Monday, May 9, 2011

9/5/11

After a bit of a damp weekend (let's be honest, I think we needed some rain!) we now have a nice sunny Monday morning!

I should probably be back in Nottingham, however I have decided that with the high cost of fuel (and another race on Friday which I'd have to come back for), its not worth the 100 mile round trip just for the sake of a couple of seminars which probably won't be useful anyway. It'll be just my luck that I'll miss something important but hopefully my friends who are apparently more conscientious than me will fill me in!

Yesterday marked the end of the 6 week period in which I have been writing up my notes from the year, it took somewhat longer than planned and leaves me with just a week to get to grips with it all before exams start! I'm reasonably optimistic as much of my first exam is based on calculations for which we will either be given the equation for or are based on calculations of logic with ratios and things.

I'm going to spend the next week re-writing up notes for the important bits, and I expect many of these sheets will be stuck up around my bedroom to maximise my chances of learning them - a few keys points like the main reactions in organometallic chemistry, the principles of electrochemistry and some important organic mechanisms. I'm also going to have a look at past papers and redo tutorials to ensure that I can actually answer questions. Up to now I've struggled with that - the revision seminars I attended last week, questions were asked, I didn't know the answers but as soon as I was told the beginning of the answer it all came flooding back, so it is in there somewhere!

As well as the delights of revision I want to make this week a good one, happy with my result on Friday, and keen to improve I finally have the motivation to stick to my training plan - thankfully today is a rest day as my legs (along with the rest of me) is feeling pretty achey today, although will perhaps finally get back on Wii fit and do some yoga to loosen up a bit! With all 3 bikes clean and shiny all that I have to do bike related today is perhaps a tad of maintenance - the new race bike is starting to suffer from cable stretch (hopefully that is within my capabilities to fix!), hopefully curing that might add even more to my speed so that I can get an even better result in round 2!

I also have my new camera to play with, I'm just starting to get the hang of it - although all my dabblings in the world of manual settings have taught me so far is that the camera knows best, I have managed to get a few good shots though, and will hopefully have a few trips out into the local countryside, probably with at least 1 dog in tow to see what I can do; already feeling the need for a lens with a bigger zoom capability though as I'm used to my bridge camera with its 12x optical zoom! You can see some of the pictures I have taken in my Flickr stream at the bottom (if I'm not in it I took it!), there would have been more than that...I "took" some pictures which I thought were going to look really good...got home to realise I'd forgotten to put the memory card back in - oops!

Other non-chemistry things I feel I need to indulge more in are reading, writing and drawing, over the last few days I've felt particularly inspired but have had to shrug it off in favour on revision, hopefully will fit some in this week - perhaps get back to work on my "novel"...

Anyway, lots to be doing today so bye for now!

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