So Becca and I have finally finished our Ph.D.s. We have the certificates, the photos and the scars. All that is left to do now is bask in our own smugness and get some leather bound copies of our thesis made up. If you are really bored you can read my thesis. One day I will upload Becca’s thesis too

Olly looking smug with his phd certificate

And so another N.A.M. has ended – I am writing this on the long train journey home. Luckily I booked my seat long before Eyjafjallajokull started to stir, and ground all the planes (unlike many that could not make it, or get back). The N.A.M. was at Glasgow University, close to the centre of the city, the university is an ancient one with many pretty old buildings that look like they belong in a work of fiction.

My main reason for coming to the N.A.M. was the launch of the SuperWASP public archive. I have been working on this for around a year now, and on Monday it was officially let loose on the public. This first data release has 14 billion data points and over 3.5 million images now available to be queried and downloaded. The general consensus among the people I spoke to about it was that it will be a very useful resource. The trouble I am having is that it is rather difficult to get people excited about an astronomical data base, and then getting them to tell their friends!

As ever with N.A.M.s there was a wide range of sessions to go to, one that I particularly enjoyed was the software astronomy session. In it the chair introduced the term astroinformaticsto me as a way of describing what it is that I do – a much sexier title than archive scientist me thinks

As you would expect there were a few people rather irate at the open forum which had representatives from the funding councils. One poor guy told us how he had his three year post-doc ended one year in, with one months notice, due to the current funding issues. Needless to say, this is precisely why more and more of my friends are moving abroad.

Besides the conference I did get to do some other stuff – mainly revolving around drinking of some description. The conference dinner was in the Kelvingrive museum, which was pretty cool. And so it is that I am heading back to Leicester with a bottle of double matured lagavulin in my case, and a head full of new ideas…

So last week I handed in my thesis. Four years of toil and torment finished. In all it was 82,217 words, 303 pages, 151 figures and 27 tables. Although a fair whack of that was in the appendix, so it doesn’t really count.

I’ve been working as a post-doc for the last year, so I have been writing up in my spare time, that has not been a great deal of fun I have to admit. The odd thing now is that I don’t know what to do with my spare time, well actually it’s more that I am struggling to sit and do nothing! Ho hum, I am sure the apathy will kick in again when it can be bothered.

Just that pesky viva to think about now.

So we are enjoying our holiday out here in sunny Sri Lanka. And what makes it all the more nicer is to gloat about how nice it is here when you are all (by all I suspect I am just talking about my sister) busy working away

We stopped in a rather nice hotel when we arrived in Colombo, the kind of place where diplomats go to do diplomacy. Well I assume that is what they were doing. I should probably qualify diplomats – they were Canadian.

From Colombo we were picked up in our private tour car, which is to take us all around the island for a week, at stupid-o-clock in the morning. I can only assume that that translated into ridiculous-o-clock time in UK time that I was still living my life by.

First on our mammoth trip was the elephant sanctuary. It’s a nice place where orphaned elephants can go and be protected. So we sat in a restaurant and ate while the elephants were washed just below us, then off to the feeding place to see them munch.

From there we went up to Sigiriya which is an old palace complex that is in ruins now that they found a while back – proper Indiana Jones stylee. Much of it is on top of a very tall rock formation. As it happens there are lots of hornets nesting on the rocks, and the day before they had been getting angry and stinging people. So just as we were about to make it to the top one decided he didn’t like my leg and dug his stinger in. Now I just looked this up and hornets belong to the vindictiveus bastardus class of bugs – i.e. the ones that sting you that don’t die – so I hope he caught hay fever from me and sneezes his way into the path of a bus.

Today we went to a spice garden and saw lots of the local stuff they grow here – including cocaine. They also insisted on giving me a massage, and since I am always up for random men to rub my semi-naked body I thought I would give it a go – t’was nice. We also went to a batik factory and spent far too much money on cloth type things. From there we went to the temple that Buddha’s tooth is in.

Now we are in Kandy and tomorrow we will head out to see a tea plantation – hopefully I will get to try lots of different types…

I will upload some of the many photos when I get a chance – although something tells me that would take an age from this internet connection.

One of the nice things about being here is that people seem to think I am great! Several kids have said that I am beautiful – in fact at one of the religious monuments a bunch of school kids stopped looking at the statues and started staring at me. I could get used to this.

So our first paper from the Schome Park Pilot has been published! This one was based upon the initial data that we collected in our early days in Second Life. The basic jist of it is that Second Life works well for distance learning If you are interested in what we did have a read of the paper. I image that this will be my only publication in an educational journal!

Just a quick post this morning!

Today is our 7 year anniversary….yes 7 years ago today Olly and I went on our first date (how sweet!). It doesn’t feel like we’ve been together that long, sometimes I wonder where the 7 years have gone – but it is documented in here.  Unfortunately I’ve been at our own flat for the past week so Olly and I are apart for this anniversary

I also got my start date for my job in atmospehric chemistry research….I start on the 16th March…woo finally!  Although I have loads to do here still (thesis) AND need to swat up on my new job :S

In other news….I cut 16″ off my hair yesterday – pics are on facebook!  No I’m not bald!

