Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Gnomula, queen of skulls and squid's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
11:08 am	The Sun Is Shining! Which can only mean ONE thing. That's right... CONFERENCES! Back Monday (conference til Friday, working Saturday/Sunday) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
10:44 am	Visitor I just came face to face with a rather confused specimen of the Southern Hill Mynah variety in my garden just now. Here he is; all wattles and glossy plumage. A better picture of the beastie in question is here. He mewed at me like a cat a few times, so I gave him some dried fruit and branflakes, which he troughed like a starving creature. Whereupon, he made a noise like a telephone, then got startled away by the postman. Wonder where the hell he came from? I quite liked him really. Edit: well he's back now, eating dried strawberries and occasionally stropping his enormous orange beak on the manhole cover. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
8:21 am	Just Another Day Yesterday I had to have a day at home at short notice to work on some posters for a conference. I feel that this should have been pretty easy: all that needed to happen was for some A0 posters made in portrait to be converted to landscape, have some typos fixed and the corporate logos updated. Sadly, the fact that The Uni stipulates that all posters for external meetings be made on official templates that conform to The Corporate Identity and that all of these templates are PowerPoint means that most of the day was taken up with PowerPoint crashing every 10 mins as it doesn't have the memory to deal with moving around great slabs of graphics. You know, the kind of graphics you need if you are presenting complex scientific data... Today I need to go back to London to feed my cells and to try to work out what the hell I should be doing this week. Time is very short before I have to start writing up and I still don't have the vaguest beginnings of a thesis. My Supervisor, as usual, is AWOL and I really could do with some supervision. To cap it all, I really have no motivation. And the sun is out. And Traumatic needs to sort out his blacksmithing. Life is too short for this stuff. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 16th, 2008
9:11 am	Weekend? What weekend? Oh you mean that swift hiatus from work that involves running around like a mad thing trying to cook enough and wash enough stuff to get me through the next five days of work? This is too much like adulthood for me! (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 13th, 2008
10:37 pm	current events Several things in the last few weeks have persuaded me that the World has indeed Gone Mad, with or without being Mentioned In The Book Of Revelations. So. Chicken farming in the Orkneys anyone? It's that or self-immolation, and I'm too old for histrionics. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
8:21 am	Not content with Western blotting, I'm now onto isotopic in-situ hybridization. If you thought a week of blotting before you can tell if it's worked or not was bad... now we are looking at exposure times (i.e. the autoradiography step at the end) of 7-70 days! *faints* But anyway I assessed my riboprobe quality yesterday and it looks gooooooood. Oh yeah, I also did some samba drumming (you can make a lot of noise with a modified Quality Street tin) and saw The Society Of Imaginary Friends amongst other things at the weekend. So it's not entirely a week of 8am starts. Just mostly. Burble and out. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
1:52 pm	Blotting, blotting, blotting Am I the only one who gets scared by the sheer number of steps that can go wrong during Western Blotting? *PANIC* (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
9:30 am	Spiky Martyred to insomnia, harbouring growing intolerance for everything and everyone, feeling less and less inclined to be likeable, putting my back into the PhD and thinking about everything else later. Have mastered breadmaking, with hilarious intervening stages. Too apathetic to put pictures up though. The Psycho Buildings exhibition at the Hayward Gallery was pretty fun, even Mr Hobbit enjoyed it. Not a 10/10 OMG you must go but fairly entertaining. Funniest part has to be the film descriptions a la Pseuds Corner on the programme. Abeno Okonomiyaki delighted again: hurrah for meals that you can actually take all evening over. Happy birthday Timbo and belated birthdays jasontheknight and afm13. Still pining for Bangface. Might go to the next one at Electrowerks. Probably off to see a highly entertaining tranny band that I saw at Manchester Pride last year next weekend. Shall be avoiding alcomahol though, on the grounds of maudlin. Current Mood: pretty obnoxious (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
