This Year

Wow - 2008 is almost over! The year has flown so quickly by, it's astonishing. I had a few plans of things I wanted to do during 2008. For the most part, these were professional ones - or at least my concrete plans were anyway. It's rather hard to make specific plans for the more vague life-improvement ones.

I spent quite a bit of time this year sorting my self out career-wise: completing my Chartered Engineer application (finally. What a tedious task!), finishing the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (which turned out to be a very comfortable way to move from academia to industry), getting involved in the IET. In that respect I feel pretty comfortable now - and I'm very happy in this job. The mix of academic and practical work, with a bit of project management and software development, it's enough variety to keep me entertained and enough substance to let me feel like I'm being challenged.

Since 2008 was my getting-my-career-going year, I think I need some more personal New Years Resolutions this year. Of course there is the wish to lose a few pounds - but I've become resigned to the fact that I have the terrible combination of loving food and being awfully lazy. So, I've chosen a few resolutions I might actually keep!

1. Get some hobbies. I mean this in the most social sense - my hobbies right now are limited to those I can do whilst sitting on my rear end in my own home.
2. Get new clothes. You wouldn't think this would be a 'resolution' I would have to make. I honestly detest shopping, it's not a pleasant experience for me, I want to get in there - purchase - and go home. Browsing and perusing are not strong points for me. This then leads to the same thing every day - me yelling 'I have no clothes!!' as I stare into my empty (disclaimer: this is probably imagined) wardrobe.
3. Get a routine. I am incredibly impulsive - I will do whatever takes my fancy, whenever I want. This has led to me getting less sleep than I need, starting things I don't finish....
Much like that sentence :)

Three is a good number. Biblical. Doable!

Not Socially Optimal

I'm sure I've put this lil comic on here before, but I do love it terribly. I think this may have been one of the first ones from xkcd.com that I read, but I've pretty much read every single one since. I would estimate about 30% of them go somewhat over my head (unfortunately my geekiness stops at the engineering side of programming), but for the most part I think its hilarity is pretty much univeral.

This week, I am in Newcastle on a training course. The topic: Optimisation. So far, it appears to be something I really genuinely love - I'd like to see if I can get some work in the area (particular optimisation for process control) to see how I go. It's got that just-right ratio of engineering:maths that keeps me interested. Each day this week is 11 hours of the course (lectures, labs) and this is absolutely solidly packed with material. It's been quite a while since I concentrated for this long to this extent (this stuff is pretty rigorously explored). I'd forgotten how much I loved university..

*little tear*

My oh My

Haven't I been away a long time!

Many things have happened since I last blogged -

*pause*

No, actually for the most part, anything that has happened in the last few months has been related to things unpleasant to a normal human being, such as activated sludge (a mixture of raw sewage, bacterial flocs and lil ole me ankle deep in the darn stuff).

I'm sure it sounds neither exciting nor interesting to you, but it has been quite a bit of fun for someone as odd as my self.

I found out recently, I have tiny feet (I mean tinier than I even thought!), especially in safety boots. I don't know why I'm particularly surprised by this. I suppose I thought I'd look all butchy and engineer-like in these things, but it actually amplifies how not-male I am. Sigh.

On the topic of my gender, the people at this particular plant (at which I am wearing these shoes) have obviously been raised to believe 'women are always right'. They're polite, quick to help and are constantly apologising for their tendency to swear at a frequency I've never before seen. Even more unusual is the fact that they actually listen to what I say and (astoundingly) don't just ignore the little-woman-telling-them-what-to-do. I've not really experienced this before (engineers aren't really known for being open to change, particularly in the form of female engineers), so it's very refreshing!

In other aesthetic news, my hair is vastly longer than it has been for years. And I'm also paler than I have been for many many moons - which I thought was impossible, but apparently not.

There was a while there where I looked like my skin was pretty much entirely white, but with a little hint of blue. I've now increased back up to a yellow-ish white, I hope to get that to tinge-of-pink perhaps this summer. I can only assume it's the lack of natural light has done this to me.

I'm sure there are many resolutions I should make - perhaps actually getting fresh air (not the air with sewer vapours in it) and sunlight would help. I'd imagine that seeing the countryside now and again would also have it's benefits.

The hair growth has been down to a few reasons, but mostly it's that I couldn't be arsed. I loved my hair up short but it was way way too much hassle and I ain't a beauty-regime type of gal.

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Dear god,

Please stop making it snow on top of me when I'm standing ankle deep in human waste. Also, I prefer not to be terrified on the M6 with high winds battering my tiny tiny Ford Ka, if you don't mind.

