Posts on Morgan Bye

The Loneliness of Leadership

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:30:00 -0400

There’s an old adage that it’s lonely at the top. It’s usually reserved for fame, power, and celebrity. But it applies just as much to org charts.

The internal cost of responsibility

Responsibility doesn’t just mean making decisions - it means carrying the consequences quietly.

As an individual contributor (IC), uncertainty is often offloaded - usually by escalating to your manager. But as the manager, you are the escalation. Even an innocuous request for advice means you’re now aware - and the responsibility lands back on you.

Ideas are cheap

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 17:00:00 -0400

There’s a common belief in creative industries that ideas are hard. They aren’t. Any schmuck off the street can have 20 ideas on any topic without trying.

No. The problem has been, and always will be, good ideas.

Good ideas are brief. Fleeting. Fragile.

Good ideas are crushed by a boss’s dramatic pause. They evaporate in an awkward silence.

Good ideas need time and space to settle, take root, grow.

The Leadership Failure of Low-Ball Offers

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 18:00:00 -0500

Interviewing is a Muscle

Interviewing is a skill - and skills, like muscles, atrophy if they go unused. You never want to find yourself in a position where you need to perform, only to realize your edge has blunted.

I advise all my mentees to interview a few times a year. It keeps your tactical skills sharp, but more importantly, it calibrates your internal compass. It’s easy to let minor office grievances feel like deal-breakers until a fresh interview shows you what a real red flag looks like.

The Efficiency Paradox: A Post-Mortem of a Success

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:00:00 -0500

The Demo and the Drop

It was supposed to be a success story. I did the impossible - again. This time: an entire agentic LLM workflow, test harness, and evaluation framework, all wrapped in a polished interface for a non-technical client.

The demo went perfectly. The client smiled. “Can’t wait to see where this goes.”

Then, I stopped sharing my screen. I silently whispered thanks to whatever merciful Gods had presided over the last hour, and I left the sales team to “bring it home” with their insights slides-the ones I had finished ten minutes before the call.

The Paradox of Control

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0500

The last release failed.

Not catastrophically, but enough to spook everyone. Three micro-services: two gracefully rolled back, one stubbornly dragging its feet.

The response was immediate and predictable: “We need more control.”

A single end-of-sprint release was declared the only solution. Everything bundled together and neatly tagged. Nothing shipping without explicit approvals. The old rituals return.

It’s the paradox of control - every time something breaks, we tighten our grip. But software rewards trust, feedback, iteration, speed. Process adds friction and, once added, can never be removed.

Addition

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 16:00:00 -0500

No startup begins life with a thousand-page HR policy.

In the beginning, there is no HR. No compliance team. No handbook. Policy can be summarized as:

don’t be a dick

And for a while, the “don’t be a dick” rule works.

Until one day, someone is an asshole.

Strictly speaking, being an asshole isn’t explicitly covered by the “don’t be a dick” rule. So now we need a “don’t be an asshole” rule as well.

2025 review - health & fitness

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

The most surprising thing I’ve learned about health and fitness this year shouldn’t be surprising at all.

Training plans work. You just have to actually follow them.

Historically, that’s been my problem.

I’ve always been deeply competitive with myself. If I showed up to a session (especially something hard) I felt like I owed it everything. If I went out for a run and wasn’t dying at the end, then what was the point? Had I really done anything at all?

2025 review - relationships

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:30:00 -0500

Switching Fuel at Altitude

I think 2025 is the year I stopped trying so damn hard.

Not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down way. More like the quiet, unsettling realization that the strategies that once worked - the ones that got me off the launchpad - were no longer fit for the altitude I was flying at.

The fuel that got me here was powerful. Explosive. Effective. It was also toxic.

For a long time, “just work harder” carried me through. It solved problems. It bought credibility. It covered gaps - mine and other people’s. But this year, a couple of events slapped me hard enough that I couldn’t deny the truth anymore: that fuel source was starting to poison everything around it.

2025 review - health (original)

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0500

The most surprising thing I’ve learned about health and fitness this year shouldn’t be surprising at all.

Training plans work. You just have to follow the plan.

Historically, that’s been my problem.

I’ve always been deeply competitive with myself. If I was going to do a thing, I was sure as hell going to do the thing.

Intervals and long runs were particular nemeses of mine - if I wasn’t hunched over and dying by the end, then did I really go for a run?

2025 review - career

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500

2025 felt like a long time in the making. There was no cinematic reveal, no sudden breakthrough - just the convergence of things that had been running in parallel for years.

I was finally awarded the job title I’d been chasing for three-ish years. Long enough that, by the time it was rubber-stamped, it had lost most of its meaning. It didn’t feel like a finish line so much as permission. Permission to stop auditioning. Permission to take up a bit more space. Permission to trust my gut.

2025 review - The best of

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 16:30:00 -0500

Returning for my third year of self-reflection in this incarnation of the blog, is the 2025 annual review. As with previous year’s, I’m using Chris Williamson’s template as inspiration and customizing it as we go.

Rapid fire, best of

Best Surprise
Having words from my blog quoted back to me

Best Meal
Beef Wellington at Bar George for my birthday

Coolest New Experience
Training with a training plan, and first time training with a power meter - it really does change the game. But sea kayaks up a fjord was a pretty close second.

In praise of juniors

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:45:00 -0400

Everyone on LinkedIn is convinced a senior dev with a ChatGPT license is the future of software engineering. Meanwhile?
Brilliant juniors are sitting at home sending out hundreds of applications into the void.

This is wild to me.

We’re living through the best junior talent market in a decade - hungry, undervalued, and wildly overlooked. Yet most companies behave like the only valid engineer is someone who’s already done the job five times before.

Do the thing

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:30:00 -0400

Just do the thing. Just start. Stop reading. Go do it. Do it now.

Talking about the thing is not doing the thing.

Reading the docs is not doing the thing.

Collecting more specifications is not doing the thing.

Writing a design doc is not doing the thing.

Building a detailed roadmap is not doing the thing.

Crafting beautiful Jira tickets is not doing the thing.

Having meetings about the thing is not doing the thing.

How to hire well: what actually matters (beyond skills & stacks)

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 17:10:00 -0400

Last time, we talked about my “baby CTO” and the three simple rubrics I use to decide whether we should hire someone at all:

The Three Questions – Can they do the job? Do they want the job? Can I work with them?
Hell Yeah or No – If it’s not a full body yes, it’s a no.
No Sevens – Rate them 1–10, but you can’t use 7. Force an opinion.

Those tools help you avoid obvious mistakes.

Hire like a CTO: three simple rubrics to save you from 'maybes'

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:45:00 -0400

Little did I know going in that I was about to give my TED talk.

It all started innocently enough - a reference check for one of my mentees who’s been in my orbit for four years or more. I connected to the Google Meet thinking that a full 30 minutes would leave a lot of dead air after “if I were starting my own thing, I’d be taking them with me.”

Clap for me, idiots

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 15:30:00 -0400

Come on, old man.
We’ve done this a million times before.
I can’t believe we let them talk us into another one of these.

In principle, sure - quarterly all-hands sound like a good idea.
A chance to rally the troops, celebrate success.

But really?
We’re so close to retirement. Do I really need to keep showing up for these?

Shut up. Yes, you do. You can’t afford to retire. If you wanted peace and quiet, why’d you marry the second wife?
Five more years.
Five more years, and then we’re done.

The Absence of Outrage

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 09:30:00 -0400

Having just returned from vacation, I’ve been struggling to find the level of outrage I usually associate with work.

Maybe it’s post-holiday calm. Maybe it’s the slow realization that leadership only moves once the building’s on fire. Either way, the engine that used to run on frustration suddenly feels empty.

The Mountain and the Meeting

A month ago, an old friend and I made our annual escape to somewhere remote. We rose at dawn, woken by birdsong and the kind of silence you only find far from cell service. The hut had no food or coffee - only gas-station foraging sustaining us on the drive to the trailhead. Before the sun cleared the treeline, we were already climbing: four hours of steady scrambling across rock face. The climb itself was meditative - simple in its goal, devilishly challenging in its execution.

You deserve better

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 15:45:00 -0400

This post was originally written in July 2016 but was never published. Nearly a decade later it still rings true. I revisit it now for anyone still in grad school, thinking about life outside.

“You don’t climb mountains without a team… you don’t climb mountains without being prepared… you never climb a mountain on accident.”

– Mark Udall, US Senator

Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

Every day you go to work. You don’t just give your time, your attention… you give a piece of yourself. Sometimes you work late and lose track of time because you’re too invested. The people who love you say you work too much. They don’t get it.

So, you wanna be a team lead

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 09:00:00 -0400

There comes a point in most developer’s career when you’ll start wondering whether or not to become a team lead.

Maybe you’ve received some positive feedback that you’re good with people. Maybe your team has been without a leader for a while, and you’ve naturally stepped into more of a technical lead role.

But there’s still a part of you that’s hesitant.

Until now, you’ve spent years honing your craft - not just being a good developer, but a great one. You’ve reached a point where coding mostly comes naturally. It doesn’t require the same effort it once did. Maybe there’s even a little prestige and ego involved. A reputation as the developer that people want on their team.

The line between solid and senior team lead

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 09:00:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what “seniority” really means for team leads and engineering managers.

I’ve been around long enough now that several of my mentees - people I helped grow into team leads and supported through their first rocky quarters - are now coming into their own. They’ve run enough projects, seen enough team dynamics, and navigated enough delivery cycles that they’re starting to ask: what actually separates a good team lead from someone recognized as a senior one?

God, I love recruiting

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:00:00 -0400

Time for a change

The latest performance review confirms what you already knew. There is no future for you here. No vindication. No recognition. Only a quiet death of a thousand cuts.

Your manager used the word “alignment” seven times. That was new.

You close the tab.

You open LinkedIn, and force yourself to the icon you’ve always tried to ignore. The unknown lands marked only as Jobs. You tell yourself it’s just to look.

Dear Morgan - Do I reward heroics?

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:00:00 -0400

Dear Morgan

I’m near the end of a project, and time is tight—we haven’t even started one of the major deliverables.
I submitted a PR with a couple of workarounds. Not elegant, but it works.

A senior data scientist (who’s built most of the codebase) isn’t happy.

He’s proposed changes.
A lot of changes.

I explained: I’m fine with making updates, but we’ll need to restructure some things.

Instead, he completely rewrote it.
And introduced new problems in the process - including a tangle of circular dependencies.

Finished without failure

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 09:45:00 -0500

It was supposed to be a success story.

I did the impossible - again. This time an entire agentic LLM workflow, test harness, evaluation framework… Which of course are mere hand-wavy details for a non-technical client that loves a pretty, little web app.

I demoed the thing to the client. They were impressed. The imperceptible nod of approval. An executive gave their highest praise “Can’t wait to see where this goes.”

All this and still not happy

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 13:00:00 -0400

A return to basecamp

I came down from the mountain, and no one noticed.

The ambulance-chasers had moved on to fresher crises.
The summit-chasers were packing for their own ascent.
Basecamp hummed with quiet, competent people doing what they always do -
finalizing decks, rehearsing talking points, massaging the roadmap like a tired muscle.
Business as usual. As if nothing had changed. As if no one ever fell.

A few veterans raised their eyes.
The small, imperceptible nod of recognition amongst those broken inside.

The mountain didn't care

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 07:45:00 -0400

It didn’t end with a bang.
No applause. No exhale.

Just the sudden quiet of being no longer needed.

You were needed.
Every hour of every day.
Until you weren’t.

All that remained was the silence.
Deafening.

Another problem solved.
And with it, your utility.

You didn’t need flowers.
But you expected something.
A moment.
An exhale.
Relief from a weight lifted.

Instead… only a void,
where a crisis used to be.

They’ll ask why I didn’t swim harder

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 14:00:00 -0400

Morgan is handling it

I’ve stopped telling people their systems are on fire.

I used to explain root causes. Map timelines. Build neat little visuals to show just how thoroughly everything was broken.

Now I just say:

“I’ve got it.”

That’s what they want to hear. Not how bad. Not how broken. No details. Plausible deniability.

“Don’t worry. I spoke to Morgan - he’s handling it.”

And I am.

Who cares if:

Buy, don’t build... then customize

Mon, 26 May 2025 10:00:00 -0400

Our business is unique

Here at SynergetIQ, we believe in innovation, synergy, and the kind of efficiency that requires at least three middle managers to define. Our customers are visionary thought-leaders, and so are we. That’s why we refuse to use software that hasn’t been manically optimized and surgically grafted onto our unique, ever-shifting business needs.

So when the VP of Sales announced we needed a new CRM—one that could support:

Intern-First - Disrupting Experience

Sat, 17 May 2025 10:00:00 -0400

The Problem with Experience

I’ll admit it: we didn’t set out to become an intern-only engineering org. Like most companies, we thought experience mattered. We believed in mentorship, in technical leadership, in “building a strong bench”. We kept hiring senior engineers, but nothing changed. Over time, we noticed a pattern. The more experienced someone became, the more they questioned things. They slowed us down with concerns about quality, scale, even ethics.

Hire More Off-Shore Teams

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0400

In today’s fast-paced digital world, nothing screams “strategic innovation” like splitting your development team across eight time zones and three language barriers.

Local talent might understand your business domain, your users, even your product — but offshore teams offer something far more valuable: plausible deniability.

Hiring your first off-shore team isn’t a decision — it’s a rite of passage. A highly visible investment in a solution no one intends to understand. A statement of commitment without the burden of results. A performance of seriousness.

Consultants should be a lot more expensive

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 16:00:00 -0400

There’s a common misconception in the industry that consultants are expensive. This is, of course, false.

Consultants are not expensive. Not nearly expensive enough.

You see, the goal of a consultant is to be a 10x engineer. Not in the sense of writing ten times more code, or moving ten times as many Jira tickets.

No, the real goal is to make your team feel ten times more productive simply by being around. To dramatically whoosh into a room, say something profound, yet slightly confusing, then disappear into the mist before anyone asks a follow-up question.

2025-03-30

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 09:41:00 -0400

French

I think that I’ve reached a new milestone. I had my first dream in French. Well actually, I distinctly remember having two dreams in French last night. Not that I remember anything about the dreams themselves, or even how coherent the use of French actually was. But this is a big landmark in my brain accepting that this language might actually be a thing. It’s a landmark that I’ve never achieved in the various dabblings I’ve had with other languages. It really feels like my brain is taking this serious as a thing.

2025-03-23

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:09:35 -0400

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and just checked in, despite all good intentions. Nearly every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, I wake up intending to make a coffee and write a little summary of the week.

Today, however, I suddenly looked up, and nearly two and a half hours had slipped by. I caught myself thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?” Instantly frustrated that I’d let YouTube sneak back into my life—and not even under the guise of French immersion. No, I was just watching trash: content with just enough happening to keep the dopamine firing.

DataProc - a (near) complete guide

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:30:00 -0500

This post is the summation of months of debugging and optimizing ML and AI workflows on Google Cloud DataProc clusters using Cloud Composer / Apache Airflow for orchestration.

If you would prefer to jump directly to a chapter:

Otherwise, hold on tight, because here we go…

DataProc - Passing runtime variables

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

Passing runtime variables in DataProc and Airflow

Introduction

Using environment variables to pass secrets and configurations at runtime is a DevOps best practice that enhances security, flexibility, and maintainability. Hard-coding sensitive values in source code increases the risk of leaks, while environment variables keep secrets out of version control systems. This also enables dynamic configuration, allowing jobs to adapt across different environments (e.g., DEV, UAT, PRD) without modifying the application code.

DataProc - Cluster startup optimization

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

DataProc cluster startup optimization

Introduction

Cluster startup time is a crucial factor in DataProc job efficiency. When a DataProc cluster is provisioned, worker nodes are allocated from a Compute Instance pool. The provisioning time depends on machine type availability in the compute region. Larger memory machines typically take longer to provision due to lower availability in the data center.

DataProc - Cluster configuration

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

DataProc cluster configuration

Introduction

In many DataProc projects, jobs are executed under nearly identical conditions — they typically have low memory and CPU requirements and access the same data sources.

DataProc - Variables

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

Passing environment variables in DataProc and Composer

Executive summary

A common design pattern for orchestrating AI and ML pipelines leverages Google Cloud DataProc to execute Spark-based workflows, offering scalable compute resources for distributed data processing.

