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I’ve been working for about half a year now but I thought I’d remain a part-time student. That’s why I’ve enrolled on the Open University’s course Rundblick – beginners’ German. When I get home from work these days, I don’t really have much to do (except watch TV and surf the net) so learning a new language seems like a good way to use my spare time. Why German? Well, back in the days of secondary school, I actually had a couple of years of German lessons at the rate of a couple of hours a week. That only taught me the basics, but as time passed, I eventually forgot most of it. I also thought French would be more useful which is why I dropped German and did the French GCSE instead. However, over the last couple of years German has probably been the most common foreign language I have encountered in my everyday life, such as when I worked in Switzerland or when I was in Vienna.

I guess those who haven’t heard of the OU won’t know what it is. Those who have heard of it will probably just think of educational TV programs on the BBC and 80’s looking academics with beards. I guess that might still be true for some but I think it’s a good organisation for people who would like to get recognised qualifications via distant learning. It’s suitable for people like me who work full-time as well as those who work part-time and can study a bit more.

So yesterday, I had my first German tutorial. It was quite fun and there were only 5 students there ranging from 21 – 69 years of age; where I feature in the younger end of that scale… Seems like they are all up to quite a good standard so shows how much I still have to learn. The tutorials are only once a month, as most the learning is self-taught with books and CDs. It would be nice if there were more tutorials, but I guess once per month is good revision for what you have learnt and to practice speaking German to other students.

I officially graduated last Wednesday. After studying physics for 4 years I was awarded the the Associate of the Royal College of Science (ARCS) and Master’s in Science (MSci) degree. Having found a job since after exams that was also my first “holiday”. Didn’t get many pictures because I gave my camera to my dad, who didn’t really know how to use it, but here are the efforts of the professionals:

It was nice to see old friends again, people who you suffered with as well as laughed with over those long hours working on projects. What’s nice about the graduation was the lovely Royal Albert Hall. It’s incredibly beautiful inside and we even had a choir and orchestra. Shame I was there last year (at another friend’s graduation) so it seems I had to suffer a graduation twice - it’s not the most exciting thing having 800 names read out over 2 hours. At least this time I got my 4 seconds of fame! Mind you the whole day did cost me more than £200…

4 years at university have finally come to an end. Just about an hour ago, I went into college, checked the notice board and I have an upper second class (that’s one below the top result possible which is a 1^st for those who don’t know the system) for my MSci Physics degree. Pretty relieved that I didn’t drop down to 2:2; slightly disappointed I didn’t work that tiny bit harder in the early years so I could have gotten a 1^st but on the whole I’m happy!

Formula One came to London again. This time in Kensington Gardens with the BMW Sauber team sponsored by Intel. It started off early with Jacques Villeneuve showing off his BMW Sauber F1.06 car about 4 times up and down a closed off stretch of road. It’s the first time I heard an F1 car in action, and 18000rpm is loud! It was very short though and I think everyone would have liked him to do more runs. Martin Brundle was also hosting it, doing interviews with drivers, guests and the public. I managed to get his autograph (woohoo) on a BMW cap they were handing out for free. Couldn’t get Jacques Villeneuve’s autograph however; he had bodyguards all round him, as well as a huge crowd of fans. At one point, it looked like he was about to cry because he was scared of the crowd. Martin Brundle was quite nice though and took his time to sign autographs and take pictures. They also gave out T-shirts, but I think they were all XL in size, so doesn’t really fit.

Andy Priaulx was also there, touring car world champion. He also did a lot of runs in his BMW touring car but at the end he overcooked it. Some pretty powerful cars though. Intel also had a small area to show off their latest technology as well as a race simulator. I had a lap in it, but I managed to spin the car which ruined my lap time. On the whole, I nice event and can’t really complain since it was free for the general public. I think the VIPs got a more interesting show. Check out my pics on flickr: Intel London Grand Prix

Nooo…not spice girls! Anyway, I had my MSci viva this morning. What’s a viva? It’s where you present your project to experts (i.e. my supervisor and assessor) and then they grill you with difficult questions. It went surprisingly quickly and although I didn’t really know complete scientific answers to their questions, I did manage to blurt out something that hopefully made some sense. The presentation itself went pretty well. My supervisor said I could have relaxed a bit and the presentation was very good except I committed one big sin. I used one of his pictures and I didn’t reference it on the slide – whoopsie daisies. So that’s officially the end of my MSci project, I’ve tidied up the lab and returned my keys (strangely enough, it seemed like a master key, it worked in every door I tried). Only 4 exams left and I’ll have graduated!

