So, a couple of months later and my paper has been submitted for peer review, I've presented my results at a conference and I have another nice few pages of my thesis written. Now, I've been given the chance, by Fusenet, to do something quite radically different.
I'm currently packing some kit (including pretty much the warmest clothes I have) for a trip to Colorado State University. Now of course I'm not heading there just for the mountain air, but rather to collaborate with some colleagues on an Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) laser. I will be helping to design the control system and a USB interface, to make it possible (hopefully) to control a state-of-the-art laser as easily as playing some music on a laptop computer. Quite a bit different from the theoretical modelling I've been doing so far.
Before I jet off to America, I'm going to swing by the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy to give a physics talk to some of the other PhD students and go for a meal with some of them. Should be a nice opportunity to see how my friends are doing with their PhD projects.
Of course, the rest of my project can't wait, so I'm preparing some simulations to run and interpret. I'm hoping to have some results ready for an upcoming conference on x-ray lasers. For now, though, please enjoy a photo of me with some bloodthirsty Vikings.