Live Updates?
Monday 2020/6/08
Royal Society of Chemistry meeting via Zoom to kick the week off. Seemed to go well, but we did miss the catered lunch. For once I’m slightly ahead of my commitments to the group, so I just need to wait for my co-author’s draft to arrive and I can add in my content.
No sign of my bike parts yet, so I’ll travel to M’s via Overground – it seems to be empty. Mask up!
Walked to Barking station, I’d estimate about 1/3 of the people I saw on the way had a mask on, or a scarf covering their lower faces. The overground train had just been cleaned as I boarded it. I got a seat right in a corder and had a third of a carriage to myself all the way to Crouch Hill. Almost everyone I could see on the train had a mask on.
The walk from Crouch Hill to Hornsey was different, I past over a hundred people (I stopped counting at 100) and saw only 19 masks, 6 including myself on men.
Return journey I saw no masks on the way back to the station, barely any on the Overground and only a few when back in Dagenham.
Tuesday 2020/6/09
Woken at 3:30 am by the neighbour’s dogs barking. Got back to sleep soon after. Just back from a quick visit to the shops for supplies. Now, email.
Completely screwed up cooking dinner, the grill was on instead of the oven, so the outside of things was perfect while the inside was still semi-frozen. Into the microwave with it all to finish it off. Recorded the practical segments of the next Lockdown Conservation Science video.
Wednesday 2020/6/10
I seem to wake up 3:30 – 4am by default the days, from then I’m usually napping until I give up and get up. Today will be video editing and running a practise viva for a student.
Viva practise was plagued by tech issues, but we got there in the end, hopefully it as useful. Later call with head of dept confirmed what I already knew, labs will reopen on July 2nd and there is a hiring freeze, so no prospect for a job change before Jan 2021. My bike parts ordered last week have gone astray.
Thursday 2020/6/11
Missed an Australian seminar because I forgot to set an alarm to wake up in time.
The dog is much happier when not going for a walk in the rain.
Much happier dog today. pic.twitter.com/ecwbzTaUcE
— Dr. David Mills (@DTL) June 11, 2020
Managed to trip the electricity off with a water spill, this necessitated pulling out a cupboard to get to the damp plug and dealing with all the fluff and dust that accumulates in places that get hoovered about one per year due to inaccessibility. Will see if the RCD will reset in the morning.
Friday 2020/6/12
My iTelescope images should be in today. The nights are too short and the sky is too bright anyway at this time of year to do much deep sky astronomy from the garden, so I have invested in a remote telescope subscription (iTelescope) and will use much nicer kit than I can afford in places with much much darker skies than I’ll ever manage to get my astronomy fix. The first two images should be just simple 5min exposures (black and white) of the Ring Nebula (captured by myself a couple of weeks back, and featuring in one of these quarantine posts) , the send image should be of the Galaxy Centaurus A – a very impressive galaxy only really visible from the southern hemisphere.
Saturday 2020/6/13
The images from Friday were a little under-whelming, clouds form even in Australia. iTelescope has an automatic refund system, which is hand – I managed to get a full refund for the first two images and I shall try again.
Cycled to Halfords at Chadwell Heath to get the parts I need for the bike, after deliveries failed to materialise. There was a small queue to enter and the guy on the door was directing people to specific parts of the shop based on what they needed. I intended to get a front fork extender, but was dissuaded by the sales person who claimed they are dangerous – he wasn’t trying to up-sell me anything instead, so I purchased a helmet and new bike lock and left to have a re-think. My back brake failed on the way home which made the journey that much more exciting.
Ordered a better specc’ed extender later in the afternoon.
Fixed a large bug in some code just after midnight.
Sunday 2020/6/14
Well, I kept up the pseudo-live updating for 5 days. Not too bad.
I seem to have spent most of today taking the dog for walks.
