Resolution

It’s a brand new day in a nice shiny new year and like almost every other blog on the internet my first post is a list of semi-ambitious resolutions. I would have been more creative but I’ve only been back in the office about 20 mins and every time I sat down to write anything over the Christmas break, a small child tugged at my arm and demanded I show him more minecraft – parenting is so hard some times…

I’m thinking about starting a campaign to get the word “resolutions” more mid-year usage.

So in no particular order here is my list of things I vaguely promise to do this year. Possibly. If I get time.

1. Write a better lab book – I think our previous blog post on the current state of our collectively lab books was quite revealing. I should spend more time getting mine written up properly. Step 1 in that process is probably writing a post on how to write up a lab book properly. They are surprisingly important and I really should take more care on the off chance that someone actually is mad enough to try and read mine one day (good luck, future person!).
2. 

   3 contributors from a department of 20 people?

   Diversify the blog – I greatly enjoy writing posts for this little blog, and I enjoy even more talking to people about it! But I am acutely aware that this is supposed to be a departmental blog and not just my personal soap box. This year I will annoy, bribe and threaten more of my colleagues into sharing some of their thoughts on science. For this resolution I get bonus points if I can get the departmental head (Ralph) to write a post.

3. Start an online lab book – This is a bit trickier for a couple of reasons; firstly I am essentially doubling my writing work load by duplicating my lab notes and secondly, as I have not yet sorted out alternative funding I still need to be aware of confidentiality – so I probably can’t make it public. However, in the future I really want to work towards having an online lab book and I think it will make it easier to convert my work to a more publically accessible form when the research councils start asking for greater transparency.
4. SOLVE THOSE %*&$ING VORTEX RINGS – I’m not obsessed with this irritatingly persistent mystery, honest…
5. Learn more python – I did learn a bit of python in 2012 and in general I thought it was an excellent programming language. It still has a few problems but is better than most alternatives (Matlab and labview) I’ve tried before. Over 2013 I will try and convert a number of my programs across to python. The most important obviously being the program that makes pointless, but pretty diagrams.

Like any resolutions these will be abandoned the second I get a better solution, but I do think they are a good place to start. Especially when it’s my first day back at work and I don’t fancy doing anything more complicated than browsing the internet for a good online lab book solution! Any suggestions anyone…?