keeping busy
Life in Tasmania continues to be full whilst I wait for my visa and approval to head home to Sweden. The wonderful thing about this world is that even when we have somewhere else we would like to be, there is still plenty of opportunities to have fun where we are. So, what have I been doing for fun?
On Friday I spent a few hours wandering around the Sandy Bay area with baronsnorri. Not as lovely an area as the hiking trails up on Mt. Wellington we used to frequent, but far easier to get to from where we were that day. That day I borrowed mushroom_maiden's bike to get to and from uni, and liked it far better than walking, since it makes the trip half as long. It did make me miss my recumbent trike--there are times when my balance doesn't quite feel perfect on the upright, but I didn't fall, so I guess it was still well within tolerance.
On Saturday I went over to the home of clovis_t's parents and a lovely lunch with his mum and collected a bunch of stuff that I had abandoned when we left two years ago because I hadn't quite finished packing yet when the shippers got there to take stuff to Italy. Some clothing and some useful objects. Some of it will come with me to Norway, and some of it I have already given away. I also picked up clovis_t to bring back to Europe for him, and his helmet, which either archinonlive and I will buy from clovis_t if it fits archinonlive, or which we will find someone else who wants to buy it. It is too nice to leave sitting under a bed in Tassie slowly gathering rust when it can be polished up and used by someone. Sadly, I do not have room for any of the other things clovis_t left there, and the cost of shipping is prohibitive if you don't have an employer paying to relocate you.
After finishing up at their place I met with madryn_1960 for a short hike before heading home and trying to accomplish a bit of work with what was left of the evening before yoga and bed.
On Sunday I went to fighter practice and visited with folk there and had an old friend visit me here for the evening, which was nice.
Monday's entertainment was doing the talk for the UTAS geology dept on what I have been up to in Italy. I had 40 minutes to play with, so I interspersed science slides with slides showing some of the pretty places I got to in Italy while I was there. Given that I finished under time perhaps I should also have added slides for all of the conferences I attended in places other than Italy, but since I mostly don't have photos of these places, they wouldn't have been very good slides. Despite finishing early I got good feedback from the students (heck, they may have liked the fact that it finished early), and my adviser had some good suggestions and comments for me (I think he may have been the only one present who actually understood all of the science--the audience was mostly just the honour's students who are required to be their because it counts as one of their classes.
This evening I will go to the SCA dance practice, which should be fun.
My progress report so far:
* Talked with my adviser about the paper and what to do with it.
* Re-familiarized myself with the files I need, where they are located, and what information is with them (this part is harder than it sounds, actually).
* Determined that the reason I was resistant to his suggestion that we use only the Thermocalc calculations for the paper (rather than having to cite a bunch of different geothermobarometers) was that there were issues with the Thermocal results from the southwest coast samples.
* Discovered that the reason there were issues with the southwest coast samples is that the muscovite analyses I had used for them were strangely high in iron (which shouldn't be in that mineral), worked out that they are probably mixed analyses because it is intergrown with biotite (which does contain Fe) in that grain, found another muscovite grain in the sample which isn't intergrown with biotite, tried the calculations again and got good results (which also agree with the pressure and temperature estimates we obtained for this sample from the other methods tried).
* Re-wrote that section of the paper to give the correct pressure-temperature results based on the new calculations.
* Created the first three figures for the paper (adapted from the thesis, but one of them took a fair bit of tweaking), inserted captions and cross references into them in the paper, and printed the figures to pdf to make certain they look as they should.
* More minor editing of the introduction, geologic setting, and first half of the results section.
Still to be done:
* Go over the old draft for the second half of the results section and re-write with the new aim of the paper in mind
* re-write the discussion and conclusion section of the paper to better match what is now in the first part of the paper
* finish the rest of the figures.
Deadline:
Before Friday would be grand.
Am I getting more done than I would have if I were home in Sweden just now? Well, given that this past week was the Medieval Days in Luleå, and the weekend was Coronet tourney for Nordmark, and now archinonlive is on holiday, yes, I am probably accomplishing far more in the way of uni work than if I were there. This does not stop me from wishing I were there, mind you.
At least we have the internet, so we can spend time together despite being on the far side of the planet. I have been tending to wake up by 04:00 or 04:30, as that is 21 or 22:00 his time, which is often a good time for him to chat. On the weekend that meant that I could listen to the final round of the tournament (which was won by some friends in Frostheim, my home shire!) as they happened. Now that he is on holiday we can also talk at other times of the day--today as I worked on figures for the paper he kept me company as he got breakfast and generally got ready to head to his brother's house for the day. Not as nice as really being there and getting to go along with him on adventures, but way better than not getting to spend time together at all.