DataProc - Understanding environments: shared vs local

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

Understanding environments: shared vs local

Conceptual overview of Airflow and Spark environments

Google Cloud Composer, a managed Apache Airflow, orchestrates workflows using Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). DAGs define a sequence of tasks and their dependencies, ensuring reliable workflow execution.

DataProc - Everything You Need to Know

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:00:00 -0500

This post is part of a comprehensive series to DataProc and Airflow. You can read everything in this one monster piece, or you can jump to a particular section

Everything you need to know about DataProc

Understanding Airflow and Spark in Depth

Google Cloud Composer is a managed version of Apache Airflow, an orchestration tool for defining, scheduling, and monitoring workflows. Workflows in Airflow are structured as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), which define a series of tasks and their dependencies.

2025-01-14: Surgery day

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Today was the day when we were to find out whether our youngest would need brain surgery.

Just getting there

We left home around 930 for a 1030 appointment, a 20 minute drive away. After 45 minutes of queuing in traffic we were nearly on hospital premises. For reasons unknown, in the brand new hospital, the patient parking is on the entirely opposite side of the site to the entrance, and you have to go past the ambulance, patient transfer and taxi drop-off areas to get there - each of which is frequently double parked and blocks everything. Then once you get past all of that, the entrance and exit are both on the same 3-way stop. Meaning that everyone trying to get into the car park has to expertly weave in-between everyone trying to leave the car park. Then, the car itself is horribly designed so that going between levels is a curved ramp into on-coming traffic. Meaning that if there’s traffic trying to get out of the car park, everybody trying to get in, is also blocked. It’s a functional disaster.

2025-01-13: Autism assessment

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Where to begin with this one? What a waste of time.

When our big guy got assessed, we did sox privately in a different province - so mileage may vary. But in BC, a few thousand dollars bought us nearly 5 hours of assessment over the course of two afternoons and a 40-page report to show for it.

This time around with the little guy, we’re doing it through the public health system in Quebec. We already know that any diagnosis won’t really change very much. He’ll never be considered serious enough to make the top of any waitlists for treatment - and as his brother is already in the English school system, he already qualifies. The only thing that comes to mind - for me anyway - is that a diagnosis will stay with him for his entire school career, so in college he’ll be able to get extra time for his exams.

Annual review 2024 - 4) Weights, weight & supplements

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:00:00 -0500

When not running, I’m lifting weights… and watching my weight too

Annual review 2024 - 3) Running

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 10:45:00 -0500

Running has increasingly become a big part of my life and identity. Here’s my thoughts on running this year.

Annual review 2024 - 2) Best memories

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:30:00 -0500

Rapid fire, what were the best moments, people and places of the year?

Annual review 2024 - 1) Overview

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 16:30:00 -0500

Why write an annual summary, and what do I hope to achieve?

EOY fallout

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000

This week my attention has almost entirely been focused upon the business end of year performance reviews and the calamitous fallout that has ensued.

I just simply cannot believe the stupidity of it all. It’s stupid to the point where, I’m not entirely sure if it isn’t all self-sabotaging in nature - and the true nature is to either (a) shake things up or (b) run things into the ground.

EOY performance review

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

3 working weeks ago I had my annual performance review on a Thursday. The Thursday after (last week) the company had its quarterly in-person all-hands meeting. In the week just past, all of my attention has almost entirely been focused upon the fallout of others’ annual performance reviews. And so, with everything that has gone on, I find myself reflecting back upon my own performance review and what went so terribly wrong.

Mini Q2 review

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve actually sat down and committed keyboard to screen. It’s not that the intention hasn’t been there - it has been, several times. Well most weeks if I’m honest, but I have this nasty habit where the usual time slot of Sunday mornings which is typically my best time to write. Instead of just picking up the laptop and committing to the thing, instead I end up reaching for the iPad and then YouTube consumes my life. Largely with a selection of vaguely educational things that have just enough interest to click upon, but never of sufficient detail that I feel like I’m left with any information that I didn’t have before going in.

Un nouveau départ

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 19:15:39 -0400

Alors, je suis ici. Un nouveau départ. J’ai eu quelques nouveaux départs sur ce site au fil des ans.

Mais, celui-ci est différent. Cette fois, je vais essayer d’ecrire en français tous les nuits. Ou du moins, plusieurs nuits.

Est-ce que ce sera parfait. Non. Pas du tout. Mais, j’espère que penser en français, même un tous les soirs améliorera considérablement mon français - même si je dois garder Google à proximité pour ma traduction.

2024-03-31

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:00:00 +0000

It’s Sunday night and I sit on the boy’s bedroom floor to write this evening. It’s a long weekend thanks to Easter so it’s day three with the family and the cracks are well and truly starting to show. And that’s before we get through Monday with no school or daycare.

I’m going to learn from today though. Whilst the day didn’t start out so bad, I’ve been pretty miserable for most of the day. Which is odd. Well odd isn’t the word. As I sit here now, it’s mostly frustration.

2024-03-23

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 12:00:00 +0000

I am tired. Exhausted even. Both physically and mentally.

I would really like some escapism right about now. I think that this has been my problem ever since escaping to Mexico back in September. Now I’m aware of what is out there. Previously, I just had my head down and was charging forward. The stark contrast reminds me that the survival on adrenaline and caffeine is not how it has to be.

2024-03-09

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve been slacking off a little bit in recent weeks with actually sitting down to write. As is usual a little of life gets in the way of blocking a good thing but the important thing is that I’m back and making an effort to get back in the habit. In truth, it helps that I’ve returned to my regular schedule of sitting on the edge of the pool whilst the big one takes his swimming class which gives me a few moments to reflect without interruption.

Eight Sleep Pod & Cover - Why I returned it

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

This week has been punctuated by two entirely separate and yet equally frustrating streams.

Background

As a nerd, and someone that was deeply involved in the biohacking space for a few years, my OCD has enjoyed trying to optimize unnecessary parts of my life. In particular, as someone who has always struggled to fall asleep and suffered occasional bouts of insomnia sleep has been a fun target.

It started with some melatonin, moved through lamps, screen filters, blue light glasses and more.

2024-02-03

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

The inevitable finally happened. For the last week or two I’ve been hanging around a new project at work, keeping half an eye on it in anticipation of me having to step in at some point. Invariably, the timelines have moved up and my “one day in a few weeks” turned out to be Friday.

I’m not sure if it’s on balance a good thing or not. I’ve previously complained about some of my projects having a lack of real world application or a meaningful social impact. Well this one for sure, knows the socks off of those complaints. This is a scheduling of nurses to ensure sufficient coverage of the neonatal intensive care ward. If you can’t feel good about making sure the newborns are properly looked after then maybe all hope truly is lost.

Annual review 2023 - 6) Personal growth

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:06 +0000

This post is part of my annual review process for 2023. This year, I’ve committing to writing a more comprehensive review, but to do so I’ve structured myself into particular areas that I think are important to cover.

To read more,

Personal Growth

Personal growth felt like it took a bit of a bit in 2023. I’m not entirely sure if it entirely declined so much as just stagnated.

Annual review 2023 - 5) Health

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:05 +0000

To read more,

Health

Weight and running

2023 will ultimately be marked down as another year, just like 2022, where I failed to loose the weight I wanted to. I started the year at the 100 kg mark, after a catastrophic December.

Annual review 2023 - 4) Relationships

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:04 +0000

To read more,

Relationships

Annual review 2023 - 3) Career

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:03 +0000

To read more,

Career

2023 was an uncertain year for me professionally. On most traditional metrics, it was likely a resounding success. I delivered my projects, the clients were happy and I am well liked within my company.

Annual review 2023 - 2) Best of

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:02 +0000

To read more,

Best memories

Best Surprise Axe throwing for my birthday

Best Meal Gourmet, fine-dining steak experience in Mexico. The best steak of my life.

Annual review 2023 - 1) Overview

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

I was recently going back through my blog over the years, and I read through my annual review of 2010. It was quite an enlightening little snapshot into my life at the time. A reflection of all that was important to me in that moment, and where I saw myself going into the new year.

I instantly regretted not sticking with the tradition and keeping a little time capsule for all the years in-between.

2024-01-27

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

It finally happened. The grandparents have left the country and I have to say that this time around it has been surprisingly underwhelming. In times prior there has been some sort of relief or change in temperature. I remember that last time they left the apartment felt very quiet and empty without them around. Not so this time.

Perhaps, I don’t have the relief because I already know that come September that they shall return and having a date means I don’t have any illusion that it might not happen.

2024-01-20

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

For the second week you find me poolside. My late 2023 habit of writing my weekly entry court-side of basketball practice seems to have well and truly supplanted by swim classes. No matter. What matters is having a few moments strung together to put some semi coherent thoughts together. Though admittedly it is much hotter, humid and noisy than basketball ever was.

In a short hour or so I’ll be taking the good lady wife to the airport as she departs to Los Angeles for a week long conference- with any luck I should see her again on Friday night before the kids go to bed. But we’ll see. International flights and congestion around the airport are always challenging to predict.

2024-01-11

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Mortality

A podcast has had me reflecting recently. Maybe journaling in this semi public venue where anyone with the way-with-all could seek it out and read along with my life. Well, is that such a selfless task?

Is it perhaps just another way of trying to create a corpus. A body of works. Renown in some form. Which, when all is said and done, isn’t that just another vein attempt at immortality and trying to somehow live on after my own passing.

2023-12-24

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

I may have missed my weekly journalling slot last week, I had gotten in the habit of simple using the time when the big guy was at basketball practice to sit down and pen some thoughts on my phone. However, with the end of basketball, I suddenly had a Sunday without the regular routine. I had all the intentions of sitting down and still finding some time to write, but then life happened. Although reflecting back upon it now, I’m not quite sure what was more important. I seem to recall that my parents were off on their wedding anniversary weekend, so I didn’t even have my regular Sunday Skype with them.

Dumpster diving & retrieval of Wordpress content

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:28:00 -0500

Background

For reasons that are stupid, I’ve lost my hosted Wordpress website. The TLDR version is that the webhost keeps doing something. The PHP version keeps changing, the MySQL database corrupts, the Wordpress backend auto-updates either via a webhost script or within Wordpress itself and then corrupts.

Either way, enough is enough. I don’t actually use Wordpress for all of the bells and whistles. I don’t actually use it like a dynamic site, and I don’t need a relational database powering the backend. What I mostly use it as, is a static file store. In work projects, I’ve been using the Python Sphinx library for a long time to have project documentation being automatically built by the CI pipeline after a commit is merged into the develop branch.

2023-12-10

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

No denying it now, winter is officially here. Last Sunday the snow kept coming and we awoke to around 40cm on the ground. As expected it took the city a little time to deal with the first snow of the year.

The little guy too has also struggled with going back to being taken to daycare in the trailer with the big tyres rather than upon my shoulders. Mentally, it hasn’t felt like an encasement yet. Not sure if that’s because the brutal January temperatures have kicked in yet or with ever year that ticks by I’m a bit more prepared for what is to come. With winter tyres on the car and the right selection of jackets it isn’t so bad.

2023-12-03

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Looks like the snow is with us. A strong wind from the north is bringing with it a little snow. The weather forecast has a prediction of 15cm this evening. Unavoidable I suppose, but still no less depressing. I think the seasonal mood is kicking in. I thought I was doing okay with the cold and the dark this year, but the snow is an undeniable sign that winter is here for the next few months.

2023-11-26

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Sunday, Bloody Sunday as U2 famously sang. Or is it sung? Not that this Sunday has anything to do with political killings- more just a sentiment of “oh another of these”.

Family

The good lady wife is currently in Vancouver with her bridesmaids as part of her birthday weekend extravaganza, which necessitates me disproportionately picking up the burden of childcare. However, in this instance I’ve played the game smarter than usual and have largely stacked the weekend with activities.

2023-11-20

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Midweek journaling! Look at this! Truthfully, between meetings over the last day or two I’ve taken the time to investigate a new framework for my website. None of the bells and whistles. Just a minimal barrier between writing and getting something posted.

I think historically this has been my barrier. When my grandmother was still alive I made a conscious effort to use my correspondence with her as a way of keeping an account on my life. However, it always created a feeling of it being an event. If I’m going to go to the hassle of committing to words on paper, envelopes, international stamps and mailboxes then I’m not going to do it for anything less than something substantive.

2023-11-19

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Tool

I sit here, this Sunday morning with the last Tool album on. It’s funny how some bands can take a 13 year hiatus and yet have the discography feel seamless. The reason of course is that I’m going to see them live tonight. I missed them back in Nottingham around ‘06 on the 10,000 days tour - which I would have loved. But unfortunately student finances meant that I couldn’t afford the £60 or so for the ticket. And then there was the hiatus, so I’d mostly written them off as one of the those bands that I was never going to be able to see.

2023-11-12

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Funny how this daily journaling has deteriorated. Finding ten minutes a day to be alone with my thoughts and without distraction is surprisingly difficult. Nevertheless this ritual of coming to basketball practice and writing once a week whilst the big guy plays has become something of a ritual. And you know what, low expectations is often the secret to starting any new habit so the fact that I’ve managed to maintain a weekly practice of journaling is something that I’m quietly proud of.

2023-11-05

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 12:00:00 -0400

I slept well last night. After Friday night’s excess of drinking left me feeling pretty empty a solid night was on the docket, but these days a good night of sleep often leaves me groggy. I don’t quite know what to accredit it to, but I don’t recall this ever being a thing until the post university years.

Then again maybe this is selection bias. When I watch my little ones in the morning sometimes they wake up with the joys of spring and sometimes they’ll be a right old grump for an hour or more.

2023-10-30

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another day of revisiting this daily writing! LOL! I think it’s been 10 days since the last time I managed to write anything. But in my defence life happened and I got busy again.

I could talk about the steering committee with the big client that happened today. Or perhaps I could talk about the request for proposal from the supermarket that had me design a whole five year digital transformation in the space of five days.

2023-10-22

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another Sunday morning and another opportunity to be sat with my thoughts, as the rain pours and the eldest attempts to play basketball at the Y. I say attempts, as his hand/eye coordination is still astoundingly bad. During one of his assessments this week he managed to catch only 3 of 6 balls thrown to him, which for a 7 year old I find a little shocking. At this point I feel like I already had a set of juggling balls and was embarrassing myself. But that’s why we’re here. Getting him to practice this stuff in a fun environment is exactly the sort of thing that gets the reps in, that will make it easier in the long run. But then, I also remember as a kid playing catch with soft balls and my dad a lot.

2023-10-19

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Didn’t quite make it to writing a journal entry last night. Truth is I was doing a different sort of writing until around 9 o’clock in the evening. And at that point, I had to put it down because my eyes were going square.

But I’m a little nervous about this request for proposal. It’s worth an absolute boat load of money and could unlock another five years of engagement with this client. It would be very cool. And my ego would love to have another big win placed on my shoulders.

2023-10-17

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Well today I didn’t do anywhere near the amount of writing that I had set out to do. One of the clients that I had previously worked on has put out a request for proposal out. However, somewhat unreasonable despite this modern day and age, apparently these require hard copies to be submitted. Which requires type setting, a design team and an actual print shop. All of which takes no less than five business days - which doesn’t sound unreasonable until you find out that we have only two weeks to respond to the RFP.

2023-10-14

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Urgh! Here we are again. Another disgusting mood I can’t shake. I’m starting to think that there’s something seriously wrong with the way that I’m doing weekends.

I mean it’s no real coincidence, how many data points do I really need? Every week is sort of the same. I spend Wednesday and Thursday night looking forward to a drink but abstaining. And then when I get to Friday night I reach a certain level of “ah fuck it”.

2023-10-13

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Okay so I’m high, and about 60 seconds ago when I remembered/ thought it was a good idea to journal, I thought I had an amazing opening line.

But unfortunately, what with the aforementioned high-ness it seems to have passed me by.

Today wasn’t a very productive day. I’m stuck in a challenging place where I don’t have the energy or momentum to really be involved in the project. But to get the energy requires the project to have some momentum. And having enough momentum really requires the energy to go and look for some small wins. Somewhere. Literally anything to capitalize upon.

2023-10-12

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

So where are we at today? I don’t know really. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a bit of mental prejudice against Thursdays. A long way from the start of the week, but without the excitement of Friday for the weekend.

Perhaps I’m just stuck instead in the same old mental paths. Back when I was in grade 10 Thursday afternoons were back-to-back German (which I was terrible at, and with a teacher I hated) and advanced math (with a teacher I hated). Maybe that grind of a year was enough to have me stuck in rut ever since.

