Published - finally

A bit of a crosspost with my OLEDs blog, but I don't really care. As of the 24th August my first paper entitled New electroluminescent bipolar compounds for balanced charge-transport and tuneable colour in organic light emitting diodes: triphenylamine–oxadiazole–fluorene triad molecules appeared online at the Journal of Materials Chemistry. Those of you at academic institutions can follow the link and access an html version of it (pdf will follow). The rest of you can still follow the link and see the abstract (and supplimentary info). This has been based on work I did this time last year and remarkably, I'm the first of my friends in chemistry to get a paper out. I feel so special! Hopefully I'll get some more out soon (but not as first author) and I look forward to the day I find out that it's been cited and when the Web of Knowledge updates so I can search for myself!

Pandora

Browsing through TIME magazine's list of "cool websites of the year" I was intrigued by the entry for Pandora. I'd briefly heard about this a while ago, but never actually investigated it properly. Now I'm hooked. The idea is that you tell it some bands and songs you like and it creates a custom radio station based on what you tell it. Don't like the song it's playing - let it know and it'll skip to the next track and play similar songs less frequently. Especially like a track - Pandora will find similar songs and play them more frequently. The more often you tell it what you do and don't like, the better the service.

Those with long memories will remember my post from last September about how I was getting stuck in a musical rut. Now I have Pandora to suggest from an increadibly wide range of music from many artists I've never heard of. It's allowed my to follow up my new found love of J-Rock (thanks to the Ouendan soundtrack) and Scandanavian rock (thanks to the Poor Rich Ones album). Thanks to Pandora, I'm going to buy albums by L'arc En Ciel and Kent. It's also nice to listen to as I type up my thesis.

The downsides aren't very many. Pandora operates via flash so there's no need to install anything. Because the music is actually licenced, you can rewind or relisten to tracks (you have to wait until they are played again) and you are only allowed a certain number of skips per hour. But, once registered you can have upto 100 different stations so this really shouldn't be a problem. After about 10 or so songs it asks you to register. Currently, it is only available for US residents but the makers clearly don't care about this as the only proof they require is a valid US zip code - not overly difficult to get off the net or even just make up.

Our supersized photos

After months of not getting around to it, Blondie and I finally sent off some photos to ProAm Imaging for enlargement. Thing thing that had put me off initially was the fact that I only had a 2MP camera. Since then I've got my 7MP A620 and been on some great trips. The attraction of ProAm is the prices - 8"x10" for 40p, and large 12"x18" prints for £1. They're a pretty retro company with no web submission forms and a paper order form that you have to send in. After a bit of hassle cropping and getting pixel densities correct we sent off the CD and waited. This week they came back and I'm glad to say they're fantastic. Most of mine are adorning my wall so here's a picture of them - for those of can't really visualise, most of the picture are 8"x10".

The lustre/matt option cuts down on reflections from a glossy covering that seems to blight my other digital prints.
They are so impressive that we've discovered they make very good (and cheap) gifts so I wouldn't be surprised if people receive these as presents (maybe with a clip frame if they're lucky) for a while.

