the joys of spring

Who says my hayfever is strangely early this year? It's obvious I'm not the only one suffering.

Unfortunately, the next comic in the series isn't quite so apt. If only my contained work area wasn't full of plants....

what physicists do in their spare time

The making of silly videos and bad rap songs (see EpMotion blog entry, 20th June 2008) isn't restricted to life scientists and engineers only. The physicists are in on it too! What better way to explain how a particle accelerator works to lay people than via the medium of Lego?

(Check out the Nature blog- particle physics in Lego and rap, July 29, 2008)

epMotion

A colleague of mine forwarded me a link to an advert from the company Eppendorf (they make lab equipment for biological work). It feels a bit unreal watching an advert of this kind for a lab supplier company, but it 's fun to watch all the same. But very very cringe-worthy.

http://www.eppendorf.com/int/hawkpopup.php?contentid=13

What really made me laugh was the fact that you can actually download the music for the advert as a ringtone, and there are wallpaper images. The lyrics have also been typed out further down the webpage, presumably so you can sing along with them. Hmm it gives a good indication of what people think a research scientist is like - very very sad.

Though that doesn't mean it's not true. Given that this advert was forwarded from Jenny to Fi to Ant (all post-docs) to me, and I've now forwarded it to the rest of my lab... obviously we have nothing better to do with our time :P