2023-10-11

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another day, another dollar. Getting back into the office is good for me. Good for my mental health at least. Not so good for my general productivity. It’s an interesting thing being old enough to remember working in an office which required a physical presence every day.

Leaving aside for a moment commuting in general. I can’t believe how much time I used to spend every day just moving back and forth between different boxes with internet connections. With hindsight now it seems ridiculous. I remember having to go my then boss after the first was born with tears in my eyes asking for unpaid leave for the sake of taking care of my newborn and struggling wife because the notion of SSHing into work from home was just unthinkable. And even then, I was providing time logs of connections to prove my hours.

2023-10-10

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 12:00:00 -0400

A little bit of an extended hiatus. It just goes to show how fragile some of these do-good habits are. Like meditation, language learning or healthy eating. The only way I have stuck with any of them is through a sheer grit and determination. Not truly because I actually ever incorporated these things into my like. They never became autonomous.

I bit like flossing. I’ve had the dentist lecture me incessantly for a decade or more and only in the last two times I’ve been to the dentist they didn’t mention it. Either because the flossing was finally self evident or perhaps the other horrors of my mouth didn’t allow for enough air time to get through the flossing lecture as well.

2023-09-21

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Last night I took my boss out for a drink. Well strictly speaking it wasn’t “a drink”, and it wasn’t my boss so much as the boss of the whole company. Yes, perhaps out of frustration, perhaps as a hail Mary or perhaps just as a calling of a bluff I had reached out to our CEO two weeks ago and asked for some face time with him next time he was in town.

2023-09-20

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

I’m not sure if I’m actually any good at this whole journaling thing. I’ve been doing the attempted daily thing for about a month now and I’m not entirely sure what my hit rate was like. It was okay. But it was certainly far from the daily target I would’ve liked. But in the words of Meatloaf “two outta three ain’t bad”.

I think crucially it’s been enough for me to cross the inertia threshold and for it actually feel like a new habit. If I get to the end of the day and I haven’t done it yet then I feel like I’m looking for it. And that is unusual. Few things have ever gotten that far. The last notable thing that I felt my body looking for was lifting some weights. But just recently with life commitments and a focus on getting myself ready for the run, I’ve barely touched the weights and the yearning disappeared disturbingly fast. But I’m sure it will come back. It always has in the past.

2023-09-18

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Well I’m not crazy. And I’m not a dog person either.

My previous exposure to meetings that suddenly took a Francophone bent were previously of the sort where I was the sole Anglophone in the area. Today was my first lower management meeting were an Eastern European (of four languages but French is not their primary) returned from parental and the other a Québécois who had been on vacation. And both of them were privately messaging me on the side with a “WTF is this?”

2023-09-17

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Sunday night and it was a wash out. Not in the “it was wet outside” sort of way, but the excessive exposure to alcohol and a touch of CBD allowed the disease in that has been tickling my nose for the last few days. Disease kept the little one from daycare on Thursday and it’s seemingly spreading a little.

Having a sick little guy means that he’s been very insistent on sleeping in our bed. Or perhaps we’ve been so worn down that we are now powerless to resist and are just allowing his presence whereas previously I would have made a lot more effort to keep him in his own bed. Instead now I just have an excessively hot water bottle trying to climb on top, headbutt or kick out my kidneys. Glorious!

2023-09-15

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another day, another dollar. Yesterday turned out to a bit of one. It’s certainly felt like a long week this week. Enough for me to be reaching for a whisky on a Thursday night - which due immediate attention from the newly arrived in-laws about how it’s not a Friday. To which I retorted that it’s the whisky they brought from New Zealand, and it’s already Friday there.

Yes, Thursday was indeed a long day in the office. Perhaps foolish I decided to run to the office, which whilst only five and a bit km away, when you add in a backpack bouncing around with shoes, clothes and a laptop it makes for a very different experience.

2023-09-13

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Well my day in a rapper’s entourage is over and what a weird experience it was. Hilariously, I found out that there was a Rue Ryan AND an Avenue Ryan in the city some 15 km apart on different sides of the airport. So there was a hundred dollar taxi ride around a part of town I don’t usually see.

But even after a twenty something minute detour I was then so early to the VIP lounge that there was nobody there and no lights on so I wondered around a bit and bumped into security. They told me that I did in fact have the correct door but that people don’t usually arrive so early. There I am, acting like a poor person again and arriving at the airport an hour and a half before the flight time.

2023-09-12

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

I’m actually nervous this morning. I haven’t felt this way in a long time. It’s like that feeling I used to get in high school on the day of the exam. A sort of apprehension that something big is going to happen but also a quiet resolve that the work is done and there’s nothing left to do. There’s no amount of last minute cramming that is going to change anything now.

2023-09-11

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking about parenting a lot recently. Having a new puppy in my life is an odd contrast to the traditional parenting that I know. Puppies come with the all the energy, curiosity and hyperactivity that comes from a toddler on a sugar high. But at the same time, just so, so dumb in frustrating ways. Smart enough to cause trouble, to quickly get bored. But too dumb to not be constantly nearly killing themselves. Knawing through cables, attacking the bleach, eating anything on the floor.

2023-09-10

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Today I accidentally ran a top 3 half marathon time. Which isn’t all that surprising considering it was only the third time that I’ve actually completed a half. I completed a few more 18+ km runs last summer in the build up to race day. But after this summer’s subpar training and that was before I lost 5 weeks of training in worries around wisdom teeth.

In reality, I was incredibly insane today. Last Sunday night I did my first run back after over a month and struggled my way around eleven or so km. The sensible thing would have been to do 15 today. 17 or 18 next weekend and then save myself for the full 21.1 on race day.

2023-09-09

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

I’ve been thinking about friendship a little recently. I heard a story of a fraternity brothers that had known each other now for four decades. Last month, one of the brothers was taken early by a quick and painful fight with cancer. The other 4 brothers crew in and across oceans and continents to be there for the death of a man they might also an entirely lifetime ago.

After he died, the brothers - all wildly successful in their own domains - took an additional week out of their lives to close the estate, clear his home and ensure that his surviving kids would be taken care of.

2023-09-08

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Maybe it is sleep debt, maybe it is stress and adrenaline leaving the system. But either way, even after an objectively good night (so says the sleep tracker), I feel terrible.

Well not terrible per se. It’s more of a zombie like grogginess. The sort of slow thinking, “the world is too bright” kind of day that really can only be resolved with mimosas, dark glasses and a nap after a pleasant brunch.

2023-09-07

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

My skip boss used the words “I’ll see if the jet is available” today. In so few words have I rarely had such a realization that someone isn’t concerned about the pieces on the board because they are playing an entirely different game.

The context being that a client wants to bring up the EO project sign off up by a month and get all of the execs in a room - on Tuesday. Of course, last minute flights to Toronto apparently run to $1000/seat and if the whole team is going the economics on private travel suddenly start to make sense.

2023-09-06

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

What a terrible day. I genuinely haven’t felt this angry. Sustained. Through the whole day in what feels like forever. I’ve had bouts of frustration. I’ve been frustrated. But I haven’t felt a genuine anger and unjustness like this since I’ve been in Canada.

I’m not even sure, to call it anger is entirely enough. There’s just a resounding disappointment mixed in there too. Disappointment from a breach of trust.

2023-09-05

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

And with the start of September comes the summer heatwave that never happened. Temperatures have suddenly jumped into the 30s and with humidity around 90% it feels around 40. It’s the sort of weather that makes me instantly grateful for air conditioning to give me a fighting chance at sleep.

But also September brings maybe the end of the supermarket project. It’s been a bit of a rough one - and on many fronts. The project, the science, the staffing. Even when I thought I was clear of this thing, it finds a way to throw some last minute surprises at me.

2023-09-03

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

It’s before six on a Sunday morning and as I look out of the window I can see the sky start to slowly fade and lose the only black in favour of a grey/blue hue.

Why am I awake? Well, because pet ownership is not all it’s cracked up to be. The silly thing awoke me with some panicked crying and upon inspection it looks like she shat, spread it everywhere and then tried to eat the evidence. As you might image the sight and the smell was really quite something. I wouldn’t have minded so much if she hadn’t been let out of the cage only an hour earlier to then run, hide and crap on a bathroom carpet.

2023-09-01

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another excellent networking event thanks to the Avansai boys. I don’t quite know what it is that makes for a good networking night. Maybe it’s a case that I’m previously tormented by past experiences of bad events. But perhaps the mindset is different now. The last real networking events I attended were either initially when I landed in Vancouver and was desperately trying to find a job. Or they were in Vancouver when I had a job that I wasn’t enjoying and was trying to leverage the night to find something else.

2023-08-30

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Well it is coming up on two business days since I interviewed over at that finance company. I guess that means that they are not interested - or that their recruitment process is completely unlike their ultra-low latency network. Not that it matters. I’m pretty ambivalent towards the notion of a new job.

Learning a bunch of new faces, redefining my persona, my reputation all-over-again doesn’t ignite much passion in me. But I have to say, it was nice to feel the thrill of excitement that comes from interviewing. It feels a little bit like a rollercoaster crossed with a talent contest. I know that I have a safe job, so the whole experience is ultimately safe, I don’t have the desperation of needing to pay the mortgage or feed the kids. But my ego has the need to impress a stranger. And the intellectual in me enjoys being challenged to think about problems I’d never considered.

2023-08-29

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Today I cried a little. Not a lot. But a little. Just something about the day. The last few days warranted it.

Today I just had 14 consecutive hours of drilling. A constant stream of interruptions, nagging, pointless observations on the world and complaints. Having a hyperactive child at home, when I need to work, and it’s raining over my only breaks between meetings so I can’t even run him is… exhausting.

2023-08-28

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Today was the first day with a puppy in my life. I never had animals as a kid. I mean there were briefly goldfish in an old pond - but the lack of feeding and responsibilities associated with that hardly counts - especially considered the few weeks of life they had before the local heron had them as an appetizer.

I never much remember even wanting for an animal as a kid. From as early as my brother could make some sort of childcare arrangement both of my parents were working. I remember my dad’s drilling words that it would not be fair on an animal as none of us were home all day. From there my childhood mind had extrapolated that were busy almost all weekend, and that when we weren’t in school we did travel a lot. Either day trips, family trips or plain old vacation.

2023-08-27

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Looking at this it looks like I failed to write anything yesterday - which ironically I thought about a lot yesterday but didn’t act upon because I had assumed that I had already written it in the morning. Which means that with two failures in the first two weeks that makes the whole thing rather more optional than I had initially desired.

But a long weekend is as close as I get to proper vacations these days so perhaps I should cut myself a break. Even the nightmare-fuelled Duolingo owl allows for you to save a streak occasionally to allow you to not fall off the streak wagon for the sake of life happening from time to time.

2023-08-25

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 12:00:00 -0400

The Bye family (possibly annual) retreat, that I decided to call it as of about 5 seconds ago is going astoundingly well. The search criteria was to have it within about an hour of the city and to have as little fuss as possible.

Therefore to find an almost inclusive hotel across the road from a supermarket, small water park and a small amusement park seemed like just the ticket.

2023-08-23

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Another day. This is what they call writers block. Sitting down to a blank page and starting to write - regardless of whether I feel like there is anything to actually say.

Today is a Wednesday, which it is one week since I had my wisdom tooth extracted - a wonderful birthday present that I never knew I wanted. I can’t say that it has actually given me much in the way of problems. The pain has been very manageable, no infections, and it hasn’t even messed with my eating all that much.

2023-08-22

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Okay, so I’m calling it. I think I’m having a midlife crisis. I’ve avoided putting a label on it for a while, but I don’t know what else to call it.

It’s becoming arduous to keep referring to a growing sense of melancholy, dissatisfaction and low-energy as anything else. And that’s what it is. General dissatisfaction. I don’t want to call it unhappiness as such. And it’s definitely not a full blown depression. But it does feel a bit like I’m stuck.

2023-08-21

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Another day, another dollar. I’m trying a new thing today - I’m writing in the evening. We’re in that false sense of quiet stage in the lull about half an hour before bed, when the kids are largely winding down and into a screen or quietly playing solo.

I wish I could say that it was because of some well intentioned effort to optimize the writing time. But it is not that. This morning was a hard start. The motor was cold, and I practically well asleep upright on the sofa before I had a chance to make the coffee. Had the little one not been so insistent on being fed, then another hour could have easily slipped on by. But alas!

2023-08-19

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:00:00 -0400

You ever have one of those days where you realize that your brain is just a little bit broken? I’m having one of those days. The family and I were in a local discount supermarket and as we walk past the dish soap I see that an on-shelf promotion has resulted in the shelf being absolutely cleared.

My reaction to such a sight is to immediately take a photo and post it to the team’s Slack channel at work with the caption “Looks like someone priced that wrong”. It turns out, after working on supermarket projects for nearly a year just sort of breaks your brain.

2023-08-20

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Sunday morning writers block. It was going to happen sooner or later, but I assumed it would be a little later than three days into the exercise. Then again, this is sort of the whole point of the exercise - to write even when there’s nothing to write. Perhaps, just maybe, these are the days that turn out to be the most valuable. As, when there is nothing in the front of mind it actually yields an opportunity for the more important stuff to come forward.

2023-08-18

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 12:00:00 -0400

Where to begin? I recently was browsing through YouTube and got to the bottom of all of the usual suspects and started into the random suggestions. Whereupon one of the first recommendations was something with an outrageously clickbaity title of something like “I’ve been journaling for 13,000 days - here’s what I’ve learnt”

Needless to say, I watched it all 13 minutes of the thing. There was nothing new there that I haven’t seen before. But it did remind me that it is a practice that I should restart again. During my formative years of high school and college I blogged semi-regularly as a form of carthacis on a since defunct platform, called Bebo. I somehow wish I had managed to capture a dump of all of those memories before they disappeared in the digital ether, but alas, c’est la vie.

Letters to grandma - December 2020

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 12:00:00 +0000

As is often customary for this time of year, I thought it would cathartic to sit down and compose some of my thoughts and reflections upon the year that was 2020. The year, that many will wish to forget, but are likely to keep repeating for years to come. In many ways, I feel that 2020 will become the focal point of many, as yet unwritten, history books. The year that Mr. Johnson bungled the exit of the mighty British empire from the tyranny of the ill-defined continental boogeyman. The year that Mr. Trump said that 72 million voters couldn’t be wrong, whilst totally ignoring that the other guy got 7 million more. The year that ultimately showed that no matter how sophisticated our systems and cultural hierarchy have become, we are still at the mercy of the smallest things that nature can throw at us.

Letters to grandma - April 2020

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000

You join me today as we approach week 7 of quarantine. I recently discovered that quarantine actually comes from the Italian word for “forty”. Back through the Middle Ages, when Venice was the trade capital of the world, they blocked travellers from entering the city for 40 days. Instead, all new arrivals would be sent to one of the lesser islands around Venice, where, apparently 9 out of 10 people died. Taken in a historical context, we’re having an easy ride of things, but at the same time, we’ve now pushed past the original definition of quarantine — so maybe we need a new word, maybe something like “cinqotine”.

Letters to grandma - March 2020

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 12:00:00 +0000

I had hoped to sit down and actually write to you a little earlier and then maybe include my letter with your birthday card, but then life happens and things get away from us a little bit. It feels like life doesn’t really ever slow down, so much as evolves and keeps accelerating — but at least it fends off the boredom.

The big news from my end is that last week I handed my notice in at Boeing and next Friday (13th) will officially be my last day on payroll. Just as it’s bad form to speak ill of the dead, I believe that it is equally bad form to speak poorly of previous employers.

Letters to grandma - January 2020

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000

I know that I said that I’d try to write you again before the move. But sadly that didn’t happen. And as predicted, life got a little bit busy after the move so I haven’t had much time to sleep, let alone sit down and compose some thoughts to paper. But c’est la vie, better late than never, as they say.

So we packed up our lives in Vancouver way back on 4th November (I say we, but what I really mean is, the university paid for a team of burly men to put our life in boxes and then drive it across a continent). But while the movers were there, we stayed local. mostly supervised the move, whilst I took off out the way so he didn’t have to live through the trauma of watching all of his stuff get packed up into boxes. Instead we went to the science museum and played with bubbles in different viscosity liquids and built dams with Lego.

