Extrude and Bevel your Cello

Having explored 3D in adobe Illustrator recently with the 3D revolve effect, I was keen to try extrude and bevel. It was incredibly easy because the default settings of -18 X axis, -26 Y axis and 8 degrees z-axis rotation seemed to convert my cello drawing into a 3D instrument.
This drawing was inspired by the fact I wanted to go to a concert a friend of mine was playing in. To do this, my dog needed to go into the kennel for the first time. I was anxious and imagined all sorts of scenarios except the one that happened. She was ill in the night and made a horrible mess of my living room so we didn't even get as far as the kennel.
So this is my imagination running riot and my dog being remorseful she prevented me going and taking up cello lessons.

How to draw medicine pills in adobe illustrator

For a diagram I was asked to do recently, I needed a pile of pills and realised I didn't know how to draw in 3D. So I have just worked it out by trial and error. First mistake I made was to try the effect on a whole pill when in actual fact I needed half a pill. Then I realised I needed to 3D revolve around the right edge, not the left. Finally when I tried to rotate my pill I got something like a centrifuge rotor so I tried changing the Z-axis as well as the Y and finally had what I needed to create my drawing.

How Long it Takes to Write a Novel

Like many people all over the world I started writing my first novel during National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org) last November and ended up with 25,000 words and, most importantly, a beginning, middle and end. Now I am past the target 50,000 words I was supposed to have written in a month and expect to finish an average length novel (about 75K) before next November. I was surprised how little time it takes, considering the busy four months I’ve had starting this year. Realistically though, the answer to the question How long does it take to write a novel? is probably fifty years in my case. Certainly my story is derived from experiences I have had over the last thirty years.

Probably a more interesting question is Why does a story suddenly have to be written? I’m a cell biologist, not a novelist. I think the reason why most people get through life without writing a novel is because they never found an urgent need to. There has to be a driving force to make it happen.

As well as the words I have written so far, I now have a synopsis and a design for the front cover with the help of Adobe Illustrator. The novel is based largely on a remote Scottish Island, something I’ve struggled to draw convincingly so I used a puffin in the fore-ground instead which was much more fun.

Arvon Poetry Course

When I was a teenager, English homework was an agonising affair because I could never think what to write about. It seems hard to believe that the same person has just returned from an Arvon poetry course at The Hurst where a morning session involved writing seven poems in three hours! There’s no doubt that Peter and Ann Sansom, our tutors, are magic but at the same time there must be some benefit from age and experience. I didn’t quite manage seven every morning but I did write poems about many things from

1. what happened at the weekend to memories of childhood,
2. being in a man’s world as a female birder in the 1990s to a dinosaur discoverer in C18th (Mary Anning),
3. showing fund raisers around our lab as a PhD student to the misery of skin disease and
4. being crazy about moths to not so crazy about dogs.

Others are still to be finished including two on Taekwondo.

Intense creativity was just part of it; I also got to know some wonderful people.

I had a brief break from poetry drawing a design in AI based on this wonderful chair beside the lake that became the front cover of our course anthology.    

The Genomics Era

The Genomics Era

The BADGEM session at last year’s British Association of Dermatologists conference inspired me to undertake a free online FutureLearn course ‘The Genomics Era’ ( St Georges, University London) to make sure I’m up to date with the technology being used now to study the genome. This had several purposes though; I also wanted to see how online courses work. Although I’ve prepared material for online courses, I had never actually taken part in one. This also gave me an opportunity to see the kind of problems students encounter learning about genes, genomes and the genetic code.

The latest technology, including genome wide association studies (GWAS) and next generation sequencing, make it possible to crack complicated disorders that arise due to defects in multiple genes. A highlight at this year’s BAD conference was hearing Angela Christiano talking about research using GWAS that has revealed new genes associated with alopecia areata, a common hair-loss disorder that can even affect young people. The discovery of these genes has led to treatment that looks extremely promising.

Also this month I’ve gone back in time and learnt about the origins of cell culture. ‘The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot is partly a biography of the patient whose cancer cells became HeLa, one of the most commonly used cell lines used in research. But it also tells, all too painfully, the reason why we now have informed consent since the taking of cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks had considerable consequences for her family subsequently. Other shocking revelations in this book were the early experiments that were carried out using HeLa in ignorance.

We have come a long way since the cell culture revolution began with huge discoveries of benefit to mankind but many lessons have been learnt the hard way. We are now in the genomics era which is the next exciting revolution with lots of potential but also lots of ethical issues regarding the sequencing of peoples’ genomes. Let’s hope we can manage it better, with fewer mistakes this time. 

Puddletown Forest Walks

Puddletown forest doesn't have any way marked routes so, during 10 months of walking the puppy, we have come up with a short (brown) and long (blue) walk. The long walk is sometimes extended to include the pond near Thomas Hardy's cottage. The map below I drew for the purposes of recording so I know which 1km square we are in at any one point. I send dragonfly and moth records to Living record and butterflies to the Dorset butterfly conservation website.

Birding, recording and tweeting

Work has been slow coming in this year so I have invested some time in learning how to submit records of moths and dragonflies and how to use twitter to find out what others are seeing locally. White winged black tern is a rare migrant in the UK and one I missed years ago when living in Dundee because I refused to be distracted from my work. This week I finally got to see one in Wareham.