where is the black hole?

We were waiting eagerly for the black hole generated by LHC. What a disappointment...
So, to cheer us up, we watched at the videos of the real LHC group:
http://www.cernettes.com/

My favourite is the "collider" song, even if also "liquid nitrogen"...

night shift at ESRF

the post doc metaphor

If it works it works

indian philosophy of our indian colleague.
His experimental setup is rarely failing

It has to work it has to work it has to work or I´ll make it work
my philosophy
My experimental setup is always misworking (when it works)

Am I missing something???????

administrative staff vs researchers = 1-0

There is no way, the administratives will always win.
This week the air conditioning in the ring has been stopped due to maintenance reasons. Of course this was the hottest week of the spring-summer period up to now (Murphy´s law never fails).
The ring was an oven and you could see baked researchers slowly boiling in front of their monitors.
Nothing happened
Then, the air conditioning system has been stopped in the offices.
Administrative staff rose up.
The next day, after an e-mail of apologize from the maintenance people, the air conditioning was up again.

So, lesson of the day: when the air conditioning goes down, put the administrative staff in the ring

When the going gets tough the tough gets going

Anyway, I am really tired keeping going. Why EVERY single step towards succes is like climbing the everest? Sometimes I would really like to give up...

Science seeker

June has come but summer not yet. Who cares, I am spending my life in the clean room! I think I will put my official residence place there...
Science is a very demanding lover. It makes you stay up to late in the night, it captures your thoughts in the strangest moments (under the shower, in the early morning in the slight border between sleeping and awaking), it makes you seek it in the weekend..
And then..
I am never able to catch it!
Sometimes I wish I never had met it at all
But there are moments, like seing the synchrotron hidden life on a sunny sunday morning, in which I really believe that this is the right place for me..
Lets hope that my boss has the same idea!

Etching Silicon Nitride

I am doing a Reactive Ion Etching to remove some silicon nitride from my x-ray mask. This process is so quick and interesting that I think it could be used by the Maleficent Witch of Snow White instead of the apple...

zen and the art of withstanding the delay of publications

Hallo to everybody.
Yes, I know, I have been away for more than a month, but I was caught by flu and, even worse, by writing an article. A dreadful experience, ending in an even more dreadful way: we will have to wait to publish, as the results we have did not prove sufficient. And it is not even my fault!
It is terrible. If as scientist I am to be evaluated on the basis of publications, I can apply for a position of lab-cleaner... this independently from all my efforts...
What does it mean? That I love research but I am not suitable for it? Am I the microtechnology Cyrano?
Or only that I have to go to Lourdes (or to the Mecca, to be sure that I have tested any chance)?
Why did nobody write something about zen and publications disappointment?
Or at least edit the "Journal of unpredictable mistakes "?

the user of the mouth (2006)

The user of the month

In our beamline (i.e. experimental station wich uses a synchrotron light source...ah, now it is really clear!!) we have a lot of users. In fact, everyone who has good ideas about experiments, can apply for beamtime (time for experiments) at our lab. After an evaluation process from an external scientific review committee, succesful users can come once or twice a year for 3-5 days to perfrorm their experiments. And with 3-5 days we intend FULL days: 24 hours over 24. In our case we decided to invent the prize for the "user of the month". How does it work? Well, users who make the craziest picture inside the beamline or our lab win the competition. The prize consists in....glory...(after all we are scientist, and should be used to it... :p ). It is unbelievable what people can do after at least 2 days of sleepless working......you will see....

the crazy thought of the day

Lithography is like porc, you never throw anything away..

back to work

First of all, happy 2008 to all!

I am here again, after a hard working pre Christmas and totally not working Christmas time.
And I have to say that it is REALLY difficult being back to work.
I am here in clean room listening to jazz and spinning my "odi et amo" SU8 2025, but I would like to be elsewhere, for example on the mountains! At least there would be white light!