Friday, October 27, 2006

Warhol Gallery

Artworks by the Pittsburgh native not on display in more important art galleries have been assembled to form the Andy Warhol gallery.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Pittsburgh

Escaping Chicago for the Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Caution

Burning the candle at both ends, and in the middle too, with 4 experiments at once. Probably preferable to consecutive experiments but only just.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Brrrr

Its cold. Freezing in fact. We got the first dusting of snow for the winter today which is incidentally the earliest on record in Chicago. I hear there's a heatwave in Sydney.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Midway-BWI-BWI-Midway

An early start (4am) to Maryland for the day to meet with collaborators. We attempted to form an outline for a paper, but with endless digressions we didn't progress much beyond the title.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Argonne Open House

The usually highly secure Argonne gates were thrown wide open today for the "open house" - an exercise in PR. Massive tents were pitched and shuttle buses hired to ferry people around site. Even the APS was opened to the public as Peter Lee explained synchrotron science to all.
Being on experiments again over the weekend, the open house provided a welcome diversion. On top of getting "thermal portraits", we wandered through exhibits from Argonne divisions we'd never heard of, amassing high quality souvenirs emblazened with the Argonne logo (including playing cards with 52 protein structures solved at the APS).

Monday, October 02, 2006

Rain

After unseasonably heavy rainfall in Chicago, puddles occupy any slight depression in the otherwise flat landscape. The oval where geese normally munch grass is now their new pond.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

mini lantern

Sharpening up my carving skills on a mini "pie" pumpkin in preparation for Halloween.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

26

Pete gave me this lovely Breville espresso machine for my birthday - a step up from my old one which I was forced to leave at home. It also helps fill the gap left when our favourite cafe "Elan" went out of business (sad, but we could only tolerate so much caffeine per day). We completed our little cafe with a burr grinder. Mmmm... coffee.
I wonder if coffee has anti-ageing properties?

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Bridges of the Riverwalk

The excellent amenities in Naperville, which includes the riverwalk, probably contribute to its rating as 2nd in the 100 best places to live (in the US).

Friday, September 22, 2006

Article HE5355 submitted

In a departure from standard operating proceedure, this manuscript took only a couple of weeks to write up instead of many, many months. This is in keeping with the theory that the likely impact of a scientific paper is proportional to the length of time required to write it up.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Yet another sunset picture

Although this is the first time I've seen well defined rays of light.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Red-edged Leaves

A week or so of cool, rainy weather ushers in an early autumn....fall.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Monkeybars

One More Time

Accumulated cobwebs remind me of violin practise and Mum's repeated catch cry - "one more time".

Sunday, July 30, 2006

S. G. M.

Suz, Greg and Marty came to do some work in Chicago.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

M&D Visit

Monday, July 10, 2006

Custom m&m's


Now you can have m&m's tailored for any occasion.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Naperville's RibFest

The culinary (cultural?) highlight of the Naperville calendar is RibFest - a festival devoted to BBQ pork ribs.