I might write a few things while I'm away, depending on (a) if anything funny happens and (b) if I have time/energy. If not, see you in about 10 days.

BK xx

Such as, presumably, Don't use the lifts unless you're happy to be stuck in them for a while.

Anyway,

1. The notice board with perspex cover on the right will have OH&S info together with Emergency procedures and contacts

2. The notice board in the middle with perspex cover will have a floor plan
with room numbers and a directory of those whi occupy these rooms

3. The notice board on the left without the perspex cover will carry
temporary notices for general use that will be removed on a regular basis.

These will be the perspex covers of which two (at least) were screwed on so tight that this morning, before any notices went in them, they were already broken.

I like the implication that the notices that are actually useful or interesting will be removed on a regular basis, and are not protected by (broken) perspex. Given the state of our lifts and air-conditioning, we're not really surprised.

Some Lovecraftian opening sentence, perhaps? An obscene mélange of tentacles and Welshmen?

No — but then again, maybe yes. They all occur in a News and Views item in today's Nature, by that Senior Editor and master of purple prose, Henry Gee. What's more, they got there as a result of a bet, upon which was riding a hug and a pint.

From the top, then:

But with [the] publication [...] of the draft genome sequence of Branchiostoma floridae, one of the 25 or so recognized species of amphioxus, this eldritch organism is set to re-enter public life.

The age of genomics has rescued the amphioxus from chthonic obscurity, as new data

Such studies reveal the amphioxus genome to be, in fact, of preternatural importance

A round of applause is called for. You don't get philosophers of science talking about this sort of japing, do you?

I enjoy writing, and I enjoy learning new things, but sometimes you just need to go away and clone something. Anything. The first draft will be done this weekend, and then I can have a proper look at the microarray data that arrived this week. This week? Last week. I don't know. There was a long weekend somewhere, I remember that.

These microarray data are interesting. They're not in total accord with the first batch I did last year, which is actually quite reassuring because Beta Gal isn't haven't much luck getting data that are consistent with what they told us. Which means, and this is good or bad depending on the angle you approach it from, that I have to re-do about a month's worth of analysis.

In seven days. Because then I have to make a poster for a conference.

So. Yeah. A couple of extra days, please. Might make a difference.

"Hur hur, it must feel like home with all this rain!"

So I point out that, actually, Sydney gets more rain than I'm used to.

Seriously. The thirty year mean annual rainfall in Cambridge (UK. What? There's another one?) is ~550 mm (source). On average it rains on 106 days a year. In Sydney the annual rainfall, averaged over 150 years (look, when you don't have much recorded history you make the most of it) is ~1200 mm (source). That's over twice as much. And the number of rainy days per year? An even hundred.

Same number of rainy days, twice as much rain. Now tell me it should remind me of home.

Just for comparison, I checked the annual figures for Manchester (806 mm), Oxford (642 mm), Auckland (1150 mm), Canterbury Plains (the driest place in New Zealand: 635 mm), Jerusalem (660 mm) and New York (1140 mm).

The interesting difference is that Sydney has 50% more sunshine hours than Cambridge. So when it's cloudy in Cambridge, it might not rain — or it might snow. In Sydney clouds mean rain. And an imperial shedload of it.

Lots of pretty pictures, too.

(HT: Biocurious)

I'll tell you more about it when I have a publication date (and before you ask: No, unfortunately it's not peer-reviewed).

However.

There is a world of difference between writing pidgin English because she is not your first language (and don't get me wrong: English is herself a pidgin, Britannia's bastard offspring who does not care from whom she steals vocabulary. Therein lies her strength), and being a muppet:

Dear [alternate name for Ricardipus].

I went thru your profile and found ur connection in academics. I want to do PhD. I have scholarship of US $100,000 and wants a PhD position in Canada. Can you help me.

Ur, as everyone knows, was a city in Mesopotamia. It would have been over 6,000 miles from Canada.

Email from HR:

The Federal Government made changes to the FBT status of laptops, PDAs and other items in the Federal Budget on 13 May 2008. The changes call into question the ability of the University to continue to offer packaging for these items.

We are currently reviewing the impact of the changes, but, in the meantime, the University must cease all salary packaging of laptop computers, PDAs and other items purchased after the budget changes until further notice.

I don't think that salary packaging really means that HR are going to come round with brand new laptops wrapped in in crisp fivers every second Thursday. Or that they have been doing it and now they can't. Or that they're going to pay us in those Cheeto-style chips you find in every Sigma box. At least I hope not.

Laptop computers, PDAs and other items purchased before the budget changes (on 13 May) may still be packaged. However, you need to arrange and finalise the salary packaging of these items as soon as possible.