It’s also my older brother’s wedding this weekend. Congratulations Garfay and Karen! Although probably not the best timing, being right before my exams, I’m going to be testing out the Nikon D50 at their wedding – I better get some practice and learn fast!

Easter holidays seem to be going pretty quickly, probably because I’m out and about again. That’s right, flew to Vienna last Sunday. Was one of those early morning flights, so was up at 2am, even though I couldn’t really sleep. Now I’m in Katja’s home in Slovenia. We went to Bled on Thursday (see pic) as Katja had an interview for some management course over there. It’s near the western part of Slovenia, about 2 hours drive. Very beautiful scenery with the snow topped Alps as a back drop. There’s a little island in the lake with a church on it but we didn’t go there, just walked around the lake. Anyway, I’ve sort of done a first draft of my report, I’ll finalise it after my viva presentation (whenever that is!), so now I’m just doing bits of revision. It’s not the most interesting thing to do but somehow I’m managing to stick to my “revision time table” so far…just hope everything sticks in my brain for the exams which are just over 4 weeks away!!!

News regarding my website: This may (but probably won’t) be my last post for a while. My current web host is being stupid and trying to overcharge me, so I’m almost definitely going to switch hosts in the very near future. I would like to do it now, but considering that my finals are getting closer everyday, I think revision is priority one – so I’ll probably try working on a new website design and change hosts in June! If anybody can recommend any good/cheap/feature full hosting package then send me an email.

The end of term that is. I was in uni from 9 this morning and only got back home at 9pm. That’s the longest I’ve ever been at uni in any one day and I was working for most of it. After last week’s 15 seconds of fame, I’ve had to carry on with my project. Yesterday I had to give a 6 minute presentation to the rest of my class about it, and today, we got some pretty pictures. I thought I’d post some pics of my experiment. We’re basically trying to trap particles with <2.5kV AC electric fields which we have done quite simply here:

So now we’re trying to see if it works in a medium vacuum:

Because we’re using high voltages and taking it down to vacuum we risk electrical breakdown so we’ve insulated the main part of our trap with plastic caps:

Now it’s in a vacuum and turned on, looks like we forgot to insulate the tops/bottoms – so now we have plasma discharge everywhere. Looks pretty!!

Well at least our insulation worked:

So we have 1 week to sort this all out and get ready for our viva interview with our supervisor and assessor. Final year is tough and hard work – but it’s actually quite “fun” too and I’ve learnt quite a lot. Pretty tired already, so think I’ll go to bed. Nite.

Well not yet, but I will be. We had a small camera crew visit my lab this morning to film my experiment in action! It’s for a TV documentary about explosives of some sort, and part of it is about how anti-matter cannot be used. So they came to film our particle trap which holds a small particle in air using electric fields – and I was in the shot pretending to do stuff. It’ll either make me look boffin like or be rather embarrassing depending on how they edit the short piece of film – i.e. I was pretending to do some data collection on a laptop after loading the trap. However, I was just tapping the mouse-pad whilst a short movie was playing in Window’s Media Player. Oh well. Not sure what the program is called or when it will be broadcast – but I believe it’s for the National Geographic channel. They said they’ll email me when it’s going to be broadcast.

Anyway, back to the real world – just over 2 weeks left of proper university (lectures/project) and then it’s over – (except the exams bit). Still haven’t secured anything for after university – so I might be “unemployed” for a while…

There’s no such thing as a free lunch? Oh yes there is! I went to MacDonald’s today and asked for the McChicken Sandwich meal. Handed the friendly chap a £20 note for a £3.39 meal. He counted the change and gave me £21.61 and my meal – so a free lunch and some free cash! Hehe – ok, normally I would give them the £5 back, but it’s only MacD – they’re loaded and I could have done with some salt on my fries. However, always nice to get friendly contributions now and then I am a very poor student after all!

Just a short one to say that I’ve finally finished all those deadlines and have a short break before exams. So Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you’ve all been good boys and girls and received some presents from Father Christmas

PS. Photos of Salomé and Eimear (friends from the good old Switzerland days) visiting me in London last weekend are in my photo gallery.