Well it's been so long since I blogged that I practically forgot my password.

September has probably been the most hectic month this year. Preparing for my PhD viva on the 12th, having to give a presentation in Germany for the DPI on the 18th, completing my corrections, going to Malaga for 1 weeks holiday, then doing another presentation on my new work.

This week has been slightly less hectic than most. Friday night I was in the lab giving my thesis the last once through, which I finished reading on Saturday. I then went round to Cristina's to watch a dvd (Bourne Ultimatium), good film, though I think I fell a sleep half way through.

Today, I spent a fair amount of time in bed, then went for a walk to Granchester and had a meal at the Red Lion - sausage and mash. I must admit there was rather a large amount of gravy, though it tasted really good with a refreshing glass of pimms. The price wasn't too bad either. We then decided to go to the orchard for a quick look around and then up to Jeffery Archer's mansion - hoping to get a good of sip of English tea -> unfortunately the area was barricaded off and probably patrolled by rockweillers. We continued a little further onto the Unicorn pub where we got a lemonade and lime. I must admit I was feeling rather tired today, particularly walking in the sun, I don't know why. On the way there and back we spotted Lukman and said hello. I think she was a bit surprised to see us going to Granchester, we also saw the lot from Queens' college.

Tonight I have just finished off the polymer properties ontology, I hope Nico likes it!

Tomorrow I think I'll start work on the polymer builder, maybe go down the gym and dance later on in the evening. We will see.

Bank Bureaucracy and the rest...

OK, so it has been just over a month since I last blogged. What have I been doing you may ask?

The short answer is: a lot!

Where to start?

• I have been to Pembroke for a formal (the food was pretty nice, not a patch on Queens' though).
• Got myself some new accommodation lined up (modern, ensuite, fairly close to the train station, department and the gym with wireless internet- 8mbp).
• Joined Fenner's Gym- trying to go down about 3 times a week plus balance salsa and work.
• Been down to Bar Salsa in London.
• Went out to Volker's leaving do at Chillis Mexican Restaurant (another postdoc, who has just left Peter Murray-Rust's group, and joined BASF in Germany).
• Got a new pair of shoes - laid back pair of brown shoes.
• DVD - marathon -> I must have watched at least 5 DVDs over the last weekend (I would recommend watching Enemy at the Gates, Master & Commander is a bag of W***).
• Clothes shopping - bought a new shirt.

Banking

I think I will start a fresh paragraph, so I can comment on the lameness of the Natwest bank. How hard should it be to transfer money from one account to another...my goodness! Transferring from an ISA to an internal reserve account is fine and also to the current account . But making a payment to a different account is a whole new kettle of fish!
The problem is that you need a card reader which they do not send in the post when you create an account. Nor do they tell you that the Natwest ISA no longer comes with a card to get money out of through the wall. Anyway after jumping through about 10K hoops to login to your online account, you then have to phone up an 0800 number and go through the whole security checks again...by this point in time I just wanted my money and went into the bank to complain. Having a reasonable amount of money locked away but not being able to access it is a pain in the buttocks!

The account now works finally! (On a different note, btw I have just received the pin after opening the account about 3 months ago).

Work seems to be going ok, I have now moved on from the ontologies to expand and develop the polymer builder. So far I have developed a much nicer interface. Later I intend to implement much of the functionality and extend it to include information generated from the OWL ontologies and the polymer repository.

Right I'm off down the gym..will speak soon.

Ed

ps.

Very jealous of someone in California!

What happened to the one week holiday?

Well I feel as though I could do with another week off... but that's life. From the 23rd of June I submitted my PhD thesis (nice moment, I don't think my viva corrections will be so nice though!), what a relief, it will be nice to have the weekends off and get a decent pay.

So what have I done with the one week I've had off (most PhD students would probably take a month, possibly 3 or even a year off- evidently I'm not bitter), well been out drinking, sleeping (a lot), washing (3 cycles-ridiculous, washing machines are expensive), I've been dancing, gone round the Fitzwilliam museum (a real education, there's a lot paintings, pottery and weapons to see). I also went to the movies and baked a cake on Friday, I think the audience was suitably impressed - one person living on my floor thought I'd bought it (sorry for the modesty!).

At the weekend I went back to Notts. It was quite relaxing, watching the TV, went for a walk and just lazed around on the sofa.

Tonight, I maybe down at Bar Salsa, depends how tired I am, as I don't want to come into the first day of my job as a zombie!

