As part of my write-up I made a podcast about my experiences. Click on the link below to listen to it, or right click to save it to your computer.

Zinc Ions and Stefin B Amyloid Formation

(Be warned, I mumble a bit – about halfway through I say “the amount of amyloid formed was much greater”, not “would be much greater”).

If you’d like a tl;dl version: I was looking amyloid fibres, which are involved in various degenerative diseases. The presence of zinc ions might have some effect on the formation of these fibres, and my project has contributed a modest amount of data towards finding out what that effect is.

To speed up data processing, I made a little macro to pick out specific lines from text files and collect them in an excel spreadsheet. It’s useful for any bits of equipment that spit out lots of single data files. I’m going to do another post with some documentation on how to use it, but in the meantime you can click here to download it if you want to have a look.

The very last thing I did was to get some pictures of my fibres in the electron microscope (which, liquid nitrogen and fiddly prep notwithstanding, was a lot like using a normal microscope). They’re underneath the cut.

I got to do some SUPER AWESOME things as part of this project and its left me with the impression that, if I can get one, doing a PhD would be the coolest thing anyone could pay me to do for three years.

So my farm on FarmVille is doing well. I don’t know what it is about farming games – whether it’s this or Alice Greenfingers, there’s just some part of me that finds the whole thing deeply satisfying. Perhaps this is a sign that I should get a real garden, who knows. Or perhaps it’s just a sign that I’m supposed to be revising at the moment and that procrastination is quite the enchantress.

Speaking of procrastination, I have rather a list of things that I’ve vaguely thought about getting around to making/doing At Some Point Maybe.

• A layout for LiveJournal – my journal needs a new look and I have a paid account for the moment, so I can edit things to my heart’s content.
• On the same note, a mood theme for LiveJournal. I said a while ago I’d make some fannish ones of my little sprite representations of Jeeves and Wooster (or was it Vince and Howard?) so I’ll get that done, I’m sure a few people would be interested in those.
• Sherlock Holmes Big Bang. Oh yes! A big bit of writing to combine many things that I love – slash fanfiction, Sherlock Holmes, victorian attitudes to homosexuality, and if I can fit him in, Oscar Wilde.
• A fanfiction archive for all the things I’ve written. I have a LiveJournal account containing my (modest) back catalogue of fic, but I’d like to make myself a wee webpage to have it all on.
• Similarly, a content management system for fanfiction archives. Lots of people write fic and I’m sure it’d help to have a nice easy way of arranging it in one’s own webspace. I’ve had a few ideas for it so far – the reader will be able to sort by genre, by characters and by rating, and to change the font, background colour and text colour of the main text to suit what they find easiest to read. Oh, and it’ll be based on CMS From Scratch and won’t require anything fancy like a database, just PHP.
• A Linux From Scratch project (I’d call it Bethnux!) mostly for my own education. What better way to learn about how Linux works than to make my own operating system?
• An icon set for GNOME or, well, anything really. Similar to the ones I use on my websites, just simple monochrome cartoons of functions.
• A font based on the one I have as the header on my blog. Again, just a simple monochrome cartoon affair.
• A Wordpress theme based on my current one. It needs a lot of tidying up and tweaking, and some adjustment to the fact that other people in the world have screens bigger than my teeny tiny one, but after that I think it could be a nice thing to release.
• A design for CSS Zen Garden. I’d like to try my luck! I’d be so proud to be picked for that website as I’m a big fan.
• A Facebook app – I have an idea for a little calendar that I would find really useful.
• The world’s best 2d platform game. Watch this space.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am aware that it’ll take me the rest of my life to do all these things, and I’m not afraid to add, revise or delete items from this list. But isn’t it nice to have plans?

My resolution for 2010 is about potatoes. I resolve to become extremely good at mashing, frying, boiling, baking, dauphinoise-ing and roasting potatoes, with the help of Delia and The Potato Council. A nice resolution, I feel.

