Merry Christmas everyone :)

Christmas day is already here!! Happy Christmas!!
I am still in the UK, spending Christmas day with friends, but will be in Cyprus soon!

I just logged in before my meal, to post some tips for Christmas holidays, even though it might be too late!

So over the holiday period, if you are leaving your home, remember to switch off all lighting, TV sets, printers, chargers, and everything else that doesnt need to be on (do no switch off your freezer or fridge).

Do you need the hot water to be on? What about central heating? No one is there, so why heat the house?

If you are not at home, you dont need to have any fairy lights on do you?

You can follow the same principles for your work environment as well; leave on things that are vital, things that need to be on, and switch off everything else.

That is the principle the retailer i work for tries to follow as well.

Companies and families can save hundreds and thousands of pounds of gas and electricity bills if they just switch off things when not in use.

I know the snow is still present in most parts of the UK (its absent in Cyprus), so keep yourself safe today, remember your limits when drinking, dont drive if you have been drinking!  and for all my Cypriot friends, remember your limits when eating!! You know what I mean!


Have fun and keep safe

The Physicist


P.S. I will be back with Christmas pictures :)

Another one of Mr Theopemptou's work

http://www.airquality.dli.mlsi.gov.cy/

The quality of air in Cyprus

PhDs are hard work!

And I am actually working for something even more complicated, an EngD!

I have started on this course two months and 13 days ago, I knew I was accepted two months and 16 days ago, I have had 3 deadlines already, and have another one this week, and a mere 8000 word literature review to complete by the 21st of January. Aham! Who said that doing a PhD was easy?
You are probably forgetting that within my degree I have to work 9-5 in an office. I work in a retailer's energy group!
This week, I say this week and its only Monday, i've done that much work already. We are working on making sure the energy budgets for the stores for next year are correct. And that's not an easy task considering the number of stores the retailer I work for has.
I ve been working through various excel sheets today, checking how much the old stores are consuming, how much we predict they will consume next year, and how much the new stores will consume next year!
I mean, how can you predict how much a new store will consume next year? HOW?
Any ideas guys?
That is one of my tasks as a research engineer..!


I will leave it up to you to tell me when I have finally turned into an engineer..

Because I am still

The Phycisist

Χαράλαμπος Θεοπέμπτου - Επίτροπος Περιβάλλοντος: Περιβαλλοντικά προβλήματα

A very true post on the situation in Cyprus..:

Χαράλαμπος Θεοπέμπτου - Επίτροπος Περιβάλλοντος: Περιβαλλοντικά προβλήματα

I totally forgot I had put this link up;

As you probably figured out by now, I am a Cypriot, and I am really concerned with the environmental problems of Cyprus... That is one of the reasons I am actually undertaking this research work.. Some day I want to be able to give back to my country.

Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean sea, as you can see from here.

From the map you can even tell how close to Africa and Asia this island is. The sun shines for like 360 out of the 365 days of the year... its a shame that people are not using solar panels as much as they can..

I mean, I did convince my family to install 'a few' (36) of them on our roof, but they only did it because I kept telling them too, and because it meant lower electricity bills for the future..

I know solar panels are not the most efficient equipment out there.. but we do have to work with what we have.. and the combustion of fossil fuels is not the most environmental thing in the world either.

There is one wind power farm in Cyprus, which is a pretty good development, and Mr Theopemptou is working hard to get any environmental equipment in the country.

Finally the public transport is being improved.. and I do hope the people responsible for it make that bus system work better.. I mean, the poor people had the buses running for a whole summer before they decided to publish some sort of schedule for them.. How on earth would I, or anyone, know when and where to wait for the bus, and for which bus?
OK ok they did put something on their webpage, but it was all in street names..
I know Cyprus is a small country, but how do I know where each address is in every city?? Even in my own area I dont know where each address is...

And they called it the 'evaluation period'... but how are you going to evaluate a system which people are expected to use to commute to their jobs, when nobody really knows when and where each bus is going to..

and dont let me start on the blue and white buses.. the stupid village system..

if you want to go from the centre of a village (and I dont mean a village on the mountains, I am talking about a village that is 20 minutes away from the Nicosia town centre when there is no traffic) you have to take the small white bus, which i dont know how often it runs, to go to the main station of your area, to take the big blue bus, to actually go where you want to go..
hmmm
Am I the only one who finds this a bit odd??




Till the next time

The Physicist

why do we write blogs?

A friend of mine is doing some research on bloggers, im not sure i can call myself a blogger, but here you go. Her hypothesis is that people use blogs as a mean of expression, of having their voice heard, mainly because they cant publish anywhere else.

I dont think that this is always the case. I do not want to publish my thoughts anywhere else..
I would just like people to know what I am doing, be aware of my research, help me and help them.

Am I looking for publicity? I might have had, if I had done something that deserved to be published :p
I dont even know why people would read my posts!

I suppose I have to find something more interesting to write about, or a more interesting way to write what I want to write for that matter!

That's why I am a Physicist  and not a writer though..


Till next time

The Physicist

Sorry for the long absence

I ve been really busy, firstly with my presentation, and after that trying to sort things out for my literature review!
I need to start exploring my resources..  There is not a lot out there on how retailers budget for their energy consumption, so I will need to 'dive in' the old fashioned way... good old interviews!
I have never conducted one, so i will need loads of help on that one!!
Any ideas?? you know I am only a Physicist :/

On a more positive note, I am going to london again tomorrow to check up a few of the retailer's store!!
That should be fun isn't it? :)
Checking up on how people in stores consume energy, how they take in the headquarters' advice on using less electricity!
 
