Thursday 30 April 2009

YATTA!

I'm going to Tokyo this summer! I have never been so excited!

I got the eight-week internship with RBS in Japan! This means that I will get to go and live in Tokyo for two months and work in a different section of their business every week. And will also get to eat nothing but Japanese food and buy jeans that are the right length for me AND collect a ridiculous amount of Hello Kitty paraphernalia! :D I will try and write a slightly more sensible post once I have found out more and managed to calm down a bit. Oh, and once I have told Selex that I know won't be able to work there... Crap.

Sunday 26 April 2009

This is not a cat blog

But I do love cats. And Maru is one of my favourites. His affinity for cardboard boxes is unrivalled.







As a good friend once told me, "curiosity didn't kill the cat, Schrodinger did. Maybe."

Wednesday 15 April 2009

I haven't met a physicist who doesn't like xkcd



One of my most recent favourites. The mouseover text reads "Sure, we could stop dictators or pandemics, but we could also make the signs on every damn diagram make sense."

From xkcd

Friday 10 April 2009

When did I say that again?

I had been talking to a friend recently about Facebook and we were wondering whether everybody's account appeared in Google searches. So I just searched for my name + Facebook and accidentally came across an article in the Independent where I am quoted! It came out last Thursday and can be found here.

It was a bit of a surprise as I had forgotten even speaking to the reporter - I got a phone call straight after I came back from the 'Building the Britain of the Future' expo in Westminster in January. It makes for interesting reading (and I think I make a vaild point :P) and it's nice to see that the media are still picking up on points that have been made recently by the PM and Lord Drayson.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

I break stuff...

I feel kind of bad about this one though. In my most recent lab, I burnt out a diode and blew a fuse. When I put it like that, it doesn't seem so bad as diodes cost about 0.2p and fuses are pretty cheap too. Only thing is, the diode I killed was soldered onto the delicate inside of a cryostat, which is maintained in a vacuum. To repair said dead diode, a new one had to be carefully soldered into place and then the whole kit had to be vacuum pumped for 48 hours. Oh, and the fuse I blew was the digital multimeter's fuse , which isn't that easy to replace either. Oops.

As you can guess, the lab technicians aren't my biggest fans right now... And it was a result of me being reckless and not checking that all the dials were turned to 'zero' before I switched stuff on - I sent 9V through electronics that can only handle about 1V. At least I learnt my lesson. For now.

The weird thing about it though was that I then walked over to the next bench (I now had to share their equipment since mine was out for the next two days) and as soon as I stood there, all their kit started reading 'zero'. When I stayed a safe distance away and they reset it, it was all okay. They were surprised but I wasn't - I have a really bad habit of breaking stuff without even trying! I am on my 4th iPod, have killed my speakers twice and blew up the PSU of our family PC. Even my Dad's phone had a funny turn when I used it the other day. I really hope that my phone lasts - I just bought myself a Blackberry Bold and love it to bits.

Maybe it's a good thing that CERN and Fermilab turned me down - I'd have had to warn them about my reputation. Maybe I should be studying theoretical physics instead of experimental!