Revolution 2012

Around this time last year I posted on my goals for 2011.One of them was to keep a regular schedule of posts at this blog, and it’s thegoal I failed at the most. But I also said I would forgive myself if I missedany of my goals, and I’m proud to say that’s the resolution I’ve stuck to thebest.

So why did I stop posting here? I got to the point where I feltI had nothing notable to give to the community, and I no longer needed to blogfor myself. I had nothing to say, so that’s what I said. Life got in the way,and evern though there were times I wanted to post something, it never feltlike the right time.

Now feels pretty right though, but I’m not promising therewill suddenly be a flurry of activity at this blog. I will write here when I havesomething to say, and only then. But I wanted to say something about my year,how well I met my goals for 2011, and what my plans are for 2012.

2011 was a busy and interesting year for me. I graduatedfrom university, got my first full time job, had a brief adventure in door to doorsales, started my PhD and moved house.  As for the goals I set myself last year, theones related to juggling are where I have excelled.

I learned the three ball cascade in April, and a bunch ofother tricks beside. I’ve even dabbled with juggling clubs and played with fourballs. I have learnt way more than three tricks for poi and devil stick and metmy quota for the diabolo. I’m not sure I learnt three new tricks for staff in2011, but I’m still enjoying playing with it. More than that, I picked up a fewnew props to play with as well. In addition to regular juggling and these four Iwill also play around with meteor, rope dart and contact juggling.

I definitely succeeded in drinking more tea, and in readingmore for pleasure. That said, I fell short of reading the size positive books Iwanted to, but I can live with that.  Ihave continued to explore the food I eat both for pleasure and function. Idiscovered that I feel way better if I drink plenty of water and get plenty ofprotein, especially at breakfast. I look forward to continuing this explorationin 2012.

I set myself a lot of goals last year. I exceeded some, metothers and sort of but didn’t quite explore still more. Some goals I missedcompletely, but I’m fine with that.

So what are my goals for 2012?

I will continue to practice my juggling and aim to:

    Learn to juggling clubs continuously.

    Learn four ball juggling.

    Learn three new tricks for three balls.

    Learn  the basics ofcontact juggling.

    Working on my flow with staff, poi, devil stick, rope dartand meteor.

    Getting or making a puppyhammer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob3SRKz0c_Y

I will continue to explore food in a positive manner, addingrather than taking away.

I will continue exploring what kinds of movement I enjoy andtrying to find something that will stick.

    Startingwith the Tai Chi, Yoga and Qi Gong dvds that have been ordered.

    I willtry to strike up a hooping practice as well.

I will continue to read books for pleasure rather than work,and try to finish A Dance of Dragons.

I will work on being more vocal and open about HAES and BodyAcceptance in online circles.

I will try to be a tidier person.

I will try to get up earlier, so I can work harder on myPhD.

I will strive to drink more water as well as even more tea.

Most importantly, I will continue to forgive myself for anygoals I miss or don’t quite achieve.

If I manage even three quarters of that list up there, 2012 will be a fantastic year for me. What are your goals for 2012?

The feeling of doing nothing

I seem to spend a lot of my time waiting. Waiting for simulations to run. Waiting for calculations to complete. Waiting for analysis finish. Generally waiting for the computer to do it's own thing.

I guess it wouldn't matter what form of science I was doing, I would probably spend about as much time waiting. I guess every scientist in the world is waiting for something; mostly waiting for their results to come through so they can see if all that waiting and stress and headaches were worth it in the end.

It's probably only a problem for me because I permanently attached to a computer and thus only a few clicks away from the internet in all it's glory.

The direct result of all this waiting (and internet browsing) is this nagging feeling that I'm not doing anything, tht I've not achieved anything in my first few months of my PhD. This worry builds and builds until I'm convinced that I won't achieve anything at all in the entirety of my PhD studies, if I'm lucky enough to pass first year.

Then, usually in the space of a few hours of furious activity, I realise that I have actually achieved something. Because instead of having gigabytes of files filled with random numbers or binary, I've finally got the holy grail of science.

A graph!

And suddenly all the doubt melts away if only for an instant. Because that graph isn't just a few pretty lines with some words and numbers. That graph is real, tangible proof that I'm actually doing something. I have been doing science this whole time!

At the moment I have furiously analysing the simulations that have worked so far, trying to produce a few graphs for next week. Why next week? Well next week I'm in Glasgow for a conference (Glasgow in December, lucky me) and it just happens that a number of our collaborators are going to be there. My supervisor wants me to have something to show the progress I'm making.

These graphs I'm hoping to have aren't just to convince me that I've been achieving something worthwhile this whole time, they have to convince other people as well. Other people who are far more knowledgeable about everything than I am and who are probably responsible for securing the funding so I could do this PhD in the first place.

So no pressure huh?

The Myth of Specializing in Science

I always thought that as you progressed through learning you were supposed to focus your time on increasingly specific topics that you can specialise in. M y own learning is a good example of this. At GCSE I was learning “Science”; for A level I did Biology, Chemistry and Physics; at undergraduate degree level I studied Medicinal and Biological Chemistry, a specific subset of chemistry. And for my PhD I thought I was specialising in Computational Chemistry.

Which is true, but also a misconception.

I work on molecular dynamics simulations of biomolecules, primarily proteins and DNA. What that means is I’m basically a biophysical chemist as well as a computational one. Those words, biophysical chemist? I’m back where I was with A Level pretty much.

Where I do my research is essentially at the interface of biology, chemistry, physics and computer science. And while doing multidisciplinary work at the interface between the different flavours of science is really quite trendy, what it means for me is I have a hell of a lot of things I need to know.