Letters to grandma - September 2019

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Mother informs me that you’ve been sending my way again, thank you for that, it means a lot to me, that after all these years (and miles) you’re still thinking of me, and increasingly, my little family. I’ll make sure that the little one gets some ice cream out of it — he seems to have taken a fondness for it recently. I think his mother might be slipping him some while I’m not looking. But last weekend, he realized that the wafer of the cone is actually edible — much to his delight. Which means that ice creams are now a full half hour affair, requiring a full change of clothes at the end. My only wish is, that in my age and cynicism, I could enjoy anything quite so much as him. C’est la vie!

Organic food is a lie

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 22:00:00 +0000

Walking into a supermarket has become a bombardment on your senses. A barrage of words and terms that sound somewhere between science-fiction and extreme farming.

Eggs come with terms with “caged” or “barn-raised” to “free-range” or “grain-fed”. Some eggs even come from happy chickens! I mean, are these eggs or aren’t they?

These eggs are whiter than my laundry detergent.

Heck! I’m suspicious every time I look at eggs in North America and they come with perfectly white shells. Something isn’t quite right there. These eggs are whiter than my laundry detergent.

The problem with reading about cancer

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 21:00:00 +0000

Cancer. The scariest word in the world. For many people, cancer is the last word that they ever want to hear. In living memory, cancer was not a word that was dared to be spoken aloud. In this modern world, most people still read cancer as a death sentence. Despite all of modern medicine, despite the number of cancer survivors, the only question that matters is “How long?”

Cancer is perhaps the scariest of all topics. When confronted with cancer, most people respond with blind, rigid panic. A rabbit in headlights. The only question that matters is not one of “how are we going to defeat it?” but “when will it defeat me?”

Drug delivery

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 21:30:00 +0000

When you’re sick with headache or flu, you likely reach for the aspirin and the Tylenol. At your lowest point. When you feel like things can’t get any worse. With your head pounding. Your nose running a marathon. You reach for pills.

You don’t even think about it. But, culturally, it is ingrained in us. Pills are medicine.

This is something every supplement maker in the world is all too happy to jump on. Your nutritional supplement of choice, whether that’s multivitamins, cod liver oil or anything else comes in pill format. It doesn’t matter if it has any benefit for you, because the instinctively *feel *better for it.

The dangers of positivity, or "Why we shouldn't ignore bad news"

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 19:00:00 +0000

Everywhere you go. Everything you read. All that you see. Everything is positive results. “Science finds this new thing!” they exclaim. Lives will be changed! What a breakthrough!

What no press release tells you is the blood, the sweat, the tears. No one tells you about the ruined lives. The failed marriages. The missed bedtimes and children longing for affection. Misery doesn’t make for a feel-good headline. Besides, what does all this… emotion got to do with an academic subject?

Antibiotic Armageddon

Fri, 27 Nov 2015 20:30:00 +0000

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. this will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it.

– Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization

Antibiotics might not seem as pressing as global terrorism or healthcare reforms. Bacteria don’t even, seem that scary. You can’t really see them, and yes there’s a scary Mission Impossible movie every now and then. But really, the worst experience most of us have from bacteria, is a bit of food poisoning.

Personalized medicine

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:45:00 +0000

It seems that the latest buzz phrase to be going around the medical world is the notion of “personalized medicine”. Which sounds like a bit of a joke, because isn’t all medicine personal? I mean, I’m the only sick person here, and I’m the only one putting medicine inside of my body. Doesn’t that already feel quite personal? But, if this isn’t, what is personalized medicine?

we should not treat everybody the same way

What is Big Data?

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 20:00:00 +0000

The world is being reshaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.

– Marc Benioff

Big data is a feeling. The feeling that the future is an uncertain place. The feeling that we can make decisions today, that although we might not understand them now, in tomorrow’s future, they might be the most important decisions we ever made.

Hot drinks cool you faster - fact or fiction?

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 19:30:00 +0000

Imagine you’re sat on a tropical beach. The sort of beach they only have in magazines and nature documentaries. The sun beating down on paradise. The humidity and cooling sea breeze is just enough to make anything other than another cocktail unbearable. Rather than decided to top up your tan a little further you decide that you really must keep up your marathon training. After all, those unfortunate orphans cannot raise the money to save their orphanage without your fundraising efforts.

10 steps to making your graphs not suck

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 19:30:00 +0000

Recently I wrote about how your graphs suck. It even generated a little bit of a stir over on LinkedIn. I am not however, the kind of person that points at a problem and walks away. I taught lab classes full of trainee chemists, biochemists and pharmacists for over 4 years. Over the years, I’ve read and marked more experiment reports than I want to think about and let me tell you, I have seen some truly shocking graphs. Including one quick hand sketch in a printed report with an apology post-it attached, “Trust me, it looked a bit like this.”

Your graphs suck!

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 19:30:00 +0000

Your graphs suck! Bold statement huh? I don’t even know you, Mr or Ms Anonyomous Internet Reader. Yet I know that your graphs suck. I know that when things get tough, and you really need a graph, you’ll suck the air between your teeth, quietly swear to yourself, before admitting defeat. Then, you’ll go open up Excel.

“What’s wrong with Excel?” I hear you cry!

Ah-ha! I’ve got you! You’re already on the defensive. Trying to justify that Excel is a perfectly good piece of software used by millions of people every day.

3x deadlier than ISIS

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 20:00:00 +0000

The cholera had broken out at the post, and five or six men were dying daily.

– Buffalo Bill

We are in the middle of a global pandemic. In one small country, population 10 million, 4000 dead. Another 200,000 infected. All in under 3 months. International efforts have had little effect. 5 years later, 9000 lie dead. Almost three-quarters of a million infected. The sick are highly infectious. Food and water are not safe from infection. This pandemic, by World Health Organisation numbers, is claiming up to 142,000 lives EVERY YEAR.¹ 3 years of civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS is estimated at 170,000 deaths.²

Vaccination doesn't cure fear

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 17:10:00 +0000

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.

– Gary Hamel

The year is 1998, a respected British surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, publishes a paper in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. In this paper, Dr. Wakefield and coauthors make a claim that they have seen a link between children receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and their development of autism and bowel disease.¹ To quote paper’s introduction

Eugenics – From designer babies to the Holocaust

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 20:50:00 +0000

You can tell when something’s not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don’t go away.

– Jeffrey Eugenides

18,000 children die every day from starvation.¹ The fact of the matter is the world is only so big. We live in a world of dwindling resources and massive overpopulation. We are approaching a transhumanist era. A moment in time when science and technology will fundamentally change the human experience. Indefinite lifespans, cloning and technology integrating our bodies. Perhaps then, it might be time to reconsider human breeding.

Pluto - the planet of surprises

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 20:45:00 +0000

We explore because we are human

– Prof. Stephen Hawking

Pluto is in the news this week and with good reason. Pluto, as most people are aware, is more than just a beloved Disney character or Roman God of the underworld. However, most people would struggle to tell you whether Pluto is even a planet - which it is… sort of. For most, we remember the science textbooks of a long forgotten youth, telling us that Pluto was the last thing of significance in our solar system before the long journey to our next nearest star (Alpha Centauri at 4.4 light years away. If your mind does not work in light years in kilometres that is 41 followed by 12 zeroes).

The rise of artificial intelligence

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 20:50:00 +0000

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race

– Prof. Stephan Hawking

Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, founder of a solar power company, founder of an electric car company, founder of a company with a mission to put a human colony on Mars in his lifetime, described artificial intelligence, or AI, as “summoning the devil”. He’s not alone, Bill Gates, urges people to be wary of artificial intelligence.

Vitamin pills and the hard to swallow truth

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 21:50:00 +0000

There is a major problem with reliance on placebos, like most vitamins and antioxidants. Everyone gets upset about Big Science, Big Pharma, but they love Big Placebo.

– Michael Specter

Study after study show vitamins do not lower cancer or heart-disease risk. In fact, they vitamins may be creating more problems than they solve.

More than half the population is regularly taking vitamins in Canada¹ and the US², with similar levels across the rest of the Western world.³ Most common is the multivitamin and mineral supplement (MVM), popularized in the US in 1941.⁴. Multivitamins are now estimated to be consumed, regularly, by 1 in 3 Americans.⁵

You, pot, and politics

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 21:45:00 +0000

Winners don’t use drugs – William S. Sessions, Director, FBI

Ever noticed how a bad hangover feels like your body is dying? The truth is, it sort of is. What you did the night before was knowingly load your body full of a poison. Anyone that has ever taken that “one drink too many” knows all too well the symptoms of what amounts to mild poisoning.

The weak heartbeat, tiredness, muscle fatigue, dehydration, headache, bad breath. We even know what long-term alcoholism looks like either thanks to the media or our own personal experience (the UK’s National Health Service reported 9 % of adult males as having alcohol dependence back in 2009¹).

Bacteria are going to kill you

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 20:57:00 +0000

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

– Voltaire (1694-1778)

Bacteria ancestors were the first organisms on the planet. Bacteria have survived around 4 billion years on this lump of rock, flying through space. Homo sapiens by comparison have only turned up in the last 100,000 years or so.

Scientists estimate there to be around 5 quintillion bacteria on the planet (that is 5 followed by 30 zeroes)(or 5 nonillion for our US friends). Combined, the weight of bacteria in the world exceeds plants and animals combined.¹

The world is going to university

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 21:35:00 +0000

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.

– Kofi Annan

In the last few years I have experienced many universities, all of them are building. New campuses, new buildings, more accommodation. From the casual observers perspective it looks like a great time to be in the education game.

I recently got to quiz a Vice Chancellor about why there was so much construction in his university. I asked why exactly he felt the need for constructing an entirely new university village on campus grounds?

Memoirs of a decision

Fri, 29 May 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Israel began as such an odd happen of circumstance.

So many things simply came together in a manner that had any one of a number of small events gone slightly differently then I would never have gone. Not for work, and probably not for any other reason.

Had the global recession not kicked in, had the Germany economy not initially resisted before collapsing, had the German government decided not to essentially pull all of its funding for science overnight – then my German would be significantly better right now.

Why trust is vital to science

Fri, 29 May 2015 12:00:00 +0000

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved. – George MacDonald

This week in America we have once again seen how difficult it is to build trust and how quickly it can be taken away. Four of the largest cancer charities in the US have been charged by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with bilking (an archaic word meaning to obtain or withhold money from someone by deceit or without justification) over $187 million from consumers.

Leaving Israel

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:00:00 +0000

One year on, what I've learnt from living abroad

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Exactly one year ago to the day, with my PhD thesis successful defended and four days before I was due to set foot on a plane I started the initial stages of packing for the biggest, scariest and without doubt the most life-changing adventure of my life.

This was not the first time that I had spent at the foot of my bed, in the room in which I had spent my formative years, my worldly possession splayed out in front of me considering what the future had in store. I had done this once before, almost a decade earlier when I first went off to university. My father still very clearly remembers that day in which myself and a car of my possessions were bundled into the back of a car and whisked across the country. He remembers that day for one moment where we said our goodbyes, he got back in the car and he saw one very scared boy.

Why I write

Sat, 13 Sep 2014 12:00:00 +0000

My last little musing had somewhat of a minor moment of virality upon social media amassing over two and a half thousand views in a seventy-two hour period. Now, I’ve never been one to analytically comb over the site statistics – I am aware that they are there and I have looked at them occasionally in my vainer moments – but generally speaking the bother of trying to turn them off was never deemed worth it. Why this time was different? Well the fact that I had a discussion explode on LinkedIn with another twenty or so emails from around the world. People from Europe, North America and the Orient – people that I have never met – felt moved enough to contact me with their support, their own stories and experiences. Mostly however, I received an overwhelming message of “me too”.

Why I'm choosing to give up academic science

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:00:00 +0200

I have held off writing this blog post for some time now. It has been a long time in the making. A very long time. Part of my reason to hold off for so long is due to the very public nature of the medium and part of it has been that sitting down to write this forces me to confront the situation and think about it. The fact remains however, that it has been a little over a week since I walked into my boss’ office and told her that I would be leaving. Not this very second, not even in a month’s time, but soon. In my mind I had reached a conclusion and I respected her enough to tell her as soon as I knew - even if I did not yet understand what that decision meant.

Dr. Bye, I presume?

Sat, 16 Aug 2014 12:00:00 +0200

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Dr. Bye, I presume?

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

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That Israel Situation

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Dear much-loved friends,

Over the last week many of you have gotten in touch with me via various means to simply check in with me. It has been both heart-warming and humbling that in your busy lives you still find the time to think of me and worry about my safety and to you I say thank you.

For those that do not know, I have been on somewhat of a tour just recently and departed Israel approximately a month ago, long before the situation escalated. I spent nearly 17 days in Vancouver, Canada, with trips to both Whistler and Seattle with the love-of-my-life, before flying to Denver, Colorado and heading deep into the Rocky Mountains for a scientific conference for 5 days. I returned to Vancouver for 3 nights before heading back to Blighty for what was supposed to be a flying visit to cross a stage in fancy robes, collecting a certificate and straight into the bar before returning hangover in hand back to Tel Aviv.

Welcome to Canada

Sun, 29 Jun 2014 12:00:00 +0000

The long wait

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Lital at the airport

Tue, 13 May 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Where have all the flowers gone?

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000

As another week begins it seems appropriate to reflect back at the week gone by, and what a week it has been. It has both simultaneously been busy yet quite, crazy yet peaceful.

It has been in this week that for the first time in Israel I have eaten lunch alone.

For this week, it has been very quiet. The lose of my brother-in-arms still weighs heavy upon the office – with it still not being the same. Of my two remaining comrades, one was in Finland with his (what I’m sure will be) soon-to-be wife which he never should have left. The other, it was his first week in his new position without the security of being under the wing of his 40-year-experience predecessor and thus off his feet.

Passover ain't gonna stop me eating cereal!

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000

It's Friday...

Fri, 21 Feb 2014 12:00:00 +0000

!()[assets/img/2014/20140221.jpeg] It’s Friday, it’s 28 degrees and I’m sat in a Roman piazza for lunch and a beer. Travelling in Israel could be worse.

Bon voyage!

Sun, 16 Feb 2014 12:00:00 +0200

As is traditional with my blog, it seems that I only take the opportunity to sit down and commit electronic ink to screen when I feel I have something to say or at the very least when I have the time.

In recent times, I have certainly been busy. Both in and out of work. In these recent times I have been quite negligent to several old friends in my usual correspondence – and to those I apologise. You are not forgotten, and you will be replied to when the time allows it, in the interim period I hope that tonight’s post allows you to at least see I’m alive.

Best email of the year

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 12:00:00 +0200

Dear Morgan

I am very pleased to inform you that we have received approval of your corrections from your examiners…

The adventure begins

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 12:00:00 +0200

The problem with being a person with a tendency toward the obsessive is two-fold. Firstly, should one not be immediately good at something then it is quickly dismissed as stupid never be attempted again; which anyone, that has had the extremely rare experience of having seen me ice skate will attest. This also results, in things that cannot be simply dismissed as being stupid incredibly difficult. For this examples of musical instruments and languages come to mind – here the perfectionism makes them very difficult as there is no possible way to be perfect with them.

Survival

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0200

This is the first year I think a November 25th has passed quite so quietly. For the last decade I’ve had a person in my life – typically a partner or female co-worker, that is usually giddy with joy of the notion that it is only a month to Christmas. Certainly, in a country that does not celebrate the birth of Christ, even in a very commercialised and secular way means that the typical suspects barely register Christmas as a thing. Yet, talking to one native this weekend, apparently this does not stop them using Santa as a gift giving excuse – simply that this falls typically on Halloween.

2 days

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0200

In the last 2 days, 2 very odd things have happened.

Yesterday, happily working away around half an hour before lunch I was disturbing from my coding trance a sudden high pitched scream emanating approximately 2 meters to my right. Alarmed by the sudden screams of an Israeli woman, I thought with headphones on and zoning out the world to code I must have missed the “HOLY SH*T WE’RE ALL DOOMED, YES THAT NEW WORLD WAR HAS STARTED” alarm.

One month on...

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0200

This week will mark one month of my being in Israel. On the one hand this could easily be deemed as the longest months of my life. At no point do I think that I have ever faced so much stress, anger or sorrow. In a lot of ways I feel like I have mourned for the life that I once had. At the same time, I look back at my time here and I realise just how little I’ve done, seen, achieved.

3 and a bit weeks of Israel

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0200

So, it’s now been some 3 and a bit weeks of living, working, breathing Israel. I think it is fair to say at this point that I’m adapting and setting my expectations a little more realistically for the situation. Unquestionably there is a huge cultural difference between the West and a borderline Middle Eastern state. Whilst, it is very much adopting the ways of the West sometimes it is inescapable to remember where exactly in the world you are.

