Room at the top

It wass a blazing hot day in Jerez, we had a walk around the town centre and discovered that storks really like nesting on top of churches. There were plastic storks on top of some roofs as well, whether to attract or scare off the real thing we're not sure...

All the chocolate

Panorama

On our last day in Interlaken, we went up the Hardkulm - Interlaken's "home mountain" with a great view of the other peaks. And great weather for it!

The joys of summer

Not even the miserable spring followed by a summer that can't seem to decide if it's winter or not has put off the rhubarb - the local shops are full of it and Austa very kindly sent me a recipe for a rhubarb and yoghurt parfait! One for now, one for when I finish work some time tonight...

From on high

It's a steep climb to the St. Beatus caves, but the view is its own reward.

Double rainbow!

Visited the amazing glacial runoff waterfalls at Trummelbach, complete with (barely visible here) double rainbows in the spray. Definitely recommended on a hot day!

Mind the glass

Last Sunday I went to the flat of a friend who is very into making things with glass - you know it's serious when someone has their own portable hospital oxygen generator to super-heat propane. 

We donned safety glasses and got started melting glass rods and winding them around mandrels, which was actually much easier than I had thought although there were so many factors to keep in mind that it was mentally exhausting after a while - keeping the mandrel parallel to the floor and rotating it constantly to keep the bead even, keeping only the edge of the bead in the flame to avoid it melting and running (I did that a lot, as you cans see from the turnip-shaped ones), and just telling where the flame was through the safety glasses! The easiest thing to do was was to watch the glass bead like a hawk and guess from the incandescence of the glass.

Some colours of glass were easier to work with others, and once I had an idea of the basics we went on to dots and stripes, twisting and poking the hot glass, making thin "stringers" from the large canes and coating in clear glass.

The glass loses all colour when it's heated, so it involves a certain amount of guesswork. As soon as the bead starts to cool and the colours starts to return, it's time to bury it in a pan of hot vermiculite so it can cool down slowly and not crack.

It was a huge amount of fun, and much more manageable than I had thought. I might have to get rid of another hobby before taking this one on though...

I know this one is distinctly turnip-shaped, but I do like it.

It was Ms Really Should Know Better, at her desk!

I finally found an ink pad (in the stationery department of the big Coop in the local shopping centre, they must be out of fashion) had a little forensics party all by myself with the John Adams New Scotland Yard Forensics Kit.

The fingerprinting was fun, and I know now that I am a Loop (which is nothing to get excited about, it's the most common type) and that I should refrain from committing any crimes involving my left ring finger as the scar makes a very distinct print (long story involving my brother and a gate, long long ago). I was a bit worried by the staying power of the ink, but by the time I'd washed my hands repeatedly as I went through the rest of the kit the blue stain was mostly gone.

Apart from the lack of any ink pad in the kit - which looks like a factory issue, as the box that should have contained it was sealed - there was also no pipette for measuring water to test the "mystery substance" (clearly labelled with a health and safety warning stating what it was and how it was toxic). So it was all a bit haphazard, but I suppose people think that's all right for children. Still, they could have made an effort. A child would get a shock watching CSI after using this kit.

(I was overcome with a desire to watch CSI, and nearly bought the first season streaming on Amazon.com before realising that their T&Cs state the service is only available in the US, so although they would sell it to me they probably wouldn't then let me watch it.)

I appreciated the clear health and safety warnings and advice on how to handle the powders, but it would have been nice to know that both plastic jars were sealed with foil, so you had to totally remove the child-proof caps to get the seal off. Lots of potential for throwing activated carbon and calcium carbonate all over the place.

I got the fingerprint identification wrong, and had to decide what "lab result" the chromatography matched based on who I thought had done it as it looked nothing like any of the possibilities. But overall it was fun and definitely checked the box for the optional "take fingerprints" activity for the OU Elements of Forensic Science module.

Things I have learned:

• Forensics is messy
• It involves a lot of washing of hands (or disposing of gloves, I suppose)
• It involves a certain amount of waiting around (chromatography, I'm looking at you)
• Activated carbon gets everywhere. An object lesson in "every contact leaves a trace".
• No, really. I kept finding it rooms I didn't even remember going into while playing with the kit. And black powder on a black glass desk is a nightmare.

It was fun and doing some of the activities may help me understand the content of the forensics course a little better, but I'd be wary of buying the kit again as it was missing items (pipette and ink pad). It's also far cheaper online (about £21) than in Hamleys (about £33), although it would have been easier to bring it back to a physical shop and complain. There were also reports of missing dusting powder in the Science Museum fingerprinting kits, which is annoying. Even children expect a certain level of quality. 

I'm going to keep a few of the items out, as they might be useful and/or fun - plastic tweezers, UV light and UV pen with "NEW SCOTLAND YARD" on it. 

Biggest gripe? "Forensics' kit" wasn't a just a flare of something on the outer box. It was everywhere. Along with the amusingly ambiguous "Advice for supervising adults" and the awful "Hair and how is it examined?".

Unboxing

I know, people usually take photos or video of unboxing the latest highly sought-after gadget but no, I unbox a Scotland Yard forensics playset. If only to show how much of it was in fact styrofoam.