Clare, John, Pembroke, Submission and pub!

May week is always packed with things to do, garden parties, events and of course balls. This year I was lucky enough to become a member of the Cambridge University Salsa Dance Team, which entitled me to go and perform and enjoy 3 balls in Cambridge.

The first one was Clare on last Monday. I was a bit nervous performing for the first time, the floor was a little uneven with nails in it and quite crowded. It didn't help that we had previously listened to some classical music <40> so we were feeling a little rushed, to put it politely! The lesson and dancing after went well.

Tuesday was St. Johns- probably the best ball I've ever been to, the fireworks were mind blowing, the entertainment lasted all night. I particularly liked our pew at the start of the night right in front of the belly dancers. The performance out of the three nights was the best at St . Johns, probably something to do with the alcohol in me and the great dance floor they provided us with.

Wednesday, the Pembroke event. I think the night just got better as it went along. I missed out on a hog roast which I should have really got at the start..nevermind. I did not tempt myself with the chocolate fountains at the start either... didn't want anything heavy until we'd done the routine, which went ok though I forgot my footwork at one point, probably attributed to the 3 glasses of wine I had before hand (note to myself.. only one if I'm dancing!). After, I was feeling a little hungry and got some doughnuts and met up with Cristina (hopefully spelt correct), we ended up chilling out, going to the Casino and bouncing on the bouncy castle. We managed to stay up until the survivors photo, it should be interesting to see that if it gets published on the web somewhere.

The rest of the week was spent reading/correcting/reading and writing my thesis. Which is now submitted (Thank God- and I'm atheist). I will have 1 week off then start my post doc in Peter Murray-Rust's group. In the mean time I'm going to get down the gym, then join my friend the 10 year old bottle of laphroaig! Apparently having bought the bottle I am now entitled to one square foot of the island, which I've claimed. I think I'll need to drink a few more bottles before the island is all mine!

Garden Party Season Kicks Off

Just come back from a great party at Lucy Cavendish. It had a Brazilian theme to it: caipirinha cocktails, a capoeira martial arts demonstration and some brazilian/latino music. It was good to catch up with Neil, Alex, Lauren, Charlie and a few others, though I will probably see them at the Garden party tomorrow. I have got to admit there seems to be so much going on this weekend and the coming week! I'm particularly excited about St Johns ball. Lead acts include: SHY FX, Dizzee Rascal & wait for it... LESLEY GARETT. Hopefully I can get my conclusion out the way this weekend as the next week will evidently be a write off! The sooner the better = more holiday!


On a last note I see Jesus have rowed over again, looks like Christian will not be getting blades this year, nevermind! Wolfson W2 have unfortunately been bumped everytime, so Zhenzhi I guess will not be too happy either.

Lets hope this Ice age thaws over

Friday night was a bbq at the OC, the food was ok from what I saw + they were providing some free alcohol, I reckon there must have been about 30 people there. Saturday I was down the gym fairly early on, then went dancing for two hours. We then went into town to get our uniform (the old one had to change because the girls stuff didn't fit with what we had previously bought), which looks good though the trousers were quite expensive. Sunday was fairly relaxed. I was invited to Trinity May Ball by person X but had to decline on the basis that I'm performing at Clare on that night...such a pitty I would really have liked to have gone.

Monday was Charlotte's birthday, I think she really enjoyed the dancing and the cake in St Ives. I probably shouldn't have tried to force her to do a quadruple spin in 4 beats (as she nearly toppled), but hey that's life! General dancing was ok, I enjoyed the routine earlier. Tuesday was the day to order a fathers day present...I think he'll like it!

Wednesday..what a day!

• Work - is going well, the thesis seems to be on track.
• Virus - Queens' are apparently having a problem with a trojan -> internet on sporadically.
• Email - I don't think person Y is particularly happy with person Z on the basis of an email sent to person Y's boss. It was meant to be a like hearted way of getting person Y to give person Z a document. Hopefully person Y will look at it in that light and forgive and forget so there is no 'tension.' Otherwise we'll have to be standing to attention to account for this tension!
  
• Conversation - Probably the longest conversation I've had with Hamse about research since I've been in Cambridge, it must have lasted ~ 45mins (I didn't think we could collectively talk for that long).
  

Dance, dance where ever you may be because I am the lord of the dance say he -> well that equates to practice tonight. One of the comments my maths teacher used to make before we were about to sit an exam was that "this is not a dress rehearsal", well today it is!


