Journal of a nanotechnologist

Just dropping by.

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:48:59 GMT

As it may not have escaped people's notice, I don't really bother with LJ any more. Look me up on facebook if you want to keep up with what I am doing and stay in contact, alhough I still check LJ occasionally.

Also, check by http://www.linxsoft.co.uk - there are now 4 seperate sites up there, all with new content added over the last 2 days.

Youtube and Me

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:24:59 GMT

Every so often I think of something to post about on here. I normally forget whatever it is before I get around to it, occasionally however I just realise its just a rant thats not necessary. Oddly, my angst has declined a lot over the past year, perhaps less so I don't feel the need to post whinges any more.

Anyway, it occured to me that a while back I tried to post links to various video editing projects I did, but none of them really worked. Well, my mountainbiking ones are still at http://www.lsmtb.co.uk , but in addition I'll point you towards some youtubed other stuff (mostly video game, notably Neocron related. I have plans to expand with some other stuff soonish. So here are my youtube videos. Oh should throw one up to my Google Videoed one too.
When I eventually get around to sorting myself out some webhosting, I'll probably stick the full res ones up there with a decent page. I really should edit some of the better MTB stuff I have into a full video too.

Random thought.

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:43:29 GMT

Currently, there is a lot of destruction going on in the Old Market Square of my home town, Nottingham. They've barriere it all of and churned it up all over the place. This has been the situation for probably over a year now, although they do keep increasing the spread of the damage. But there doesn't really seem to be a lot else going on, save various arranged equipment.
Yesterday, it struck me. This isn't (as the material around immediately claims) redevelopment or any such thing. It is in fact, a huge piece of installation art, designed to perplex and irritate many people, at the same time as juxtaposing a busy, prosperous city centre with its main feature in ruins.

More work!

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:38:52 GMT

Fancy reading some more poorly written scientific stuff written as part of an assessed excercise? You don't? Well, don't click on any of the following links then.

Just a lab report (do dozens) but shows the biochemistry stuff we do which nothing else would.
A full paper (not published) about studying metal surfaces with expensive microscopes.
Explaining how I would use various different expensive microscopes to work out what something is and why it doesn't work.
My "Magnum Opus" for this year, a 2500 word, 16 page rant about what happens when your pour titanium on carbon nanotubes.

I'd like to show the results of our big group project for this year too. Unfortunalty, I only have my third of it. And it wouldnt make sense without the rest of it. Still, its about tooth cement (turned out more interesting to do than it sounds) so you probably won't mind that its missing.

fixed links

ZOMG Update!

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:22:16 GMT

Well, nothing of interest in my life generally had happened latley, and the whole "my week at uni" seemed neither to interest many people, nor was it well written. So erm, havent updated in a while.
For those who are interested about the kind of things I do, here are some example pieces of work that I've done - they'll be more from the end of this year once its marked. I'm not entirely sure how legal this is mind, seeing as all my work is technically the University's intellectual property, but hey.

Clean Room project from the first year
Second year, report about electronic properties of carbon nanotubes
Second year - an assingment with questions of some sort about colloids
An index page when I can be bothered.

As a side note, back in Nottingham for a few months I guess.

Photopost

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 17:01:53 GMT

Havent updated in a while. Been ill and had motivation issues, plus the whole "on my course" thing seemed kinda pointless. Here are some photos from around Leeds University, anyway, and some from the work we've been doing. {edit} Erk, just realised how HUGE some of these are. I've uploaded them now though, so can't be bothered resizing and reuploading.

One of the Church's taken over by Leeds Uni and used for lectures etc:

What is in many ways a "main entrance" to the Uni, competeing I guess with the parkinson building

Another Church owned by uni on the left, and a view down towards the stoner building.

Terraced Houses converted into seminar rooms and offices

A view down "the longest corridor in the world" Its probably around 400-500 metres long, although it dwindles to a vanishing point in these photos.

A view from the top of EC Stoner, out over the Physics research Deck and twoards parkinson. Every buidling you can see bar one is part of the university.

Looking across from the longest corridor towards the bridge to the Roger Stevens building.