9:59 am	Hm. How to put this... So: I had my MPhil to PhD upgrade viva/thesis defense, whatever you want to call it: the interview that decides whether you should carry on with your research project/career or just go back to shelf stacking/sandwich making/bust measuring/lab tech-ing/whatever. I passed. However: I very much feel that I only just passed. There were comments during the viva such as "This comment shows a staggering lack of knowledge", "Your fundamental assumption for this whole run of experiments is flawed" and "If you are going to have any chance of getting this thesis past an examiner, you are going to have to really focus to draw it together: I suggest that you don't leave the lab for any reason other than to go to the toilet for the next nine months". Now: Given that A. This PhD has already made me so depressed as to warrant 6 months of psychiatric treatment B. I'd had worries about the underlying logic and methodology, mentioned them to my Supervisor only to be repeatedly (and usually drunkenly) informed that I "worry too much". and C. Any chances of having a research career are fading like the ozone layer over Antarctica anyway. Partly due to my Supervisor seeming to have already decided that I will be his Post-Doc (despite me turning the position down on several occasions) to the point where he doesn't even consider that I might want to work elsewhere AND by the fact that I have developed a loathing for "Science" and its attendant beauracracy, politics and just plain lies which makes me very very hesitant indeed to stick myself on the rack of continual grant applications and liver-smashing networking sessions for the rest of my life. ...is there really any point in bothering to register for PhD status? Might I not just be better off just writing up what I have for an MPhil, throwing myself in the Thames (not next to the RNLI!) or just going back to technical work? I'm really not sure what to do. I have totally lost confidence in my Supervisor (for other reasons than mentioned here), dislike the subject I am working on and have no aptitude for it. I also seriously doubt that my levels of commitment and enthusiasm will enable me to put in the work needed to pass the project. Answers on a postcard. Please send chocolate. Current Mood: a bit hopeless (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
11:12 am	blah blah blah BLAH sod this, as soon as i can find somewhere worth going, i'm off ...just as soon as i manage to get out of bed (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 14th, 2008
10:43 am	Stupid Hair Redux This is my hair from the front. This is my hair from the side. This is my hair from the side but you can still see the front... and this is the Spanish Inquisition, hiding behind the coal-shed. Current Music: The Decemberists - The Infanta (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
9:18 pm	I have Had My Hair Cut, seen Grindhouse in its entirety at the Stoke Newington Rio and eaten a lot of very cheap but mighty fine Turkish food. All of these turn out to be Good Things. Special mention goes to Edgar Wright's trailer for "Don't". My hair is Rather Different That It Has Been Of Late. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
4:13 pm	Final Fury Can anyone recommend a competent UK bank with simple and reliable online banking? I have had it up to here with Barclays. Not only have they failed to bother sending me the hardware they now require me to use to access my own bank account and disabled my online access once, when I complained, they sent the hardware out to an address that I haven't lived at for at least FOUR YEARS. Despite the fact that at my first complaint, they confirmed my address as THIS ONE, and the fact that I confirmed my change of address by going into my local branch, online AND by letter and I've been recieving bank statements at this address since I moved. Just to make it even more special, they have the other address down as an address to send 'non-confidential material to'. So why are they sending the stuff I need to access my account there?! This just about tops it off really, I've already dealt with three years of them being unable to understand the concept of taking out a standing order on the correct day and not charging me for taking out money 7 days before I get paid and 5 days before the standing order date. Any suggestions on how to change my bank welcome also, as I will have to change the account that all of my utility bills get paid from, and the account that my rent and payslip are attached to. I am crap at anything financial! oh yeah I forgot to add then when I complained for the SECOND time, they said they had reactivated normal online banking. They haven't and now I am overdrawn, and I'VE BEEN CHARGED FOR IT. Even though I could easily have transferred money between my Barclays accounts IF THEY HAD re-enabled my online banking as I specifically requested. Current Mood: angry (15 Comments |Comment on this)
11:36 am	Update Codename: Boredom So as Friday was illness day, Saturday was go into work and thaw my cells out for culture and the next round of experiments day. Sunday was walk by the River Itchen in the sunshine and have an ice-cream, get phone call from Supervisor informing me I have to give a talk tomorrow day. Then obviously Sunday turns into read a million papers (mainly this one, which is a bit shite really), wrestle with Journal Club PowerPoint presentation until midnight day. Fortunately, at midnight, Wrestlemania XXVI kicked off with an unexpected but sublime Money In The Bank ladder match win by CM Punk, followed by an exhilarating and emotional Shawn Michaels vs Rick Flair, the Snoop Dogg adjudicated Playmate Boobzilla Bapsnatch (or whatever it's actually called. I care not because mmmmm Melina), the obligatory money-spinning novelty match: Floyd Merryweather vs The Big Show, and of course the AMAZING UNDERTAKER VS THE EDGE finale. Lots of squeeings and stampings from evildrem, desincarne and even me: we rather liked John Morrison and of course Shawn Michaels, Edge and Undertaker are all mighty mighty fine wraaaaaastlers. Monday was back to work, after getting home at around 4.30am after Wrestlemania. Trotted off to the labs in Whitechapel for a change to give my presentation in this white pod thing at top left (it's actually a lecture theatre a.k.a Large Cloud; Spiky is in the background). Cue Mac to PC PowerPoint formatting horrors and half an hour of faffing. Got the damn talk done in the end tho, then had to go and do all the rest of the stuff I should have been doing that day in half the time. Eventually got home from work at 8.30pm, totally grumpy and hormonal: shout at everyone and make self highly unpopular. Wake up this morning very late and very shivery. Remember today is PathSoc Summer Meeting Abstract Deadline Day. WILL THE HORROR NEVER END? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 28th, 2008