My problem with...time

Not really a rant, but more a realisation that time is very odd. In a little over 6 weeks I'll be leaving Trevs for the last time. Once again, summer has raced away like it did last year. For the first time in as long as I can remember I don't know what's going to happen 2 months from now. At the moment I have no job and thus the future is very uncertain and I'm not sure I like that. From school I knew I was going to uni and then 4 years later I knew I was going to do a PhD, so this is probably the first time I've been in this situation. When I started the PhD back in 2003 I joked to people that by the end I'd be 26 and still living with my parents - now that moment is almost here (September birthdays really aren't an advantage anymore).
It feels like the world has changed so much in the last 7 years. Yesterday I put a load of old photos up onto my facebook account and seeing some of the photos from my first year brought back a lot of memories. When we arrived as freshers in 1999 Trevs was a different place: the cobbles and bar had yet to be refurbished, only about 1 in 4 people had a mobile phone (and that was mainly thanks to a Barclaycard offer of a free one) and only about 1 in 10 people had computers. College wasn't networked and the rooms weren't even carpeted and came with very old rugs (the so-called college Bungles). We had Pepsi, Fosters and Kronenberg instead of Coke, Carling and Stella and shots cost 95p. Even Durham itself has changed - Klute was the club of choice, Rixies still wasn't Rixes, but was DH1. Robbins cinema offered very small screens, mono sound and weird L-shaped rooms where Walkabout now stands.
Within a few days I was so happy with Trevs and my new friends. The first 2 terms were the most amazing time of my life as everything was so different and we were completely free to do what we wanted. Being the worrier I spent a lot of time in the 3rd term thinking how this was already the end of an era - because of the way Trevs allows finalists to live back in, there wouldn't be another time when all my friends lived in college.
I always seem to think about - and remember odd things. In 2nd year I realised that the calaendar year 2001 would start with us go from having just about got used to running a house and end with us 1/3rd of the way through our 3rd year. When you start thinking like that, 3 years really doesn't seem very long. Those of you who've now looked at my facebook photos (you'll need a durham/dunelm email address to sign up to dacebook) will notice that they stop after my 3rd year. The 4th year for me was a lost year. My life changed a lot as I had to make new friends and adapt to a different Trevs experience. The decision to stay for 3 more years was fairly easy to make, not only was I offered a place in an area that's reall interesting, but Durham has a 5* rating and I felt as though there was so much more I could accomplish here. The rest of the 4th year passed in a blur of big nights out and bar work. Walking back into Trevs in 2003 felt very odd. I had to continue making new friends and sure enough, by last summer I was really happy - even my reactions at work were working. I could see a fairly good short and even medium term future. This really would have been the perfect time to leave - on a high. This year I've struggled and I'm actually glad to be leaving now. Of course, once I get home I'll probably still expect to come back up to Durham, but that won't be happening.
PhD funding seems to be increasing to 4 years now which is insane. When I started I was under the impression that I'd make some really important discoveries. Of course, that hasn't happened - with a PhD, supervisors are getting cheap labour and we are getting further training. And at the end of the day, it really is just that: training. By extending a PhD to 4 years and then allowing a further year to write up we're getting on for half a decade! For those that choose to stay in college, that's 8 years! Those people who are only here for 3 years might as well not have been here.
Whenever I see friends who've left and got "real" jobs, they always say that they couldn't imagine going back to being a student. Well, at the moment I can't imagine not being a student.

Now for something more - arty

I've just realised that the last few posts have been a bit texty. Well, to sort that out here's a link to a Flickr group that I've just joined that's been created by members of the DVD forum. Despite, being primarily a film forum, there is a photography forum that has revealed some very talented photographers. The group is still new (only a day old), but contributions will grow very quickly, so keep checking it out!

Ok, I just realised that this still hasn't introduced any pictures into the post. Oh shutup!

My problem with...people

I'll come right out and say it: people are crap. There, I've said it.
The classic interview question: "what do you see as your greatest weakness?" How are you supposed to answer this one without giving the interviewer a reason not to hire you or coming across as arrogant. Thankfully, one of my friends gave me the reply "I sometimes expect too much from other people". Brilliant - it makes it seem like you always give 100% and are held back by the failures of other people - essentially shifting your weakness to them. But the more I thought about this, the more I realised that it actually applies to me. Whether it be some analysis departments at work making analysis of our compounds far harder than it should be or someone saying they'll do something that they have no intention of doing.

This was one of my pet-peaves a few years ago. Friends would come out with statements like "We'll have a barbeque soon" or "We'll go out tonight" and then nothing would ever happen. It got to the point where I simply started showing no enthusiasm to anything as I simply knew that suggestions just wouldn't result in anything. And it continues to this day; "we'll organise a meal out", "we'll meet up again" - all things that I know just won't happen. Now my time at university is nearly up it's become all the more acute - plans people come to me with that sound fantastic, but never come to fruition. Maybe it's cos I spend so much time by myself, so I do still get pissed at these things. It's an important realisation that people are useless. I know I certainly used to - especially at home when I was asked to do such simple things as hang out the washing. Once I came to this realisation it became a lot easier to deal with people: simply expect nothing.

I remember when I first came to Trevs. It was amazingly overawing and after just a few weeks I felt like I had known my new friends forever. And this happens to everyone - you live together, go to meals together, go out together, go to the bar together - far more contact than you'll have had with most school friends. But of course, you don't know them that well. Everyone's so eager to make a good impression when they arrive that it's hard to get an acurate view of people in such a short time. It's the trap I've always fallen into and I've been burnt by it several times before. What I still haven't fathomed is what to do when people who you don't want to let you down do so. Hmm, does that make sense? Maybe. It's possibly the final fronteer I have to cross before I can fully accept that people are all flawed. Unfortunately, I've no idea how to do it. If anyone knows, please let me in on the secret.

