gemini://gemini.bvnf.space/blog/007

It's Thursday, and I spent 6 hours of today in labs, measuring some gamma ray spectra. It's not as exciting as it sounds, since a scintillator hooked up to a pc does all the work, it's mostly grappling with some windows software until we can set it off and write down a couple of numbers every 100 seconds. Already being very tired, this is not enjoyable. It's for my degree, not actual research, and for this particular "experiment" the biggest source of error is not from the radioactive sources, but from how we measure the numbers off from the computer (CASSY-lab has a less-than-ideal click and drag interface to get the program to fit Gaussians to the spectra, so depending on exactly where I click, the reported peak height can change wildly.

Anyway, I've been overwhelmed with new modules since the start of this term two weeks ago, but I'd like to make more time for reading books, especially fiction. Ew0k's reading challenge over the past week seems like a cool idea. I didn't have time last week but I'd like to try now. Maybe we (gemini) could have a more structured, gemini-specific environment for people to track their progress, rather than just replies to blog posts. Replies work fine (skyjake's COSMOS is very cool), but would anyone be interested in making a small space dedicated to this challenge, so that it can go on for more than one week?

A few years ago I used Goodreads to do this - in 2018 I tracked 19 books, and since then it's gone down to only 1 last year. I did try to read more last year but I only _finished_ one book. Some people challenge each other and succeed to read 52 books in a year; I struggle to understand how they read so fast. I think I can read quite fast if I genuinely enjoy the book - but I suppose that's not surprising.

Like many people, I have had the habit of reading several books at the same time. The last time that was happening, I was reading the following:

Emma (Jane Austen) - "quaint". If I were retired and living on the edge of a lake in Finland then I'd read a page of this every day.

The Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker) - I'd really like to continue this, I only read a bit of the beginning but it seems to have a very interesting perspective.

Troy (Stephen Fry) - this I finished, and it's comparable to what popular science books are for science (that isn't a compliment, but such books have their place).

Since finishing Troy, I have been picking up fewer fiction books (K&R is excellent bedtime reading) but I bought a copy of "The Cut" (Chis Brookmyre) which is a very recent book but recommended to me. Maybe I'll start with that.

My brain is struggling to put together sentences now, and I need to finish (/start) a problem set due tomorrow, so I apologise if your brain also hurts after reading this. Hopefully on the weekend I'll start reading properly.

Reading