The next five weeks of my life will look like this:
One week of scout camp in Stavanger
Two weeks of univerity courses in Seattle
Two weeks of complete relaxation and exploration in South Korea (here is Busan)
We come back in the middle of August, and after that it’s back to finish the apartment and back to work…
Today and tomorrow I am doing Software Carpentry. I am improving my skills in BASH shell, python and will learn git, whatever that may be. I have already met three people I know, learned some new things and am looking forward to getting new, smart tools to improve my work day.
Still the python lecture is quite easy, so I have time to blog as well.
Everybody can attend one of these, so if you want to learn more on bioinformatics, just look at the page and see when the next bootcamp might be.
In two weeks I will be attending SISG, summer institute in statistical genetics, at University of Washington in Seattle. I will do two courses, one in Bayesian statistics and Markov chains and one in genetic animal data analysis. So this will be a heavy summer!
It is strange to think that a year ago I was just starting to learn to code Python using Udacity, and now I am expanding and getting better at it all the time. I am so glad Erik talked me into trying.
Just wanted to show you how good the gardeners at UMB are and that I really appreciate that the uni spends money on flowers. The campus looks lovely. These are from the uni summer party a couple of weeks ago.
I realise I didn’t really blog last week. But let me tell you, it was a crazy week. Tuesday it was our 2 year anniversary and we shared a bottle of wine over a homecooked meal and talked about life. Then the crazy started. Wednesday we packed all the gear we needed for the canoe trip and I cut my hair (finally!).
Thursday I went straight to Bekkestua, I picked up things I needed for the trip, my bunad and some of mom’s clothes from 20 years ago (3 new trousers, yay!). Then we went and got Dolly (my car) out of winter storage and I stopped by Alexander’s place to say hello. He was here over the weekend to see friends and family, very nice to see him 🙂 When I got home we organised all the food for the trip (two dinners ++ for 25 people) that Erik had bought, tidied the apartment and made it ready for our 17th of May breakfast.
Friday the guests started arriving at 8 and we had a magnificent breakfast, some lovely sparkling wine and lots of laughs. We went to the city centre to see the parade, almost drowned in a shower of rain, lunched with Erik’s family, listened to Den Norske Studentersangforening (including my dad) sing outside the Aula, then had icecream with my parents. We went to Sofienbergparken to hang with our friends for a while, but had to leave early because we had to go home and pack. It was super hot and wonderful weather and we looked lovely in our bunads. The rest of the evening we packed everything we needed for the trip, my parents delivered my kayak and we tried to get to bed early.
Saturday we were up 6.30 to transport everything to the scout house, get the big car Erik was to drive, meet the scouts and be on our way. All 25 left at 8.20 and were at Fjorda (Oppland) about two hours later. We taught the kids how to master the canoe, found a good camping spot and set up camp. Everyone loved the salmon for dinner and it was too warm to wear a woolen jumper around the camp fire.
Sunday they did a round of orienteering on the lake, doing tasks along the way. Erik and I were responsible for the food stop. We spent much of the day sitting in the sun watching the scouts make food. In the evening they all just swam and played because the weather was so nice.
Monday we did small things, cleaned up the camp area and canoed back to the cars. We were back by 18.00 and Erik and I were home, kayak and car delivered by 19.30. We managed to unpack and get everything up in the attic before we went to bed, super tired. What a weekend.
So now there’s this week. It looks to be a busy one as well, but at least I will be home this weekend.
I would have blogged about Malta and our anniversary today, but I have this terrible examn in R that I have to hand in today, so I didn’t have time.
Many of my friends with more technical backgrounds than I have re-posted and re-blogged this article about introducing programming in schools, so children will learn how our most important tool works. I think it is a really good idea, not only that children know how to use a computer, but also how to make one. It is important that everybody knows about IT and knows how it works. This is another good article about the same. The cool thing is that it is a grassroot initiative, that ordinary people are doing the work and getting organized.
As you know, I learned programming only six months ago after contemplating it for a while and after geting the final push from my boyfriend. Now I regurlarly urge others to do the same (mostly because I am around PhDs a lot). But I really think it would be beneficial for many (if not all). If you want to start you own business and need to set up a website. Or you deal with data analysis in some form (as I do) or something else.
I really recommend the python course I did at Udacity, but there are many places you can do it. Do it!
Ok, so I’m turning into a tech freak, or geek, maybe. Anyhow, you will never guess what I got for my birthday 🙂 This:
A shiny, new iPad! My plan is to use it to work on the train and when I travel. I have worked a bit on it already and it truly is everything you need in a box. I will keep you posted but I think I might start using it to blog as well. MAybe I will finally get back to posting outfit pics?
På tide med noen natur- og landskapsbilder igjen. Nå som jeg ikke går til jobb og for det meste befinner meg i asfaltjungelen blir det ikke så mye naturbilder. Men fredag 1. mars hadde jeg med meg kameraet hele dagen og fikk tatt noen bilder at den vakre naturen jeg ser hver dag.
Dette er kontorbygget mitt. Det er altså ingen tvil om at jeg jobber på landet.
Dette er over veien for kontoret mitt. På dette jordet er det preppa skiløype.
😉
Tog i solnedgang
Det var veldig bra vær. Jeg hadde tydeligvis vært snill jente i år.
Solnedgang over fjorden.
Furu i solnedgang er spesielt vakkert, synes jeg.
Det er mye fine hus på veien også, fra alle tiår.