I need to have a working knowledge of the biology of proteins and DNA. What they do in the body etc. I needed to know how these molecules work on a chemical level. How they form, how the chemical structure affects the biological behaviour. I have to deal with chemical structures and understand things like bond angles, bond lengths and what the consequences of that are. When I carry out my simulations I am applying lots of physics to my model. I need a good idea of the physics I'm using; a knowledge of Newton's laws and the more complicated equations required for the complex structures I'm dealing with. Each step of my simulation is basically a lot of maths, which I need some idea of as well.  And because all of this is happening inside a computer there is yet another area which requires my knowledge. I need a working knowledge of Linux, where all my calculations are carried out. I need to be able to use the suites of programs that carry out the calculations, and know how to use the programs that analyse and compare my results. I need to know a bit about various coding languages to make my job easier.

So you see how I haven't really specialized at all. And that's without getting into the spectroscopy side of my project our the experimental work I may potentially carry out.

I believe that in science there us no such thing as speculating. Everything requires more knowledge and the lines between the different sciences are increasingly becoming blurred. There may once have been a time I could have called myself a chemist, but not so much now. I'm a computational chemist working on classical molecular dynamics simulations of biomolecules.

I think I'll just called myself a scientist.

Hello, World!

Hello world is such a cliche. Every tutorial I have ever done that was remotely related to programming has used Hello,World! as an example. But I thought it would be an ideal way to kick off this blog.

So, hi there, world. I'm Rachel, and I just started a PhD in Chemistry. I'm less than a week into it and already I have had some strange thoughts about this thing I've decided to devote the next few years of my life to. It's scary, strange and pretty new.

That said, I'm still in a pretty enviable position. I'm studying for my PhD at the same university I did my undergraduate degree at, so I know the campus and the city really well. I'm also working in the same research group with the same supervisor I had for my master year project. My research is also fairly similar to that I did in my masters as well.

The reason it feels so scary is because there's three years of this ahead of me, and there's much more expected of me.

I've not yet decided exactly what kind of a blog this is going to be. Whether it will be talking purely about research, or if it will touch on other aspect of a PhD. Whether I will talk about success and roadblocks and the emotional side, or whether I will focus on the learning that will accompany my research. Knowing me, it will end up being a little bit of all of it.

To round off this first post, a little background on myself, the author. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham. I studied Medicinal and Biological Chemistry as a 4 year MSci degree with an integrated master research year. My research will focus on simulations of protein DNA complexes and analysis those simulations.

This blog will record my progress, at least for the first six months until I either tire of it or I become far to busy to sleep, let alone blog.

Hooray For Trolls

I might not have posted here in a while but I'm obviously doing something right as I just had my first troll comment. Three of them in fact. None of them were anonymous though unsurprisingly their Blogger accounts were set to private. Even more unsurprisingly they were all male.


I honestly have no problem with people disagreeing with any of the content in my blog. But if you want to make a pro-dieting comment you sure as hell better back it up with something better than "I was a chubby kid and now I'm not" or an "everyone knows how simple it is to lose weight".


Eighteen months ago comments like the ones I just got would have been a horrific experience for me. A real blow to my self esteem. But today, when I got the email notifications all I did was laugh. I honestly don't understand people who choose to spend their free time posting nasty comments on peoples' blogs. Maybe it's just because I have better things to do with my time. Perhaps its just because I'm not an asshat.


In any case, let me make something abundantly clear. This is MY space. This is where I'm working out the best way for me to deal with living in this world. It is my space and I control what goes into it. Any comments that are offensive will be deleted. Any that I don't like will be deleted. Feel free to make pro-dieting comments, but they better be polite, as respectful as possible and be backed up with some awesome scientific references using the Harvard System of Referencing.


If you disagree with me the internet is big place. There's space for you to have your own say. But not here. My space my rules.

Silly Quick Hit

The fat haters seem to have put their foot on the accelerator this week and at time the hate and shame has bordered on overwhelming. I'm not linking to any of it because I don't want to ruin your day. It struck me that there's a solution that sounds pretty good for both fat people and fat haters.

Ship all the fatties to the moon.

For starters we'll all weigh less on there, which should ease the minds of the haters. For another thing we'll all be on the moon and they won't have to look at us any more.

But it's actually a sweet deal for us fatties too because we won't have to deal with any of their crap. We can concentrate on building a rad fatty colony on the moon. We could even rename the moon the Fatosphere*! How cool would that be?

Now we could start off with just rad fatties on the moon, but no one would be excluded. Thin fat allies would be more than welcome. And we could invite every oppressed person in the world to join us in building an awesome colony on the moon where people are treated as people. We could have an awesome time playing with the reduced gravity and eat moon cheese all day.

So come on fat haters; start using all that hate and anger productively. Channel it into building the technology we'd need to live on the moon and we could get there no problem.

I want my rad fatty colony on the moon. And I'd kinda like it sooner rather than later.

*I have to admit, that wasn't my idea. Props go to my boyfriend Sam for that little bit of awesomeness.

Quick Hit: Just think about it for a second.

So I made the mistake of reading the comments over at this awesome post.

Dear Fat-Haters, trolls, and anyone who believes people can lose weight "easily if only they would try"; if it's so easy to lose weight then why are there so many diet companies and plans?. Surely if it was so damn easy to lose weight we would have found the one magic way to make everyone thin and stuck to it? And if that were the case wouldn't everyone be thin already?

And another things; hate and shame is never going to make people thin. If it did I promise you there wouldn't be a thin person on the planet. There is enough vitriol spouted daily that fate shame and hatred has reached such a concentration in our atmosphere that fat people in remote locations away from western media would have been made thin already. Hate does not make a person thin, and it certainly doesn't make them healthy. All it does is make their lives more miserable.

Angry making comments made me angry,