Look, I'll tinker with the very nature of life itself, you look after the accounts. Do we have a deal? (Oh, and for pity's sake when will Australia grow the chuff up and learn to use -ize like the rest of the world?)

Your patience and understanding is appreciated.

If I had either, then you'd be welcome.

Seeing as I'd have to break the journey anyway (because trans-Pacific flights arrive on the Eastern seaboard at stupid times), and overnight either in Boston or New York going up and coming back, I've decided to take an extra day and do the tourist thing. It doesn't help that the conference finishes on the 4th July, which is some kind of public holiday or party in the US. I might see if I can see fireworks anywhere and ask what's going on in my best English accent.

So. It took me about half an hour to write the abstract and a similar amount of time to create the application online. The Black Queen spent Thursday afternoon looking for flights, then I took over and spent all day Friday trying to juggle connections and whatnot, finally making bookings Friday night. On the weekend I rested (actually, I didn't: but that's a story for somewhere else). Monday morning I figured out the hotels I'd need, and since then I've been banging my head against the completely arcane and impenetrable accounting system in order to get approval for the money I've already spent on the corporate card for the flights, and to make a claim for the hotel bills that have to be paid in advance and have had to come off my own credit card.

It's a bloody nightmare. You've got to do all these things in the right order, and you can't click 'save' until you've got all the information: if you hit 'submit' too soon it shoots off to get approved and you have to winkle it back out (easy to cock this one up — the buttons aren't labelled in any meaningful fashion) — and if, because you like to multi-task, you decide to open a claim for one sort of expense while working on a travel requisition then the second opens in the first window (not in a new tab, no, that would be sensible) and you lose everything you've done up to that point because you can't hit save yet.

My travel requisition might be a little terse for that reason.

Anyway, I got it done, and if I haven't checked all the right boxed or filled in every last detail I'm sure someone in admin will scream and shout. Fine.

After all that I went into the lab and buffered some phenol/chloroform. It was comforting. The semi-ester scent of isoamyl alcohol purified my senses. When people saw me in labcoat, gloves and safety specs they knew I was doing something dangerous. And real.

It felt good to be alive.

The average salary (average!) for a radiologist appears to be Au$600k. Yes you read that right, six hundred thousand (~quarter million, Sterling).

Or maybe mining.

A north Queensland recruitment agency said there was huge pay growth across the whole spectrum of professions in the region, not just the mining and engineering sectors.

When PAs are recruited at substantially more than I earn, fourteen years after completing my doctorate, you might understand why we scientists are a little sensitive about money.

And while I have your attention. . .

FSP has an interesting piece on "Sexism-driven science",
and this email (about indoor football soccer made me laugh (emphasis mine):

We need more girls so everyone is welcome.

Your non-parent will probably say "Ew, stinky" with a side-order of an attempt at description. The parent, on the other hand, will immediately file the smell alongside breast-fed baby's nappy. The nappies that look like they have mustard or sesame seeds in them.

Aren't you glad this weblog isn't scratch 'n' sniff?

The Black Queen last week discovered that by the simple expedient of sourcing certain not uncommon (and certainly not patented!) chemicals directly from a supplier in the US rather than a multinational distributor of exorbitantly-priced gear with a warehouse in Australia (mentioning no names, but think non-amateur times ten to the sixth), we can save about 12,000 dollars over six months to a year. Including shipping. Twelve grand! And we're not exactly a process lab — nor a manufacturing one.

It's good news for the lab, not least because I'm about to blow another 4 grand on these blasted microarrays. I'm also going to a conference in Maine at the end of June, the plane tickets for which — for some unfathomable reason — are going to cost more than the tickets I've just bought for London.

So every penny helps. Swings, roundabouts, etc.

Anyway. I have, he declared grandiloquently, A Plan.

You see, as the globe, because of the internets, keeps getting smaller, the price of actually oil keeps going up, making travel more expensive. Then there's global warming, fossil fuels are running out, omigodwereallgoingtodie etc., which is only going to make conferences and collaborations more difficult, especially stuck out here on the A E of N. So I'm going to do over a bank apply for money to construct a small fleet of tall ships on which there will be ultra modern labs and a helipad for emergency supplies. We'll cruise the world, working hard, collaborating with anyone who has money but a green conscience, immediately and imminently in touch with everyone via our satellite uplink.

Oh, and a couple of these in case PromegaQiagen pirates show up.

Here I'll concentrate more on the doing of the science, funny things that happen on the way to the forum and basically 'outreach' — talking to you folks who do other things than tinker with the very fabric of the created order for a living.