Apartments old and new

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Just a quick post tonight because it’s already half past ten here as a result of my two and a half hour Hebrew class after work. Which has given me a mild information overload based headache, but then my brain was desperately trying to learn as much as it could for a long period of time.

Anyway, most folks will be happy to know that I have now successfully moved from the shoddy temporary accommodation, which rumour-has-it will be shortly demolished, into an actual studio apartment designed to try and con as much money out of foreigners as possible.

Day 8 of Israel

Mon, 28 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Today was always going to be a long day. I knew that going in. What I didn’t realise going in was that this was comfortably going to be the worst day so far.

This day’s mission objectives were get to the bank for 9, collect everything I needed, swing past the photography studio for my staff photo, pick up the forms from the office for the visa extension, drop off said forms, grab lunch if there’s time, present at the group meeting.

Week 1 of Israel

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

So here we are, almost exactly one week since I entered the very apartment in which I sit now.

I wish I could say that it was all better now and I’d completely settled in, but that would be pretty far from the truth. As a realist, I’ll be happy if I’ve just found some sort of routine after a month. Hopefully, after a month everything will have settled down a little bit and some sort of routine or at the very least some semblance of normality can be found. But then this is Israel, apparently it’s quite quiet here at the moment as there are peace talks on – though after 60 years of peace talks if they haven’t found it yet, I’m not sure if it wants to be found.

Day 5 of Israel

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

If you’ll allow me the luxury of another cathartic rambling, I’ve been surprised today by the response of so many of you getting in touch by one means or another.

I think it has helped that last night gave a solid 11 hours of sleep that probably helped immeasurably. As this morning upon actually awakening I didn’t stare at the ceiling and wonder to myself as to why the hell I was here. Maybe that’s just a latter stage of grief, acceptance.

Day 4 of Israel

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Well Israel has been a real emotional rollercoaster, and today has been no exception. Except that, as with all good rollercoasters you can’t just rush straight into the main event there needs to be a build up. The previous few days have only been a few small bumps, testing the waters, wetting the appetite for what comes later.

This morning waking up from another mosquito riddled night, I could have wept. The closest thing I can put it to is when Richard Hammond on Top Gear is dog-sledding to the North Pole and at some point there’s a little handy-cam shot where he just talks to the camera in the tent. Through the combination of tiredness, being emotionally drained and seemingly so far from home he just has a little weep.

Day 3 of Israel

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Just a quick one today, partially because life day to day life can be quite dull and sometimes there just isn’t all that much to report on. Today this is only partially the case. Today is mostly a case of being absolutely knackered.

The travel, the new life, the not being able to sleep properly for a few months through workload and/or stress is starting to mount up a bit. Several people have asked if I took a break between the PhD (which most in the know actively acknowledge as the most stressful time in one’s life) and moving on out to Israel. When I reply that there was only 10 days between the PhD defense and me starting here, they look at me like I’m mad. When I then point out that 1 of those was hang over recovery, 1 was sorting out corrections, 2 were spent getting my life into bags and others were spent attempting corrections or stressing out over the ensuing move. Seems, what everyone else with a shred of sanity does is take a couple of weeks, disappears off grid somewhere on holiday and recharges.

Day 2 of Israel

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

As with yesterday, I can’t help but feel that I should really start the day 2 report with the end of the previous. Last night I dashed out of the apartment, barely awake, to visit the fourth and final apartment of the day. After a near 20 minute walk across town and actually finding the correct building (as it was three blocks from where I’d been promised), I look around at the busy street with 3 clubs underneath and am already perhaps better of this decision not to go straight to sleep.

Turning out the light

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Last night in an attempt to turn the bedside lamp off, the socket turned through 90 degrees and fell off the wall!

Day 1 of Israel

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0200

Before I begin with day 1 of Israel, it makes sense to start with day 0. The parents very kindly drove me down to Luton to catch the plane where upon EasyJet completely conned me. Interesting thing to note, if you purchase extra luggage allowance on EasyJet it does not increase your personal luggage allowance. So, you can buy as many 20 kg bags of luggage as you like, but everything after bag 1 or 20 kg is beyond your personal luggage and is charged at £11/kg. I’ll let you do the maths on that one. Needless to say, the additional luggage cost more than the actual seat.

Breakfast in Israel

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:00:00 +0200

Coffee on the lawn, with a lovely pond, sun out and a light breeze. It could be worse.

Packing complete

Sat, 19 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0000

One’s whole life contained in 3 small bags, and I’m convinced I’ve got too much stuff

Packing up

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0000

You realise that you’ll really miss some things as you put them away for the last time in a long time

Blog introduction (2013)

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Some may remember my original blog that was hosted for many years on a certain social networking site, through some what I’m sure were some rather self-loathing and hormonal teenage years. Unfortunately, it was lost to the great nothing-ness in cyberspace as a result of an argument with a particularly crazy girlfriend. Sometime later I tried to return to said social networking site and found an horrendous fallen standard; to a level where everything was in pastel colours and aimed at telling the world what band you thought was hot.

What I love about science...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:44:00 +0000

…is the ability that every day provides the opportunity, and more often than not, allows you to realise what a colossal idiot you are.

And not just about the simple stuff, the every day mundane things like “Where the hell did I leave that?”. No science allows you to come to some sudden, sweeping realisations that not only you an idiot today, but in fact you have been being a massive idiot for 2 YEARS.

EasyRefiner

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:44:00 +0000

Faced with fitting well over 30 experiments at room and low temperature at multiple frequencies, as all of my experiments are spin-labelled mutants of the same protein then surely their EPR properties would be similar. I decided that there must be a better way of using EasySpin than manually inputting each file in time and time again.

What if I could queue an entire folder of files, set up some rough parameters and then get EasySpin to do the hard work? Why not use a rough EasySpin search for parameters and then input the rough parameters back into EasySpin with finer searches and refine the numbers? By queuing a folder of files I could set up my PC at the end of the day to run overnight and come in in the morning and be greeted with fitted spectra.

Ghosts of Xmas past

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:15:00 +0000

It has been some time since my last blog post, but this is more a reflection of my philosophies than inabilities. It has been a very many years since I started blogging and it has largely been my belief that I’ve only ever blogged when I’ve had something to say. Not necessarily important to all audiences, or for that matter any audience outside of m head. And I’m sure that if I ever bothered to read through some past posts it would be surely cringe-worthy.

e2af

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:38:00 +0000

E2AF or “EPR 2 ASCII folder” is a folder version of E2A, whereby a folder of Bruker EPR files are converted to ASCII data files (readable by any operating system), by default the conversion is to *.csv files (comma separated values). These file formats are easily editable and can be imported into Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice or Origin.

Syntax

1
2
3
4
5


E2AF
E2AF ('path/to/folder')
E2AF (delimiter)
E2AF ('path/to/file.DTA',delimiter)
E2AF ('path/to/file.DTA',delimiter, extension)

Inputs

input1 - The path to a folder; must be in single quotes (')

Misinterpretations

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Those that know, know that one of biggest, burning hatreds is bureaucracy. Being a firm believer in Occam’s razor, I’ve never quite understood why things have to be more complicated than they have to be. I’ve always strived in what I do to make things simpler, make things as simple as possible. No one sits down with an inquisitive child and when asked “why”, starts with quantum theory, subatomic particles and Higgs’ field.

PyMOL visualising e2 rotamers

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:44:00 +0000

This morning whilst writing some reports I wanted to show some rotamer populations of my spin label attached to the protein. Whilst MMM provides visualisation, and having had discussions with Jeschke I understand just how difficult it is to do, I do not consider them to be of publication standard. For this reason I needed to come up with something.

So first up do all the calculations in MMM as per normal but make sure you save your statistics.

Xepr license work around

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Danger

Disclaimer: the author does not condone piracy but this may be used as a temporary measure

As readers of my work-sided blog posts will be aware, I’ve had some recent problems with spectrometers and their control PCs. As a result I’ve been swapping computers and network cards right, left and centre to try and get things working. As a temporary measure and so as to avoid contacting Bruker every 20 minutes for a new Xepr license file for the latest network card I’m trying I’ve written a little script to get around the Xepr license check.

HTC Desire headphone jack fix

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

This morning on the way to work I got down to the road, plugged in my earphones to my phone and hit play on Spotify. Only for some horrible, tinny, quiet music to come out. It seemed that the phone just simply would not recognise that anything had been plugged in. Something that I confirmed when I got to work and confirmed with a pair of headphones and PC that it was the phone and not the earphones.

Troubleshooting a non-connecting Bruker ELEXSYS spectrometer

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:50:00 +0000

Recently in the lab we’ve had some problems thanks to a helpful software update rendering it impossible to connect to a spectrometer. This troubleshooting provides a record of my steps to diagnosing the problem. Hopefully shortening the process in the future. The spectrometer in question is a Bruker ELEXSYS E580/E680 hybrid connected to a HP/Bruker desktop running openSUSE 12.1 x64, with Xepr v2.6b53. You will need super user privileges for almost all of these commands.

Logarithmic backups on a linux server

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 17:50:00 +0000

This is the second part of the lab server setup guide. Mainly for my own memory purposes, but if you find it useful then so much the better.

Synchronization

As previously discussed all of the machines in the lab are mounted onto the server using NFS under /media/lab-machine-XX. But this does not back them up. So the first step of the backup is to copy the files from the lab machines to the server. For this I use unison which is an easy implementation of rsync which will compare the two versions in question, determine the newest and only copy across changes saving bandwidth and time.

Lab server setup - Ubuntu 12.4

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:31:00 +0000

With a recent change of machines in the lab, I thought that I should update the backup server according to reflect the new machines. However, upon inspection the backup server OS hard drive had died long ago; but then what do you expect when you use 8 year old battered PCs as a server.

This wasn’t too much of a problem as the machine’s RAID array was otherwise fine, it just hadn’t been mounted in some time. And the lab machines all have their files safely on them still. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to bring new life to the server and update it. Something that had been on the list of things-to-do for a long time and I just hadn’t got there.

Annoying the French

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:46:00 +0000

Sometimes you get to the end of a conversation and you realise just how weird it got for a moment somewhere in the middle. And really by the end of it, you’re so far from whence you started that the mind boggles. Take for example last night, I phoned my brother to say happy birthday and generally see how he was doing as I haven’t talked to him in some time.

Frozen in space and time

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:26:00 +0000

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my job, I really do. I don’t think there are many other opportunities in this world where I could get to be a biochemist, chemist, physicist, engineer and software developer all in one day. But I really wish that mistakes weren’t so punishing.

Yesterday afternoon I spent over an hour a half preparing buffers and making sure that they weren’t too acidic or too basic, to then spend nearly 2 hours getting my sample into those buffers. Admittedly I’ve been putting off this experiment for some time now as I couldn’t face an entire afternoon sat in front of a pH meter and centrifuge, but it was with the notion that today would be an easy day. Come in, turn the machine on run the samples, go home.

(Anti-) social media

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 20:11:00 +0000

Today it is much more difficult to get up than it was 10 years ago, and that’s not just because we’re all getting older. 10 years ago chances are that every morning started with the same thing; hitting the alarm clock. Wind the clock on a decade and chances are most people don’t even have an alarm clock. After all why have a separate device that performs only one task when we can merge many devices into one in the shape of a mobile phone.

Red car...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:20:00 +0000

Today I had to take the car to a tyre garage type place having picked up a puncture in the shape of a massive thorn over the weekend. Now I’ve never been a great advocate of the intelligence required to be a mechanic but having discussed the matter with the garage prior to my arrival, I was pleasantly surprised where, upon my arrival I was greeted with the title Sir and sure enough I had to say nothing about the issue at hand.

Savitzky-Golay - sgol

Wed, 30 May 2012 16:44:00 +0000

The Savitzky-Golay smoothing function essentially applies a local polynominal fitting routine to a series of data points to then find the smoothed data points. This has the benefit that for sharp intense peaks (common to EPR) that the line broadening effects and lessening of peak intensity seen by a local moving window average are not seen.

To perform a Savitzky-Golay smoothing functions requires a polynominal order to be defined as well as the window size (or number of data points to be sampled at any given time). We can also weight the window such that future data points are more/less favourable than past points

cwViewer

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:52:00 +0000

cwViewer is a tool for the easy opening, analysis, manipulation and plotting of cw EPR data and superceeds the previous function cwPlotter

With an intuitive user interface, users can quickly create professional looking figures in seconds and export them however they like. Here’s a quick demo introducing the basic features:

cwPlotter comes as part of the EPRtoolbox or as a direct download

Users can quickly load

a single file
a folder of files
a single file with a third dimension (such as power) (*.YGF file)

Manipulate the data using

Motivation and a mission

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:25:00 +0000

The church would have you believe that Sunday is the God given day of rest, whilst the business world would tell you that it was rather the Bank Holidays that were sacrosanct. Well today I tell you that for me that today is that day of rest. Which after a 7 day stint I feel is not necessitated but somewhat required if I am to be of any cognitive use in the following week.

Reflection of a conference

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:07:00 +0000

The science world is an odd one. Almost all ideas are communicated through one of two means, tried and tested means that show no sign of changing any time soon. The first is that of academic papers or journals, these are essentially like the entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica of old. Each piece has an introduction, a methods section, results and conclusions. Typically any given piece will have a minimum of 4 authors and have to go through 2 sets of reviewers and editors before it can go to print.

Moving apps from the Android phone memory to SD card: HTC Desire

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

So I’ve had my HTC Desire now for approximately 2 years now and whilst it has served me well I’ve had a bug bear with it for a long time. Essentially the phone has only 148 MB of internal storage and after the basic Android OS has been installed this is reduced to under 134 MB. Now I knew that this phone didn’t have much memory when I bought it, and as a result when I bought the phone I bought it with a 16 GB microSD card.

DEERextract - get data from DeerAnalysis

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

DeerAnalysis is a program from the team at ETH Zurich that allows for the easy conversion of DEER / PELDOR data into distance distributions. The program itself runs within MATLAB which is renowned for being difficult to make high quality figures with, and DeerAnalysis provides no easy way to obtain the raw data behind the plots that it presents, something that is required if you want to go on to analyse the data.

PyMOL visualising binding interfaces

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Today I’ve been trying to come up with a nice way of visualising the binding interface between protein-protein or protein-DNA complexes. What follows is a quick little walk-through mostly for my own purposes so that I can remember what I’ve done in the future.

Download PDB file from pdb.org, here XXXX will be your PDB accession code.

Point a terminal window at the download directory

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cd ~/Downloads

Run CCP4:

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ncont XYZIN XXXX.pdb >> XXXX.ncont << eof

source A [or whatever your protein chain is]

target E,F [or whatever the DNA chains are]

eof

This will give us a file XXXX.ncont in the Downloads folder which contains all the information about the binding interface

Blog introduction (2012)

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:42:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to my personal website here @ morganbye.~~net~~ .com

This website serves three continuing purposes. Initially this was started as a pet project, I have always been an inquisitive sort especially when it comes to technology. However, I found myself in a position where I knew very little about the workings of websites, despite using them on a daily basis. So, being the “why not?” sort that I am I decided to expand my knowledge. And what better way to learn than through a project of your own?

EPR Converter (e2a)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:57:00 +0000

The Bruker spectrometers output data by default in the Bruker BES3T format, which whilst being perfectly usable is not recognisable by most operating as standard.

This script was originally written for the benefit of the project students in the lab who wanted to plot their cw EPR data in Excel without going to the trouble of learning how to use MATLAB. Or for going back to the spectrometer and trying to export their data in ASCII format.

Clone an (openSUSE) machine and make it functional

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

In the last week I’ve had some need to setup some new PCs to control some of our machines in the lab. The problem being that the control interface between machine and PC is quite complicated and uses some pretty niche software, on the openSUSE OS (which is one of the most difficult linux OS’s IMHO).

So rather than having to install openSUSE from scratch using repositories that are no longer supported (because the software isn’t supported by the new SUSE distros) and then try to install the software and configure it, I thought it perhaps best to take a PC that is working and clone it onto a new PC.

Getting an openSUSE machine online

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

This week I’ve been cloning machines, but each new machine has slightly different hardware, even if it’s just a MAC address or serial number.

So, a quick disclaimer I’m using openSUSE 11.3 and so things will be slightly different for different versions of SUSE or different distros.