I also have some little things I want to do, which don’t quite merit the status of “resolution”. I’d like to go swimming more often (I like swimming!), make time to do arty, crafty things, and to keep working hard at my degree.

This time last year I was trying to put myself together again after going through a hard time, trying to recover from depression and find something to do with myself. Well, I managed all of those things. Now I’m healthy, happy, busy and still just as quirky and interested as I’ve always been.

Depression is a rotten disease, and it’s something that most of us have to deal with in ourselves or others at some point. There’s no magic trick to getting out of it – it takes time and hard work, with lots of setbacks along the way. Some things that helped me were The Mood Gym, which is free, online cognitive behavioral therapy; this book by Dorothy Rowe, and the support, patience and gentle prompting to shower of my loved ones.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Incidentally, that zebraman is also a qualified electrician.

It was at this festival that I started accidentally liking Dubstep, which caused my Petebrother to direct me towards the noises of Spoonbill, which I find agreeable.

I have been engaged in cake-baking activities of late after reading too much food porn (Smitten Kitchen, I’m looking at you) and the simple necessity of it being my last day at work on Friday (there was not a dry eye in the house, I tell you). These endeavours would be much improved by the edible glitter I’ve been drooling over of late. But still. Read on for my completely failsafe vegan chocolate cake recipe…

Really Quite Easy Yet At The Same Time Almost Obscenely Moist Vegan Chocolate Cake

1¼ cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup cocoa powder
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla essence*
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar

Mix together dry ingredients, make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients, mix well. Pour batter into greased 8″x8″ tin. Bake in preheated oven at 175°C for 20 minutes.

(*I don’t think I’ve ever actually owned vanilla essence)

For apple & cinnamon cake all you have to do is replace the cocoa with flour, replace the vegetable oil with applesauce and add 2tsp or so of cinnamon.

So anyway, I made chocolate cake and an apple and cinnamon cake and everyone loved me and I’m sure will miss me horribly. But I’ll be back at Christmas with some more of my messy Visual Basic Scripting and/or envelope-stuffing. For this week I’m doing some work experience at the East Grinstead Courier and Observer, which has been brilliant so far – they even let me write things!

I will post cuttings if they actually publish any of it. If not I’ll bake another cake.

And how were these cupcakes drawn, you ask yourself? I happen to have purchased myself a graphics tablet for the princely sum of twenty quid off Amazon. Oh, and yes, you can use it under Ubuntu. It’s fun! Its main purpose is for diagrams for my biochemistry notes… but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been drawing endless bunnies with it. I love living in the future.

Incidentally, I’m selling some botanical illustrations in my etsy shop. If you like that sort of stuff.

Now, a few of you may have had a peek at Teacosies With Irony, my webcomic (currently on hiatus). Does anyone remember seeing that one about the Brighton Bead Shop? Well, they did.

I came across your ironic site by a rather circuitous route & was very pleased to see the name of our shop up in lights. If one shop in Sydney St fell down they would all do so, it is only the fact that they are leaning against each other that keeps them upright. The street has been standing for over a century & a half & no 21 has only been a bead shop for about a quarter of a century. It would make a bit of a mess if it did fall down.

So that’s pretty awesome. Plus, they gave me a gift voucher – let’s just say I’ve got some goodies coming to me in the post very soon (did you know they have a website?) Jolly good show.

Recently I’ve been learning a bit of visual basic in idle time at work, and just for fun I ended up making a small macro that sort of… does my job. So who knows how long I’ll be staying there. They sure don’t keep me around for my excellent bedside manner, I can tell you that.

Cool stuff:

• Bunny the comic, the inspiration for all my bunny-drawing.
• Solid perfume in someone’s Etsy shop, because don’t we all secretly dream of smelling like Nag Champa?
• You probably knew there was a Torchwood mini-series on the BBC the other week, but did you know about the radio plays the week before?
• MuseScore is a free music notation editor, which plays your scores back to you. I used a similar non-free program when I was in school, and I found it really enjoyable. This one’s open source and runs in Windows, Linux and Mac, and anything you compose on it can be read by any other music notation program. Epic win!

