Meg's pages

are still here. But wait... what's this?

WOW! It's been updated!

Again!!

(It's still not very exciting though)



26/10/03

I'm now back in the UK after my exciting summer galavanting around Sydney (you can see my photo album here). It feels kind of weird to be honest. Hey ho, that's life!

Due to the spectacularly helpful (as ever) accommodation office I ended up staying at Mum's for a couple of weeks when I got back. But two weeks ago I moved in to a house in Manchester with three other students, two of whom are also PhD students at Jodrell!

Things are generally going well, I've picked a project and spent the last couple of weeks ploughing through the literature in preparation for writing a review by Christmas, and, in three weeks time I'm going to be flying off to the states to visit the VLA (the Very Large Array - a collection of telescopes in the middle of New Mexico)! How groovy is that?!



16/04/03

Oh wow, can this year possibly get any better?!? Back in February I applied for a summer studentship at the AAO (in Sydney, Australia!) not really thinking that I would get it as I wont officially be a student by the summer. This morning, two months after the application deadline, I got an email from the programme coordinator, Joss Hawthorn, offering me a place!!! Jumping jellybeans!!!

So when the exams are over I'm going to be moving out of the flat I've been in for the past three years (*sniff*), stacking all my stuff in boxes at my Mum's and jumping on a plane. When I get back I will be (hopefully) moving into a flat in one of the postgrad halls in Manchester and starting at Jodrell! This is going to be one heck of a summer! The only slight down side is that I will miss graduation - shame!

The only trouble with the halls is that they don't allocate the rooms until the offer is made unconditional. Now normally this wouldn't cause a problem because I'd be around to do something else if it fell through. As it is, I may well come home to find I have nowhere to live for the next year! Yikes. On the other hand I'm probably just being pessimistic as usual!

The other really cool thing about this summer though is that the IAU are having their conference (held every four years) in Sydney this year! This is basically where a huge number of the professional astronomical community, including several people from Jodrell, get together and have a big meeting for two weeks. And I'm going to be in the same city this year! :-) Groovy!



12/04/03
I'VE GOT A PPARC FUNDED PLACE AT JODRELL BANK!!!!! Wow. How cool is that? I have to get a IIi (which means I have to score an average of about 30% in the June exams - a score of less than 40% is a fail anyway) in order to be awarded it.



Roll on September!



12/04/03
Happy Yuri's Night everyone! Take some time today to celebrate one of man's greatest achievements!



28/02/03
The paper I put together whilst at Jodrell last summer has finally been published! The abstract is here. We've now got more data on the lens (long track VLBA observations at 1.6 and 5 GHz) and my lab partner and I are analysing it for our MPhys project this semester.



18/03/01
My photos are now online thanks to boots, unfortunately they weren't scanned at fantastic resolution so they look a bit crap. The prints look a bit better, honest.

BL256
rockets in the park in late December.



16/3/01
Last night was the Battle of the Bands final at Manchester Student's Union. One group, Basement Lard 256 - a slightly strange (some might say disturbed) bunch of physicists in the same year as me - played and came a fantastic second place behind the Kirkz and in front of local (un)pop group Madee. Not bad for their second ever live performance! Here's a photo of them on stage. More to come when Boots get their act together.



11/03/01
Well, I'm now half way through the second semester of my second year at Uni. I got my exam results back the other week and my overall average is now 72.6% Woo. I put some of my astrophysics laboratory reports online because I think they are interesting. Don't laugh. Oi, I heard that! Other than that I have about as much to say as usual.... so here is the old stuff!









The A-level coursework is still there because I can't be bothered to get rid of it. I have done a few lab reports this year but it's just effort converting them to html. Besides, they are just as dull. If anyone really wants to know about gas flow through narrow tubes, forced oscillations or globular star clusters then mail me. But I don't think it's likely, do you?

I am still an astronomer(!), but the MIR and ISS predictions were so out of date that they have gone for good. Well, until I either find a program that does the same stuff on Linux, or I get my machine to dual boot properly so I can use STSPLUS without having to shutdown and unplug one of my hard drives. Thankfully, there is some very good astronomy software for Linux, but as yet I haven't found a satellite tracker as good as STSPLUS.

I'm still running SETI@Home. Here are my team's stats.

I also still run the distributed.net client but generally only when the SETI client can't connect to download another work unit! Consequently my stats are pretty boring. From the fortune generator: Statistics are no substitute for judgement.

Don't all these links just give you a headache???

Contact Me

If you use Linux - go register!