Eastern Morning

This morning brings two visitors to the shores of the NMEG group. Aseel Hassan (Sheffield Hallam) and Tamara Basova (Russia) will be visiting me and using a spin-coater as well as discussing possible new joint projects. Welcome to them.

Other news? None yet. Next week marks the beginning of the madness when I have to start devoting quite a bit of time to the organisational aspects of a new first year intake of around 130!!! Five years ago it was 60! What have I done to deserve so much custom? I really will have to win the lottery in order to escape this crazy academic world we live in! But then how would I cope without my beloved Langmuir-Blodgett films?

Have a great day and even greater weekend! See you next week.

Recent News

Hi All
Sorry for the absence for a few days. What's new? Well, I've been marking re-sit exam papers. Some students have indeed redeemed themselves but a few have repeated their first sitting performance and one or two have actually got worse! No-one did what a student in a neighbouring department did though. Apparently they wrote on their exam script, "This exam is ----". The missing word didn't rhyme with "duck", or "pit", but did with "bank", and for that misdemeanour they were thrown out of the University!! It's not as if they would have any plausible defence. "I didn't mean to write that, sir, honestly. I was drunk and high and didn't know what I was doing". "That's quite understable, sonny", the Dean would reply. "We won't throw you out for bad language. We'll throw you out for substance abuse instead!"

I've just started planning a big paper I've been asked to write about all of our porphryin work to date. It's going to be a big job to get it done for the mid-October deadline but it should look good on the ol' CV when it's done. And today Faridah and I have written her first abstract for a conference in Malaysia in December - she's going to that one as part of an extended trip back home. Lab news - we're soon to get a new air conditioner for the clean room which will make working in there more comfortable and will reduce sales in "Sure for Men" substantially and also within the next month, we've been granted part of a new lab room to complement the existing lab space. It's only around 10m2 but it'll mean we can move some non-chemically sensitive gear out of the main lab and free up room there to expand our pollution-inducing sensor experiments.

Well, the only other news is non-work; my new "silent" guitar has apparently arrived today. This will enable me to practice anywhere without causing my wife to shout "Christ! Can't you play something with a tune for once?!" on a daily basis. You may be thinking what a silent guitar is? Well, it's not a guitar without any strings, although certainly that would be silent. It's basically one with a pick-up and collapsible sides to enable you to travel with it. It's got its own pre-amp so you use headphones or it will drive a decent size amp if you want, although that would convert the "silent" into "bleeding noisy" of course. Anyhow, I'll report in a day or two on its attributes.

Finally, a mention to my greatest "blogreader" - Ben R from Bangor - thanks Ben for reading my blog. It's great to know that there is at least one (and probably only one) daily reader out there! Much appreciated and enjoy the quiet while the boss is away!!!

Big Irish Day

Today we've got Mary Deasy from Tallaght Institute in Dublin visiting us. Mary is a calixarene chemist whose materials we've been working on recently. We're reporting on what we've done and then hopefully getting advice from Mary on sensing work.

Weight news: now down to 14 st 13 lb, so sub-15 stone for the first time in ages!

More later.......

New painting

Just a very brief post this morning to show you my latest painting. It's called "Land A'hoy!", click on the image to get a full-size view and tell me if you like it, or if you don't. If you want it, make me an offer - the full frame size is about 18 inches x 14 inches (those good ol' imperial measurements again!). The frame itself cost £20 so if you want the frame, then the lowest offer must be £20.01 !! Best wishes for a nice day - it's pouring with rain here. I got soaked cycling to the tramstop but it was a good challenge nonetheless.

MONOLAYER EATING EXPERIMENT ON YOUTUBE!!

Just to say that the Monolayer Eating Demonstration is now on "!youtube". Please watch and rate: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4dRuX8xJVmQ. Tell all your friends (especially science people).

Lead in the subphase and my lonely bike

Morning all

Yesterday Faridah showed me some samples she had made using lead nitrate (or it might have been acetate) in the water subphase. The monolayer contained a carboxylic acid group that should take up the lead. She used pH of around 7.5 I think. The question is this - the films were frosty in appearance and seemed to contain white crystallites (we're looking down the microscope today to get more info). So you inorganic chemists out there, what might be happening? Could we be precipitating some lead salt or oxide perhaps? If so, would you reckon that exposure to H2S might convert it to the sulphide? It doesn't really matter if the film contains inorganic crystals after deposition so long as they are nanoparticulate (obviously we're seeing large clusters with our eyes); our objective you see is to form nanoparticulate PbS eventually. Any comments very welcome - thanks.