Yesterday I went to a Young Singers’ Day with my good friend Astride and did a bit of alto-ing for the first time in ages. I think I’m a tad rusty on the whole singing-in-harmony thing (sopranos really do have it easy), but it was great fun and just the right amount of challenging. We were conducted by Leslie Olive, who really knew how to bring out the best of a slightly shy group. The repertoire was a good mix, and included the Hallelujah Chorus (just for fun), Rutter’s version of All Things Bright and Beautiful and Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium.

I’ve been in a bit of a letter-writing mood recently, and have been doing so with the aid of my lovely cupcake stickers, number confetti and good old colouring pencils. So a couple of gorgeous young women of my aquaintance will be getting some love in the post soon. And by “love”, I mean odd rambling stream-of-consciousness meanderings with occasional illustrations and in one case, some post-it notes.

Do you want a letter? Comment and I’ll send you one.

But before we embark upon this journey into the significant and momentous, a few lighter notes.

• Last weekend I went to the Peace in the Park festival in Sheffield, and had a wonderful, if damp, time.
• I was accompanied in this endeavour by my beau, Johnny, who rather delighfully supplied me with wit and cheese throughout.
• This glorious man has built me a wardrobe, and fixed my guitar (important note: I cannot play the guitar) and got me all excited about UV LEDs, all in the past fortnight. Oh yes.
• I recently googled the phrase “how to be awesome” with some interesting results.
• On Thursday I am going to Hacktion Lab, which promises to be the most educational activity I have ever undergone in a damp, Welsh field. Think of it as being a music festival with techie activism instead of bands. Ooh, and there’s a workshop on L.A.S.E.R. graffiti!
• I’m thinking about going to some of the Surrey Artists Open Studios workshops, since they seem fun and crafty. With anyone I can drag along. Such as… you?
• Tetris, that game that pleases the primal puzzle-solving nature of the human brain, has been immortalised in a blanket by some awesome person on Craftster.
• My brother gave me his old digital camera as I’d mentioned I wanted one. The good news: it has a very good flash. The bad news: it has a lower resolution than my phone. I guess I’ll just keep saving up for a DSLR…

Anywho, more on my comfy jumper. It’s perfect for snuggling up in, it really is. Just perfect. But I thought… isn’t this a little bit bland? Would a true crafter really go around in a hoodie (probably made by children in a sweatshop, but for two quid we’ll skip over that little factoid)* without crafting it up in some way? Oh no she wouldn’t.

I used two parallel lines of backstitch for each stem, buttons for the three shorter flowers and made a fabric yo-yo for the tall one. The dots around the pink button are french knots, and the petals/leaves on the other two are backstitch.

So there we have it, one somewhat adorable jumper, with a sum total of zero decent photos.
* After the revolution, Primark clothes will be made by robot children.

A few years ago I picked up a bag at a jumble sale. It was a garish green and pink monstrosity that clashed with every item of clothing in the known universe, but I’m pretty sure I’ve used that bag more than any other I own. Colours notwithstanding, it is the perfect size and shape for me – a messenger bag small enough not to get in the way, but large enough to fit books and my little netbook inside, with cute elasticated pockets at the side which are the perfect size for a phone or a pot of bubble mixture. Folks, I love that bag more than I will ever love a woman, but the damn thing’s falling apart. The fabric is disintegrating like so many broken dreams. What’s a crafter to do in that situation? Why, make a new one, of course!

So here’s my prototype version of The Comfy Bag. I made a rough pattern by tracing around the original (which I can’t bear to disassemble) and put it together with pillowcase fabric, then lugged it around Sheffield for a week by way of product testing. It needs some tweaking, and I need to learn how to use a sewing machine properly, but I think I’m well on the way to resurrecting and (dare I say it?) improving my old favourite.

