Igor makes for lame blogging.
Local time, it's the wee hours of the April third. There hasn't been an update to this blog because there hasn't been anything that would make decent reading. I've gotten comfortable with all the beamline equipment, but explaining it all would strain even the most forgiving atttention spans except possibly for people who plan to come here to use this beamline inthe near future. Since those select citizens number about as the left-handed pygmies of the world, I'll fill in you the reader on the scientist's best friend: his Faithful Hunchbacked Brain-Fetcher. The FHBF of choice amoung my colleagues is, of course, Igor. Igor Pro Version 5, specifically. He isn't squeamish about the type of data (e.g. sounds, text files with numbers in columns, pictures, graphs, tables), or the task (manipulating files over the net, controlling your laboratory equipment, harvesting organs from the dead). Igor can be trained (with unlimited awkwardness)to do most any task that his master might require of him. I've been as uncommunicative as I have because I've been working away in the lab, getting to know Igor, trying to make him a properly useful Faithful Brain-Fetcher.
With all this mad science going on, our first glimpse of cheerful blue sky had the emotional impact (Look, Elana: "Impact" as a noun!) of the end of a cheap horror movie. The whole lab seemed to glow, and I suddenly felt a lot less like I was lurking or plotting.
After washing the burying ground dirt and from my hands, there were hands to shake: Tim, Brian, and I have been joined by three more students from Brian's research group at Trinity. "Two Americans, an Irishman, a Greek, a Kiwi, and an Indian (not shown) walk into a synchrotron in Sweden..."

We're beginning to adjust the sleep schedules in preparation for landing back in the states. It'll be a pleasant change to be awake when everyone else is, and when there's enough light outside to see things in the distance. The sky is blue during the day, right? Don't tell me; I'll look it up online. Or derive it from the Rayleigh scattering formula. Now where do I find a human eye spectral response to have Igor convolve with the sky's power spectrum....?

Tyvärr, jag kan inte engelska.,
-Dr. S