It does sadden me that to think that I've become so untrusting, but maybe I still get caught out because deep down I know that not trusting anyone would make me too cold and distant. For my part, I'm sure I'm still crap too. I try my hardest to do things I say I'll do, but I probably still owe a few people sets of Scrubs discs or other such things.

In my first year, my roomate in 2nd term appeared to be an almost polar opposite to me. We were neighbours in the first term and got on pretty well. He smoked, went out on alcohol or drug binges and hardly ever got up for lectures. At the end of the term he told me that I'd inspired him because I always got up for my 9am lectures no matter how battered I'd been the night before and I always tried to help him out. I didn't understand at the time cos I thought "I inspired you so much, you didn't even try to get out of bed or remember to take your room key out with you". After that term I saw a lot less of him which I'm sad about now as he was a very interesting character. But I realised that we were more alike than most people perhaps realised. The was a time when he pulled me to one side and said "mate, do you think I'm a dick?" He went on to explain that every now and again he suddenly got the feeling that all his friends didn't like him at all and that he needed reassuring that it wasn't the case. Several years later I realised that I get those same feelings - maybe not that all my friends don't like me, but things along those lines. I guess all I can conclude is that every decision I've ever made - from deciding how much work to do to deciding what to have for dinner - has made up who I am. My decisions have shaped my personality and how I act and I have to trust that people will like me because of who I am and I should stop looking for people to validate my choices.

My problem with...data

A while ago I wrote a piece on how the internet will become more important in our lives. Today I'm going to rant about how this future is being denied to us by the providers. Back when we got broadband in 2003, the standard package was 512kbs (9 times faster than dial up and 1/20th the speed of our uni connection). A few months later, BT enabled speeds of up to 2mbs (1/5th uni speeds). To get this though, not only did you have to live close to your telephone exchange, but you had to shell out £40/month. Speed came with a price, but if you were happy to have a (still quick) slower service you could still get all the data you wanted. Now times have changed, 8mbs is standard in the UK and local loop unbundling has seen the start of adsl2+ and speeds of upto 24mbs. ISPs are now quite happy to give you as much speed as you want, but it comes at a price. They have set caps on how much data you can access. Some of the most stingy limits are only 2gb (including most of the so called "free broadband schemes that have appeared). That sounds like a lot (especially to a dial-up user), but consider that you can download this amount in a little over half an hour with an 8mbs connection and it starts to look small. Things like graphics rich sites have become more prevelant as speeds increased and once things like Skype and streaming video and music are factored in, 2gb is pointless. When ipTV launches, it's going to be pretty costly.

One of the biggest revolutions that will happen in the next few years is mobile internet access on mobile phones. Back in 2000, the mobile companies launched WAP to much hype. Internet on the move - amazing! until you realised that the low rez screens, stupidly low amount of content and slow access rates made it all pointless. Now we're have proper access - smartphones integrate full web browsers that allow access to all the internet, operators are obliged to get over 80% of the UK fully covered by 3G by the end of next year and HSDPA (3.5G) has already been launched allowing speeds of upto 3.5mbs (T-mobile have pledged to increase this to 20mbs by 2010). Remeber that these phones can be plugged into laptops and used as modems, so getting your PC onto the web will be possible where ever 3G signal is available. This would make expensive city wide wifi or WIMAX networks pointless. Sounds fantastic right? Unfortunately, the mobile companies don't are limiting access (or at least making it very expensive) without adding a data package, the costs per mb are pretty rediculous - £4/mb on Orange! For 3G data access you're looking at £20/month on top of your line rental. On Orange, the unlimited 3G data package costs a whopping £75/month. Surely a better way to encourage people to use these services is to include a small allowence in the tarrif? T-mobile recently launched flext - a scheme where your rental buys you credit which can be spent on minutes, text and sms as you see fit - surely it would be easy to add data transfer to this so people could check their emails without getting ripped off? There are rumours that 3 are about to launch a rival tarrif makes me hopeful that they allow some data usage (I think their tarrifs allow 5mb/month anyway), but 3 still don't allow access to the full internet.
The biggest problem is that the mobile operators are still realing from the massive fees they paid out in 2000 to obtain their 20 year 3G licences. £22.4 billion was paid out (only about £4 billion was expected). Of course, the roll out didn't happen for years and in the meantime 2G prices went through the roof. Handsets at the time weren't capable enough to provide decent net access to 3G was launched around the idea of video calling - something that completely failed to catch on. nealy 1/3 of the contract has passed and 3G phones are still in the minority.

All in all, the future is within our grasp - the infrastructure is rolling out all the time and new HSDPA handsets are being launched. It's just whether we're prepared to pay for it or not.