Friday 2 December 2016

Christmas Lectures: Day 46

Things are now starting to ramp up here at the Ri. A good chunk of the demo's are all built (and currently crammed into the tiny prep room waiting to be moved downstairs where they can be stored in the much larger demo room. Rehearsals are now in full swing (not that I've seen any of them), scripts are being finalised, and stress is starting to show on everyone's faces. Well, except for Saiful, he always seems to be smiling whenever I spot him around the place.

I do start to feel a little guilty at times when I'm sitting here with very little to do whilst I know a bunch of the others are running around like crazy on little sleep trying to get things done on time. I have offered my help on many occasions, but often there isn't much I can do so I leave them to it.

For my part, a good proportion of my job this last week or so has been sorting out the database records so they make a bit more sense, and stuffing envelopes. Lots and lots of envelopes.

My small pile of stuffed envelopes
For those people lucky enough to win tickets in the ballot for this years lectures, they will be getting one of these lovely envelopes in the post soon containing their lovely tickets.

The stuffing party...containing tea
Surprisingly the 600 or more tickets only took a couple of hours to stuff, with a team of about 5 of us. Made a change from sitting at a computer screen for the afternoon. Plus the tickets are kind of pretty.

Also for those of you not following me on twitter (@RetroBagel) the Ri advent calender has gone live for 2016, all on the 4 laws of thermodynamics. They're explained beautifully, with lovely short videos presented by expert physicists giving simple explanations that build on one another to give a good overview of the laws and how they connect with the world around us.
The calendar can be found here

Outside of work, this weekend I'm heading back to see some of my lovely friends (Sorry those of you I'm not seeing!), and last weekend I had a visit from my sister!
We had an awesome time, with cake for breakfast before a flying visit to the natural history museum to see Dippy and its friends (Diplodocus)

One of Dippy's friends

Then we headed over to the Ri to have a quick tour, and then finally headed to tower bridge, had the tour and then saw this:

It Opens!
Yup, we hung around in the dark and freezing cold to watch the bridge open. It was pretty cool, especially as neither of us had ever seen it open before.

So that's about it for now. I need to head off in a mo to go find my train home. Until next time, have fun!