Off to the land of chocolate croissant breakfast!

Hi guys,

So I am heading off on another adventure. Not too long… just nine days but I might not have much time for the easter long weekend either since my sister is coming over from the Netherlands (she is studying her masters there) for a visit. But never fear, I have taken the pics for my next two posts and hopefully I will have internet connection where I am going and I will have quite a lot of time to write I think. I am heading to Grenoble in France to do an experiment on the synchrotron (wheeee!). But there has to be someone there at all times so we are taking shifts while the experiment is running (some overnight and 12hrs!). So hopefully I will have a lot of time to write (unless my supervisor is sharing a shift with me… then I will be writing but it will be an article and not Mhalwae :)

Anyways… wish me big lucks that I don’t break the machine (eeek it costs like a billion dollars or something) and that my experiment actually works (which may not happen… nobody has tried this before so it is quite likely we will have to fall back on plan B which is nowhere near as much fun). So remember just cross your fingers that I don’t explode it. And sorry to leave you hanging with poor Igrayne :(

Keep up the writing and simming and hopefully I will get a post out soon.

And just for fun here is ultra-shadowy Radomir. See why I had to fix my lighting mod?!

shadow_rado

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4 responses to “Off to the land of chocolate croissant breakfast!”

  1. Lothere says:
    March 11, 2008 at 5:07 am

    The land of the chocolate croissant breakfast! :-D And here I thought it was the land of stinky cheese. Mmmmm stinky cheese….

    I will be holding my thumbs for you, Verity, hoping your experiment both succeeds and doesn’t explode Europe’s most powerful synchrotron radiation source. Because if it does, it means that several thousand other researchers who travel to Grenoble each year, where they work in a first-class scientific environment to conduct exciting experiments at the cutting edge of modern science, are going to be pissed. And I watch the French news every evening so I will know it was you. :lol:

    I think Radomir looks wonderfully craggy in that picture, but I admit he looks more frightening than usual…

  2. Mao says:
    March 11, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    Wow, Verity, you’ve got nerves of STEEL! Here’s hoping everything goes according to plan and you don’t turn Europe into a fallout zone. ;) Just kidding. Have fun, good luck, and boo to you for doing so much awesome traveling! :D

  3. Verity says:
    March 15, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Oh I love stinky cheese! It has to smell like feet though… a nice feety camembert is the best thing ever. Although I am really looking forward to my sister bringing some “old cheese” with her from Holland when she visits. So so delicious!

    So far so good… synchrotron is still intact despite me attempting to crash a bike into it. Yes you heard right… it is so big you ride bikes around inside it to get from one place to the other and yes I almost crashed mine (I am seriously uncoordinated). The experiment is going sort of well and sort of not. It is working but some strange things have happened and the data is extremely difficult to analysis. Luckily there are some analysey type guys who are going to help me with it (prolly do most actually and then I will interpret and we can write a paper together). And guess how much data I will be generating from this one 6 day experiment?!! A terrabyte!!! That’s right a blinking terrabyte! I had no idea they even existed let alone that you could buy a flipping external hardrive that big. I am still not sure it exists… it doesn’t come up in my dictionary so it has a nice red line underneath. Technology is moving waaaay too fast for me and the spell check obviously :)

    So hopefully it continues to go well… we haven’t had to stay up all night and watch it (it is actually ok to leave occasionally) so I haven’t written a post yet. But it is my turn to check it a bit later tonight so I am going to try and write some though probably not a whole one.

    Thanks for your luck… I am needing it and I am sure it is helping :)

  4. Taryn says:
    March 15, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Lol, I just had to laugh at the bike comment. Hope all goes well with the experiment Verity. I’m still trying to catch up, with easter coming up my business has turned into a hot zone *makes me grumpy*. That, and my niece is bugging me to paint easter eggs with her, my fingers have never been so many different colors.

    On the camembert, my hubby would definately agree, I’m not a cheese person. He thinks its sinful :( to not like everything about cheese, chocolate and coffee. And I’m not into any of those, lol we make such an odd pair.

    Oh, and good luck with all that data to

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