Monsoon season

Well. Maybe not quite, but it really hasn't stopped raining ALL day, and during my cycle home (5 minutes!) I got thoroughly drenched. Here is a photo from last weekend in Ticino, depicting MUCH better weather.

I am currently scanning (in the laser set-up) the eye of a fly. It felt a bit wrong cutting off the head of this little thing and mounting it on double sided tape, like some sort of micro-hunting trophy. A bit gross indeed, but the diffraction patterns are really interesting and I am hoping that the reconstruction tomorrow will produce somthing nice. The back of this particular fly was a nice shiney green, so I thought to try removing that too, but my specimen was a bit fresh so some guts came out, yuk. The eye will be awesome if it works. The diffraction patterns from my test scan really looked nice...maybe I can show you one soon.

The experiments are light sensitive so have to take place in the dark. Until now we've been darkening the room, but it doesn't actually darken it completely. The CCD (the camera) is incredibly sensitive, so this affects the images somewhat. Today, however, we've revolutionised the setup! We got a hold of some thick black material to cover the optical table. It's now light tight and we're getting the best counts we've ever had - and an added bonus, people can actually enter the lab while an experiment is taking place. Good news for my colleagues who need to rinse out their coffee cups in the sink that is situated in the lab. When I've had experiments on they've gone to use the sink in another lab which uses nasty chemicals. At least the worst they can encounter from my samples is a bit of computer chip or dead fly. Yummy.

My revision is essentially underway. For those of you that don't know, I will be making a flying visit to Aberdeen next week for an exam in Quantum physics. Quantum = quite interesting, but exam = gross. I've been spending time revising the basic things that make life (physics) a lot easier if they are known well... things that are taught in basic maths courses, but that I haven't really done for a long time. Seeing as I've been learning lots of new things all summer, I think my mind is in a good state to take it on and maybe even understand it. And, this week I am really able to focus on revising, learning and on making scans of interesting samples...! If the weather stays rubbish I will probably feel good about it too.

Am pretty sure I don't want to leave Switzerland... but at the same time am pretty sure I want to get uni over and done with... less than a year to go! And, woah, I'm going to be 22 in less than 4 weeks.