Jeg synes de ser så majestetiske ut, som stålgiraffer.
Eller dinosaurer, kanskje?
De famøse barcode-byggene. Jeg liker dem, jeg. Det er kanskje teit å ta fjordutsikten fra folk, men utseendemessig er de bra.
Spesielt dette, som ser ut som om det er en hellegang eller flekkene til en giraff.
These days, as we are planning holidays and wonderful things to do the next months, I can’t help but think about how life was a year ago. It is strange to think that it has only been one year since I was sitting in my office in Trondheim, thinking that the master thesis was still a long way off. Now I am a master of biology, I am a PhD candidate, I live in Oslo and my life is just so different when keeping in mind that nothing has actually changed. I’m still doing biology, I’m still doing genetics and computer programs, I’m still with Erik and I have the same friends.
xkcd had a new comic today and it made me laugh, because I too, have been scrolling alon the river Lena (in Russia), trying to find civilization. I didn’t do it for fun, but because I was trying to find places that were mentioned in the descriptions of the samples I used in my master thesis (and there aren’t that many, as you can see) by Russians travelling 60 years ago.
I have to admit that I prefer not to use rucksacks. I wear them when I actually have to carry around something heavy, but I really prefer to keep my computer and reading glasses in the office, and just carry my packed lunch around every day. So I only use handbags and such, but I have to admit that I could have lived with one of these rucksacks from Yang Du. An own or crocodile, perhaps.
If you like it, there are a lot of cool meets fun clothes from the brand as well, I would try ebay or something.
Good news! Erik and I are going to Italy on a road trip this Easter 🙂 We have now even bought the tickets, so now it is definitely happening. I can’t wait to go. There is nothing better that travelling with Erik and I am looking forward to spending ten days in romantic Tuscany with him. There will probably be a lot of what we did when we went to Uppsala for my interview in September last year.
Uppsala:
The church from the river
Beers by the river
Mmmm, berries and mushrooms.
Skipping and dancing
By the fort
The entrance to the botanical garden
Benches for giants
Carl von Linné was at Uppsala when he invented the scientific system of ordering organisms
Insection of the plants
Happy, lunching in the sun
The fashion brand Acne has collaborated with Uppsala University to make t-shirts! (but I was too poor to buy one)
The front of the church
Bulle! (cinnamon roll, Swedish style) Just as big as Eriks’ face
The tea cup is dwarfed by it
What does this tell you? That I wasn’t particularly efficient at work last week. Or not at all, really. This is one of the graphs that Rescuetime will give you of what you actually did on your computer. So I signed up and decided to not try to be good, just do what I did the week before. And it turns out that I spend way too much time on Google Reader (no news there) and that I am not very productive in general. But I am also either very productive or very non-productive.
I will have to tweek the settings a bit, but I think this will be one of my greatest tools during this PhD. The interesting part will be how good I can get.
Wish me luck!
Mmmm, new computer. And that huge screen. This will be a good partnership.
I attended a one day conference and project finale just before Christmas. It was at Ås, in their great hall. I just wanted to show you some of the details.
Two news articles for you this afternoon, one about being busy and the other about lying.
The first one, “are you as busy as you think” is about how we think we are so busy all the time, but really how the small things that we don’t notice steal our time. Ida Jackson has written a similar blog post on how to save your unhappy marriage with the Internet (in Norwegian). It all has to do with using tools that help you measure what you are actually doing, not what you think you are doing. Now that I have gotten my new PC, I will start using Rescuetime, to see what I am actually doing while at the office.
The other article is about how Japan is experiencing an alarming percent of confessions in the legal system. The article is in Norwegian, but I learned some new, disturbing things about Japan. Almost everyone that are prosecuted are convicted. Almost everyone confesses. The police can do what they want with you the first couple of days. Suddenly I am very happy with Norway…
For første gang på en stund går jeg et forutsigbart år i møte. Jeg vet akkurat hva jeg skal gjøre og hvem jeg skal gjøre det med. Jeg gleder meg til å bo i Oslo og til å jobbe med alle de fine menneskene på Ås. Tenk at dette kommer til å være utsikten min de neste tre årene.
🙂 I love how geeky people are (and it is evident that she is not the one working in the lab, not with those nails) and how others appreciate it. And BTW, electrophoresis of that precision takes some skill.
Yeah, after having a long hard look at the train shedule from Halle to Berlin, I spent most of my second day in Halle in Berlin. I just walked aimlessly around, but with good light and a camera, I was more than happy.
It feels like a lifetime ago that I went to Halle to decide if I wanted to accept the PhD I was offered. The weather was sunny, warm and pleasant. I thought it would be nice with some pictures of sun and colourful leaves, now that the snow if falling and the world is white.
I really liked a lot of the street art and architecture in Halle.
They had a lot of old houses in the city centre. They reminded me of my trip to Romania.
This is Händel again, from the town square.
Old towers allways makes a town feel old and sound. I like it.
Oh, I have (as you can clearly see) started to photograph interiour, but these lamps were so cool.
My dinner that night was at the microbrewery. This is pflammkuchen. Gut!
Yesterday my supervisor had invited all the people at CIGENE to his house. We talked about the future first, but afterwards we made these
His house is from 1750 and is completely renovated, but they have kept the old wood fired oven in the centre of the house. So for the first time I have made my own pizza the fancy way. And it was really nice to spend the day with everyone that I will work with the coming years.