Palaeo-Art

Recently I found this intresting guy on twitter called the Flying Trilobite who is an artist inspired by science - I really liked his drawings so followed him.

Anyway he then tweeted about submissions for palaeo-environment pictures and lo! I found Art Evolved and their time capsules full of palaeo-art!

Anyway it turned out the next time capsule was palaeo-environments and they wanted pictures along that theme. Unfortunatly it was very close to the deadline and I wasn't sure how to entire or if I could - even though on a later inspection of the site I saw all the instructions in plan sight!

Anyway I basically only manage to get a quick biro sketch done which wasn't composed properly or anything!

My topic was an Upper Ordovician benthonic community - yep you got it - basically it was another of my seascapes

Anyway its here if you want to see it I'm in the middle bit of the time capsule.

Of course being me the first thing I did was sit down and read a few chapters of various palaeo books I just happen to have lurking about

Anyway I am really excited about this as I've been searching for art and science cross overs The next time capsule is on the Therizinosaurs which I think are like beaked dinosaurs I think! I need to do a bit of reading up on these - at the moment the only book I have that mentions them is my Vertebrate Palaeontology book :/

Sorting things out

I'm currently sorting things out for a fun weekend of family wedding and meeting up with people - there have been a few hicups already ie getting the wronge weekend for the wedding in Al's diary and concequently issues with his dad's visit!

A friends just had a baby so I'm bring some things down for her as well and have made the wedding presant and card.

I have also been sorting out paper work and my craft supplies and through talking to the local arts and craft people have been instilled with the idea of selling the cards I've been making.

Generally I've had people saying I really should be displaying my art work and things but I just don't know how to do this and have no money to join anything or hire galleries etc...

As Alaric said in hind sight giving up the art classes and writing group to go back to my course right at the point lots of things fell to pieces for me (Alex dying, mum's last lot of cancer and the realisation that we had miss understood/miscalculated money issues plus the situation with being stuffed by my main client) was a bad trade off.

I'm not even sure if I blogged back in the autum that one of my pictures was on display locally thanks to the art teacher.

This is leading me to thinking though - I love science and geology and feel it is part of me but it is easier with pain flare ups and tummy stuff to be at home writing, making websites and doing arty things - but what will make me happy?

I have never react well to having to choose between the two Art and Science. They are not even distinct in my mind but then I have a slightly odd take on things and veiw it all as creative.

I want to try and finish at least the first year of my course but it means more money we don't have but on the other hand if I don't we loose that money already invested in it.

And then the art world is so uncertain - publishing is going through the mill at the moment - big changes the industry are failing to cope with and so traditional avenues are closed but I have noticed new ones opening up - but I am beginner at this game and have no idea how to muscel my way in.

I interact with an extended communitee of writers on twitter but mainly we discuess our kids and the like. I also have science friends on there and a healthy dose of computer people and a few arty crafties but this is only making my dissusions harder.

I am all of these things but modern society doesn't really allow for Jack of all trades especially one who has intermitent health. And so by not choosing I risk achieving nothing.

But I don't think I can choose - my life feels unbalance when I do not have a mix of things.

And at the same time I feel that the house and Jean are priority - I get sick even for a few days and the house descends into chaos and I can not really allow this and so I feel an instinct to nest build until it is all easy to maintain with out me looking over everyones shoulders all the time.

I started this post thinking I was going somewhere and that I had sorted part of my life out but realised as I was writing it that it is all still open questions and discuissions to be made.

The Dr pointed out that I was one person and one person only - I am trying to take this into account with what I plan to do next.

A talk on giving talks

I went into college on Monday and met up with my friend David for a coffee before the lecture which was nice even if I was being a bit a flake - and his supervisor appeared and he felt too guilty and went back to work :/

It was odd being around the IC campus once more it was like being transported back in time about five years but into a parrallel universe where everything was just slightly wronge - like the walkways gone and is now in the libarary and there is a cafe in the the libary - why oh why couldnt they have had that when I was there - thats what me and Ella always said it needed - that and 24 hr access!

Anyway I then headed over to the UCL campus and turned up to the lecture room and panicked that there where undergraduates in there with microscopes and the like doing some petrology.

But then Martin turned up and we went in anyway - talking loudly and scaring all the little UG's away

Then Franky turned up and a girl from another course (Chemistry related I think) - the lecture was on how to give our 15 minute talks next week - first off eeeek eek eek - what do you mean next week? Panic! - then - wow they actually managed to give an hour lecture on giving a fifteen minute talk :/

At the end we found out that we really are down to 3 - the other moon girl has left and one of the other guys has changed to a PhD.

That is one hell of a drop out rate - maybe its the part time thing - we all have other lives and this is the thing we 'fit-in' when it is really a full time thing in itself.

I feel abit said that we are down to three - and I'm still not properlly registered :/

A Sense of Deja Vu

Alaric left for London yesturday to fly out to Santa Clara for a MySQL conference thingy and within an hour of him leaving my mother asks me if I knew a neighbour - I say yes and then ask why.

She said Barbara had asked her if she had known Linda and when she had said no Barbara had just walked off.

