Canon 400D/XTi

After years of faithful service from my Olympus C5050, I have finally decided to upgrade. Spending a considerable amount of time finding the best price online, I wanted my new toy ASAP and splurged on next day delivery. With any luck it will be waiting for me when I arrive in Connecticut tomorrow for Thanksgiving along with an extra lens - the Canon f1.8 50mm II.

The Third Decade

It's a big birthday for Pete. As with any new stage in life, this is an excellent opportunity to take up a new hobby - brewing. Thankfully a high quality Australian product was available through Amazon.com and I wasn't forced to resort to the local "Mr Beer" brand.

US Mid-term elections

Yet more elections, and in the absence of compulsory voting, candidates not only need to convince people to vote for them, but to vote at all.

One tactic involves automated calling at odd hours... "I'd like to tell you something about candidate X....". From the X campaign? Nope. Candidate Y motivating anti-X votes - the "make 'em mad" strategy.

Fallingwater

Before returning from Pennsylvania, we visited the famous 1930's Frank Lloyd Wright construction, Fallingwater. The huge horizontal slab floors/terraces are cantilevered directly over a waterfall. My favourite design element? The retractable-glass covered stairs from the lounge down to the river above the falls.

Warhol Gallery

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

Pittsburgh

Escaping Chicago for the Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

mini lantern

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

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?

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).

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.

Yet another sunset picture

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

Red-edged Leaves

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

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Monkeybars

One More Time

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