Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Geekdom

Here you all are. A fun test that gives you a geek rating.
http://www.innergeek.us/
Have a go and post your scores.

I managed to get 17% which equals Geek.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Speculum Conlectio

Speculum Conlectio

Lucky me.

I've a lovely little debate tomorrow.
The topic is Xenoestrogens and Male fertility and we the guy's are stuck arguing that xenoestrogens have no effect on male fertility against the gal's who are arguing they decrease male fertility.

So 4 guy's vs 5 gal's. With public opinion on the topic leaning more the gal's way and the science also appearing to lean in that direction.

Xenoestrogen's by the way are biochemical mimics of the female hormone estrogen. They're a pollutants, waste products and by-products that enter the environment and then the food chain through a large number of sources.

It's not going to be fun :-(.

PS I'll stick up some camp photo's soon.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

My 21st: Food!

My 21st: Food!

My 21st: Food! Oh and the odd person or six.

My 21st: People

My 21st: People

My 21st: People it's not a 21st with out them.

My 21st: Food drink and people.

My 21st: Food drink and people.

My 21st: Food drink and people.
The perfect ingredient's for any 21st.

What I've been doing.

Well the new University years started with a bit of a bang.

I got back in town on the 19th of February after having spent the summer working for Fonterra at there research and marketing centre in Palmerston North. And then went out for the evening to Sally's flat warming.

Uni started on the Monday @ 9am with an introduction to Postgrad study in the School of Biology. A number of activities kept us busy for the morning.

After that was out of the way I had the lovely job of enrolling having missed enrolment week. Thankfully it didn't turn out to be to bad.

The rest of the week was spent going to Postgrad activities and preparing for the booksale.

That Saturday was my 21st party which went well. Went out to dinner with a few close friends then had every one else around for supper. People seemed to enjoy them selves which was good as did I.

The following week was the booksale enough said. Let's just say I was there from 7:30ish to 6pm one day and 9-5 for the rest. Thankfully the UCSA was used to working with us from last year and so had organised a few things from there end which helped.

Also I must thank all those who helped out with the booksale. You people were great and have helped make it work out well.

Special thanks to Andrew for organising big bit's of it due to me being up north in the lead up to it. Christina for coming in and helping even though she's now finished Uni and the various others who helped Organise things.

Also that week my seminars for the year started.
That's one interesting thing about Postgrad in Biology we don't have lectures instead we have seminars 3 hour slots every second week were we discuss current research with lecturers, present presentation's, posters, grant application debates and a number of other things. It's more relaxed and the focus is very much on you doing the work and the study, understanding what your looking at then discussing it with the Academic staff.
It's a nice change from undergrad though it may end up meaning that I actually have to spend more time at uni as a result reading papers and books at the library trying to understand the subjects that are to be discussed in the seminars.
The result being that I'm only scheduled for six contact hours a week. The other nice thing is that the exams are in September and after that we begin our research.

This week has be a continuation of the booksale with the unsold books and monies being returned to there owners with my second set of seminars. And producing a final copy of my thesis research statement.

By the way for those of you who wonder this year I'm doing A Masters of Science in Biochemistry.
Covering these topics:
Genomics
Medical Biochemistry
Molecular Biology
Protein Science