So I am in La Palma doing my astronomy thing. Or rather not doing my astronomy thing because of the weather I am supposed to be using an instrument called FIES on the NOT to do radial velocity measurements with some of the folk from Queens to look for exoplanets, but alas it is too cold.

(The rest of my photos are on the photos page.)

Last night we observed until about 1:30 when it got cloudy, and when I say cloudy what I mean is the clouds descended and we were in them. Then tonight we got as far as opening the dome when it got too humid again, so we had to stop. Ordinarily when the humidity drops you can start observing again, but the temperature here is cold, very cold, so everything is freezing. We had to drive down from the telescope to the residence, and we had the support astronomer drive with us – as the roads were frozen. His advice to us when driving down was not to wear our seatbelts so we could jump out of the car if we start sliding towards the cliff edge. Hmmm. Oh well we made it down anyway and am now sitting in the residence. The temperature is rising now though, so we may end up going back to the telescope tonight….

My journey here was fairly uneventful, I came via Madrid (and didn’t lose my luggage), then Tenerife. The only thing that did phase me somewhat was when I saw the tiny little plane that goes from Tenerife to La Palma, it was a tiny little two propellar engine jobbie. Ho hum, it got me here I suppose.

Tomorrow I go back down the mountain in the afternoon, but my flight back doesn’t leave until Sunday, so I have to spend a night in that four star hotel with the indoor waterfall and heated swimming pool.

It’s a tough life this astronomy malarkey.

I had an interview for a position at Leicester University today, and guess what, I got it

The position is an archive scientist, working with the LEDAS stuff and the superwasp stuff. The LEDAS side is looking after the hardware and software of the X-ray archive server at Leicester, so lots of web interface stuff to huge X-ray databases The superwasp stuff is along similar lines; looking after the hardware and software of the archive. This is fast becoming one of the biggest astronomical databases in the World, so lots of things for me to break. Then there is the research side too, I get to do independent research too!

So all in all it really is an awesome job for me, since I do the web stuff as a hobby this is kind of merging of my job and my hobby

They said I can start at the beginning of November, so by then I need to have finished decorating the house and sold it. Then I can go and move up to Leicester. Oh yeah, and I need to finish that minor task also known as my thesis….

So today Olly and I went to Farnborough International Airshow to represent the Schome Space Experiment team in a nationally run competition for high school students to design an experiment to go on board a satellite!  Unfortunately none of the Schome students could go, but they did prepare a poster for the BNSC “Space for Inspiration” exhibit at the airshow.

Olly and I presented the Schome space experiment poster to Ian Pearson MP (Minister of Science and Innovation) and other invited guests. Olly and I actually got mistaken for High School students by some of the people there!!!!  It might have had something to do with the “bothered” T-shirt Olly was wearing!!!!! LOL! We had a chance to spy on the other entries (and entrants!) and even Buzz Aldrin made an appearance to chat to people. Olly and I also received three book prizes presented by Ian Pearson MP to the Schome Team for getting through to the final.

After presenting the poster Olly and I went for a wonder to look at various things from the Airbus A380 taking off, to acrobatic fighter jets.  We filmed everything but editing the podcast is taking ages…. i will get around to posting a link to it at some point. All in all a tiring day!

So I am back from Cape Town now, I might bore you with the details of the touristy things I did later, but for now you have to make do with my random complainings.

I stopped in a four star hotel called The Capetonian. It was in a nice location and at a nice price too (was about £30 p/n). I think I know why it was so cheep.

The staff were somewhat inept it has to be said. In fact I would go as far as saying that they would struggle to organize a piss-up in a swimming pool full of vodka when everyone is in the pool. And drunk.

When I booked in I asked (and paid) to use the internet in my room. Now to me that implies that I would like to be put in a room that can actually access the wireless. So when I went back to the desk about half an hour later and they said “Oh you want to use the internet? Well you won’t be able to use it from your room, it’s too far away from the access point” I wasn’t impressed. Grrr. Time for a room change.

Then I asked to use the shuttle bus to go to the docks, now it is supposed to run on the hour, so at a quarter to I asked if it is going and they said yes, then I waited. About half an hour later I went and enquired, “Oh, you want the bus? It will be leaving soon”. About fifteen minutes later I decided that the fifteen minute walk was certainly not worth more than a forty minute wait, so I walked.

It’s this sort of blasee attitude to life that makes me love my beloved Blighty so much.

And as for the hotel itself. Hmmm. It seems the South Africans don’t believe in fuses in plugs, or wiring plugs correctly for that matter. Every room I was in had sparks flying….

Then there is the building that was being demolished next door. When I came they put me in the room closest to it, not happy. It then took two days of being woken up at 8am before they would move me, not good when you have been working until 6am for the last week.

And of course there was the bathroom. I suspect that some kind of blind baboon installed it. All the fixings were not fixed to the walls properly and water ran along the bath, around the corner and onto the floor. Then of course into the main part of the room.

So my advice to you, if you are ever looking for a hotel in Cape Town, is don’t choose The Capetonian. Right, time to go vent some of this annoyance on hotel review sites…..