15/09/12
Hi everyone. I've finished my summer project and will now proceed to mooch about the house for the next three weeks until term starts. I've got to tell you, this is the best project I've ever had, and I have had a fair few! So, I was making solar cells in the physics department of my university - it was so awesome being able to actually make something, and fiddle around with different processes, and then measure how well it worked!! (1% efficient... at best... and many, many short-circuits... ¬.¬ but it's a relatively new material and a process that no one in the lab has much experience with - although there's quite a bit of literature about using the thermal vapour deposition process to make thin films from this material, no one has yet made these thermal-vapour-deposited films into solar cells yet - the originality is a bit niche but it's there if you search hard enough... ) Long story short, I had a lot of fun and it's been fantastic doing something that's not just running a simulation or taking measurements of stuff that someone else has made (not ragging on those activities - just personal taste, yo).

So, about this house that I'm mooching around - I'm renting it with *Phoneix-Faerie and... hey Jenni, is Vicky on dA? It's quite exciting - I've spent the summer playing at being a scientist, and now I'll spend the year playing at being an adult. -grimace-

I'm sorry about going off the radar all summer - the three weeks of mooching will include much dA-message-sorting, you have my word on that. Now, there's something I don't get - if you're not active on dA for ages, you ought to apologise for not commenting on deviations or replying to messages, sure - but to apologise for not having uploaded any of your own work for ages? Huh?? I'd understand if you had a hiatus in the middle of posting pages of a webcomic or story chapters or something, and your dA friends are avidly reading those, but why does anyone feel an /obligation/ to regularly post random original work? That's not the nature of an artistic free spirit, surely. Or am I just being rude and ignorant of social conventions? I've been putting off uploading stuff because I haven't gone through all my messages yet, and I wanted to save up the reward of reading your comments on my work - in fact, I thought it would be rude of me to upload stuff as if demanding your comments, when I hadn't caught up on all your deviations yet. But if you want, I can upload a few things - I have tons of photos and doodles from the past year. I really don't mind either way, it just puzzles me that some people do mind - or rather, that they feel they ought to mind.

Anyway, that's all for now. Do excuse me if it takes me a while to get round to looking at your work/reading your messages. I will get there eventually, and many thanks in advance for your patience!