I am a small, blonde, writing, motorcycling, dancing, baking, yoga enthusiast. My head is more often than not in the clouds, living a fantastic concurrent life. I’m embarking upon a voyage of discovery. Scientific discovery.
Writing is what I do. I run my own marketing, PR and copywriting business – so if you like what you see here, and need some words writing – words for anything – head on over to my professional website www.sunflower-comms.com and get in touch.
Welcome.
girlinclouds 
I’ve just discovered your blog and sat reading every post so far!
I’ve just started S104 (official start date 1st October) and am so excited about it!
I am a little apprehensive as, although I do not ‘work’ I have a son who’s almost 2 and a baby due in February! I’m just really hoping I can keep on top of my studying and stick with it!
I loved your blog and your ensuthiasm has definately made me feel more positive!
Good luck with future courses & I shall continue to follow your blog!
Welcome, Vikki! Thank you very much for your kind words – I’m so glad you’re feeling positive. It’s a fantastic course. It’s huge; it covers so much ground, and so many topics, that it can seem overwhelming at times, but stick with it! It will be worth it in the end.
I wish you the very best of luck with it, and with your new arrival – and if you have any questions I may be able to answer, feel free to ask :o)
Vicky
Hey, sorry but I couldn’t see anyway to email you.
You inspired me to keep a blog for my OU journey and I was hoping you could add it to your blogroll. Your blog was one of the first I added to mine back in July.
http://b64naturalsciences.wordpress.com/
Thanks 🙂
Hi Phil,
Thank you very much! I’m so glad you’re starting S104 – if you keep motivated and make sure you don’t get behind, you’ll do fabulously I’m sure 🙂
I certainly can add your blog to my blogroll – it should be up there by the time you read this comment.
Good luck with it! And one piece of advice – if you can make an early start on the studying to get ahead, I would do so 🙂
Vicky
Thanks for that.
I’m definitely planning on making early start… 😉
I popped in a few minutes ago – for the first time ever – because I searched for ‘casio fx9750g hack’. But didn’t find what I wanted but then decided your question (December 19 2011, I think) – “who searched for “casio fx 9750 hack” deserved an answer. It is a long story.
I was a postdoc but I have fallen off the gravy train of over lazy underworked days and lavish over funded research as depicted in ‘PhD comics’. I am currently unemployed and, with a PhD and postdoc experience, pretty much unemployable.
My very young son is mad keen on robots but I am from the Earth Sciences and I know nothing about this. We need drag and drop programming. Lego Mindstorms is what we really need but that is ferociously expensive even by Lego standards and because of the afore mentioned status, money is, as the song goes, too tight to mention.
A few months before my contract ended I was writing a grant proposal (for my boss so my boss could give me a job – original idea was mine etc etc and in the end we were 7th in a grant round that gave money to 6 groups). Anyhow, the proposal included datalogging.
In my searching for how to make a cheap datalogger (so there would have been more money to pay me for longer) I found a description of how to use a PIC chip and a Casio fx 9750g+ to make a datalogger cheap enough to use in schools.
This had caught my eye because at the end of a teaching year I had picked up 3 of these casio fx 9750g+ for $1 each from lost property.
AND… one of the off the shelf robot systems that seems to offer drag and click programming runs off a PIC chip. I began to wonder if it might be possible to add other components to the robot and I thought I could maybe take components from the calculators = ‘hack a casio fx 9750g’. So that was why tonight I searched for this tonight.
It seems it isn’t possible. So I have to go with an off the shelf toy kit and wait till my son is older and we have more money to get something like an arduino. At the moment it feels like it may have to wait till he has a job of his own.
Before children I also rode. Nothing flash but it took me and the future wife on some great rides. I wish you luck with a career in science.
Cheers
CJ
Crikey – thank you for the comment and explanation! I do appreciate it, because some of the search terms people use are downright strange (as you’ve seen if you read that post). Plus, I’m interested in other people’s lives.
Good luck with everything! And thank you for the good wishes 🙂