Wow.

It's been such a looooong time between posts, so anyone who is actually reading this blog, my apologies for the no updates, and my blessed thanks for you to be such loyal readers and hoping for updates all this time.

I should rename my blog as I am also now a Kendoka and an Engineer.

My work in the Department of Engineering has progressed quite a lot. The project has had slow and fast moments, and it's fair share of extremel boring periods of time.

However, there are also some excellent moments where something new is found and provides some stimuli for more thought and development.

Recently I have been focussing my work on DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry). I can't remember if I have previously mentioned this or not, but it is a technique used to measure the heat energy flowing in and out of a given sample compared to an empty reference sample. It provides excellent information about a variety of characteristics in a sample, like melting point, crystallinity point, glass transition, phase relaxation and so on. I used to go to Mechanical Engineering to use theirs, but now Chem Eng bought a simple one, I only have to go downstairs. Useful!

Today, I played with a Nikon C1-Confocal system. It's an extremely cool toy, and I can already see why the Electron Microscope Unit chose to spend big bucks on it. The beauty of this sytem is that is can run 3 lasers simultaneously and 3 detector filters at once also. The system is computer controlled, but the software is manually driven. If that doesn't make sense to you, it's like so.

A manual system is where the user must apply everything by hand to the microscope, The computer is only for aquiring images.

A automated system is where the user uses the software to operate the microscope. The user does not have 100% control of the microscope as the software has pre-set functions and options.

A manual driven software is where the software controls the microscope, but the user can manipulate and control 100% of the functions and options, just not by touching the microscope, but using a mouse.

The advantage of this system is that you do not disturb the microscope setup, and the software can track all of your movements so you can backlog if you want to repeat things.

So I got to play with it today, and it was funky as.... I want one!!! hahahaha.