On a last note I've booked myself a place on the GBSEx congress should be great fun! Yes I know I use too many exclaimation marks!!

Oxford Extravaganza

If last weekend wasn't enough travelling, the weekend that's just been I went down to Oxford for a formal hall exchange with St Hughes. All-in-all I enjoyed the experience, bar the hangover on the bus on the way back. We started our tour of Oxford at the market place, where Oxfam were out in strength. Our first port of call was the Bodleian Library, I got to admit I was quite surprised they'd let a group of Cambridge students in there, though apparently if you have an Oxford card you can invite 4 people. An interesting experience, though I couldn't help but feel embarassed when the librarian was looking at the Cambridge guys using flash photography in the library (idiots!).
We had a quick tour of the Radcliffe Camera and saw some people from one of the colleges doing a 24 hour ergo (30 mins on, I pitty the poor bugger having the 1-4am slots). One of the main points I've noticed about Oxford is that it is so much larger than Cambridge, however it is very similar (architecture, bikes wizzing by, loads of pubs etc) and you believe you're back in Cambridge expecting to see someone you know around the corner or in the high street. Anyway back to the story. We ended up going to Magdalene College to look at the chapel and the deer park. The chapel was nothing special, nor the deer park until we realised we were just looking at an overgrown field and in fact the deer park was to our left not right. The day was topped off with a Dim-Bar ice cream from G&D's and a drink down the pub followed by a cracking formal and late night party.

Sunday everyone was a little less enthusiastic, probably due the alcohol, so we all went for a walk around the botanical gardens and town to clear our head. We ended up spending most of our day in cafes and the natural science museum.

A highlight of the trip was that I came second in the bus quiz on the way back.

ps.

Cristiana if you're reading this, thanks for the apple. I like the golden delicious, whilst the granny smith are ok a little sharp for my taste buds, my favourite are probably the royal gala apples or pink lady.

Adventurous weekend, laid back week

Friday kicked off with myself and Christian + Peter Murray-Rust's group going down to the beer festival at lunch time. There was a large variety of beer from all over the UK and a foreign bar for those not particularly keen on the local brew. I had a pint of Claife Clare, not too bad, it was an Ambleside ale (near the Lake District) which was apparently made in Ireland.

I enjoyed the festival so decided to go there on Saturday with my brother after attending brunch at a friends house. It was quite crowded on Saturday and we stayed for two beers. We would have got there later due to punting complications (excessive traffic on the river, we went drinking instead). Following the festival we met up with our parents for a meal at the Avery. The food is normally good and on time, not on Saturday though! Shocking service, they took so long then got our order wrong. I think they've lost my custom for a long while.

Sunday could have been a relaxing day, though we decided to go to the seaside (Lowestoft) - 2 hours travelling there then 2 hours back. The weather was absurd being cold, wet and windy. We had some traditional sausage and chips, then went down to the sea, which according to my brother was bloody cold! Not really much else in Lowestoft other than the arcades, we had a go on the dance machine (first time, cained the beginner level, then got a rude awakening on the intermediate). Two 15 year old chavs went on after us, they did rather well but had blatantly been spending all their pocket money and spare time on that machine. Lowestoft though nice for a day out, is rather bleak....I pitty the teenage population, they must really struggle to find things to do.

I forgot to mention I also went to the cinema twice, once to see Iron man then Indiana Jones. I preferred Iron man, not such a big fan of Indy, but it was ok.

Today, I have been checking a chapter of my thesis then pratting around with my website, which is great fun. I've added a new photo album of our adventures in lowestoft (http://chemoinformatician.co.uk/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=487), set up an rss feed for this blog which can be accessed at: http://chemoinformatician.co.uk/main/Chemoinformatics_Blogging.php embedded some youtube videos into my wiki (http://chemoinformatician.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Youtube_Videos), put a google map mashup (or soon to be) on my website and have also included some extra chart functionality for my wiki (http://chemoinformatician.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Google_Charts)...important graphs coming soon!

I will start to blog more actively about the semantic web and polymer informatics from now on.

On a last note dance practice is tonight, it should be good, the routine is getting better.

Polymer Informatics here we come!

I am really excited about the new postdoctoral position I have been appointed to in Peter Murray-Rust's lab. The work will involve a lot of java programming and xml processing. The main goal is to develop a polymer ontology. I think I will learn a lot over these next two years.

