End of Year

A good Christmas was had by all. Well, except for my Dad who became ill with a rubbish cold on the 23rd, and so unfortunatley Christmas kind of passed him by. I hope he's better for the New Year.

Hogmanay for us will be a quiet affair. Some friends are up in Aberdeen, which is cool, but as their wee son will be in bed well before the bells, we will just be having a quiet drink, nibbles and chat. But that's cool, just being with friends is cool. I don't like the fact that society expects you to have an over-the-top good time on New Year's Eve. You must go somewhere and do something, and you must have a great time. I agree that lots of drinking and making a fool of yourself at this time of year is good, but it's more often than not better when it's spontaneous. Organised fun is never so good!

So with that in mind we will have a quiet evening in, and see what happens!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Christmas Holidays

Well that's me finished work for this year. Train home leaves at 8:10 tomorrow morning! It will be nice to have 2 weeks off work, and I can completely relax knowing I have a contract for another three years! (still really happy!). We went out last night for dinner as a kind of celebration for getting the grant. La Bon Brasserie was very nice. A very fishy menu, but the Sea Bass and King Prawns that I had were very nice.

I spent all of today catching up on writing my lab book, which I hadn't done for about three weeks, and then having a lab book meeting (so you see, I really had to write my lab book up!). Now I've finished for the year. Write-up room already quite quiet as a lot of people have headed off home for the Christmas break already. 

Had a big lab clear up yesterday, it's amazing how much space we now have in the lab. Just as well as we have an honours student starting in January. Someone I'll have to supervise as they'll be doing something (hopefully) useful for my project.

Boy I'm struggling for things to say. So I might as well stop. That could be it until after Christmas.

A poem for today

There builded boles          of beeches ancient
marched in majesty          in myriad leaves
of golden russet          greyly rooted,
in leaves translucent          lightly robéd;
their boughs up-bending          blown at morning
by the wings of winds          that wandered down
o'er blossomy bent          breathing odours
to the wavering water's          winking margin.

J.R.R. Tolkein
The Lay of The Children of Húrin

Fantastic

Yeay, we got the grant! Those lovely people from the BBSRC thought we were good enough to fund. So great! I have job for another 3 years after this contract finishes at the end of March. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. I don't have to go through the whole applying for jobs fiasco again. I don't  have to go to interviews and keep telling people it went fine when they ask. I don't have to be bored poor and unemployed.

This is great, after 15 months so far of this contract I feel I am starting to understand a lot more around my project not just the specifics of translation termination  in yeast but the broader view. Now I can continue to learn this. Wow, this will be the longest I have been involved in one project. Obviously my PhD was only 3 years. That's quite cool though, I will be able to feel quite knowledgeable after a few years!

Hooray!

Come on guys!!

Still not heard from the BBSRC! Though apparently now they have decided where the funding lines have been drawn, they are just not telling us yet. If we are successful we will hear by letter! We had to ask specifically to be told by email, 21st century or what?

For the first time in my 9 year research career, I actually started running an agarose gel backwards. I wonder what this portends?

Very much looking forward to a break at Christmas with family. Not having to get up at 8:00 every morning will be nice. I know this is not terribly early compared to a lot of people, but it does seem to be just as bad because it has to be done every day. Pretty much all Christmas shopping is done now, just  a last something to buy for my sister and I'm done, which is nice. Most of the Christmas cards are written, which is also nice. Confirmation of another 3 years of job would be really nice!

Week 50, are we?

I'm not likely to achieve too much this week, Ooo why's my keyboard vibrating?

Off to London to meet out collaborators in Imperial college tomorrow at 15:00. This should be interesting and constructive, however, at this time of the year I'm struggling to motivate myself to flying all the way down to London for a couple of days. I have quite a few things I would like to get done in the lab before the Christmas break, and I would rather stay at home with my wife.

Thursday and Friday are then the 3rd year PhD symposium presentations, so I'm not likely to achieve much in the lab this week at all. So then I have 5 days left in the lab to finish off before I go down the road to my folks for Christmas. Eek. Not even vaguely prepared for Christmas. 

I'm too tired to try and think of anything else interesting to say.

I bet holiday blogs are much better!

Thursday

Not too much to say today.

Moved around the write up room this morning. I must admit that I was sceptical that it would make much difference to the amount of space we have, but it really did. And now my computer is right behind my desk, so all I have to do it turn around not walk to the other side of the office. Which is nice.

A bit of Christmas shopping tonight, really a bit, one shop hopefully.

Lab Christmas lunch tomorrow, following the lab meeting in the morning, so I wont get much work done tomorrow. Then, yeay, a weekend at home! It seems ages since I've been able to do that. Jon and Emma's wedding last weekend, Thanksgiving the weekend before. No 6 hour train journeys this weekend.

That's about it for today.

BBSRC funding

So here's what stage we're at, apparently.

We wont hear anything until about 16th December! 

This all seems to be because of the BBSRC's LoLa system. That is Longer and Larger grants.

The BBSRC are encouraging even more collaboration between groups all over the country, so these LoLa grants are for £2 to £3 million and involve being able to buy fancy equipment as well as having many postdocs etc working in the collaboration.

Of course in any one round of funding there is only a finite amount of money, so, if a couple of these LoLa grants are funded in one round, there is less money to be awarded to individual grants, like our own proposal. Because of the large amounts of money involved, these LoLa grants must be approved by a higher level than the normal committee, which takes longer. I guess they have to see if there is any money left in the pot to fund the individual projects like ours, hence the delay in us hearing.

Previously I had seen 3 of the 5 referees reports that we are allowed to respond to, and they all seemed to be very positive. The other 2 were less positive so I was told today. They didn't have anything negative to say, they just didn't rate the project quite as highly as the other three had. Which is a shame.

The boss seems to have heard on the grapevine, that out of 51 grants that were discussed, ours was between positions 5 and 7! Which seems to me to be pretty good, but of course it all depends how much money is left in the pot after however many LoLa grants are successful.

So I am still waiting to here if I get to work in this lab for the next 3 years or not. I really would like to, I'm still really enjoying working here.

Enough for now, I've probably got all this a bit mixed up, I just thought it would be useful to have written this down while it is still fresh in my head, before I try to explain it again to other people.

Blogging from Picasa

Just trying to Blog from Picasa!

Blurry Eyes

I'm not really used to this. I've sat at the computer most of the day because I had to check some sequencing results. I don't usually sit at the computer working this long! More often than not I will do and hours work at the computer, maybe less; then I will be back into the lab to do something more interesting or plan experiments. Staring at sequences all day in particular has made my eyes go funny.

I can tell you that all my pAC98 inserts start: GGCCTACAGGGCCC !! Yes! I know!

Short post then because I don't want to sit at the computer much longer. I can go home soon. Though being at home will probably be cold. Our flat is very efficient! It very efficiently equilibrates with the outside temperature! Since it is snowing outside, I think it could be quite chilly in the flat. Google reckons it is 1°C in Aberdeen just now.

Haven't heard from the BBSRC yet.