Forgiveness

Wasn't it worth the wait?

Last week's experimentation revolved around an attempt to project a particular illumination pattern -- the image of a resolution target -- onto some uninteresting fluorescent sample by means of extraneous optics added to an infinity tube microscope's epifluorescence illumination pathway.

Yes, indeed.

No, it didn't work.

Turns out my unregarded Leica scope has some undocumented optical elements in that pathway, including a ground glass diffuser at just the right position to completely fuck up the entire endeavour. The day's tests were correspondingly unsuccessful, and profoundly frustrating. In bed that night, and in the shower the next morning, I was picking at the problem incessantly, and by the time I reached the lab next day I had narrowed the problem down to three possibilities. One of these was decidedly unpalatable -- that I'd completely failed to understand the problem and was barking up some unspecified number of wrong trees. Luckily, both the other possibilities turned up trumps instead.

I'm currently awaiting permission to set about this microscope with a blunt instrument. And, in the meantime, sidling up to some frankly intractable integral equations. Come Wednesday morning I am supposed to provide a rigorous mathematical justification of what are currently merely nebulous intuitions about this structured illumination lark. Do I look like a fucking mathematician?

On Saturday, encouraged by Alastair's charming boyfriend, I took to my skates for the first time this year; for the first time since bloody sunday. I've meant to go out before, this summer, on the one or two occasions it hasn't been a total fucking washout, anthropogenic global warming truculently refusing to be any help at all; but I was -- I'm sorry to say -- afraid. Despite being happy to venture out alone before in brazen, unashamed crapness, I've this year felt completely ungrounded, unable to take that feeble and irrelevant risk without someone to hold my hand -- or at least to share the merriment when I made a fool of myself.

I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever skate again, just as I wonder whether I'll bounce again now that it's no longer a regular thing; but, thanks to D, it turned out pretty well. I'm still almost entirely useless on skates, but with confidence sufficiently restored to be useless unaccompanied.

And yesterday -- Sunday -- I went with Kym to see the Headlong/Glasgow Citizens' production of Angels in America in Hammersmith, all frigging day. I still consider the text one of the great theatrical masterpieces of the late twentieth century, and it was good to see it again, but it's not a great production. While some aspects worked well enough, others fell badly flat -- the most egregious case being the big dual argument scene in Millenium Approaches (Act 2, Scene 9), when everyone winds up stomping around shouting at each other in dismally histrionic ways -- just too tedious for words. Bleah. And, despite going on for seven sodding hours, they still managed to cut some important bits.

On the other hand, the quote above came across OK, which is something. Not transcendently, in the way of Declan Donellan's NT version, but present at least, not glossed into nothing as the HBO movie has it. That's got to be worth something. Worth some kind of forgiveness...
Posted by matt at July 16, 2007 11:11 PM