I’m marshalling for the first day of the 5 stage bike race, the Ras de Cymru tomorrow.
Link.
Vitamin C won’t prevent colds
A review of 55 studies suggests vitamin C supplements don’t lower the risks of getting a cold.
Link.
Wet
Storm
There’s a storm out to sea, tracking me as I cycle east, & coming closer.
Am I going to get wet?
I heard it before it hit me: the heavy rain on the sand. I managed to get to a tunnel, put on a waterproof & wait for it to pass over. Lightening followed by thunder. I got bloody soaked cycling the rest of the way anyway.
Postdocs
I’m interviewing tomorrow morning, for a post-doctoral research associate (postdoc to you & me). I have a year of grant-funded work to complete, and I’m more than eager to get it done so I can publish a ton of data sat on my computers. So I get to employ someone.
This has been much delayed by beaurocracy, but this might turn out to be provident as I’m trying to get myself back in the lab to run some other experiments, so I’ll have time to introduce, supervise, teach & train. Hopefully the successful candidate will have a fair bit to teach me too.
Following this come responsibilities: getting continued funding to keep them employed, getting them trained up in new lab techniques to keep their CVs improving, making sure they present their work to useful conferences & published in decent journals, etc.
We’ve done most of the teaching, now on to the research.
Beach Bums
Cycling to work this morning, around 9am, it was already warm & sunny. Warm to the point that on the beach was a red and rotund man, in a very small pair of black underpants, drinking a bottle of stella. (Truth be known, I wasn’t actually close enough to see the brand of green beer bottle, but tell me it wasn’t the most likely). His much thinner friend was a little better dressed.
I love Swansea Bay.
Mobile Working
I went back to Cheltenham last night after work, for my brother’s 30th birthday. It’s funny when your little brother hits 30. It’ll be strange when my little sister does.
I decided to work in Cheltenham today, to avoid rushing back to Swansea. On the one hand this was probably sensible because of the extent of the flooding in South Wales with today’s thunderstorms (accidents on the M4 & A48M). On the other hand, it ended up being hard work, & the day was so busy that I should probably have driven back to Swansea first thing this morning (its about the same commute-time by car as my usual Cardiff-Swansea bike-train-bike). On top of this I’ve been getting crap from an insurance company that doesn’t want to pay for repairs after I got knocked off my bike. Useless.
So I’ve got work to do tomorrow. I’ll go back to Cardiff tonight & drink lots of beer.
Summer is a break for students from University, but not for lecturers. It’s a break for lecturers from students, I guess.
Wiki it
For those of you that don’t know, there’s a great resource for clearly explained information on the web, called Wikipedia. It’s a free internet-based encyclopaedia. The really novel thing about it though, is that entries can be created and modified by anyone.
To quote, “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers. Lots of people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes an hour, all of which are recorded on the page history and the Recent Changes page. Nonsense and vandalism are usually removed quickly.”
If you’re new to a topic or term, go straight to Wikipedia and find out about it, usually in clear English (or another language, if you’d prefer). If you’re an expert, go to Wikipedia and check the entries in your subject area. Can you improve them? Are they accurate?
Use it as a starting point – a jumping off base, from which to get the basic facts and then find out the detail.
Examples:
– cartilage
– arthritis
– gene
Kinky Boots
Pens Update
A lot of people have been asking about the pens situation. It was resolved quickly and peacefully, without injury to any hostages (froggy, purr purr and oink) or damage to property. All pens were found concealed behind the living room door as part of an amnesty agreement.