Marie.

*****************************

I just looked out the window and saw a group of people struggling against gale force winds, with hailstones hitting them in the face. And I laughed. Because I'm cruel. I'm sure I won't be laughing however when I'm trying to get home tonight. Karma will probably make sure some birds also make my car even dirtier than it already is.

I have been mostly laughing at this today:

Offset Schmoffset

There's been a lot of talk (and a fair amount of it just a whole load of nonsense) about global warming, carbon emissions and so forth. I won't get into a debate about it here, I don't know enough to do so!

However, anything that reduces my impact on my surroundings is, to me, a good thing. I do believe in the notion that humans are rather destructive by nature, so I like when a good idea comes along to compensate for that.

http://www.terrapass.com/

Terrapass. So you've reduced your household waste, saved by reducing domestic energy usage, recycled, composted but you just don't want to get rid of that nice car you have, and you can't avoid the plane journeys. Well, the idea behind Terrapass is this: you fund research into renewable and green energy sources/reduction of carbon emissions/etcetera, with an amount of money proportional to the size of your personal carbon footprint. If you're greener, you don't need to help as much. If you're a big dirty capitalist energy wasting person like me, you pay more.

Nice idea.
Pity I don't have the money ;)

Speech Accent Archive http://accent.gmu.edu/index.php

This is a lovely little site giving you access to examples of various accents from around the world. The same paragraph is read out by each person and so it allows you to compare speakers. They give a little bit of information on the background of the speaker (geographically, linguistically, etcetera).

Why indeed I would be interested in this is a matter for a debate (probably between the little people in my head), but it grabbed my attention this morning.

Dr. Kylie

My two favourite things: Doctor Who and Kylie. In one place. Could it be?

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2117159,00.html

Apparently it can be! What a wonderfully amazing idea! I *heart* Russell T. Davies for making Doctor Who just that bit more gay (who thought that was even possible, considering we already have Captain Jack!)

How Things Change

Greetings,

I've just returned from my graduation last Monday and am finally starting to feel the effects of the completion of my university education. I was quite schocked to find that a considerable weight had been lifted from me, and not only that but a feeling of genuine contentment.

That is it, I feel free - no more panic about the looming thesis deadlines and the even more terrifying viva, none of that backstabbing that invariably accompanies competitive research environments. Were I back at the start of the PhD however, with the knowledge of how difficult it was, would I do it again?

Absolutely. The difficulty of the PhD, the stress of the bullying situation I was in, the financial issues, all of them together can't outweigh that feeling of acheivement that the experience gave me. I am by nature a very lazy person and will, if at all possible, avoid work - procrastination has become an art form for me. So I believe I have the right to feel proud - I have worked very hard for something I really wanted. It went against all my tendencies and urges to commit to something to that extent. I am very glad I did, I truly do love my work.

For those of you who still have no clue whatsoever what it is I actually work on, here's a quick explanation in the form of an everyday task:

• You're in the shower, the waters a bit on the cold side, so you decide to turn it up. Round goes the dial, but you're still thinking it's a bit cold, so you turn it further..
• OUCH! Too hot. You forgot that it takes some time for the hotter water to reach you.
• Quickly, you turn it down, making it a bit too cold, though not too far off, so you turn the dial much less.
• After a few little turns back and forth you get that *just right* temperature.
• OWWWWWWWWW....*&*$"£&($...what the %^&$ was that!?!
• Someone flushed the toilet ;)

This little story basically boils (harhar) down to this system:

1. The process (the shower) to be considered
2. The variable (the temperature) to be controlled
3. The variable (the dial) to be manipulated
4. The disturbance (the loo flushing)
5. The controller (here this is you!)

Now, say for example, you'd prefer this system to be like this:

1. You don't want to boil the skin off yourself
2. You want to set a temperature for the water, not have to find that temperature yourself
3. You want to make sure that the shower isn't affected by some div flushin the loo

This is where automatic control comes in. Automatic (a lil electronic chip, a few valves, etcetera) as opposed manual (you!). It can allow you to specify what you want (temperature in degrees Celsius for example), what you want to avoid (scalding water because of a change in water pressure for example) and how quickly or slowly you want to do it.

The simple answer would be a system of changes made that are similar to those of your own (i.e. move up to a temperature, realise it's too high and move back down, etcetera until you reach your target).

The better answer would be to know the system (for example, the range of temperature, or the delay of the delivery of hotter water) and be able to predict what you need to do..

And this is where I am - Predictive Control!