Get online

SUSE unlike some of the more user friendly OS’s doesn’t go out of it’s way to get you online. So we need to manually tell it what to do. First open a terminal and log in as a system admin:

PyMOL with Ubuntu 11.10 rendering problems

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Recently my (Ubuntu 11.10 64bit) machine stopped playing nice with PyMOL and whenever I tried to render or move an object I was facing a >40 second render time, while both of my CPU cores jumped to >90%

When I paid close attention to the startup messages in the PyMOL command window I could see:

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Detected OpenGL version 2.0 or greater. Shaders available.

 PyMOLShader_NewFromFile-Error: Unable to open file '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/pymol/data/shaders/default.vs' PYMOL_PATH='/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/pymol'

 PyMOLShader_NewFromFile-Warning: default shader files not found, loading from memory.

 PyMOLShader_NewFromFile-Error: Unable to open file '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/pymol/data/shaders/volume.vs' PYMOL_PATH='/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/pymol'

 PyMOLShader_NewFromFile-Warning: volume shader files not found, loading from memory.

In short, the current version of PyMOL supported by Ubuntu (1.4.1-1) was having troubles playing nicely with the new version of Python (2.7).

Take back the ordinary

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

It was once said that the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is that little bit extra. A potent statement, and one full of wisdom, but one I find myself disagreeing with more and more by the day.

In this age of sensationalist media it is my opinion that adjectives that used to be the preserve of linguist expression are now all to often thrown about willy-nilly.

I realised this this week when over my breakfast cereal I was watching the BBC news and found them doing a human piece about, what was effectively someone walking up a few hills in the Lake District. Now the argument could be made that yes, these people were using the experience as a training event before going off to climb some proper mountains. However, I could not shake from my mind, that at the exact point of interview these people had none nothing more than thousands of people do every weekend and every summer in our many National Parks. Heck, I’m aware of races where lunatics run up 3 mountains in the Peak District in an afternoon.

That slightly racist car game

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Walking to the car last night after Jason’s humiliation at badminton I was reminded again of a little game that I invented on Friday. A game that after some time I affectionately named “Jerry, Jap or Yank”. The game itself was created as I waited for an every 5 minutes bus (I stood there for 37 minutes in the end) outside Cambridge train station.

After some time of generally starring at nothing it dawned on me that nothing seemed to be driving past me except VWs and Audis. Upon this realisation it then become somewhat of a personal challenge to then try and spot cars that went past that were not of German construction (or at least design). This itself became quite a difficult game as by and large the vast majority of traffic traveling into the train station cul-de-sac are private hire taxis in nature. This meant that almost every thing going past was a VW Passat, large Audi (A6-esque) or Mercedes van-taxi conversion. Less often were BMWs or Skodas, but then these are both still German in design.

BrukerWrite - Write Bruker BES3T files

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:57:00 +0000

This script allows for the writing of cw-EPR Bruker BES3T files (.DTA/.DSC) files from MATLAB onto your computer

The script uses a graphical user interface to select file name and location, so minimal user line experience is required.

Syntax

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BRUKERWRITE(x,y)

Write arrays x and y out

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BRUKERWRITE(x,y,'40uM_MTSL')

A third string argument can be used to name the spectrum, in this case the spectrum will have the title “40uM_MTSL”

addnoise

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:46:00 +0000

This script allows the user to add noise to a spectrum, in a manner almost exactly opposite to smoothing data. The script random adds noise to each data point of a spectrum within the range of +/- a percentage of the highest to lowest point.

By default the script uses a value of 5%, so each data point will be randomized to a position + or - 5% of it’s original value (relative to the largest peak). However any value can be selected.

Fsc2Read

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:39:00 +0000

This script allows for the loading of cw-EPR Fsc2 files from Jens Törring’s (FU Berlin) program Fsc2 into the MATLAB environment for data analysis.

Syntax

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FSC2READ

When no inputs are selected a “point and click” interface guides the user through selecting a file

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FSC2READ ('/path/to/file')

With an input the script opens the selected file

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FSC2READ ('/path/to/file','plot')

With the second input argument as ‘plot’ the imported file is displayed automatically as a new figure

JeolRead - load Jeol ESR files

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:33:00 +0000

This script allows for the loading of cw-EPR Jeol files (*.esr) into the MATLAB environment for data analysis.

Syntax

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JEOLREAD

When no inputs are selected a “point and click” interface guides the user through selecting a file

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JEOLREAD ('/path/to/file')

With an input the script opens the selected file

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JEOLREAD ('/path/to/file','plot')

With the second input argument as ‘plot’ the imported file is displayed automatically as a new figure

R1A to CYM

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Traditionally the MTSL spin label bound to a Cysteine residue (Cys) is given the residue code R1A, at least in crystallography structures.

However, some computer modelling programs prefer the identifier CYM. To switch between the two I’ve created this MATLAB script.

Using a GUI interface the user can use a local PDB or download straight from pdb.org and decide to swap from R1A to CYM or CYM to R1A.

If neither a R1A residue or CYM is found then the user is messaged.

Power Saturation Curves

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now*

Power saturation overview

Determination of the effect of increasing microwave powers on the saturation behaviour of a sample can give information regarding the relaxation properties of the sample. At low powers the amount of signal is linearly proportional to the microwave power. However, at high powers the signal dies away as a function of the inverse square root. Essentially you are saturating the sample, by giving it too much power the spin states cannot relax in the measurable time frame.

PDB Splitter

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now PDBs are great, however from time to time you only actually want one protein chain to analyse at a time. What you need to do then is split the PDB of many chains into separate PDB files.

This MATLAB script does exactly that. Using local .pdb files (selectable via an open window) or files directly from rcsb.org (using PDB identifier code) up to 4 chains (in this current version) are exported to the current work folder. Important note: This script does use pdbread and pdbwrite from the Mathworks Bioinformatics Toolbox. This is not the ideal open source script I wish it could be, but this is largely due to the widely varying PDB format. I intend to look over how Jescke and Polyhach solve this problem in MMM and perhaps update this script at a later date.

MMM Plotter - 2 spin labels

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:56:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now

MMM is a program from the team at ETH Zurich which allows for the attachment of spin labels in silico. Once attached PELDOR (aka DEER) spectra can be simulate.

With time a temperature assay can be conducted and the distance between spin labels can be monitored.

This MATLAB script combines multiple experiments and plots them into one figure.

Important notes:

In the DEER window of MMM, the figure must be detached and saved to a folder as a .fig file.
All .fig ’s need to be saved to the same folder
The annotations work off of the file names, save your figures as temperatures ie. 298K.fig
The plots will be plotted in folder order, so to get 4K plotted first (ie at the bottom) you need to name your file 004K and adjust it later in Figure Editor

This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2][^3]

MMM Plotter - 3 spin labels

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now

Carrying on from the 2 spin label temperature assay figure creation script. I found myself trying to repeat my success on a system with 3 spin labels.

Such systems give added complication as we now have 3 peaks on the DEER analysis relating to 3 distances. However, in my case I had 2 peaks at very similar distances which ran into each other but I wanted to maintain the underlying peaks as well as the overall trace.

About me (2012)

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

So, let me tell you a little bit about me. I was born at a young age over a view over the South coast of England; I believe it was the 16th floor of the hospital at around 6 in the morning whilst the sun was still rising. I’m almost positive that if it were not for all the drugs and agonising pain that my mother would have appreciated the beauty.

Copenhagen: who do we believe?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:07:00 +0000

As a scientist I am trained nay indoctrinated to find the truth, whatever that may be. Right or wrong. And no matter what the out come ultimately the job requires a certain amount of starring at nature, observing what happens and trying to make educated conclusions from these observations that will perhaps allow for the prediction of further instances. The problem is, I’m not just a scientist. I am human. And with humanity comes a certain amount of shying away from the facts even when they are staring us in the face, simply because we don’t like what we see.

A future in science?

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Approximately 2 months ago the first knock-ons from the Government’s spending decisions was announced to the research community. Whilst the Government as a response to the Science is Vital campaign acknowledged not to cut science research spending.

The problem with science is that almost all research that is conducted not by industry with the aim of direct marketable end product within 5 years (eg a drug to sell for a pharmaceutical company) is paid for by the Government and to a lesser extent charities (think Cancer Research UK and the like). And the problem with that is that all things take time, and there might be 20 years research behind an idea before industry gets interested, if not an entire professional lifetime of several teams.

Version History

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:26:00 +0000

Release dates:

Version	Release date	Notes
v14.09	7th September 2014	1500+ downloads
v14.05	15th April 2014
v14.02	15th March 2014
v13.12	11th December 2013	NEW: PulseGen
v13.10	24th October 2013	1200 downloads
v13.09	N/A
v13.07	7th July 2013
v13.05	4th May 2013	150000+ lines of code
v13.04	5th April 2013	800 downloads
v13.03	10th March 2013
v13.02	6th February 2013
v13.01	14th January 2013	600 downloads
v12.12	7th December 2012
v12.10	25th October 2012
v12.9	N/A	Youtube demo videos
v12.8	15th August 2012	500 downloads
v12.7	9th July 2012
v12.6	30th May 2012
v12.5	10th May 2012	400 downloads - NEW: cwViewer
v12.2	2nd March 2012	350 downloads
v12.1	25th January 2012
v11.11	19th October 2011	NEW: PowerSat GUI
v11.8	22nd July 2011	NEW: cwPlotter
v11.6	27th May 2011	NEW: PowerSat CLI
v11.5	19th May 2011
v11.4	15th April 2011
v11.3	18th March 2011	First public release

Release information

v14.09

NEW FEATURE: DAPlotter

Takes a saved DeerAnalysis file and plots it rapidly in a graphically pleasing way for notebooks. Figure 1, raw DEER data. Figure 2, raw data after background subtraction with fit. Figure 3, distance distribution

MatLab with Ubuntu 11.10

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Under the new Ubuntu release (11.10 Oneiric Ocelot), trying to run MatLab gets the following error

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/opt/MATLAB/bin/util/oscheck.sh: 605: /lib64/libc.so.6: not found

MatLab will still load, but will effectively be useless and can only be closed by killing the process. Furthermore, my previous trick of

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sudo ln -s /lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so /lib64/libc.so.6

On closer inspection, the libc.so.6 link exists in /lib64 however the file it actually points to (/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.13.so) does not exist, thanks to the update it’s moved

Plotting cw spectra with a g-value x-axis

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:10:00 +0000

cw-EPR spectra are common place in the lab, but often we report them simple as intensity against magnetic field in Gauss (G) or milli-Tesla (mT). However, in reality what we are actually interested is the frequency independent g-value.

The problem is that the g-factor by definition is a reciprocal scale (ie non linear, non logarithmic, and reverse scale), which causes a nightmare when trying to plot in MATLAB.

For this reason I have created two similar scripts. The first plotgx creates a new figure (such as that shown above)

Notes for Mr. Clegg MP

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0000

This week I was asked by the carpenter of the department, of all people, what exactly I made of the LibDems. I have to admit that this question seemed as left field for you as it did to me. Now, Jerry and myself have had a good number of conversations of the previous year or two but they have rarely been any more than the usual work “you alright?”.

Unusual though the question, I thought I’d share a few ideas that usually drift around my brain. And once the floodgate opened I was surprised by exactly how well formulated my ideas, how logical they seemed and how much support they had from the common man.

cwPlotter - the cw EPR plotting tool

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:18:00 +0000

This script has been superceded by cwViewer

cwPlotter is a tool for the easy opening, analysis, manipulation and plotting of cw EPR data.

With an intuitive user interface, users can quickly create professional looking figures in seconds.

cwPlotter comes as part of the EPRtoolbox or as a direct download Users can load

a single file
a folder of files
a single file with a third dimension (such as power) (*.YGF file)

They can then manipulate the data using

Foo Fighters complaint letter

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Below is a copy of the letter that I have sent to SeeTickets, Gaming International Ltd (owners of MK Bowl) and Sony Music Entertainment UK (record label of the Foo Fighters) regarding the shambolic Foo Fighters gig on Sunday 3rd July 2011.

I’ll keep you posted, and see what happens.

SEE GROUP LIMITED 2nd Floor, Norfolk House 47 Upper Parliament Street Nottingham NG1 2AB 5th July 2011

To whom it may concern,

Amino Acid Converter - AAconverter

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:54:00 +0000

The amino acid converter (AAconverter) is a small user interface that I’ve put together for MATLAB that will transform amino acids between the 1 letter or 3 letter representation. Useful for any amount of DNA work.

Simply, type or paste (from the clipboard) in one of the boxes and then press the appropriate arrow. The program will then convert between amino acid codes and then format the original and new sequence into easy to view formats (1 letters into groups of 10, 3 letter into groups of 5).

Animal domestication musings

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:00:00 +0000

So, just recently I’ve been reading much of science writing and been watching far too-a high brow television programming for even for my own tastes.

And just recently something has occurred to me. No matter where in the world you look there is something so common place that you don’t even realise that it’s there. Something that is independent of creed, colour, nation or social standing.

So what is it exactly that I’m talking about that unites the world. Something that is unique amongst species on this planet. Well dear reader, what I refer to is the domestication of other species.

BrukerRead - load Bruker BES3T EPR files

Thu, 19 May 2011 13:09:00 +0000

This script loads Bruker EPR files into MATLAB.

The script has been extensively tested with Bruker BES3T files (.DTA/.DSC). Originally it was built for cw-EPR files, but functionality has been added for 3 dimensional cw experiments (.DTA/.DSC/.YGF) and for pulsed experiments such as field swept echoes (FSEs) and Fourier induced decays (FIDs). Functionality for advanced and 3D pulsed experiments such as HYSCORE, ESEEM, ENDOR and PELDOR is more supported.

BrukerRead also supports the older Bruker file format (.spc / .par) still used by the Bruker EMX instruments.

cwplot

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:58:00 +0000

Implemented in the EPRtoolbox or direct download

This script is a quick way of presenting cw-EPR spectra by taking data from arrays of magnetic field and intensity

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cwplot(x,y)

Where, x and y can have any number of columns (so long there is the same number). With optional input arguments we can specify the separation between spectra and even offset.

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cwplot(x,y,sep,offset)

This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2][^3]

Rosetta 3.2 with Ubuntu 11.04

Wed, 11 May 2011 10:45:00 +0000

Rosetta is a very useful program for the prediction of protein structure, folding and interactions be that docking with proteins or ligands.

However, the current version of Rosetta (3.2.1) uses SCons to compile itself on your system. This is usually fine except that these use gcc libraries 4.1 and before.

Ubunutu 11.04 considers anything before gcc v4.4 to be obsolete and you can’t install them (even with apt-get).

As a result, a small amount of hacking is required.

Ubuntu 11.04 and MATLAB x64 C, C++ and Fortran libraries

Sun, 01 May 2011 12:00:00 +0000

MatLab requires the use of libraries (think translation dictionaries) to run code that is outside of it’s native realm (a hybrid C).

The most common of computing languages are those of C and Fortran (an old machine code).

The problem is that old code runs typically on 32 bit (a way of addressing memory), whereas most modern operating systems are now running 64 bit.

If you run a 64 bit Linux distro then you cannot run 32 bit MATLAB and you will be forced to install and run x64 MATLAB (there are some work around for Windows).

Peakfinder

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:29:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now (requires fpeak)

A simple MATLAB script to open an EPR spectra (requires eprload from S. Stoll’s EasySpin), baseline corrects to zero, plots the result and then finds all of the peaks.

It features a GUI to select the file in question, and the option of automatic settings or manual settings as well as a noise filter for small variations about 0. Output to the Command Window lists the exact positions of the peaks, first column is magnetic field, second the intensity.

MMM individual rotamer PDBs

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:27:00 +0000

This feature has been removed from the EPR toolbox as of version 12.9, due to MMM 2011.2 directly implementing this feature. This page remains for information purposes only. Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox

MMM by default saves calculated rotamers as a rotamer library PDB. This when viewed within PyMOL causes a bit of a problem as you’ve now lost the protein to which the rotamers are supposed to be attached.

Using scripts not distributed with MMM provided by Yevhen Polyhach and Gunnar Jescke, you can make instead make MMM output each rotamer as an individual PDB with the spin label attached to the protein.

cw Normaliser (cwnorm)

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:45:00 +0000

Feature implemented in EPRtoolbox or download now

cw-EPR are useful, but when comparing numerous spectra things can become quite challenging especially when different powers or sample concentrations are used.