Other work related issues include the submission of my thesis, which should hopefully happen pretty shortly as I have given a second draft to John (fingers crossed, he'll give his blessing!). Not much else, but I may start writing up another publication related to my thesis in my spare time.

Miscellaneous news: my parents are in Madeira for a week, hopefully they are having a good time on holiday, I think they needed a break from work. My brother came back from a Tax conference, then went out to the dogs (betting on dogs). I don't think he won anything, but it sounded like he enjoyed himself.

A milestone or simply a one off?

Last week was the first time Christian and I managed to convince some of the traditional 'cyber cafe' goers (Lukman and Christina) to get out of the department for lunch at Queens'. I myself am a big fan of leaving the department for an hours break at lunch, it gives me more time to think and chill out, others I guess prefer the closeness of the cafe and the apparent chemist community based atmosphere.

Watch this space for future developments.

Other than that I can safely say I've had a fairly hectic weekend. The UK salsa champions put on a show on Friday, the performance was great, pitty about the rather large number of people down the club....wasn't exactly conducive to dancing. Saturday I had a free meal at Emma College. The food was Mexican, so tortilla then fajita wraps followed by a chocolate mousse for dessert. I didn't have much to drink which might surprise one or two, but the one margarita cocktail I had was strong enough. The dinner was followed by a bit of dancing to a live band, Capricorn..which was suppose to be a salsa band, though it turned out that they were in fact a funky/soul band.

Sunday, I must have woken up fairly late ~11am, it's nice to have a lye in if there is no compulsion to get up and work. Some people I have noticed do however go into the lab at weekends and proceed to work on Bank holidays. Well it's their choice, I just think it's a little excessive, unless of course "desperate times call for desperate measures." More likely though the fact that they have nothing better to do in their spare time.

Anyway it was good to see my brother's new flat on the Sunday night after a lesson at SOS (level 4 - Advanced). I think the shine routines down there require a hell of a lot of attention, the partner routine (which I guess I'm more use to) was fairly straight forward.

I think I'll have to get a regular gym routine going on the Tuesday night as the 'On2' has now finished...or work later.

Long time no post!

It has been almost two weeks since I last made a post. I guess it's probably a combination of being busy with a mixture of activities and events. Last weekend was my Dad's birthday so I went back home to celebrate, after chilling out for a while we did a blind wine tasting session, which I failed abysmally at by picking the cheaper of the two wines under the belief that it was the more expensive one. My only excuse was that I didn't have a pallet cleanser. Anyway we went out to a Turkish restaurant (for a change, we normally go to Chinese for some reason) in the centre of Notts. We all went for the 3-course meal, greater starter - mixture of beans, sauce, salad. I had a traditional mixed kebab for the main course then finished up with some bakala (if that's how you spell it?). All in all a good night. Sunday I decided to go down to SOS with my brother. I thoroughly enjoyed it, the level 4 lesson was good- good in the sense that it pushed you but was not out of your league.

Other news

More recently I have been offered a post-doc position, so that's great news. The thesis seems to be going well, just a bit of chopping and changing then all should be done and dusted.

In the mean time I need to sort out a presentation for my PhD for tomorrow and get a pizza from the shop, so I can't procrastinate any longer!

An Interesting New Paper

Titled: “Distributed Chemical Computing Using ChemStar: An Open Source Java Remote Method Invocation Architecture Applied to Large Scale Molecular Data from PubChem.”

Authors: M. Karthikeyan, S. Krishnan, Anil, Kumar Pandey, Andreas Bender, and Alexander Tropsha.

Provisionally published in JCIM.

A long story short, they have published the first online open source distributed computing and data analysis architecture written in Java using the remote method invocation. The resource can be found at:

http://moltable.ncl.res.in/chemstar/index.jsp

The network consists of 25 windows based machines. Server side computing requires Java, Oracle, MySQL or MS Access. On the client side only Java is required.

They have demonstrated its ability by calculating descriptors on a dataset of over 11 million compounds using the JOELib and Marvin toolkits. At present they are able to calculate: pKa, log P, log D, polar surface area, charge distribution, polarizability, topology analysis, H-bond acceptor, H-bond donor properties, the prediction of protonation microspecies, Huckel analysis, refractivity and elemental analysis. They envisage extending these methods to in-silico-based virtual screening, fast docking, text mining or other related informatics applications.

I am also very interested in this work as their homepage (see link above) is written in Java Server Pages (JSP), a language I have started to write some open source web services in.