12:26 pm	Bleurgh Lab meeting was cancelled yesterday, resulting in an earlier than normal adjourning to The Knights Templar. Today I do not feel So Good. Yesterday's batch of photos was somewhat architecturally biased. One of the things I love about London is the feeling that nothing is ever really removed or lost, merely more added... resulting in a glorious piled-up mess of buildings and cultures. You can excavate London Past by turning off the main drag, only the topmost layer changes. This is a side street to Lincoln's Inn Fields. I guess this red-brick building would have towered above everything else at one point: now it's dwarfed, and takes the opportunity to bask in the tiny moments when the sun can reach it. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
10:10 pm	This morning's shot It threatened to rain all day today. This morning that meant gloomy clouds over the City of London. I never get bored of my walk to work: not with views like these... Knowing that I was going to take some photos on my way helped ease the pain of going into work again, and as usual, once I was there everything was great. Only just got home from work though. Hopefully my dreams tonight won't entail explaining the evidence for basal stem cells in colonic crypts (like they were last night). Is that just not the saddest thing in the world to dream about. I explained it right too. Come back clog-wearing unicorns all is forgiven! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:17 am	Glums I have my driving lesson in 10 minutes and after that I'm going to pick up my phone from the airport and go to work for the first time since March 14th. In between there's been a conference and a Bank Holiday weekend. Honestly you'd think I'd had a year off. I REALLY have the wobbles about going back. Why does this always happen? This has been going on pretty much since junior school. I have any time off whatsoever and I panic about going back to whatever it is that I percieve that I SHOULD be doing, regardless of whether I enjoy it or not... (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
12:17 pm	It's cold and wet outside... ...and the bf is allergic to portraits, so there's nothing else for it but to take portraits of the diverse tat curiosities that seem to follow me around wherever I live. The doll was found in a haberdashery, he has an owl tail feather and a squirrel tail in his cranium (both rambling finds). The skulls are dog (used to be the dog of a surgeon friend of mine) and rabbit. The leg bone is some small rodent or other, courtesy of my mother's cat. The stripy thing on the left is a cheapass model of the Eiffel Tower that I bought in Paris and painted up. The photograph in the background are the stones at Avebury stone circle. (Crossposted to mylife_onceaday) (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
7:58 pm	Lazy Holidays Thursday looked like being the best day of the Easter Holiday, so The Hobbit and I made an expedition to Netley by public transport, intending to walk from Netley to the (PINK!) Warsash Ferry then walk up the river to a cafe for lunch. Of course, we took the Interesting Route through the Royal Victoria Country Park, past the old Military Hospital site, traversed a swamp, followed some overgrown railway tracks and somehow ended up in the village centre at Hamble-le-Rice. The marina was very picturesque despite the squally weather, so we lingered and went for lunch in The Bugle instead of persevering to Warsash. The Bugle turns out to be not just any-old-pub: the lunch we had was gorgeous (Hobbit had roast breast of duck confit with creamy cabbage and chestnuts, garlic mash and prune jus and I had roast chicken breast with colcannon and green beans), albeit stacked in odd Jenga-like structures. Today I decided it was about time that I started learning how to bake my own bread. The idea of messing about with Saccharomyces cerevisiae seemed *almost* like tissue culture, so I thought I should be good at that part at least. Dough is Problematic Stuff, however. After almost pulling a stomach muscle with an hour of paranoid kneading, I just threw the damn stuff in a bowl to rise. AND GOOD GOD IT DID. A bit of punching, another rise and a ride in the oven and these babies resulted: I am well impressed, though not as impressed as the Hobbit was, after having heard me swearing for about an hour solid prior to the baking stage. It's all gone now, of course. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
4:02 pm	OOH AND! For a bit of Something Different: Chaos Royale's (ex-Noise/Girl, Kaimsetsu Technologies, Trauma Corporation, you name it...) new effort is FANTASTIC. Download it and turn it ALL the way up. No need for back-combing! Beyonce will never seem the same again, and neither will the Sisters of Mercy... Possibly the best cross-over ever. Current Mood: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Current Music: Chaos Royale - Gotta Work (Sisters of Amerie Remix) (3 Comments |Comment on this)