"entirely satisfactory"

So, I gave a talk the other day about my research work -- mass spectrometry data analysis. And, since this is an exercise for students to present their work to both biological and statistical audiences (which is a real challenge and i didn't quite pull it off), I asked my supervisors and other lab heads for some sort of feedback. My main supervisor (Terry) described my talk as "entirely satisfactory". Not exactly flattering, but maybe that's the closest I'll ever get to a complement from him. Not sure. It's one of those statements that is so vague that it really doesn't say anything positive or negative. And, from what I can tell, Terry is very deliberate in everything he says and does, so I'm not sure what to take away from it. Thankfully, I got some constructive criticism from the other lab heads, most of which was a repeat what Lynn had already told me. I credit Lynn with the overall organization of my talk. We spent a "romantic" Sunday night at work going through it.

In case anyone is interested in what I do for a living, which can roughly be described as "making pretty pictures of experimental data", a rather large PDF can be downloaded from here.

Ouch.

Wow, you gotta love what Canadian news makes it to Yahoo Australia ... check out this story:

Haze of bad behaviour hits Canadian amateur sports

46 a day

Check out this site for a TV commercial that we just saw here 46. It's pretty shocking.

here is lynn!

in a world of hurt

check me out ...

i think i look more like my brother in this photo.


yep, that's me though. do i look like i'm about to cry?


ok, well, despite how it looks, i had a pretty good day in the melbourne half marathon. had a tough final 4k but basically gave it an honest full effort the whole way. the result was a pb:

Time: 1:25:49 (4:05/k, 20/227 M25-29, 88/1617 Male)

The Shape of Speed

well, folks. it's been a long time coming. a big thank you to lynn for having patience for me through the gross amount of time it took me to get my dream bike.

here it is. it's a 2003 cervelo P3, with dura-ace 9 speeds ... was a pretty good deal compared to whats going. i've already replaced the saddle and tires (not shown), since they were both crap. will give it a good test on saturday as the training gets stepped up a bit with a looming half ironman 5 weeks out ...

Barossa Valley and Adelaide.

My apologies for the lack of posts here. Seems like I go a week or two without posting and then give updates all at once.

So, last week, after surviving a sudden cold, I took off to Adelaide (1 hour flight east) and then north to the Barossa Valley, very famous for it's wine. I was there to attend a microarray conference, not because I had anything to present on my project, but because there were several talks about my possible eventual project and it was nice to see what other people in the field were doing.

Lynn joined me on the weekend after the conference and we toured around a bit. Here are some photos.

Here is the view from my hotel room ...


The visitor centre at the Wolf Blass winery (the Wolf Blass yellow and red label wines you get in North America are not available here ... they have gold label here, which is supposed to be a higher grade. Also, we learned that screw caps are the way of the future and not only for the cheaper wines)


The view from Mengler's Hill lookout ...


This is what grape vines look like at high speed:


We spotted a Kangaroo in the wild! What a joyous occasion.


The whispering wall (as the names suggest, you can talk at one side and hear it clearly 150 metres away) ...


Some rather large trees in Adelaide's Botanic Park ...


The "hollywood" view of the Adelaide hills:


Some artwork behind the Art Gallery in downtown Adelaide:

Geez, I'm feeling patriotic all of a sudden

Project Caribou has been successful!

Special thanks to Steve and Cathy for sending along some red and white goodies and of course, treating us to some Tim Horton's coffee grinds and some darn large sized Tim Horton's mugs ... it was a bit of a shock how big these mugs really are ... I guess we are a little out of touch with North American beverage sizing. And the coffee grinds, how did you know?

Snags

So, I used the proceeds of winning the footy tipping pool to host a bbq for the Footy GRAND FINAL. Here are some pictures of the festivities ...

Some "snags" on the BBQ:


umm, people, you *can* eat the vegetables, you know:


It was actually a great game, as you can tell here:


And, it's amazing to see who the big fans are ... not always who you'd expect.


ok, well maybe not every minute of the game:

Footy, footy and more footy

So, as Lynn mentioned on her blog, I tried my luck playing footy. In the following picture, I think Ken (co-worker in Bioinformatics) is pointing out that I actually *do* have mud on my shirt, obviously due to my determined efforts on the field.



Needless to say, I just don't think I have an agressive enough demeanor to play footy. At our level, kicking and marking skills don't really come into play ... it's mostly about tackling guys on the other team, irrespective of whether they actually have the ball.