On Friday I spent a few hours wandering around the Sandy Bay area with baronsnorri. Not as lovely an area as the hiking trails up on Mt. Wellington we used to frequent, but far easier to get to from where we were that day. That day I borrowed mushroom_maiden's bike to get to and from uni, and liked it far better than walking, since it makes the trip half as long. It did make me miss my recumbent trike--there are times when my balance doesn't quite feel perfect on the upright, but I didn't fall, so I guess it was still well within tolerance.
On Saturday I went over to the home of clovis_t's parents and a lovely lunch with his mum and collected a bunch of stuff that I had abandoned when we left two years ago because I hadn't quite finished packing yet when the shippers got there to take stuff to Italy. Some clothing and some useful objects. Some of it will come with me to Norway, and some of it I have already given away. I also picked up clovis_t to bring back to Europe for him, and his helmet, which either archinonlive and I will buy from clovis_t if it fits archinonlive, or which we will find someone else who wants to buy it. It is too nice to leave sitting under a bed in Tassie slowly gathering rust when it can be polished up and used by someone. Sadly, I do not have room for any of the other things clovis_t left there, and the cost of shipping is prohibitive if you don't have an employer paying to relocate you.
After finishing up at their place I met with madryn_1960 for a short hike before heading home and trying to accomplish a bit of work with what was left of the evening before yoga and bed.
On Sunday I went to fighter practice and visited with folk there and had an old friend visit me here for the evening, which was nice.
Monday's entertainment was doing the talk for the UTAS geology dept on what I have been up to in Italy. I had 40 minutes to play with, so I interspersed science slides with slides showing some of the pretty places I got to in Italy while I was there. Given that I finished under time perhaps I should also have added slides for all of the conferences I attended in places other than Italy, but since I mostly don't have photos of these places, they wouldn't have been very good slides. Despite finishing early I got good feedback from the students (heck, they may have liked the fact that it finished early), and my adviser had some good suggestions and comments for me (I think he may have been the only one present who actually understood all of the science--the audience was mostly just the honour's students who are required to be their because it counts as one of their classes.
This evening I will go to the SCA dance practice, which should be fun.
My progress report so far:
* Talked with my adviser about the paper and what to do with it.
* Re-familiarized myself with the files I need, where they are located, and what information is with them (this part is harder than it sounds, actually).
* Determined that the reason I was resistant to his suggestion that we use only the Thermocalc calculations for the paper (rather than having to cite a bunch of different geothermobarometers) was that there were issues with the Thermocal results from the southwest coast samples.
* Discovered that the reason there were issues with the southwest coast samples is that the muscovite analyses I had used for them were strangely high in iron (which shouldn't be in that mineral), worked out that they are probably mixed analyses because it is intergrown with biotite (which does contain Fe) in that grain, found another muscovite grain in the sample which isn't intergrown with biotite, tried the calculations again and got good results (which also agree with the pressure and temperature estimates we obtained for this sample from the other methods tried).
* Re-wrote that section of the paper to give the correct pressure-temperature results based on the new calculations.
* Created the first three figures for the paper (adapted from the thesis, but one of them took a fair bit of tweaking), inserted captions and cross references into them in the paper, and printed the figures to pdf to make certain they look as they should.
* More minor editing of the introduction, geologic setting, and first half of the results section.
Still to be done:
* Go over the old draft for the second half of the results section and re-write with the new aim of the paper in mind
* re-write the discussion and conclusion section of the paper to better match what is now in the first part of the paper
* finish the rest of the figures.
Deadline:
Before Friday would be grand.
Am I getting more done than I would have if I were home in Sweden just now? Well, given that this past week was the Medieval Days in Luleå, and the weekend was Coronet tourney for Nordmark, and now archinonlive is on holiday, yes, I am probably accomplishing far more in the way of uni work than if I were there. This does not stop me from wishing I were there, mind you.
At least we have the internet, so we can spend time together despite being on the far side of the planet. I have been tending to wake up by 04:00 or 04:30, as that is 21 or 22:00 his time, which is often a good time for him to chat. On the weekend that meant that I could listen to the final round of the tournament (which was won by some friends in Frostheim, my home shire!) as they happened. Now that he is on holiday we can also talk at other times of the day--today as I worked on figures for the paper he kept me company as he got breakfast and generally got ready to head to his brother's house for the day. Not as nice as really being there and getting to go along with him on adventures, but way better than not getting to spend time together at all.