More stuff, my new knitting machine and some web design on the inside…

The pattern on the fabric (which apparently a friend of mine had as bed sheets when she was younger – small world!) reminded me of feathers – or more accurately, the way I used to draw feathers in primary school, so I embroidered a couple of owls on the front, which apparently look more like blind penguins, since I neglected to give them eyes. Nonetheless, they are adorable.

Other things I have been working on recently are the website of O-Tech, (Oroboros Technologies), a computer and amplifier repair service in Sheffield which is run by an extremely skilled (not to mention squishy) man called John. The website’s still a work in progress but it’s not bad, eh? I’ve also updated the main page of bethmcmillan.com, in a blue fashion.

The other thing I’ve been looking into, which is a bit more obscure, is making themes for Nokia phones (mainly because I happen to have a Nokia phone and just am that sort of person). There’s a program you can use for it, called Carbide.ui, which is all very well and good but a) it’s quite clunky and annoying to use and b) it’s Windows-only, and I use Ubuntu Linux.

Thing is, the themes are quite simple really. They’re just zipped folders of images with a file describing where in the theme they’re used. So all I need to do is make some images and edit the descriptor xml file to tell the phone where to use them. The problem is, there isn’t a good way of finding all the things you could possibly change in a theme without using the program. So I booted up my mum’s computer and used the program to make template files so I don’t have to again. More complex explanation (skip to the knitting machine if you don’t care!):

If you take a theme file, example.nth, rename it to example.zip and open it with an unzipping tool, inside it are image files, sound files and either theme.xml or theme_descriptor.xml. To create your own theme, download the xml examples I have uploaded (see a theme on your phone first to see which it uses), open it up in a text editor, change the hex codes for the colours in the files, change the names of the image files to your image files, and the names of sound files to your sound files. Make a zip file containing all the images, sounds and the xml file, then rename the zip file from themename.zip to themename.nth. Then try it out on your phone and see how it looks.

Download: theme.xml – theme_descriptor.xml – and for more information check out my post on the nokia forums.

Brace yourself for awesomeness:

How did this incredibly neat if un-cast-off piece of stocking stitch come into being? I hear you cry. Oh yes I do.

Ladies and gentlemen, through some wonderful people of my aquaintance, I have come into possession of a, wait for it, knitting, wait for it, MACHINE. That’s right, a knitting machine. A machine that knits. This is extremely exciting, because I am, as we all know, a massive geek, and anything that brings knitting that little closer towards being programming is pretty much the best thing ever. That said, it’s an entirely analogue machine – no electrics at all, but it speeds up knitting like lightening and uses combs which are, like, practically punch cards. I’ll post more about it when I’ve worked out how to use it more effectively – that is, learnt how to cast off and other exciting things. Glee!

My mother never attempted to hide vegetables in my food as a child, for which I am eternally grateful. However, as an adult who prefers sweeties to her greens, I’ve had to fall back on using evil parent-tactics on myself. The result is surprisingly delicious, not to mention super healthy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Spinach and Chocolate Brownies

Recipe follows…

Ingredients
3 handfuls fresh spinach (or more or less, I just grabbed what was left
of a bag)
1.25 cups plain flour
1 cup caster or light brown sugar
0.5 cups cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt

1 cup water
0.333… cups vegetable/sunflower oil
1 tsp lemon/lime juice or vinegar (or another acid, hydrochloric maybe? Yum.)

Preheat the oven to 180C, 350F, gas mark 4. Steam the spinach for a couple of minutes, then whizz in the blender until it’s homogeneous goop. Add all the dry ingredients and whizz until the mixture resembles slightly damp sand, the kind that’s good for building sandcastles out of. Add all the wet ingredients and whizz until it looks like cake mix. Grease a 6″x6 tin and pour the mixture in, then bake for 20-30 mins, checking frequently by jabbing a fork in the middle. It should end up with a moist, brownie consistency.