By normalising (normalizing by American spelling) spectra, key features instantly become more comparible.

This MATLAB function acts discretely to normalise a cw-EPR spectrum or can be used within a script to act upon many spectra.

Usage:

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y = cwnorm(y)

Normalises matrix y (ie the y axis) between -1 and 1.

Recovering a RAID1 disk from a corrupt array

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:00:00 +0000

I recently had our backup server at work die. Upon investigation the Kubuntu 8 server had had it’s OS drive and one of the RAID1 data disks corrupted to such an extent it couldn’t boot. The bad data disk was so bad that it couldn’t even be assigned a hardware address under Linux or Windows.

The only hope remained with the remaining RAID1 disk.

As the server had been set up by a previous administrator as a software RAID, I thought it would be a nice simple job of sticking the drive into a good computer and copying files off.

Western Digital Green Drives (WD20EARS) and spin downs

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Recently I bought myself 2 new Western Digital (WD) drives for my home NAS box. Doing the good thing for the planet and not wanting massive electricity bills, I thought I’d try the recommend Western Digital Green Drives. Drives that are touted as being energy efficient compared to their WD blue and black office and server based brethren.

I personally have always opted for WD drives as all Hitachi drives I’ve had seem to make horrible noises and die quickly, Samsung always expensive and Seagate always been a bit slow.

UEA efficiency

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Once again this week I’ve been graced with some wonderful email from UEA’s very own Postgraduate Research Office. These are the people that ultimately will decide whether the university shall award my PhD. No pressure then.

Dear Morgan I note that you were enrolled on the PPD course “How to write a thesis” (SCI3RE1Y) on 16 December 2010 and did not attend.

Could you please clarify the reason for your non- attendance.

Blog introduction (2011)

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Some may remember my original blog that was hosted for many years on a certain social networking site. Unfortunately it was lost to the ether as a result of an argument with a particularly crazy girlfriend and as a result of the falling standards of said social networking site to a level where everything was in pastel colours and aimed at telling the world what band you thought was hot.

2010: The Year in Review

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

You join me today from on-board a train. In one of the few ways that these days still surprise me, both as a technology fan and as a man that finds himself ever increasingly disappointed by the British mentality of “that’ll do”.

The country currently seems to be run with a “that’ll do” mentality. Rather than creating a long term solution or at least a slightly future proofed system, the country as a whole seems to be settling for a half arsed solution now, and may again in 6 months when it all goes wrong and breaks.

Snow blindness

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:21:00 +0000

Well upon Friday night despite the snow in these parts I journeyed back to the remote parts of Norfolk. This resulted in a good local curry and a pint or two down the pub. But the real pain came on Saturday. As part of my mother’s madness and desire for as long as possible holiday, it was decided that we shall pick up her mother in a day.

So with 6 inches of snow on the roads, (although that stopped just after Peterbourgh) 10 hours 56 minutes and 562 miles later I returned to the remote parts of Norfolk after a roundtrip to South Wales. With nothing to show for it but a Welsh cup of tea and an appreciation of Birmingham service stations.

Real or Fake: Sennheiser IE 7 s

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

When you have a certain taste in music, you develop quite an ear for it. And at that point you find yourself hating poor quality equipment, which inevitably means you’re doomed for the rest of your life in spending quite a lot of money.

As a result of my Shure earphones going walkabout, it was time for a replacement and after doing my research and a sound test, I settled upon the Sennheiser IE 7s. Not really being able to afford the IE 8s and having asked a few people in the know they said the difference was so negligible it didn’t justify the price difference.

Lies, damn lies and politics

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 14:42:00 +0000

I myself for one never bought into the “buying our way out of a recession”. Like most sensible, sense and middle class people; when times get tough, I cut back on my own spending. I do not think, much as the government was encouraging, hmm… I have no money, I know what I’ll do, let’s go out and spend more money I don’t have. And whilst I understand this, I can also see the government’s perspective to keep spending at the start of the recession. When times get difficult and general public spending stops all that is left is the government. Without this spending all business in the country would have freefalled, and it is exactly for this reason every government around the world continued spending through 2008. Countries that stimulated the hardest, such as South Korea, ended up coming out of the recession first.

Memoirs of Konstanz and a summer school

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:00 +0000

So today is my first day back at work proper since my recent journey to Switzerland/Germany. And I return feeling like I’ve learnt a lot, not least about EPR, which was the primary reason for going. For example I now know that the Swiss and German rail network running like clockwork is somewhat of a myth. They did once upon a time function like that but about 7 years ago they privatised their network (despite having very closely watched the British attempt fail), so the network has had no investment in those 7 years. As a result the track is slowly coming apart, meaning that the trains have to run slower to avoid derailing. The Swiss/German response to this, is that where there is consistent late running, they simply put back the timetable. This has resulted in even the fast-speed trains running at little more than 20 mph.

Memoirs of (Northern) Spain

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:28:00 +0000

Having recently returned from Bilbao I can conclude that I shall not be returning to Spain any time soon. It is only since my return to Blighty and talking with those that are more Spanish-ly inclined than myself that I can say that I would even bother with returning to Spain at all; I’ll just skip over the Northern bit and go to the Southern/Mediterranean areas.

My resounding memory of Spain is that of a lazy, disorganised and largely unhelpful people. Having experienced hot weather countries before I was expecting a certain level of decelerated life compared to that of the temperate world. What I wasn’t prepared for was the entire population to shut down at 1pm leaving the city in a state somewhere between ghost town and zombie apocalypse until 5pm when the whole thing seems to come alive for another 4 hours.

[Geek-post] Why I choose open source

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:29:00 +0000

I’m currently using an awful lot of software and getting to the stage where I’m having to develop my own. For this reason I thought I’d keep a little track of what I’m using and why. I’m in the process of moving all of my computers across to Ubuntu for a number of reasons. Really the tipping point came one day when Windows 7 (the uncrashable) blue screened on me one too many times. Now I’m perfectly happy with my gaming machine to use Windows and crash occasionally. This is because by and large (despite Wine trying hard) you can really only game in Windows, and that’s largely due to it being the largest market. This combined with the fact that the machine barely ever has the sides on means that a crash or two is unavoidable. However, this my work PC, the PC that has its core programs, talks to the internet and that’s it.

Lecturing eh?

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:35:00 +0000

Well yesterday was the final session of my teaching seminar course, which was by and large a necessary evil for me to get a small certificate to say that I can continue demonstrating in the undergrad labs which is a) fun and b) well paid. So the last session was all about presentation skills and leading from the front. Which was then made clear after the initial blurb that 7 of the 28 of us would be getting up front and presenting a 4 minute talk about our PhD (pitched at a first year undergrad level) in front of a camera, to then be watched back and critiqued by the group plus two leaders of the session.

He’s a vegetarian, I aint f*cking scared of him

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:07:00 +0000

Been a funny old week really. Bit all of the place really full of lots of things and nothing all at the same time. I mean work for example has been a bit of a joke this week; the microwave bridge has turned back up from Germany so the group is operational again which is good. We have been billed £700 for that plus courierage, but then the engineers report is a line and a half, and says that they soldered one joint back together and turned one dial. So I’m not sure what you get for your money there 4 pence worth of solder plus 32 pence for a dial = £700. You do the math and see what you get. I mean you wouldn’t pay £700 for an MOT where the mechanic tells you that he had to change 3 screws.

E-on are useless

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:01:00 +0000

I was welcomed home today after my trip to Scotland via Manchester and Cambridge (more of that another day) my a final demand notice from a debt collection agency apparently sent on behalf of E-on for a sum of £54.19 for the house in Beeston (Nottingham). Better yet the dates on this were from 26th July til 4th Nov, so the day after I moved out.

My immediate thought was that someone has managed to spin a fine yarn, having managed to change the supplier to the house in Beeston but then kept my name on the account and managed to charge me thus. After 8 minutes of being on hold I noticed that in fact the period in question was actually 2008.

Gilette: the best a man can get

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:33:00 +0000

Does anybody notice the beautiful irony? Everyone seems to think it is weird that Gilette, one of Tiger Woods’ biggest sponsers is standing by him despite all the cheating. When other sponsers like Gatorade dropped him so fast it musta hurt.

But at the end of the day. Gilette: the best a man can get. And the best he could only get was 7 women and 2 porn stars.

This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2]

Bugs: some are useful

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:13:00 +0000

So Tuesday. Tuesday was a long week. And Monday seemed to really be 3 or 4 days. Not helped by my approach to illness (ie ignore it) is starting to come undone. By that I mean it has now had a few weeks to manifest itself to a stage where I cant really ignore it any more. I’m now at the stage where I cant really breath nor will it allow me to fall asleep, which is getting to the point of frustration now after 2 nights.

Nerds, nerds, everywhere

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:44:00 +0000

So it’s been a busy old week in the world that is Morgan. I’ve suddenly been thrown into a world where work seems to be not even remotely close to the number of hours I have in the day. Well, I say that, but in reality I’m still far better off than I have been for the last 2 years. It’s just that for 3 of the thus far 4 days I’ve been getting home at gone 6 after getting to work at 8. Which just seems a bit of a jip after the last couple of weeks when I’ve been doing my standard 8 til 4 which my body was just really starting to like. C’est la vie. When me must and all that.

Finlanders beware

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Someone seriously needs to tell this driver that this double decker bus is in fact NOT a rally car.

That was actually wheel spin!

This page previously appeared on morganbye.net[^1][^2]

[^1:] http://morganbye.net/2009/11/finlanders-beware) [^2:] http://morganbye.net/blog/2009/11/finlanders-beware/

Intro to computing methods seminar

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

As part of the Government’s endless bureaucracy it was decided that PhD students just arent skilled enough for the world. So, as a result of a certain Mr Roberts I am required to jump through even more hoops in the way of a selection of transferable skills seminars. As I have a GNVQ, A level and years of hands-on computing experience I thought a seminar on computing methods would be an easy hoop.

Coffee and croissants

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:06:00 +0000

This morning marked the start of what is dubbed as Fraser Fridays, basically the inter-group meeting of the Magnetic Resonance groups at UEA. And as I’m new it was decided for me that I should do a nice little presentation about what I did before Norwich.

So I dug out the old Masters presentation from 6 months ago, changed the date on the front and went for it whilst the hoard dug into the croissants and breakfast pastries I bought in (apparently another rule to get people there, the speakers brings cakes).

Stick to the code

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:19:00 +0000

[Names and events have been changed to protect the innocent] [The following events are completely fictional]

What do you do when a brother in arms succumbs to illness and explosive diarrhea? You obviously stick to the pirate code, mount up and head to the nearest ~~FINE ARTS CENTRE~~. Which really was the theme of the whole weekend really. Master YOSHI seemed physically unable to make it through his own third of a century weekend.

Just generally in sickness

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Well if I were married this would certainly not be one of those “in health” times. This would be just an “in sickness”. One of those really annoying ones that have been lingering on the brink of proper illness for the last 2 weeks, but wouldn’t really be arsed to get the motivation to do it properly.

This was even in the face of my sheer stupidity. I mean I go to a wedding the weekend before last and drink to excess, that only gave me a 48 hour hangover and strange bouts of dizziness. Then on Thursday, despite my better judgement and well, common sense I thought I night of jazz would be a good idea. This actually ended up in staying past closing time, but by that point there was no sense in stopping drinking.

Analysis of the analyst

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:43:00 +0000

So I was going through an old blog, for the only reason that they emailed me saying I hadn’t logged on in 6 months and would close the account if I didn’t. Anyway, I found this old post from June ‘07. I’ll let you guess who it relates to.

Morgan says: Tis a classic response though. Why do I have to deal with crazys? The huge iceberg ones at that.

NSFW: and while we're at it

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Does anyone want to explain my bowels at the moment? For ease of reading I shall refer to them from now on as if they were a train.

I’m a man of routine. And that routine involves 815. Always has and that’s the way I like it. Special exceptions could be made for things like weekends and strange mornings in which case time 90 minutes from getting up.

So why has my body suddenly decided that saving it up for 3 to 4 days is a good idea. The 815 is maintained but a 915 follow up service seems to be required, almost immediately the space where the 815 left off.

To be, or not to be....a student

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:55:00 +0000

So I know it’s a confusing time in life. I’m a post-grad student. This makes me a student as far as the government, NUS, taxman, uni, my bank and basically everyone else who is concerned. And I appriciate that I’m not actually taught only further questionning the actual nature of my student status. Yes I get paid, and yes health and safety think I can be trusted with a fire extinguisher like an actual person.

Wedding bells and living hells

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:27:00 +0000

So since I last wrote a few things have generally happened. Namely I appeared in one of Doug’s dreams as a zombie killer, I’ll let your brain run with that one. I’ve also done some things in reality. In this respect I think I’ve gone to Manchester to see E for the last time (hopefully in a long time) cos let’s face it there are only so many ways to pass 9 hours of train travel in a weekend. This is of course because I get to get on a train this Saturday, head down to Cambridge and empty a van / build ikea furniture.

The Macabees

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:36:00 +0000

Well I write to you know from the middle of a Maccabees concert. And I’ve gotta say that I’m completely disappointed. Granted I distance have high hopes of this event. But bloody hell. Get a sound tech. There are no mids and the highs are distorted. Partially from crap speakers, partially from smaller arena echo. Both add up to a better audio experience if one puts their fingers in one ears. This is actually recommended as it removes the echo from the highs and there’s no distortion of the mids. My biggest gripe of this performance though. And it is pretty significant. What is this band doing that isn’t just the same as “Dogs die in hot cars” or the like 4 years ago. This genre of magic hasn’t evolved. It’s the same old sh*t it was 4 years ago. There’s a reason that very few people know of Dogs Die in Hot Cars….Because in all honesty they were sh!t 4 years ago. When will music grow up? Grow up and stop being a sheep? Stop being a sheep and grow an identity?

Rant #37

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:28:00 +0000

If you’re going to make attendance compulsary to your stupid 3 DAY induction program at this bloody university then kindly have the good grace to actually bother turning up to the god forsaken thing. I mean honestly how much can the Dean of Students actually talk about to us. And if he really is that self loving make him turn up on time so that this 24 hour ordeal doesn’t start 45 minutes late. Alternitivly fill the room with strippers so that this sausage fest will be at least entertained in the interim.

Cleaners, or as I call them...

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:18:00 +0000

glorified corridor furniture. Seriously. What exactly is it that cleaners do. On my walks about work over the last couple of weeks I see completely unable to go anywhere without at least bumping into 2 “cleaners”. And I use parentheses deliberately. Because as yet, after 6 weeks of being at this university I have, as yet, to actually do any cleaning.

What I have seen is people which look like they’ve had their souls sucked out of their eye-balls stand around in small groups talking about inane drivel. “Ooo have you seen Shelia today….blah blah blah …. doesn’t treat her right …. blah blah … if I were her ….”

Am I a bad person if...

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:54:00 +0000

…when I saw the queues on campus this morning I just laughed. Knowing full well that all those “students” will be standing in line for a good 2 hours just to get to the front of the line to get a flimsy piece of plastic, which they will largely never use except to get into the library, so as I say will largely never use.

Although this is a fantastic method of separating out the Brits from the foreigners. The foreigners clump together in little huddles and don’t fully appreciate or understand the system that is British queuing. And I love it, the very patient of it all, knowing that nothing at the end of the queue will possibly have been worth the wait, but we still do it in quite desperation.

That funny feeling continues

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:28:00 +0000

So my funny week continues into a funny little weekend. So, after the adventures that E had it was down to this weekend to have ourselves a little house warming celebration, nothing fancy, just a few guys from the Western parts of Norfolk for old times sake. And well, I have to say the numbers in attendance were pretty slim which would not normally bother me much; if anything I generally prefer smaller numbers for it usually bears better conversation. However, on this occasion over the 20 or some names that were invited we actually had 2 turn up, 1 apology for being otherwise engaged and 1 phone call asking what we were doing and then a resulting poo-poo.

The ineptitude of Virgin Media

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:55:00 +0000

Thank you Virgin Media for once again proving how crap all of your employees at your call centres are trained on the systems on which they work.

