Fresh Wallaby Juice

At least not in my new lab. Which isn’t to say that I was planning to take that many — an occasional weekend trip down to NC, an occasional overnight camping trip, that sort of thing. It’s a “real job”, after all. Of course, it winds up being just another example of [...]

Estimated cost of a high power femtosecond laser that “just works”: $250,000
Estimated cost of a decent power meter to measure the output: $1,000
Now, my new lab has 5 of one of those two items. It’s got 2 of the other items, one of which apparently doesn’t work.
Two guesses on which number matches with which [...]

I am 225 barleycorns tall. (High?)
And taking notes on nonlinear stuff using my own private Mediawiki installation (same stuff Wikipedia uses).
Fun, except for typing in the equations. But I don’t like the equations anyway, they make me sneeze four times for every two equations I read.
That’s right. Second-order nonlinear susceptibility susceptibility.

Apparently, it’s okay I don’t post super-often, because post frequency doesn’t matter anyway. And you thought it was ’cause I’m lazy — I’m just trendy.
Irrelevant but I like it: “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.” (G. K. Chesterton)

“Um… can I help you?” “Well…. I’m [orange]. The new postdoc.”
Repeat half a dozen times. Even though I thought I’d met just about all the lab already
Semi-holiday notwithstanding, it was my first day of postdoc-hood. My new advisor was back from Ireland — where he was complaining that Guiness wound up being cheaper [...]