Emma’s Blog

Apparently, .com is for American sites only. If you have a .com domain, that implies you’re from the US. That means you!

All us little British Chaps and Chapesses should settle for the lowly .co.uk, and keep our grubby mitts off the shiny, golden .com. If we use it, we’ll only confuse people, despite America having .us (try www.grouphug.us if you’d like an example). Although from what I was aware of, .co.uk was originally a business suffix (.org.uk being an organisation, ac.uk a British Educational institute, .gov.uk UK government et cetera). There is a .uk but that seems to be rarer than the .us.

Clearly, .com is an abbreviation for .communist, so for all you Americans who pledge allegiance, I urge you, avoid .commies!

I realised today I only have a fortnight left on my lab project. At first, the actual subject seemed pretty boring, but now i’ve really got into it. Having struggled so far with one half of my mutants (three times they’ve died, I only have one surviving to produce protein). Now there are the opportunities of extra substrates, possible inhibitors and…crystallisation!

 I love crystallisation, my first experience (beyond copper sulphate and a bit of string) was back in January in our “Structural Molecular Biology” lab. We took a tray with 24 wells, and using a range of pH and bits and bobs, found out which was the best to crystallise. Of course, we only looked at what actually crystallised, not the structure etc. I don’t understand the whole turning scattered electron images back into a real 3D structure, but it’s amazing.

I’m starting to realise maybe I am getting too into this whole science thing.

In other news, I was chatting to Adrian (one of the doctors in the lab) at lunch time, and saw Sarah from the other side of the hall. Rather than “hello” she shrieked “What is wrong with your eye?”…turns out its gross and bloodshot (and has been all day) but no one thought to point it out. Sometimes people are too polite. Trouble is, I didn’t spot it until it was brought to my attention, now my eye stings and feels a little strange.

Mike and I have both hurt our backs. Stop your sniggering, its nothing of the sort. He noticed his was sore last Thursday (but it recovered for the Beer Bus). It started again on Tuesday, I walked straight from the lab to Tesco, and noticed when I got there my back was a bit sore (I assumed from a heavy bag). He was limping, this carried on through Wednesday, and mine stayed as a dull ache. Woke up on Thursday in agony, as did Mike. People in work told him to go home as he was limping so much. He took today off, but I had to go in, thankfully I finished early. Restful weekend it is.

I think we need a new mattress, but bloody hell they’re expensive.

I found out today that someone I know has a “pet” squirrel. It was bought to him as a baby and he refused to have it put down (they’re illegal to keep, or return to the wild - greys only). As one who adores squirrels, I was, of course, extra excited, although I must admit a little disappointed that they don’t turn in to tame little lovable pets, but seem to still have plenty of wild instincts. Still, its cool. In return, I shared that I own several hamsters.

While walking down the hill back to the bus stop, I saw several baby rabbits again. No baby ducks yet, I hear there are some at Gibbet but i’ve yet to see any in the fluff. 

Last night we went on a tour of the black country on a bus, with beer. Apart from it turning up 30 mins late, it wasn’t a bad evening. God knows what the awful beer served on the bus was, but by the time we got into the pubs it was great fun. There’s nothing more hilarious than a bus of drunk people you don’t know.

I spent most of today purifying a protein using IMAC, its a modern form of black magic, such as that practised by the wizards of old who searched for the best enzymes to keep their white-wizard underpants white as white can be. Basically, you have a protein tagged with histidine residues, poor it through sepharose containing nickel ions, and then elute (with something to chelate the ions, or something which binds competitively, at increasingly higher concentrations). This isolates your his tagged protein from all the others (which either don’t bind, or bind less strongly and wash off sooner). Still, I prefer to ignore all that chemistry behind how it works, and focus on the more important fact: Its Magic. Its that sort of thing that makes me love biochemistry.

 Also drove up to Birmingham to sell the robo’s old habitrail, so that’s Theo and Archie’s new cage paid for!

 Also its the new series of Lost starting tonight, I rarely get excited about TV but I enjoyed the last series so much (sometimes its fun to be a sheep). I really hope they can keep the idea going, as frankly towards the end of the last series the plot did seem to get a little bizarre, but maybe the writer is just weird.

Today I won the “Hamster Article of the Month” competition on Hamster Heaven. I was the only person to write (and have an article accepted) in the month though. As I am on the review panel for articles, is that some sort of insider trading?

Well, I didn’t get on too well with the last blog, it looked like i’d need to learn something in order to customise it better/change the themes, and generally get it to look like it matched the rest of my site. So here we go again!

 So far, so good. I’ve manually moved the posts from my old Blogger blog (yes…not much happening there. I got annoyed after I wrote a long post and it was eaten).

Today I started revising Drosophila development, fairly slow going. There are only so many pictures of mutant larvae a girl can look at.
Had a bit of a surf round to see if I could find a cool birthday present for Jill…I want to get a chocolate fountain, but I bet she already has one. It’ll go well with their ice cream maker though.

Went to Asda as its the only supermarket that sells chicken and turkey sausages…well, Big Tesco does but that’s a longer trip. So we wandered round picking up stuff we needed, and stuff we didn’t. It appears Mike’s new idea to stop me buying fun stuff is to make me pay for it myself. First of all, they only had one checkout open and a queue of around 12 customers. Then, they decided to open another, woo-hoo. Put all the sensible shopping through first, with Mike, and after he paid we were asked the postcode. Then as he was putting receipt etc away, she didn’t start to put my shopping through, so we said “we’re together, and she did”. I decided to buy a bottle of Tropical Sourz, because it tastes so damn good. The woman said “Are you over 21″, so I replied “Yes”. She then sat there for a bit, so I decided to get ID out, she then looked at it and appeared to take great difficulty in working out if I was indeed over 21. So I pointed out if I wasn’t, i’d have just got Mike to buy it. I know its their job, but really, have a brain. Or is that why you’re working in Asda…(Is that too controversial?).
Then, to top my evening off, they overcharge me by 99p. Practically £1! So I went to the shelf, whipped off the price tag (I bet they hate it when shoppers do that) and took myself to the “we’re always happy to help desk”. The girl there re-funded me and gave me a £2 Asda voucher, so all was well in the end.

Another thing I feel the need to complain about is that I can’t find an eyeliner for less than £1.99. Perhaps I should just go and buy a 4B pencil…

Today I didn’t leave the house. Tragic isn’t it. I did manage to revise 6 development lectures though, would’ve been more but apparantly my progress report for my final year project wasn’t good enough. Basically, I knew that, but it doesn’t get marked and so many people have been told not to bother I didn’t feel the need to put much effort in. So I re-wrote half of it, then read the reference paper and realised everything i’d researched in other places and added was already in there. Oh well. I’ll right another 1/4 page tomorrow and it’ll be at the maxiumum 2 pages.

I think i’ve already forgotton the stuff I revised, one thing I do remember is that in Staufen- mutants, there are no pole cells, and oskar is found everywhere, not localised to the posterior of the embryo, shock horror!

In hamsters, things are still going well between the three robos. I cleaned one of their three sections of cage, and they don’t seem to be fighting. I also put some fresh bedding in a little house for them, and I hope they move into there. The other bedroom is getting a little “ripe”, but it’ll be worth it if this intro continues to go well.

Finished the bag of “Stacy’s pita chips” arguably the nicest crisp-type snack i’ve had in a while. Perhaps tomorrow I should go to Sainsbury’s and see if there are any left on the reduced shelf.