I’ve received a wonderful letter off a, how would we call them, a “debt recovery service” saying that I owe the 46 odd pounds. This annoys me for several reasons:

Being charged £46 - £30 as a cancelation charge (because I didn’t give them at least 30 days notice, £16 for the remaining service as I didn’t hold the account for a full 12 months (because they couldn’t deliver the stupid service to me when I requested it, instead pissing about for a month)
After arguing that the £46 was a bit of a joke, I asked whether I could just pay the amount then and there on the phone. The guy told me that the cancelation team didn’t have access to take payments, it was just easier to leave my direct debit and the money would leave my account like a normal bill at the end of the month. Did it £uck.
The letter from the debt collectors spells my name, road name and town name wrong. Knowing full well that these details are from Virgin Media and I emailed them the details.

Compare:

Debt, bills, and frightening life speed

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:39:00 +0000

It’s been a funny old week this week. Not only am I disturbed by how quickly it seems to have disappeared, but just how quickly life seems to be racing past as a whole at the moment. If I’m not careful I’m going to blink and I’ll be 40 before I even knew what happened.

So, I’ve currently got an incapacitated girl friend at the moment. In her wiseness just as she was about to drive down here from Manchester, she realized that she’d forgotten the satnav and went back into the house to get it. However, the dog being over excitable and disliking people running in and out again had other ideas. So Lady E, satnav in hand, coming down the stairs has the dog run down the stairs and take her legs out from under her. Needless to say, the resulting fall down the stairs has left her with sever bruising and a broken tail bone. Which, having now inspected the injuries myself just looks like I’m into some really kinky sex. So, the drive down here did not happen, what with the inability to really sit or walk, so what with stubbornness kicking in she got the train late last night. And she’s still determined to go to the job interview in Cambridge later today, the good news the interview is at Addenbrooks hospital if things go wrong.

15677 days left to retirement

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:11:00 +0000

Well today is week 6, thus day 30 at UEA. And I gotta say that I’m a bit bored by the whole thing. Thus far I haven’t really done anything that I would consider to be work. Yes, I’ve built a website and a file server but I’m glad to see that a solid science degree leads to me passing the time by working on IT. Probably much to the annoyance of JC as I’ve probably done enough IT stuff to make him seriously jealous; as his supposed IT job is seems to be nothing more than a glorified printer tray refiller and mouse connector. But heyho I guess you gotta start somewhere. I just wish that I was doing something a little more productive, that said I’m very much grateful that I’ve actually got something going on and that I’m being paid even if it is to do very little. This morning on the news some more predictions have been released saying that even though the recession is technically over unemployment is set to double…again

A teasing end to summer

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:54:00 +0000

Today you join me on my iPhone outside the cinema waiting for 2 rather large bounders to turn up so we can watch district 9. Whether it’s any good is anyones guess but lady E tells me that it’s actually quite racist to the Nigerians. Making it right up Canny’s street then really.

Anyway, today was spent split between the seaside town of Sherringham and the picturesque market town of Holt. Got to see JC’s parents have some fish and chips and even an ice cream on the sea front despite the intermittent cloud and biting wind.

Winter's closing in

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:12:00 +0000

I know it’s a sh!tty day, but I’m going to jump on the bandwagon just like everyone else. The weather is terrible at the moment. And I think, what with the relatively naff summer that we’ve already have, it’s fair to say there goes the end of the summer. I’ve already got the coat out.

But the good news is that my house is water-tight this year, and the wind doesnt ravage it either meaning that I can sleep safe and warm.

Problems galore

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:59:00 +0000

To those that actually read this thing I find myself apologising again. The last week has been riddled with problems for the website.

For whatever reason the host decided that it would be a good laugh to have blog.morganbye.net try to redirect to morganbye.net/blog which would be fine if they’d told me in advance so I could have changed the blog settings.

Unfortunately they didn’t, so my blog was spread across the 2 addresses, meaning that none of the features worked and I couldn’t even log in to save my databases. Thank god for google cache and a bit of “outside-the-box” thinking. Hopefully, this should be the end of the problems. That said I might try and to migrate back to the old blog dot address due to personal taste. But you know, it may turn out to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Last 2 weeks

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:56:00 +0000

To those people that actually read this thing may I start with an apology. I know it has been some time since my last post, probably approaching a month. The reason for this is that I have been incredibly busy lately. Since my last post I’ve moved into my new house in knowledge. And as soon as I was moved in I was visited by lady E for a week, which I always enjoy however, it isn’t terrible useful if I actually want to get anything done. And after Lady E left me on the Sunday it was straight into the new job at UEA on the Monday. After a whirlwind week of running about the place trying to get everything in order, such as staff cards, computer accounts and the like, I got straight onto a train and headed to the Peak District with the guys and girls from Nottingham for a weekend of camping.

Moving on

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Well today after my return from the land of Lady E, I was awoken early to a busy day. After collecting my things together and having a quick breakfast it was a case of jumping in the car that I practically had to book off of my brother and heading 60 miles down the road to Norwich.

Not to fear, found some Eurphoria to listen to, put the air con on, and with plenty of time it was a very relaxing drive. After parking the car up at the house I walked up the hill to the letting agent. Got the contract and pleasantries out of the way and we headed back down the hill to the house, and an awaiting JC.

Holidays II

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Well today I’ve just got back from Lady E’s place via the means of a 5 hour train journey. That I must say was far more productive and pleasant than the train journey to Manchester the week before. Partially because the train was over half empty and I managed to have a table seat to myself in the Sun with a good book from Sheffield.

The Manchester to Sheffield trip was quite successful in that I only shed only maybe 6 tears upon leaving my lady on a platform. However, the lady sat next to me at the time was on it like a flash. Producing all manor of tissues, which was would have been nicer if she wasn’t so obviously fishing to see what was up. But she got off at Sheffield so she need not be palmed off for too long.

Holidays I

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:52:00 +0000

Well today is day 2 of the holiday, well complete day 1 of Cornwall. And I’ve gotta say that I’m knackered for it.

Back on Friday I got up early and packed my a full backpack in Downham. Quickly I got myself down to the train station; after Downham decided that it might be quite useful to actually man the quiosk, I go on the train.

A quick hop to Ely and a coffee later I got on the cross country train heading for Manchester and Lady E. The tiny 2 carriage train lead to an interesting fight for a seat, something quite essential considering the next 4 hours I was going to spend on the train.

Norfolk, a new beginning

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:51:00 +0000

Well I’ve got to say, it has certainly been an exciting couple of days. Since I last wrote I’ve been to Denmark and back for Doug’s wedding and I’ve packed up all my belongings and have moved out of Nottingham after a graduating. Tomorrow brings a trip to Manchester on the train so that I can go on holiday with Liz and her family to Cornwall for the week.

So yes, Denmark was an odd experience indeed. Once I had got over the crap-ness that was the magic of RyanAir; which essential came across as a bunch of Irish pikeys that are willing to grab any penny you may have on you at any opportunity. Although if you can tell me why a flight going between Stansted and Bilund wont accept Sterling or Kroner and want you to pay for refreshments in Euros, then you are obviously better at business than myself. Once in Denmark and we actually got the car to start (taking 10 minutes, as you need to have your foot on the clutch and the brake before you can turn the key) we set off to the wedding. Unfortunately, the 3 junctions or about 8 miles of motorway took us 3 and a 1/2 hours due to a lorry ploughing across the central reservation causing mayhem and 7 1/2 mile tailbacks. Apparently Danish radio was telling everyone to avoid the road as the accident had happened about 8 hours earlier and they were in the repair process. However, no one in our car spoke any more Danish than beer, chicken, cheese, ham, sandwich (everything you really need in a foreign country).

House hunting

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:49:00 +0000

So, this past week has been one in which there has been little rest for the wicked. I got to spend all of last Thursday researching houses online through the wonders of RightMove amongst others. Having then compiled a list using several criteria:

Must be 2 bed
Must be both double beds, I think me and JC both have too much stuff for single rooms really.
Ideally greater than 2.5 x 2.5 m (more like 3m desirable)
Must have a shower
If only 1 bathroom/toilet cant have to walk through one bedroom to get to it (rules out a lot of the victorian houses, as they’ve done a 2 storey extension and just stuck the bathroom upstairs onto the back) don’t think we’d appreciate the late night , early morning intrusions
Must have parking a parking space
Must be less than 3 - 4 miles to UEA. The criteria I use is less than an hour walk. Putting - the train station as a maximum as a rough guide.
Using Google Streetview must not be an area I’d walk around after dark (and I’m from knife - city central) and I wouldn’t worry about your car getting nicked
Avoid storage heating but it can be lived with
Definitely ignore houses with gas fires in each room for heating
Must be double glazed (I’m not playing with sash windows again)
Carpets / wallpaper / general decoration should be less in age than I am
Kitchen units must be attached to walls
Mould is a no go, or rising damp
Any property that doesn’t say where it is (address or postcode), how big it is, or show any photos of the inside despite being up for a number of weeks / months aren’t worth the time of day
And all ideally for £500-600 pcm

Using this criteria, a number of properties were shortlisted albeit most of them being upto £700 pcm. Which then allows me to be in a position where I can spend all of Friday talking to estate agents trying to book appointments for viewings for the coming Monday and Tuesday. I’m sure that talking to estate agents is mentioned in Dante’s second circle.

Alton Towers

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:47:00 +0000

So, I’m now fed and watered after today’s activities. And I gotta say I had a good little day. Me, JC and the appropriate ladies joined us in a little adventure to the middle of Staffordshire in the name of fun and Alton Towers.

Aside from me and Lady E turning up at 9 after having planned for traffic and then finding none, and unfortunately the JC car finding that traffic most successfully what with them having the booking form; meant that me and E sat outside the front of the gates for over an hour and a half. Ca la vie.

Post results

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:42:00 +0000

So, after the weekend in Manchester and having watched lady E run the race for life we have returned to Nottingham. So we only have a day or two now until I go off on Doug’s stag weekend and after that its a week in Sherringham on the Norfolk coast with JC and company. Which should be a nice relaxing break from the running around that has been accustomed in previous months. As soon as we get back from that lady E has some work experience to see if she wants to teach and then its practically graduation, which means leaving Nottingham.

Nearly there

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:30:00 +0000

So, today is Wednesday. And university is all but past tense. He says with his fingers crossed, for Friday we find out if I actually have to do a viva next week. Which if I do then there shall be 30 minutes of hell next week on Tuesday or Wednesday but then it should all be over.

For those not in the know, a viva is essentially an interview where they ask you questions from any topic that you have studied in your time at university. Typically given to students that are borderline candidates (ie 59%), to determine whether you are actually worthy of being bumped up to the next grade boundary. So potentially a very stressful procedure.

A new beginning

Wed, 27 May 2009 12:25:00 +0000

A new beginning

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:41:00 +0000

Morgan says:

tis a classic response though why do I have to deal with crazys? the huge iceberg ones at that

Housemate says:

your a listener it’s you’re first mistake your second mistake is being happy with yourself, so the advice sounds genuine and good the third mistake is having a sense of humour and making people happy due to it

Morgan says:

bugger… good analysis though

Fate?

Wed, 09 May 2007 00:18:00 +0000

My horoscope for today.

You Lions have been tested ever since Saturn entered your sign in July, 2005 ( / A levels). Even if you have already been through major transition, your current actions will still have important ramifications over the weeks ahead. Consider the tasks before you; if you are trying to take on too much, you may be forced to let go. Make adjustments now by taking cues from reality before it’s too late.

Smile and contention

Sun, 06 May 2007 16:33:00 +0000

Randomly,

Brother:

You’re a legend

Me:

Well, I try to be.

Brother:

No you don’t even have to try. I mean, you’re one of these people that don’t even have to try, you are just a legend. When you walk down the road, people are just like “yes”.

I smile. I lean back. I feel content.

Over?

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:50:00 +0000

Well I haven’t had a good night. Well a good few days really. This morning I was awoken 3 times by different phone calls. The first at half past one in the morning by a housemate that is currently away ringing to see where his mobile was then realising that ringing the house phone at uni is not the same as his mobile. The second time was at half past seven in the morning by the local county council phoning to ask me to do a questionnaire about antisocial behaviour in my area. How about phoning people so early in the morning being antisocial?

The saga continues

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 20:43:00 +0000

Family life

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:45:00 +0000

This day is the Sunday. Sunday the 15th, whereas for a number of years now the 15th has always brought with it some amount of joy and promise, it no longer does so what so ever. I was born on the 15th of August, and some years ago now my parents decided to set up an allowance system (makes up for the years of lacking in pocket money, 10p per year old per week, so when I was 10 I got myself £52 for the entire year). And so ever since having some feasible amount of money enter my bank account every 15th was a privilege that I did not take for granted.

Over, now it is

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 21:20:00 +0000

My star sign told me today:

“Someone’s power play could be defining your current circumstances, and there is likely more going on than meets your eye. But your motivations, too, are more complicated than they seem. A bit of self control can help, but this is not an excuse for avoidance. Say what’s on your mind, but do it in a way that has lasting value rather than just being melodramatic.”

Destruction

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:51:00 +0000

Dear Diary,

Today has thus far been one of those days where it was difficult to get out of bed and promptly wished I never had bothered really. Today after a very slow start, after a very long night where my sleep was interrupted many times by numerous twats coming in and out of the house, I attempted some work.

Very shortly afterwards the girlfriend came online. What with my status being online rather than my usual appear offline I thought that I had better make and effort to talk to her, rather than my usual tactic of just pretending like I’m not there. Truth is I hate talking to her online these days. Usually because I feel so crap after a conversation online with her. Many reasons for this really. Partly because it now takes her over 2 minutes to give one word responses, regardless of the question. Even if I know she is doing nothing else at the time than talking to me. Partly because I feel about as appreciated talking to her online as something she might tread in. Having said that, now that she works at the stable she probably thinks more of sh!t than me, at least that pile of sh!t is treated to some one on one time everyday without interruption.

Life currently

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:30:00 +0000

Well life is several things so we are told. I only agree with one of the common place sayings. Life is hard. Plain and simple. Just when I thought it was about time I got a break, a bit of a let off life comes along and takes another fat bite out of my arse. And supposedly bottling things up is not healthy for us so consider this to be my cleansing of mind, body and soul. So, let me start with why I’m writing on a website, with no record of my name, why I haven’t chosen to myspace my life or taken to the shelter of a book. Well the answer to that my friend is simple. I cant. I used to use the wonders of a friend network site to do all of blogging and whilst it was very nice sometimes to have words of encouragement from my friends over matters in my life it also proved to be more hassle than it was worth.

Posts on Morgan Bye

The Loneliness of Leadership

The internal cost of responsibility

Ideas are cheap

The Leadership Failure of Low-Ball Offers

Interviewing is a Muscle

The Efficiency Paradox: A Post-Mortem of a Success

The Demo and the Drop

The Paradox of Control

Addition

2025 review - health & fitness

2025 review - relationships

2025 review - health (original)

2025 review - career

2025 review - The best of

Rapid fire, best of

In praise of juniors

Do the thing

How to hire well: what actually matters (beyond skills & stacks)

Hire like a CTO: three simple rubrics to save you from 'maybes'

Clap for me, idiots

The Absence of Outrage

The Mountain and the Meeting

You deserve better

So, you wanna be a team lead

The line between solid and senior team lead

God, I love recruiting

Time for a change

Dear Morgan - Do I reward heroics?

Dear Morgan

Finished without failure

All this and still not happy

A return to basecamp

The mountain didn't care

They’ll ask why I didn’t swim harder

Morgan is handling it

Buy, don’t build... then customize

Our business is unique

Intern-First - Disrupting Experience

The Problem with Experience

Hire More Off-Shore Teams

Consultants should be a lot more expensive

2025-03-30

French

2025-03-23

DataProc - a (near) complete guide

DataProc - Passing runtime variables

On this page

Passing runtime variables in DataProc and Airflow

Introduction

DataProc - Cluster startup optimization

On this page

DataProc cluster startup optimization

Introduction

DataProc - Cluster configuration

On this page

DataProc cluster configuration

Introduction

DataProc - Variables

On this page

Passing environment variables in DataProc and Composer

Executive summary

DataProc - Understanding environments: shared vs local

On this page

Understanding environments: shared vs local

Conceptual overview of Airflow and Spark environments

DataProc - Everything You Need to Know

On this page

Everything you need to know about DataProc

Understanding Airflow and Spark in Depth

2025-01-14: Surgery day

Just getting there

2025-01-13: Autism assessment

Annual review 2024 - 4) Weights, weight & supplements

Annual review 2024 - 3) Running

Annual review 2024 - 2) Best memories

Annual review 2024 - 1) Overview

EOY fallout

EOY performance review

Mini Q2 review