When we were kids (some still feel like we are) we get to play in the sandbox. It is a safe area where other than getting sand in our hair and perhaps up our nose we can have adventures, build new worlds one day then rake it over and build something new the next.

Working in science you have lots and lots of ideas. Some of these ideas you put in proposals to get facility beamtime, jobs, research funding and others you talk to your friends about at lunch, in the pub or on public forums. Just like a sandbox these proposals, these ideas often never make into the “real” world. They get raked over when they are unsuccessful or left to one side for that next proposal. Or perhaps worse still they appear in paywalled peer review journals and internal reports.

I figured it was probably a useful idea to share these ideas some have already gone into proposals, some have been successful and some have failed to get me a job or funding or beamtime even. However some of them I’ve never put into written form before - they have never left the pub!

Why do this?

I want to share. No seriously I do. What is the point having an idea if you can not grow it or see it being fulfilled. There is only so much time in each of our lives so perhaps it is worthwhile for the greater good to make sure we distribute the knowledge and ideas.

Of course we expect the greater good to acknowledge these ideas and not to just run off and steal them. I guess we try and follow the Creative Commons approach. I’ll make the appropriate CC license with each page I post.

Proposals

Watch this space for a list of my proposals to appear - give me time to up load them.

Thinking Out Aloud

These pages cover ideas I have had for science and stuff. Some out far out there others a little bit more honed.