I really hope that thing that looks like an apostrophe after "Forensics" is some kind of background pattern...

All very exciting...

And, as you can see, mostly styrofoam.

It all ended up being not much bigger than a book, although the impression clay caused a bit of a problem as I already had 10 things that security like to consider liquid. Apparently Lush's solid shampoo/conditioner bar is also a 'liquid' despite the fact I can rattle it in its tin. 

But at least they didn't take away my sewing machine needles.

In the name of science

So yes, maybe it is just a little tiny bit slightly over the top... I only needed a fingerprint kit for the optional activity on the OU forensics course... but... but... chromatography!!

Walking

I've been trying to get out for a walk more recently, especially since the weather has been halfway decent. There are some cherry trees in bloom down by the river.

I've also planted some shiso seeds, although nothing showing yet. 

Went to the shops to get a birthday card, and found a rather optimistic one (I don't think people live to 999 even here).

And you may want to spellcheck before you embroider (courtesy of Butlers).

We went out to a barbeque by the river with Mr Yamaguchi and Hiro Takahashi (the Japanese baker) where himself picked up this beauty. We thought it was dead at first, but it roused and eventually flew off.

Another little creature seen out walking, on the other side of the river on the hill with the church on the top.

A sweet window display at the local craft shop.

We also went to see a property in Horgen, where the mild, rainy day made it feel almost like autumn. Lots of lovely buildings.

And last weekend we took advantage of the good weather to go up to the Wildpark, and made it into a part of the park we'd never been in before. That meant we got to see the Przewalski's horses, including a cute foal who was so sleepy he passed out leaning on his nose. The enclosures were full of Christmas trees for some reason. 

And now, bunnies

The weather was slightly less horrible on Wednesday, so I took the train to Leimbach and walked back.

It appears to be "log the slopes by the river" season.

Huge piles of tree trunks were piled up on the river bank. Not sure how they're going to get them out. (Helicoptering trees seems to be quite common here, so that may not be as wild a guess as you think.)

Bigger trunks lying parallel to the river.

Some had numbers spray-painted on them, or else a logo - "Holz" (wood) with a Swiss cross.

 Just for Austa, the current Stadt Adliswil fire station by a bridge near the river (in the same compound as the city recycling/disposal station)...

And the old fire station, you can just make out "Feuerwehr" above the doors on the left. It's now a row of shops and a vets, with entrances on the far side (just off the bridge).

And as promised... bunnies!

We'd seen them before but only inside their hutches during the cold weather. They were out nibbling the grass and chasing each other. 

Hello you.

And I managed to finish two baby blocks for a friend's baby - she moved to California last year, so hopefully David can meet up with her or her husband and hand them over while he's there.

Progress

Himself has just left for a business trip, so I'm going to try to really catch up on study this weekend. I haven't left myself much room to manoeuvre with the second part of Topics in Health Sciences - Understanding Cancers - finishing up in June, and Elements of Forensic Science and Inside Nuclear Energy just starting. The deadline for the last two is October, but I'll try to get them done well before that. Oh, and Introductory Human Physiology on Coursera is proving to be a lot of work, but fascinating. Makes me look forward to the OU level 2 biology courses.

Looking back (ah, hindsight!) what I should have done is taken Introducing Health Sciences - that together with Topics in Health Sciences would have given me the Certificate in Health Sciences. And I definitely enjoyed some of the Short Science modules more than others - having heard good things about Introducing Health Sciences (30 credits), I would probably have gladly done that instead of Plants and People, Understanding Human Nutrition and Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis (10 credits each).

I could go back and do Introducing Health Sciences, but it's about £1,000 to do it in Switzerland even on the transitional fee structure, it's being withdrawn in 2015 and if I want to make progress on level 2 I don't really have the time for it before then...

Which brings me to the next question. Under the transitional arrangements, I have until the end of 2019 to complete my BSc Open Studies. (I thought about trying to convert to a science BSc but I think that would involve changing too much at this stage.) That's plenty of time, but do I try to do all of level 2 in one year and same for level 3?

The level 2 courses I want to take all start at the same time this October, and one of them is going to be hard (The Molecular World, a whopping 60 credits of chemistry) although I'm hoping the other two won't be as difficult as I already have some background knowledge (Cell Biology and Human Biology, 30 credits each).

The level 3 courses are a bit more spread out, but all between May 2014 (overlapping with the three level 2 courses!) and October 2015. So it would be better for my sanity to space them out, doing each level in two years instead of one, but I'm not sure I want to wait until 2017 to get the BSc.

I'll keep my eyes open for new courses, but at the moment these are the ones I'm most interested in. And that is the key - some of the courses I struggled with were ones that I thought I'd be interested in but just wasn't (I'm looking at you, Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis). Nothing wrong with the course, but if I don't have that little spark going for the subject then it just feels like work. (All of this is unavoidable if you're still in school, but you feel rather embarrassed about it as a mature student choosing and paying for your own courses). But this is all new, so I can't expect everything to go perfectly. There are a lot of things I would change if I could go back to me in secondary school, frightened by drawings of benzene rings.