At the beginning of February I started a new job, in the Evolutionary Biology Group, which is in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading. The project I am researching is concerned with the evolution of phoneme use across sets of related languages. This research is in conjunction with researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and to learn more about the project I spent two weeks visiting them.

It was a good trip and I also had opportunity to spend time exploring the local area. While there I did some running – all of which was either up or down hill and at an altitude of over 2000m.

I am currently working on modelling wind flow and dispersion in urban areas. This research is for the Boundary Layer Meteorology group, which is in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading.

The image in this post is from a recent experiment, modelling scalar transport.

(And thanks to the hard work of those that allows me to produce such images!)

]]> http://owls-count.net/blog/work/my-job/feed 10 http://owls-count.net/blog/work/graduation http://owls-count.net/blog/work/graduation#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:47:13 +0000 Simon http://owls-count.net/?p=383 This morning I graduated. I am really glad that the hotter weather of earlier in the week had relented, making the wearing of a suit and robes much more bearable.

The combination of a surname starting with a letter early in the alphabet and my degree meant that I was the first person to be presented for a degree today. There was a small amount of pressure to start the proceedings off correctly.

]]> http://owls-count.net/blog/work/graduation/feed 2 http://owls-count.net/blog/work/presentation-styles http://owls-count.net/blog/work/presentation-styles#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:19:28 +0000 Simon http://owls-count.net/?p=371 Today I presented at the Reading e-Research Open Meeting. My presentation is on that website, but that set of slides is my notes rather than the presentation slides I displayed. My usual presentation style is to use many slides. Instead, for this fifteen minute presentation I decided to try a different style and I went minimalist. In the presentation I showed two slides [1] – two and ten from the longer presentation – and drew similar images to those on slide three [2].

I found this to work fairly well. Certainly it stopped me from just reading the slides and just stand and talk about my research. I could have used some better flash cards/notes – just to have some reminder of areas I wanted to mention. I certainly feel this needs experimenting with and more trails. And that is good – I am giving a seminar [3] next week!

Notes
[1] I used no title slide either – everyone in the meeting had a schedule with my name on it and I had just been introduced.
[2] The images on slide three are not those drawn in the meeting. Instead, they are images I drew especially to put in the longer version of the slides.
[3] For the research group weekly meeting.

Yesterday I presented Sparse Hybrid Monte Carlo Methods for Matrix Inversion. The presentation went fairly well and I was asked some interesting questions prompting a good discussion. It would have been useful to have some graphs of the results, but the results were produced too late for this.

Now I am back I am busy putting together the final touches for The Sixth IMACS Seminar on Monte Carlo Methods (MCM2007). I must remember to write my presentation in the next few days!

Also while out in China we visited the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall, some of the Ming Tombs, and some other areas in and around Beijing. The hotel we were staying at was a spa resort, so we were able to relax in the spa pools and get a massage. All in all a fairly good trip, even if the smog did get a bit much by the end.

Tomorrow I am off to Bulgaria!