Web Site Crashing!

What a day! I woke up a little late then went into town to get a collection of clothes for the spring/summer. After looking around numerous shops I decided on two tops from Next. One a v-neck with a shirt, the other a t-shirt/hooded top cut off at the sleeves.

The rest of the day as been spent browsing the internet and listening to music. I must admit since I have spent a reasonable amount of time browsing the web today I am not particularly happy with the fact that the web server I am hosting my website on has effectively crashed for the most part of the day. I suspect that now that I'm not using so much bandwidth they will move me to a slower less robust server!

So if anyone was trying to access my page today, I would like to apologise for the inconvenience!

Online classification tools

I have just set up some online classification tools based on the WEKA machine learning library.
More information can be found at: http://edcannon.hobby-site.com/SimpleUpload.jsp .

Basically people can upload one file upto 5mb in size and then use either: SVM, NBayes, Logistic, k-NN (k=1), RandomForest or the PART rule based learner.

The results are based on the default parameters in WEKA and using 5-fold cross-validation.

I hope some people might make use of this facility!

Birthdays Galore

It appears that everyone has a birthday in April. Dub last Saturday, Nicola today and Florian tomorrow. I think Florian wants to go for a meal somewhere then off to La Raza for a few cocktails, not sure, but I'm sure he's got it all ironed out.

Yesterday I decided to treat myself to a haircut - it was about time. The barber that I regularly go to is apparently moving shop back into the centre of Cambridge, so that means I might need to go into the centre, which is a bit of a pain or alternatively find a barber closer by.

On a different note:

Chemoinformatics
Currently looking at new webservices, more information on XML and CML processing and XOM.

Salsa
I had a good time last night at the Slug and Lettuce, the dancing and the lesson were enjoyable.

Webservices

Initially I thought today was not going to be such a productive day. However, I have now managed to set up an online web server http://edcannon.hobby-site.com/CDKDescriptorCalculation.html) that can calculate descriptors from the Chemistry Development Kit given a smile string as input. The descriptors that have been implemented at present are:

• BCUT
• Fingerprint
• Apol
• Number of aromatic atoms
• Autocorrelation descriptor with polarisability
• Number of hydrogen bond acceptors
• Number of hydrogen bond donors
• Lipinski's rule of 5
• Total polar surface area
• XlogP

More descriptors will be made available later. I also intend to put an online service for machine learning algorithms in using the Open Source WEKA Java library.

Off to bed.

Dub's Birthday

After a day in the lab reading papers, I was off to the Mitre pub to celebrate Dee's birthday. Florian and I initially went to the Prince Reagent then on to the Avery to get food, but had no success. It's surprising how early pubs stop serving food, particularly at weekends in Cambridge. Anyway we managed to go to the GBK, I had a thai burger (red thai sauce), tasted great, but quite expensive. In the region of £10 for a diet coke and a burger.

We then ended up at the Mitre ~9pm had a drink there, then Florian's friend Michael came, he seemed to be happy and in high spirits [like Flo, me and Dub....not so sure about everyone else though]. Two drinks later we tried La Raza, but at £6 to get in, the ~£7 per cocktail we parsed on this and ended up in the Fountain where Steph joined us later. I must have stayed till about 1am before I got too tired of dancing and talking.

Today I was meaning to go to the gym. However Queens' College have still not sorted out where the gym key as gone missing or who has it. If this turns into a more regular event I may decide to join a different gym. In the end I went for a run around Granchester as the weather was great tonight. I think we're going to be in for some sleet and snow on Mon, Tues and Wednesday. Snow in spring...shocking.

Bowmore More More!

Our whiskey guide last night was Andrew Torrence, he took us to the Isle of Islay for two different types of single malt. On this tour was myself, Zhenzhi, her friend, Volker and about 10 others.  All in all we had 6 different whiskeys. The line up:

Auchentoshan - 10 year old

Auchentoshan - Three Wood

Bowmore - 12 year old

Bowmore - 15 year old

Bowmore - 18 year old

and the mystery guest: Bowmore 25 year old.

My favourite was the 18 year old, quite sweet -evident from the sherry cask, with a strong peaty after taste.

Zhenzhi liked the 25 year old, the only noticeable improvement in this whiskey was the length of the after taste and at £250 pounds a bottle I was not prepared to buy that! Maybe when I'm richer.

