A photo of mine from the Heidelberg Castle has been used in the documentary “Louis Pasteur: The Space of life“. The image used is from the chemistry laboratory at the castle and was used as the background for the laboratory of Jean Baptiste Biot, the man who discovered the chiral nature of tartaric acid. As […]
Our lab got renovated recently. It doesn’t look anything like this old school chemistry lab we saw at the Heidelberg castle though!
Someone complained that I don’t post enough photos of people! The reason I don’t normally post photos of people is because I’m not very good at taking them and I often never get around to asking permission. To keep my readers happy, here are some photos from Israel containing real live human beings 🙂 This […]
Our 500 MHz NMR machine quenched itself today 🙁 Here is an awful quality photo I took of the aftermath. To make things worse, our other machine (300 MHz one) has been out of action since late last year, so we now have no NMR access whatsoever … for any non-chemists out there, this is […]
I’m out of action from playing sports at the moment due to my silly shoulder popping it’s self out of the socket again 🙁 But the chemistry department soccer team said they were usually short of female players so I dragged along Becky Brassett to help them out. The games are played 9 a side […]
Natasha came round to visit. She let me wear her lip pucker-upper 🙂 And Dars took this photo of us.
We had another Brooker Bunch group photo done. This time was by a professional photographer and will be used in advertising for Sally’s inaugural professorial lecture. As you can tell, I’m not a big fan of having my photo taken 🙁 EDIT: Here is another group photo I found that needed adding.
We’ve had quite a few visitors to the Brooker Bunch research group recently including Jane Nelson and Grace Morgan. This photo was taken facing away from the University of Otago Chemistry Department. From left: Jane Nelson, Grace Morgan, Humphrey Feltam, Ryan Hellyer, Jonathan Kitchen, Andy Noble, Owen Clements, Sally Brooker, Nick White and Scott Cameron.
My dear friend Debbie Jordan won an award recently for “outstanding communicator” at the NZIC conference in Rotorua. Here’s the poster she presented at the conference. and here’s a demonstration of Debbie using her subtle but effective outstanding communication skills 😛
The poster presentation at Lehn Stock 2007 was a good chance to network with chemists from other parts of the country. A rather stunned looking Matt Polson walking in front of my attempt to take a photo of the Steel group from Canterbury. Matt used to be my lab demonstrator many moons ago. My fellow […]
I attended the Dunedin Supramolecular symposium and presented my poster on mixed cobalt(III)/silver(I) coordination complexes. The star of the show was Nobel prize laureate Jean Marie Lehn who spoke about his pioneering work in the area of supramolecular chemistry. From the Supramolecular chemistry Wikipedia page : “Supramolecular chemistry refers to the area of chemistry which […]
Woot! Got a lift back to Dunedin from Christchurch with my old hockey coach Jenel Bode who I’m hoping will take a job with the Dunedin Ice Hockey Association as a professional hockey coach/skating instructor. We stopped off at the Moeraki boulders on the way. Yvette and I took her up onto the chemistry department […]
Whilst surfing my backups I found these photos from my trip to Hobart in 2007. The first two are from a trip with Kelly Kilpin, Lisa McClintock and Vicki Argyle on a boat in Hobart. The second two are from dinner that night at Sals restaurant.
I went to Hobart for IC07 which is the biggest inorganic chemistry conference in Australasia. The conference was a success. I met lots of new people, made some new friends and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Hobart is an excellent place to visit. It’s very picturesque, the weather is great and it’s not too busy.
Karl Wieghardt was visiting the Brooker Bunch and whilst here he found out he’d made the worlds first iron(VI) compound! While celebrating at Eureka, Sally arranged this cake with six silver candles to represent his new discovery. For any of you non-chemists, discovering iron(VI) is pretty huge! Iron is almost always found in the +2 […]
I went down to Invercargill to celebrate Debbie’s birthday. Debbie is a fellow chemistry geek and one of the awesomest people I know. Happy 21st Debbie 🙂 Blowing, blowing, blowing … BLOWN! The speeches: So what did Carla say that made Debbie squirm so much?
Here’s a photo of the Brooker Bunch, the research group (which I’m a member of) of Prof. Sally Brooker. From left: Jason Price, Nick White, Andy Noble, Sally Brooker, Jon Kitchen and Ryan Hellyer (me).
First came the number eight wire, now comes the stock pot 😛 We needed to scale up a reaction in the lab (potassium permanganate oxidation), so instead of repeating it a gazillion times, Sally suggested I got a big pot and scaled it up 🙂 Since giant beakers from Aldrich cost a fortune (and break […]
I drove Debbie and Brendon down to Invercargill. We stopped at the worlds most exciting bus stop – Froggat Rd. … I am Milton …
I headed up to Christchurch with Debbie. We road tripped with her friends Davin and Emma (Goose). We went to an engagement party of some people I’d never met, promptly disturbed them and headed back to Dunedin the next day 🙂 Emma … Debbie … Davin … you’ll need to use your imagination as the […]
After a lot of trips with trolleys, moving some massive fridges and packing way too much glassware into too few draws and cupboards, we finally moved into our new lab in the basement of Science B at the University of Calgary. Here’s a photo of my boss Mike Benn. I stole the photo of the […]
It turned out Matt Dakins (an old mate of mine from our undergrad years studying chemistry at Otago) was living in Banff when I moved to Calgary. Thanks for letting me crash at your place Matt 🙂
My first major tramping experience. Myself, Andy Helm, Maree Helm and Vanessa Green headed up the Matukituki valley towards Mt Aspring, then detoured up a ridiculously steep incline. The map showed that we were only travelling 200 m from the bottom to the top of the incline, however that was only the horisontal distance, the […]
Ick, graduation, the most BORING experience ever. I was graduating for my Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry. Here’s some pics of Michelle and I at my graduation dinner. I can’t remember who gave me the photos, but thanks to whoever it was! I graduated in absentia for my Master of Science degree so no […]