OK, this morning's images are of (i) my bike that is left in the rack at about 6.50am each morning only to be on its own for the whole day. You may think this is an invitation to more bike thiefs but they don't know where it is left and of course I've now booby-trapped it! Have a great day all; (ii) my "Canadian leaf" - I gave this English Maple leaf to a friend and former colleague from Canada - Jamie Forrest - when he worked here in Sheffield way back around the mid-late 90s. When he left he gave it back to me as a keepsake. I've still got it and it's doing well at an age of at least 10 years, maybe more.

Singing in the rain

Today (5th August) heralded a visit from my good ol' friend David Lacey from Hull University. We've worked together for years and it's always good to share lighthearted insults as we always do. To an outsider, it would look as though we didn't like each other, but it's the English sense of humour that lets you mickey take like we do. I promised him I wouldn't post the photograph of his arrival today on this blog. Well, promises often get broken........

Click on the image to see exactly how surprised he was to see me lurking like a paparazzi for him with my camera! And for all you Mediterraneans, remember today is 5th August!!!!

Scum-bag Thiefs and Early Morning Modern Art

My son Matt's photo of our French friend's tea!

Greetings from sunny Sheffield

Well, last night I got off the tram and walked to the bike-shelter whereI'd left my push-bike, only to find that some scum-bag had stolen my pump and repair tools from my saddle bag! Usually I take my saddle bag off my bike and keep it on me, but I'd forgotten yesterday just the one time, and bingo, along comes a low-life and steals the stuff! This is one of Britain's greatest problems - lack of respect. I'm certain it's worse here than many countries - Spain, Greece, Italy, France, Turkey, Japan all have cultures where respect between people is a very important part of society, but here in England (in particular - Scotland is much better, at least away from the cities) the victim has little importance and the state spends millions of "re-educating" offenders with their soft-centred police-force and their welfare-state-do-good-handout system that elevates criminals to hero status. OK, I'm getting carried away - the theft of a bike-pump is no cause for such an outburst, is it? Well, actually, yes it is! A bike-pump today is a bike tomorrow and a car the next day and a burglary the next - lock them up in a cold and dark room with bread and water for a week, that's what I say, even for a bike-pump and then scale up the punishment accordingly. Give the victim a token to replace his/her stolen goods and take it out of the benefit system. Wow - I used to be left wing; never has a man swung so violently to the right, eh?

OK, next, my "Shrinking Apple" that was received well in the department's Art Exhibition this year has developed. The image as you see shows the original apple, now in a pretty disgusting state of decay, along with another apple (about 3 weeks old) beginning its journey. I'm looking out for a tapered glass vase so that I can create the Mother of All Shrinking Apples containing a series of apples in progressive states of decay down to the bottom of the vase for next year's exhibition. I will use these two apples and hopefully add around 7 or 8 more! Have a great day and remember to unclip your saddle bags!!!!

Very quick post

Weigh in day! 15 stone 3.6 lb - so another 3.1 lb (or nearly 1.5 kg) lost this week. It's a bit early to start plotting graphs but my target weight will be met in 12 weeks (24 Oct) if I lose weight at 3 lb per week. At 2 lb per week, it'll take 17 more weeks (28 Nov) - still within my original target of 20 weeks. Who once said on our web-site that I was obsessed about my weight? It was Jon Hill, a former postdoc and still a good friend - if anyone knows him, he's doing very well in software development for a medical software company! Nice one Jon!

So, today's work will involve the start date of my new postdoc, Benedek. I think he's going to be really good. He'll be working on "calixporphs" - a term I coined for calixarenes substituted around their periphery with porphyrins. It's a way of coupling together our work on mixtures of calixarenes and porphyrins but within a single molecule. The chemistry will be done here in Chris Hunter's group and we'll do the sensing work. But I think Ben will be able to offer much more than just one project - he's got a lot of experience, so I'm hoping he'll introduce other new projects into the group as well. Anyhow, good luck Benedek for your time in Sheffield!

If I don't post again today, have a great weekend everyone!

The photos, by the way, are clockwise:

Grapes in Sheffield (our own vineyard in our house!), Sunset in Madeira, Fort in Funchal, Mediterranean Street Scene.