==The Good Tasting Guide - 6 Steps==

1. Look at the colour of the whiskey- indication of the cask its been in.

2. Swirl the whiskey in the glass, see how wide and long the legs are (the wider and longer, the older the whiskey).

3. Take a small sip on your tongue, let it evaporate, the length of time it takes to evaporate is a measure of the alcohol content.

4. Smell the whiskey.

5. Drink the whiskey - initial reaction on tasting / swallowing.

6. The after taste in your mouth.

Zhenzhi and I then ended up a Club Salsa for some dancing, which given the fact we had that much whiskey, I think we did quite well.

Nearly There

Just the bibliography and the appendices to sort out....thank God its taken a while.

I now need to add a few more programs and scripts that I wrote during my PhD to my wiki, then add a few tags to make use of the semantic nature of the wiki.  Now that I have a bit of spare time, I am starting to look at RDF, RDF Schema, SPARQL and OWL, I am also investing more time in Taverna.

==Chemoinformatics paper of the month?....== 

TBA next post!  

What a turn out

I was really surprised tonight. I know it's Easter and all, but why were there so many men at Club Salsa tonight? Anyway, not the best of nights, but I still had a few good dances, all On 2 tonight except 1 dance.

The routine tonight was a little stange, and disjunctive. X-body lead, followed by an open break, the guy wraps the lady's right hand round is stomach then on the count of 5-6-7 spins anti-clockwise. On the count of 1-2 the lady is turned clockwise then pulled round the guy into a cross body on 3 and span clockwise twice on the count of 5-6-7. The lady is then lead into another X-body where the guy has to spin anti-clockwise after the lady has span clockwise. Break back on 1 then lead the lady into a Xbody keeping her to your right then on 5-6-7 push her back into a clockwise touch and go. The guy places the lady's left arm on his right shoulder then turns clockwise whilst picking up the lady's left then both turning on the count of 6-7 the guy clockwise the lady anti-clockwise.

Not really any other news, though I shall feel better when the corrections I've found in my thesis are ironed out.

Tom in Town

Well there was a surprise.  Tom (my brother) had come back from Cuba and had a few days spare before he heads down to London. I invited him to come to Cambridge for a day or so, to catch up on information in general and find out more about his trip to Cuba.  It sounds like he had a great time: drinking, relaxing, scub diving, walking and salsa dancing. I guess the only downer of the holiday was his last night in Havana, where the hotel apparently was all booked up!

Anyway it was great to see him on Tues night. Sadly I missed Sally & Chris' on2 lesson, but that's life [yes not a 100% record any longer!]. We went out to the Bangkok City Thai restuarant on Green St. I have only been there once before, last time I got a take-a-way and that was a Green Thai Curry. On Tues, I had the pork stir fry and my brother the Green Thai Curry, both accompanied by traditional Thai Singh beers. Singh beer is quite sweet as far as beer goes and fairly strong (6%). For dessert we finished with a lemon and champagne sorbet. We then headed off to La Raza for some cocktails. The cocktails in La Raza are quite expensive but really nice, there was also a live band playing there; I thought their "funky soul" music was great to relax to. However, the female lead singer given the fact that she was about 40+, could have worn a less revealing outfit...if you know what I'm saying!

Today we had 4 games of squash. I lost 4-0 so it looks like a need a bit more practice. Having said that that was my 4th competitive set of squash games, so not too bad. We cruised around the shops for some clothes then went to the Prince Reagent. To our surprise they were not serving burgers so we ended up in the GBK. Nice burgers and chips, a little expensive though. Before Tom headed off we went to the cinema to what Juno. The movie lasted a little over 1 hour and a half.  My opinion: I thoroughly enjoyed it, great story line, amusing with great character interaction. 

Now back in the room chilling out for the next day ahead.

 

Dan's Viva

I must admit, I got out of bed rather late and ended up in the lab at about 11am. Work is going well, my CN2-SD stuff has now finished running, whilst I'm still waiting for some other calculations to finish. In my spare time, I also upgraded my mediawiki to a semantic wiki. It probably will not make much of a difference until my wiki gets a lot larger.

I went to CS tonight, to wish farewell to Cyrille. The routine was OK, most of the moves I knew, it's just I'd never strung them together in that way before. When the dancing started, Nicola asked me, I had a great dance with her on2, she was a bit concerned with her spinning, however I think she is one of the best followers/spinners in Cambridge, so I don't think she should be concerned about anything, if anything could be improved it should be my leading!  I also danced with Jane tonight on2, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Unfortunately he turned up later than I expected so I had to leave to congratulate Dan on passing his PhD viva. It would be nice to be in that position! We had two drinks down the Anchor then off into town for some chips.