Carbon nanotubes - under a FEG-SEM

And those tubes afeter meeting a titanium molten salt and a Hydrofloric acid wash.

Well isn't this religous

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:01:57 GMT

I'm tired. I was mountain biking in scotlan all weekend, I've just had the second of three long days at uni (10-6, 1 hour off today). This is all leaving me feeling reallly drained. Also, the "hey, its valentines day" everywhere (eg on LJ) does seem to be filtering through to my mind in a "hey, single fucker! loser!" way. Anyway, to the point:

Everyone needs a way to express creativity, or I think so anyway. I haven't really found a good way yet, seeing as my artistic/musical talents are almost nil. I use Western Europe from time to time but my writing isn't so hot either. One thing I have been doing of late is video editing. You may be familiar with http://www.lsmtb.co.uk - a website of mine with MTB videos, working on one from the Scotlan trip at the moment. I've also done a few comprised of ingame footage from Neocron. The better and probably more conhrehensible to non-players are:
Crying Out - footage of a series of "outpost wars" in the game, hailed as the best I have done by the player community.
Smash Something - a collection of action sots set to raucous music/
Virtual World - focusses on a rather odd part of the game - HackNet

Thats all for now I think. As ever, comment on any posts if you have any questions.

Peaches, I could eat a peach for hours...

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 23:01:20 GMT

Yeah, kinda late. What of it? Also running low on Face/Off quotes

Solid State: More derivations and conjectures related to Fermi levels and energies, and also some work on the sepcific heat of a material.

Microscopy: I've mostly been using STM to look at the surface of graphite thats been heat treated to see how it oxidises, and what effect the temperature has on reaction rates. Also, look at this image and tell me if it reminds you of anything:

Energy Chemistry: More bastardised Quantum Mechanics, futher going over the particle in a box and beginning discussions of the hyrdogen atmo (yay?). The 'discussion' classes are painful because of the daft answers people give.

Biochemistry: Lipid behaviour and significance in membranes (yay, I understnad this), and then looking at the electron transfer pathway on the inner membranes of miotchondria. Also a rather dull and uninfomative practical.

Surface characterisation: Erm, darkifield and lightfield optical micriscopy was discussed. Beyond that I can't really remember.

Surface physics and chemistry: Adsorption (notabllly gibbs) and vapour pressureds, and getting the two to work together.

My place is getting fucked up!

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 22:26:36 GMT

Somewhat delayed, but heres thas weeks stuff.

Solid State: Heat conduction and more interestingly density of states, relating to fermi level etc. How to describe electrons building up energy levels in a metal.

Microscopy: STM images of gold and platinum formed by different means, AFM images of the same and of a human hair. (lemme know if you want me to continue posting images from this lab).

Biochemistry: NO IDEA. Erm, protein attachment to membranes maybe. How the guy was a referee for Nature once. I really don't understand this lot.

Characterisation: More optics. Diffraction techniques - xray, neutron, electron. That was kinda intersting using weird stuff to image things. Also indirectly discovered to my suprised that the WWW was invented at CERN.

Energy Chemistry - Shordinger equation! Wow, thats new to me...

They're like cockroaches!

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 21:10:13 GMT

Ok, so back to my weekly what I learned this week thang:

Condensed Matter (solid state) Physics: Behavior of electrons in a conductor mostly - electon gas model, scattering and mean scattering time, distance etc. Flaws in model. Description of the solid state. Began (but didnt actually find out what it was) discussion of the Hall Effect.

Microscopy: Used AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) to image a silicon/silica based calibration grid. Image quality and resolution is awesome.
Used STM (Scanning Tunneling Micropscope) to image a graphite surface, theoretically down to atomic resolution. Somewhat fiddly this one, and my genral fumbling resulted in the use of a lot of wire and hastle. Impressive though.
Here is some AFM images - of the "grid" - as you can see the lithography/etching made it less than the square grid we were expecting.

And now from the STM - a zoomed out one, and an "atomic resolution" one - if you squint, you can sorta see the hexagons that the graphite patterns form.

