123 altogether.

Luckily, I did not die cold and alone though.

New Year's Seafood

We couldn't figure out the crab. It seemed to just be filled with evil (except the delicious claws).

It's not actually a crab, it's a tourteau. I've not found a direct translation, but it seems to refer to some kind of very large species. The fishmonger even declared it "magnifique!" when he sliced it in twain, so I'm not really sure what we missed.

A literal metal squirrel

My desk here is kind of a mess. Stupid moving country.

Regardless, nuts go into the squirrel's mouth, you push his tail down and he shatters the nut in his steely grip.

Or so the theory goes. Walnuts are a bit big and almonds are virtually indestructible.

More Car Ice: Ice Flowers?

The sub-zero temperatures continue causing stranger and stranger patterns to form on pre-existing ice crystals (on my car). These ones look a bit like flowers. Another week of this and I am sure the crystals will achieve sentience and then defrosting the car might actually be genocide.

Car Ice!

So given that it has not been breaking zero here, the ice on my car has had the chance to grow in some pretty little spikes.

Driving Home For Christmas - The PhD Ends

So, I suppose I should change the description of this blog. As I am no longer doing any experimental work. I have left Bristol behind to spend Christmas with my parents before I set out into the wide world and start writing up the shambolic collection of misadventures known as "My PhD".

Regardless, Bristol is around a three hour drive from where my parents live, but it was a little bit snowy, so I made sure to pack a banana, two miniature Melton Mowbray (accept no imitations) pork pies, a bag of Malteasers, two oranges and a couple of bottles of water. All in all I was expecting it to take maybe four or five hours, as it can when the traffic is truly awful.

How wrong I was. So very wrong. I set off a little after noon having compressed my worldly belongings into my tiny car and escaping the fair city with its few centimetres of festive snow. I arrived at the house of my parents at around half one in the morning.

An extra ten hours. Ten hours where I covered perhaps nine miles trapped between junctions four and five on the M5 (major motorway going between Bristol and Birmingham). I nearly went insane. I attempted to wee in a bottle but couldn't find an angle. I got out of the more or less stationary car to do my business upon the central reservation but feared that the temperatures being so far below zero could cause irreparable damage to one of the favourite parts of my anatomy. And then I drove past a this little snowman at around hour eight of my journey. It made me smile. Luckily, I had plenty of time to snap a photograph.

More graphs for the graph God

The result actually seems to have held up under closer scrutiny. This one has multiple point and lines and a little greyed out box!

Sadly, this "sensor" is nowhere near as sensitive as just popping your finger into a solution and seeing it tastes sweet or not.

A result!?

I do declare, that could well be a sensor. Could be. I'm not entirely sure. Still: Woo!

I like visiting my collaborators

There are also rabbits in the summer. For now they are in cryogenic storage

University cuts

Sticking a note onto a bit of defective equipment (or a microwave, as in this case) isn't the best way to get it resolved, especially in this financial climate.

Step two: Fill bag with nitrogen

Or any inert gas of your choice. Or I suppose you could use any gas at all. Do it. Fill that bad boy with hydrogen and oxygen. What can go wrong?

Then you jam your arms through the inverted gloves and bodge your way through what should be an incredibly fiddly and precise but of science, but when every movement compresses the air so that you feel increased forces the further in you reach, and the bag is not quite transparent, meaning you can't see if the pipette has anything in it at all, it's quite tricky.

Then let it sit for at least sixteen hours. The little cardboard box which formerly held lemsip knock offs is to protect my reaction from stray UV.

Step one: Fill bag with science

This is actually quite hard, as things get knocked over. Delicate things. And samples flip upside down.

Then you seal it off with the handy clips, and...

Finally! A gum just for me

This originated somewhere in New York. Although the real story here is how damn difficult it is to upload photos to a blogger account on Android. Surely a smart phone should make this easier? But the browser really struggles with images being put inside it. I kind of miss my old phone and how simple it was.

Ah well, getting images onto a computer is not so bad. I WILL SURVIVE.

Village whale

What to do when some unknown terror from the dead lands upon your beach one morning? Put the remains in a park next to town hall!