Now I have the dilema of what to do on Friday? Go home or stay in Cambridge?

Salsa on Wed for a change?

If you dance until late, waking up early is a bit of a pain. I must have got into the "office" at around 11am today, yes a bit late, but that's life. Work is going well, I'm running the last few bits and pieces then I shall be able to correct my final chaper. I also put a bit more work into my website today, so there is now some nicely styled html for the home page, a journal, issues relevant to chemoinformatics and a gallery.

Tonight I decide to go down to CS. The routine wasn't too bad, one move I particularly liked involved breaking with the guys left hand (connected to lady's left hand) underneath the right hand then spinning the lady clockwise, then opening out into a crucifix for the guy, the guy then took his left hand with the lady's left hand and led her clockwise so her back is facing you on the count of 1-2-3, then wrapped her into your arm on 5-6-7 anti-clockwise. All in all I thought the routine was interesting though that was the move I liked best, and SHOULD remember.

Unilever Photo

Today was the day where everyone in the Unilever Centre got their photo taken. We were paraded to the top of the chemistry department (the roof!), up a couple of flights of stairs then onto a steep spiral staircase. Everyone was lining up, the photos were taken, then the camera man realised that their was no film in the camera! We repeated the shoot, it was very difficult to keep your eyes open without blinking given the fact that there was so much wind taking the moisture out of your eyes...long story short, the photo of me has probably come out badly.

In the evening I went to the Slug and Lettuce and found out that my "I love Slug" card gives me a 15% discount at the slug and lettuce on all drinks! The lesson tonight was interesting, interesting in the sense that a number of people who have never done any "On2" jumped straight into the Int/Adv class. Brief overview of the routine: cross body lead, prep lady spin her clock wise 1-2 times into a hammerlock with her right left hand, break back on 6, step forward on 1 forcing the lady round clockwise then hook back on 2, wrap the lady in using your left hand with two ant-clockwise turns. Whoosh on 6, then and spin her out on the count of 3 in a clockwise direction and you spin under on the 5 anti-clockwise break back on the 6 then with your left hand lead the lady with her right hand into a anti-clockwise under and over. Break back on 6 then spin her out on the 1,2,3 making sure you keep your hand close to her stomach so she doesn't spin off in a random direction.

MOT Passes

Altogether Monday was a great success. I took my car in for an MOT in the morning, it only took about 1 hour, in time I decided to do some shopping. I got a new squash racket, the printer paper (yes boring!) and my lunch from Tesco, which consisted of a honey and mustard flavoured chicken pasta which was quite nice though it also went over the interior of my car, after my car past its MOT! Horrah!

Monday night at St Ives was great, I thoroughly enjoyed the salsa dancing. I think the Int/Adv routine went something like: 1-2-3 cross body lead 5-6-7, then take the ladies left with your left and wrap her in anti-clockwise (one full bar for this move) then on the 1-2-3 open her out and do a clockwise under-and over to get the lady's left hand behind her back, the guy needs to change hands so he takes her with his right hand now. On 1-2-3 the guy leads the lady into an anti-clockwise turn then turns clockwise himself and leads the lady into another anti-clockwise turn. The hand hold should be left-to-left. Take the lady into another X-body and turn her anti-clockwise and then prep her on the 1-2-3 to turn twice clockwise, at this point the guy needs to wrap is left arm behind the lady's neck then on the count of 1 the lady goes back and the guy back with his right foot, then take the lady into a zig-zag, and turn her clockwise, open break and pick her up routine over.

Jesus College Formal

I was invited to a Jesus College formal by Christian tonight. Despite the small turn out of ~ 30 people, probably due to the end of term, I really enjoyed it. For starters there was some form of cheese and leak tart, though small, it tasted nice. The main course was salmon with potatos, cabbage and peppers. Dessert was a rasberry tart which was quite sweet, but tasted great.

After the formal we proceeded to a local pub for a beer, I can't remember the name of the place but apparently it was a regular haunt for the "Elite" sportsmen of Jesus college, which Christian is going to be a member of for rowing in the men's 1st boat in the May bumps.

New Website

Just set up a new website at:

http://chemoinformatician.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

This website should provide information on myself, my family and some pictures of my recent holidays.  

Off to bed I think, I'm feeling shattered!