Energy + Chemistry: quantum mechanics that we already knew - that things exist in quantised states, Heisenberg Uncertainy Principal, etc. Is taught my MARCELO! though (capitlization and exclamantion intended) - a lecturer who spent half ab hour talking about how enthusiastic he is.

Membrane Biochemistry: This isn't even in englsih... seriously, the biochemists can give you a full sentence without a single word of english. There was some discusion of the syntheisation of integral membrane proteins and the roll of translocons, as well as some random rnating about lipid rafts, but honestly I can't really follow it.

Chaterisation of Materials: Optics in mircoscopes (optical). Yay. Erm, did miss two hours of this mind (out of four) :(

Surphace interaction: Entropy, surphace effects + pressures. Stuff like that. Sorta did this in the colloid science, but being taugh by physicists, there is more of a focus on teaching through maths. General thermodynamics and such.

Lets just kill each other

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:07:03 GMT

"I need this, I need that". On thinking about my last entry, it occurs to me what I really need is to stop being such a whiney bitch. But then you knew that anyway. As did I. Just makking sure it was common knowledge.

Freak

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 01:24:40 GMT

You know you are a little strange when you are lying in bed late at night using the internet to look up information on Niels Bohr (although I do have a quantum mechanics exam tomorrow)

Going into something

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:43:52 GMT

Anyone ever read Demonology 101. Its pretty cool and sorta beautiful, although it definatley has its flaws. Its possibly the only webcomic that I've bingeread (finding a webcomic thats been going for a while/finished and reading the entire archives in one sitting) three times.

Anyway. A little internal, expressing messed-up feelings post here. Don't read if you arent in the mood for this kinda shit.

It was all triggered, sorta randomly because Channel 4 seem to be rerunning the 1st series of TSimpsons. They showed the episode where Bart cheats on an aptitude test and gets sent to a special school for the really, really clever. I caught myself thinking "I wish I'd been sent to a school like that". On reflection, this seemed really odd. I wish I'd been taken out of mainstream society and put in some kind of think tank? I think I'm intelligent enough to deserve that? I think it would have made me a happier/better person?

Lots of ramifactions there, but mostly I got sat thinking about my own intelligence. I've often maintained that I'm not really intelligent, thant I don't actually know what I'm doing and just have a trick memory. Well thats true to some degree, but I havent always believed it. I do kinda feel that whatever 'promise' I may have shown as a child wasn't really nutured and instead it was left to the culture of children to beat me down (continuously prime target of bullying from 5 to around 14-15. Still receive some ever since, too), and convince me to supress whatever ability I had to try and fit in. I suspect I was always inherrently lazy to some degree, but the "I'm not square cos I don't actually do any work" thing was an attempt at a defense in school, and has become to the point that I really don't. In addition, never being really driven hard enough means that I blitzed the 5-18 education system without ever learning what "hard" was or how to work at things. I still don't know if I really do have anything special, but I sure as hell know I don't make anything of it. Today, I completey bombed a maths exam. And it was all quite possible. I could SEE that none of it required really heavy thought, there were certainly no proofs. But I'd become so jacked in to all my entertainment (gaming, TV, music, ect) that I hadn't prepared at all. Even though I knew needed to. I'm not really expressing what I want to here, but I guess I'm not going to manage it. Maybe if I think this out in advance at some point...

Oh, and anyone ever passing by/fancies coming to Leeds, give me a shout.

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:39:51 GMT

Pink Floyd is awesome. Its just got this weird, pseudo-transcedent nature to it that helps make even media

So, back in Leeds, back at Uni. Exam period and I'm not working nearly hard enough on anything.

Tried to go fencing last night, noone there. Robbed of a chance to work off exam-based frustration and see the HCG again.

Always think of cool things to put on LJ when not able to, come to make update and its shit...

See ya around...

You're still not having any FUN!

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 21:15:50 GMT

So, been back in Nottingham for a few weeks now. Nothing of particuarl interest has happened, and I've been really quite lazy (and inactive, I can feel my muscles wasting away).

New years was a pretty quoet affair, with just James and Mat (and James's girlfriend, Haley) round at mine. Met up with the vast majority of the gang a few times though.