A sinking feeling begain in my gut - Linda was a very sick woman and I was awere she hadn't been to visit for a while but then she always had spurts in hospital and stuff. So I went over to talk to Barbara and she said 'you didn't know my friend Linda but she dies yesturday.' I've been making preserves and giving them to Linda for about two years and her and her husband used to come found for a lot of meals with Barbara - we tracked down foods she'd had when she lived abroad that she couldn't find like tofu and balsamic glaze.

So I had to explain that we did know her and then deal with the fact that this was actually one of Barbara's closest friends in the village. She was very sick and apparently refused the dialysis that could have kept her alive for a bit longer

After that I found out from Barbara that some terminally ill children are coming over in May to visit and she would like it if me and Alaric could be around to take them on an outing.

I came back to the Bakery feeling troubled - I had one thought I could not shake - please god don't let this be another September. Family friend/villager dying - that was how it all started.

September - the catastrophic month - four funerals, three in one week.

Fear clinched at me - who was I going to loose? Who that I felt deeply about would be leaving me next? Stupid and idiotic, I fought the stupersticous thought. A pattern repeating, encircling me. Alaric away on business and the messages of death begin to arrive.

Insane thoughts - edged with tears for Alex once more.

Obviously no more such messages arrived but Barbara came over later that day to give me some cool gardening bits she had been sent for free/by mistake and didn't know what to do with and some recipies she'd cut out for me.

She also bought round a job advert - something she had cut out a while ago and forgotten to give me but seemed to be the perfect job for me - geologist, very local - Birdlip - walking distance really. It was the company Alex was working for when Alex died.

I saw the name of the company and thrust it back at her, 'no thats Alex's job' I cried - I don't even know if it was I just panicked as soon as I saw the company name.

'Oh he's that close is he?' Barbara asks - then she went on to ask why he hadn't been round for dinner or to visit recently. I couldn't say anything.

She carried on talking and then said - 'oh this company is the one that was involved with that poor boys death in that trench is it?'

I managed to say, 'That was Alex' and then ran out the room and locked myself in my room and cried.

Jean came and found me and 'hugged me better'. I still feel just so raw about it all. I'm wondering how often this is going to happen

Using the Electron Mircoprobe

Today I went into the lab once more and place the lunar sample into the machine - this time instead of blasting it with x-rays to get element maps I was picking out specific points to hit with an electron beam and see what they are made off.

First off we picked a selection of elements that I wanted to get proportions of and then I picked the points I wanted to know about specifically. From the element maps and the back scatter image I had taken previously I knew that I apparently had several minerals (I had trudged through four large tomes of mineralogy and lunar/planetary stuff to find out what sort of things I might have lurking in the sample. I had then taken the element maps and compared them - drawn faint scetches of them and then working out what elements I had in conjection where drew on mineral areas with coloured pens onto a printout of the backscatter image. (He told me this was actually an x-ray map just not element specific so I need to check whats what with him I think).

They seemed quiet impressed that I had done this but it seemed like the only way to make things clear to me personally. I was becoming frustrated that I couldn't work out the actual proportions and therefore the exact minerals from the elelment maps and that I could only narrow things down. Fortunatly this is what today was actually about so I worked out how many samples I wanted and were to take the measurements - unfortunatly becuase there is a bad polish on the sample I had to be careful and was highly restricted in where I could take measurements.

But I selected 101 points each point was going to take about 9 minutes to analyse but I specifically went in early to get it all going and as it turned out had plenty of time.

I had also narrowed down the minerals really far more accuratly that I thought I had and I had worked out stuff about my 'dirty' quartz that that does seem to be correct which is very cool and makes me feel like I might just have a chance of doing this.

The only thing is I found myself baulkin at the interface of data and computers - there are situations that I just see no reason not to have a computer automate and I think they should be relatively easy to implement and yet there is nothing! This keeps happening every where I turn in geology and earth sciences there is just huge gaps that computers could feel reducing monkey work and increasing the amount of research that can be analysis in depth!

Other issues that I have had is finding information barred to me - this is painful when I would happily pay say £10 for an e-book of the phase diagrams I needed or even just the chapters I needed - then and there I may even have gone up to £20 but it is only avalible as a book and at around $300 which sucks big time.

Can anyone tell me what the restrictions would be on me finding data in papers and ploting my own graphs/diagrams and then putting them on the internet for free so that people like me don't get stuck like this? I just needed a guid to see if I was on the right path. The question of science on the net has been interesting me alot in the past year and I wonder lots about hwo things are going - I like sharing info and I think it helps move projects and science as a whole on but there are those who tell me that I sholdn't talk about my projects and ideas incase they are published by other first.

Also there is the question of funding and where the money is coming from to do the research - I find myself pondering over the wole peer review system and how a nice fast version could apply to articles on line - making the turn around of science much faster without loosing the reliablity.

It is a thorny problem and I feel slightly swamped in it.

Oh well I'm sure I'll sort it all out eventually

The only scary thing about todays stuff was that if I want to go out of the lab I have to remember to press a button that puts an alunium or copper block infront of my electron beam so that it doesn't burn a whole in the sample - this made me quiet nervous!