Change of Focus

Note, pressing the button won't actually do anything.

You may notice that there have been one or two changes around here. There's a reason for that.

I've come to realise that I'm really quite rubbish at keeping a blog, and even worse at keeping a blog dedicated to a specific topic. Therefore, in order to try and stimulate my writing juices (ew!) I've converted my blog from one solely about my PhD to a general all purpose blog where I can keep thoughts on any topic whatsoever.

In addition to changing the focus of this blog, I've also closed my other blog, and imported the posts here. In fact, this blog now represents all of the combined blogging I've done in my life as I've imported my livejournal from way back when. Feel free to browse all the embarrassing content.

It's nice to keep everything in one place.

Expect infrequent ramblings that may cover topics including my PhD, Fat Acceptance, Juggling and random stuff I've found on the internet.

So, what's the new blog title all about. It's a bit of a silly play on two nicknames that I have acquired. Captain Raz has been my nickname since I was about 14, and it now my handle for just about anything I do on the internet. Raz has been a nickname for so long I don't really remember how it came about. All I know is that I became Raz because I had friends calling themselves Fraz, Maz and Gaz. You see the pattern there?  Raz was my most prominent nickname during the time I was in the Scouts. The Captain got added into the mix due to my propensity for wearing sailor's captain hat whilst kayaking. I even wore it whilst rafting in the North Sea. my raft got overturned by a wave, and when I resurfaced I was still wearing the hat. I still think that's one of the coolest things I've managed to achieve in my life.

Tonks has been my major nickname since I came to university. It is far more ubiquitous than Raz ever was; so much so that my boyfriend refers to me almost exclusively as Tonks, and I have friends who forget my real name because they didn't find it out until we'd been friends a few months. Doctor Tonks is a nickname I intend to take that far off day when I've completed my PhD. It's a hopeful title, as getting there is far from certain, but with a little luck some of that journey will get written down here.

Cooking Injuries (Not What You Think)

Originally published at Chuck-It Cook 28 July 2010

Food isn’t the only thing that gets cooked up in my kitchen, or rather, my mother’s kitchen in this case. One of the odder things I have a tendency to cook up is fake flesh and fake blood.

Yep you read that right.

See I’m a member of St John Ambulance and have been for years. A while back I did a course on casualty simulation (i.e. making people look like they’re injured) and its kinda become one of my specialities. I’m particularly good at making people look like they’ve chopped their fingers off.

In order to do this I have to make my materials. Now the stuff I use isn’t the sophisticated latex and bought stage blood. I make everything myself out of kitchen ingredients. Technically speaking you couldeat this stuff, but I often use out of date ingredients. And eating lots of the fake flesh would probably make you sick.

One of these days though, I’m going to make eating my severed finger my party trick.

I honestly can’t remember where I got this recipe from. I think the recipe came with the casualty simulation kit I acquired. But anyway, here are the recipes for fake flesh and fake blood.


Flesh

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Self Raising Flour
• 1 cup salt
• 4 teaspoons Cream of Tartar
• 2 Cups water
• 2 tablespoons cooking oil
• Liquid foundation to match skin colour (optional)

Add all ingredients to a pan, stir and cook until mixture forms a soft dough ball

This is a basic salt dough essentially. And although I primarily use it to create wounds I do also plan on cooking up a few batches of different colours and have my own (incredibly cheap) playdough.



Blood


Ingredients:

• 4 dessertspoons Cornflour (or custard powder)
• 2 cups water
• Few drops red food colouring
• Few drops yellow food colouring
• Teaspoon instant coffee granules
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup (optional)

Make paste of flour and a little water and blend in the rest of the water. Add the rest of the ingredients. Slowly bring to a simmer and stir constantly until mixture thickens and darkens.

Add water to thin.

I prefer a nice dark red colour, achieved by adding the coffee. The consistency I prefer is almost like jelly, which is really good for filling in the wounds. It can always be watered down to provide a stream of blood.

When I have my materials I use them to put together a few things like this;








Happy Cooking.

Green Food

Originally published at Chuck-It Cook 27 July 2010


My diet recently has been extremely green. I’ve been experimenting with green smoothies, after hearing so much about them on various food blogs. The first one was utterly delicious, the second one slightly less so. For the second on there was more green than other ingredients and I guess I need to strike the balance.


Green smoothies are ridiculously easy to make. Add fruit and milk/yoghurt to a blender as you normally would for a smoothie and then add in a couple of handfuls of some tender greens. I used baby spinach both times but I’m told you can also use arugula, parsley and even carrot greens.


The next green recipe I’ve been cooking up is something I dubbed Swamp Soup. It started out life as a way to use up some leftover kale and carrot from Sunday dinner, and turned into something utterly delicious that I’d definitely cook from scratch. So without further ado, I present you with the recipe;



Swamp Soup

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion 
• Curly Kale (about half a cup) 
• 1 Carrot (I had about 1/4cup leftover cooked carrots) 
• 1 stock cube (made up to about ¾ pin stock) 
• ½ cup cous cous 
• Butter 
• Herbs to taste (I used about 1 teaspoon of mixed herbs) 
• Pinch cayenne pepper 

Instructions

1. Chop the onion and fry off in a little butter. 
2. Add the kale and carrot 
3. Season to taste; add herbs and spices 
4. Add the stock and bring to the boil. 
5. If using leftover veg simmer for about 5 minutes. 
6. If using fresh veg simmer until carrots are tender 
7. Remove from the hob and blend to an appropriate consistency (I used a hand blender in the pan) 
8. Add cous cous and let stand (cous cous will cook in about 4 minutes) 
9. Either serve immediately or allow to cool and refrigerate until required.

Profiterole Adventure

Originally Posted at Chuck-It Cook 7 July 2010

I’m lead to believe that every cook has something that they’re nervous about making. It doesn’t matter how many people tell them it’ll be fine, or how easy it is to do, they’re still scared to do it. In my case it was choux pastry. I desperately wanted to try making choux pastry as it is an integral ingredient in one of my favourite desserts, profiteroles. And no matter how many times I was told how easy it was, I was still a little nervous. I’m not good with pastry.


I’ve tried my hand at a few pastries and they turned out exceedingly mediocre. I put it down to my having warm hands which isn’t good for rubbing butter and flour together. Anyway, that’s not a problem with choux pastry. What I was worried about was ending up with scrambled eggs.


But I took a deep breath and had a go. I’ve now made them twice and, to be honest, they turned out pretty well the first time, and even better the second. I don’t know if the second batch were so good because they were cooked in my mum’s halogen oven. I don’t think I’ll ever cook choux pastry in a conventional oven again, because that second batch was absolutely magical.


The second batch were also extremely fun to make because I had my first ever go at piping. The first time around I did the old cut the top of the pastry off and spoon cream in method. Which isn’t as good and I used whipped Elmlea, which really isn’t the same as whipped double cream.


The piping went fairly well though I did end up squirting cream all over the kitchen. There were one or two issues with getting the cream into the piping bag and then controlling the flow of cream into the profiteroles. The cream also kept squirting out the wrong end and hence all over the kitchen.


But the most important thing is they were damn tasty, and I’m now armed to be ale to combine my two favourite desserts to create the ultimate decadence of a profiterole cheesecake. I’ll keep you posted on that one.


The recipe I used can be found here, and I baked the profiteroles in the oven at 200*C (gas mark 6) for 10 minutes, then at 220*C (gas mark 7) for15-20 minutes. They went nice and golden brown and were utterly delicious.


I’d post pictures but I’m afraid they all got eaten before I could get a camera out!

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.