Had a reasonable amount of snow here for a few days, then it melted.

Will update again when I remember what it is I wanted to say...

BLARG

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 20:08:04 GMT

going home tomorrow - gotta get some packing done I guess.
Rather randomly read the whole archives of http://www.themidlands.net the other day. Not honestly sure why. I mean, its not particularly original or clever.
Won't bother discussing the uninteretingess of the last week of uni academically.
Other night, was lying in bed at "4:04" being projected onto the wall by my clock. Rather geekily thought - life error 404: Sleep not found.
Thought I had more to say than I do.

Picture Story

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:00:51 GMT

OK, this is something I started a while ago, and intended to take mor pictures, but never got around to it(and I had "lost" my camera for a while - downt he back of my printer). Its basically my journey to and around uni each day (although it misses some of the cooler bits - will have to take more photos.

So, corss the road and stat up through woodhouse ridge. It gets a touch muddy in the wet, and a touch intimidating in the dark, but its nice to be walking away from roads for at least part of the journey.

Next stage is past the terraced houses of Woodhouse. A lot of students live here, but so do a lot of other people. In many ways, its quite depressing. Still, the roads are quite and its not unpleasant to walk through.

Here we see the very northern tip of the university - SPEME (School of Process and Materials Engineering), and stretched out beyond it, we have Civil, Mechanical and Electrical engineering, forming the first block of the vast university.

Walking down the gap between Chemistry and Colour Chemistry, along with various other departments. Evey so often, this little spot gets rather flooded with liquid nitrogen that leaks from the tanks. It looks kinda cool.

Stairs up to my home department, not that we spend a great deal of time up there.

Going down to the Union for lunch - this is the other end of the accessway/cu through you saw earlier.

Students Union ads it starts to get a little busy. Impressively, even the studnets union, you can carry on walking for 10 minutes and get throughly lost. To walk across the whole campus, staying outside would probably take 20 minutes at brisk pace, 30 if you dawdled. It often takes us 10+ minutes to get between lectures.

Its That time again

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:38:03 GMT

OK, here we go:

Quantum mechanics - looking at the Hydrogen atom.

Colloids - Uses of colloids, more polymer effects on stability. Did a lab on capilary action.

Philosophy - Democracy and sciences aka more excuses to bang on about fucking plato. I hate plato.

Make with the magic

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:54:52 GMT

So yeah, I finally make a couple of entries about whats happening to me, and I don't do my reguarl spot on time. Ok, here we go:

Quantum Mechanics - Discussed Paulin exclusion principle, fermions and bosons, spin and countelss other things. All feels relativley abstract compared to some of the stuff we were doing earlier. It sounds strnage to saythat about QM, I know, but hey. It all builds up to the idea of describing real-world events with QM though.

Colloid Science - Polymers! And their uses in stabilizing colloids. Also so me more adsorption work. The lab was a PH based tritration of TiO2 nanoparticles, that went very, very badly. Thanks to this module, I can no longer even do the fucking washing up without thinking about the science involved. Theres another no-brainer activtiy gone for me.

Molecular Electronics - very little = a bit more on DNA patterning work being done at the moment.

Philosophy - discussing transhumanism - which interests me. As I said before, I felt the lecturer somewhat opposed it, and viewd transhumanists as somewhat species traitors. Is it strange that I find the idea of being called a species tratior one of the worst accustaions that can be made? Anyway, its an interesting, and largely noble concept I think.

See ya next week, although more and more courses are coming to an end.
Also, http://www.secondlaw.com/ is kinda cool in a very, very science geek way.

"I Know Quantum Mechanics" "Show me"

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:28:28 GMT

Two weeks in a row here, because I missed a lot of my lectures through ilness the previous week.

Quantum, eh? Discussed the mathematical ways of expressing measurement, and the concept of eigenstates. Also got as close as we are ever going to for an explanation of the bizzareness of the double slit experiment. Also learned about Heisenberg uncertainy principle. Bloody QM, makes very little sense whatsoever. But is fascinating and probably useful. Gotta figure out how to deal with the Schrodgeniger equation and wavefunctions properly.

