In other news. The teaching semester is over

Our departmental Christmas lunch was yesterday. It was great. I ate loads and loads. Sure felt a little weighty after but it was worth it.  The menu was excellent this time around, I was satisfied and jolly and even wore the silly hat you find in crackers

Although we’re still here until Wednesday afternoon, I can’t wait. It’s been interesting times and I look forward to a less interesting holiday. What I miss the most is the amount of casual reading I have neglected ever since 4th year of university. I hope to catch up over the break, and not deal with work at all. This is a Christmas wish, which I hope Santa is listening too (I’ve ate the cookies and milk =\).

In fact today, I’ve decided to celebrate a little early. Hopefully, going to see Avatar this afternoon. A visual feast I’ve been told by semi reliable sources (the Internet!) I hope it’s worth it, but more importantly I hope the cinema is warm enough so that my arse wont stick to the seat when I try to leave. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. If my fingers work

Laters

Ever seen those wacky moves with scientists/engineers/geeks that seem to produce instant result?

The Myth:

24 is my favourite example where encryption is childsplay, and takes less than an hour to break, to the right person and everything works and is so seamless and batteries last an entire day with all their fancy phones that can do GPS take Hi Res images and are instantly compatible with all data formats. It makes me laugh, but I still watch it

The Reality:

Sitting in an office doing research is like sitting in an office it’s not much different than the usual. We read scientific papers full of language and ideas that have been compressed into four sheets of paper trying to figure out what all the extra greek letters are referring to and giving yourself a pat on the back when we finally understand the gist after reading it about 3 times. Fully understanding it can take a week (well for me it can) .

Of course that is only ever one part of it, then trying to figure out if there is anything directly applicable to our research and that we think is worthwhile in pursuing needs careful consideration. In fact sometimes we just sit there hoping for a little inspiration in what we read and that inspiration is what it takes to progress forward to the next … whatever. This can be a very slow process at times, i.e, will take longer than an hour, and that’s why a good supply of coffee is beneficial and some food to keep the brain ticking. Research is a waiting game 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, and after 3 years or so we hopefully vomit out something that looks remarkably looks good and of course full of greek letters and maths for the next generation of researchers to mull over

P.S. The title doesn’t even make sense now and therefore I dedicate this another rambling post

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It’s always a good time and as expected sweets and drink were available. Not that it was the only reason I went, of course.

First, we have my favourite project of the day, Helicopter

Unfortunately, they were being safety conscious and decided not to hae the 4 rotors, one on each arm on. The demonstration video showed it flying around and avoiding hitting object automatically, they could even control it via text message. I wish I could have played around with it

Secondly, satellite tracking

Now, doesn’t that look cool! It’s an ongoing project so not 100% complete but their objective is to track and communicate with satellites as they fly overhead (on top of Glasgow) They’re eventually planning to have it installed on the roof of the building

The last two weren’t exactly within my interests per se but I’ll put them up for diversity

It’s a telemetry acquisition device for a car, namely Formula Student and they did an interesting comparison with a commercial system which showed that it was more feature packed for less than half the price. Maybe it’ll be commercialised

Lastly, I never really got a good look at this one, but was impressed by the size of the flywheel

There were a few other good project, one done by the students who were one year below me in the same course showing an automated security camera that noticed when objects are removed or moved or put into the frame and highlighting with a red border. Not got a good shot of that though

That’s all folks! A good day, with Irn-Bru and Quality Street choc snacks