The Monday before last I took a piece of poetry I had written to writers group as I usually do only this time the piece was written from a voice that was not my own. In this case Jack Frost, it was rather fun to do, but I do think that the cold was getting to me! Since that worked fairly well I have since written a piece that is pure fantasy, well it is a way of talking about feelings that I need to work through but being put in a total fantasy situation. I will see on Monday how well that works.
Work wise I have been busy. The work keeps coming in and every time I think it is going to ease I find something more. At present I have four long term bits of work on. An analysis that is ready to role but I am finding it very difficult to explain what the results are and this is once I have transformed into variables that are easier to interpret. Every time I think I have it sorted there is something new. I have a course which I am trying to get into videos so people can study it at their own pace and now have a new analysis which is looking at folate. Then there is the research bids. By the way for sharing documents I am finding Dropbox really good. Once it is installed on a computer it just looks like an extra folder in which you can store things but it shares those things with everyone else who has access to them. On top of this I am dealing with queries that come in and there is hidden reorganisation going on as well. I wonder how I get my department to realise that ninety percent of research computing is not done on big machines. Fifty percent of it is done I suspect using Word, bibliographic searches and such.
On Monday this week I spent sometime with someone from the the Research and Innovations Services and they were saying what I have always known, that researchers want a continuity of care when they deal with CICS, computing queries for them are not one offs but part of the ongoing research process and to have to deal with someone new each time is bewildering. On the other hand the machine room guys don’t want to be hassled with answering the phone. The thing is CICS actually do have more staff than me doing this but none of us publicise our work as their are far to few of us. The fact is that I am run off my feet doing what I do, I suspect if we had a team of a dozen of us doing it we would all be equally busy and we would find the same with some other specialised groups.
The photo is one of two I managed to take with my camera with a macro filter, I am still learning to use it particularly as it seems I need to use manual focus. I might see if I can buy a pot of snowdrops next weekend and have a go taking photos indoors where I can spend lots of time fiddling with the controls without my fingers going numb. I also got a new coffee maker called an Aeropress. This was to replace my large cafeteria that fell out of a cupboard and smashed. Unfortunately the Aeropress though it makes good strong coffee only makes small quantities. I wish I had found that website before I started trying it might have saved me a lot of bother.
This weekend and last weekend have been thesis writing ones. The result has been almost 6,000 more words onto my thesis although and I have also been trying to cut my methodology chapter down to size. It is now under 20,000 (in fact I think it is under 19000) but it could still do with going on a diet. It was in the region of 23,000 all put together so I guess I have lost around 4,000 words. The nice thing has been despite having to cut back like this I have still managed to put in more words than I have cut. So I am getting closer and closer to my end point. I also have crossed the 30,000 point so if things keep going I may make 40,000 words by Easter (or the half way point).
I seem to have got myself a couple of jobs at St Andrews Sheffield, one is being a committee of size one (very convenient for meetings) which takes long term view on audio and media including budget (a bit like the choirs praise committee but with even less members). Then St Andrews is reviewing its committee structure and I seem to have been recommended for being on the working group for that. I hope we can think out of the box as if I and James have read the suggestion right it will be more work intensive than the present one (a single extra level of complexity) but what Sarah has talked to me about is much leaner.
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