Colloid Science - Surfactants and charged particles is all that occurs to me right now. Lots and lots of discussion of how electrical "double layers" work in solutions of electrolyte with charged particles. Essentailly we have got to perhaps the important part of the course - if substances will always form bulk to lower their energy, how do we get stable nanoparticles? Answer - well, theres a few ways - but charge is probably the most reliable and easy to understand. The lab we did was involvoing Titanium DiOxide nanoparticles, and playing with pH to make them all stick together.

Molecular Electronics - DNA and using it to build stuff. I miss too many of these lectures, ARG!

Philosophy - Risk. Risk. And more risk. No, not the boardgame, sadly. But about how we should consider risk when doing engineering stuff. And erm, thats about it.

Wisdom?

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:24:53 GMT

I have more teeth coming through. I thought this had stopped a little over a year ago.

Techy Time

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:59:13 GMT

OK, so whats been going on with my crazy course this week?

Quantum Mechanics is moving on from merely turning the Schrodinger equation this way and that (slightly). It was all about what happens when you measure a system this week - of course the good old wave equation is still central to it all - looking and what the measurement does to the wavefunction. Basically, it turns out that QM cannont predict the position or momentum/velocity of a particle, even given all information. ALl you get is the "expectation value", which would be your average result if you repeat the experiment enough times...

Colloid science was all about surface interaction (well, the whole of colloid science is, basically) but more specifically, in realation to "wetting" of surfaces and surface energies - basically a discussion of what was needed to make substances stick or not to each other in various ways, how it could be measured, and how it could be induced. The lab this week was particle sizing using light scattering. A little daft, IMO.

Molecular Electronics - a look into the possibility of any techniques to make circutis from "molecular circuit components" - perhaps the greatest problem in the subject. DNA with its specific recognition was suggested in various ways of being useful.

Philosophy was discusssing DDT and media hype. Was vaugley interesting, although not much. Also, the lecturere is just plain STUPID.

Delayed Knowledge.

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 23:02:05 GMT

Soo, Quantum Physics. Lots of demonstartions of how computers can solve otherwise rather hard maths relating to the Schrodinger Wave Equation. Also discussion of expectation values, which is essential the location that the particle is most likley to be in. Crazy this QM is, where things only have probailities, not fixed locations/speeds/etc.

Colloid Science was studying Surfactants (SURFace ACTive things) and how they effect droplet pressure, shape, colloidal stability etc etc. Oh, and micellisation and all the differnt forms and implications of that. Micellisation is well, self-assembling structures of these surfactant molecules - as ever want to know more, comment asking something.

Philosophy discussed the ethics of weapon developm, and how to design possible nano-weapons. Yes, they really did seem to be encouraging us to come up with evil uses for nanotechnology as homework for the ethics course... Being evil scientits, we loved it of course. Didn't learn a great deal, save that you have to accept (my argument anyway) that any weapons you develop can and will be used by everyone. Also that most rules/taboos about war are set up by the boys presently in charge to keep themselves there.

And erm, thats all I can think of, new information wise last week. Should maybe do a personal life type thing too.

Grow

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:41:54 GMT

I've beaten Grow Cube and Grow RPG. The original Grow still confuses me something silly though.

Behold, Science!

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:12:36 GMT

Quantum Mechanics was examining particles in non-infinite wells, and examining the fact that if you add two wave functions, you get time depenedence (which explains atmoic emissions) and also providing a hint as to the solution of the paradox earlier in this journal. (double slit experiment).

Colloid science was all about pressures in droplets and how you would go about measuring theses pressures and surace tensions and so on - and then leading on to hwo these factors realted to colloid formation and stability. The lab this week involved adding salts to a solution conating charge-stabilized colloids, and studying the effect the salts when dissolved had on nanoparticle stability.

Molecular Electronics related to how about you connect and measure the electrical properties of a single molecule, and how you can assess if you are really studying said molecule, etc, etc.

Philosophy discussed the tired old issue of GM crops. The only interesting thing about it, I have already discussed.

Wow, 3 entries in as many days, nifty.