I cant wait really!!

Have a nice Friday people!!

The Physicist

Bad day?

I am feeling very lonely today.. This usually happens when I have a lot of important things to do!
I dont know if this is the case with the rest of the world, but when I am stressed over something, I keep doing things I dont need to, just to avoid doing what I have to do..
Right now I am supposed to be asleep, of course I am not, and instead of working on my presentation for Tuesday, I am reading other blogs, tweeting, and even looking at pictures on FB.
That is not me...
When I dont have anything to do, I just read books, or blogs, or something useful anyway.. I am not the fb type, unless I am very busy :S It is very frustrating and embarrassing,  but I cant help it...
And its a shame, because tomorrow I will be unprepared, even though the .ppt part of the presentation was finished and checked by my manager on Thursday, but I still havent been able to rehearse what I will be saying once.
I am not stupid, and I am not careless, I just stress over things that are not very simple, things I have solutions for, but for some reason, my mind tends to ignore, and leaves me without any inspiration.

Its simple, I just have to sit down (ok maybe stand up) and do it... Rehearse it, Ive made the slides, how difficult can it be to pitch a bunch of other students, on the company you work for, and the work you plan to do in the next 4 years?

How difficult can it be??



The stressed Physicist

So I went to london today

Apparently I had forgotten how packed London is a month before X-mas!

First of all, I saw these two guys on the train:

look on the left hand side of the picture. You can see two set of hands holding iphones, right?
Well these two guys, mid thirties I think, were playing Angry Birds (iphone game) AND comparing notes!!
-"Mate im trying to go high"
-"Man if you go high you will lose it, go straight on it"
typical angry birds' conversation!

Sorry for the poor quality of the picture, I was sitting opposite my manager and didn't want to make it too obvious that I was taking a picture:)

Now, usually, in London the traffic is pretty bad.
It looks like THIS-->
pretty bad, it might take you half an hour to pass in front of Harrods, but that's about it














Today though; there was an accident right outside oxford St station; and they closed both of the lanes for some time!!

These poor buses were stack there, for more than an hour! Some of the drivers even switched off the engine, dimmed the lights and told the people that they were not gonna be moving very soon :p










Those were my observations for today

The Physicist

Yes it is Tuesday

What is Tuesday? Of course its my Lboro day :\

At the end of EVERY Tuesday I say that I have wasted another £60 to get up there, but I still buy my ticket the following week, and every time I regret it!
I suppose im too optimistic for that module!

Well if you are computer savvy, if you have not done any statistics before in your life, and you have never seen excel, then MAYBE you wouldn't find today as boring as I did.. :S
ARGHhh
At least I did get the chance to go to the library and get a few more books out. Call me a GEEK, but you know I am a Physicist and LOVE my FORTRAN :p

Statistics in FORTRAN, is there anything better?

Maybe running FORTRAN on a MAC is even BETTER ;)



Till tomorrow

The Physicist


Oh wait! I do have a picture for you!
Is this the cleaner campus you have seen or WHAT?

You probably haven't missed me, but I missed you!

The internet connection at Lboro was VERY slow, so I just had to abandon it altogether and relax! I tried to act like my old self for a few days, watching 2-3 episodes of CSI back to back! Not bad, not bad at all!!
Although I am back to my earlier routine now, I have to stay I still haven't got used to it!
I am based in a company 6 days a week, ok ok 4 working days, and then I spend every Tuesday at Lboro. It just gets so tiring though! It takes me the whole weekend to relax, Mondays Im in the office, and then on Tuesday I just have to wake up at 5 to catch the early train! I can't wait for this module to be over and the real work to begin :)

So what I have been up to this week?
I ve spent all 5 working days of the past week learning how to use IES <VE> and what it does!
IES is a dynamic thermal simulation tool, using which you can draw a 3d design of a building (not as fancy as the SIM's game though) It can be used to calculate the energy usage of the building, and its potential carbon emissions for an average year.

I have to admit that I have enjoyed my week working in IES, I have even produced this:

Am I turning to an engineer or what?


The Physicist

Better than expected!

The 'Make sense of the energy debate" was much better than I expected!
There was in interesting talk by Dr Colin Church on the new government strategy for a low carbon economy. He talked about buying Carbon allowances, and explained that this was actually moved to 2012, and a new scheme, the First Green Deals that is being discussed at the moment.
During the energy clinics, I went to the Siemens' one, pretty interesting but didn't really say anything I didn't already know. I also attended the 'Optima' one, interesting work they are doing there, I am looking forward to their email with more explanations on their forecasting tool.
- Exciting fact, during question part of the presentation, a guy from ASDA raised his hand and asked for the presenter's contact details, because he was interested for their 'Analysis and beyond'!
The afternoon session included talks by Ant Wilson, Director of Sustainability, AECOM, and Richard Hipkiss, Commercial Director of i-prophets energy services. Quite informing and helpful I have to say!
Especially as it was the first time I attended such an event :)
Last speaker of the day was Mark Frazer from BSI, whose talk could be interested, if presented by the original author. He did try, and did quite well, but not as knowledgeable as I would have liked him to be. He kept talking about a 10% before the end of 2010 and 14% before en of 2012, but never said what theis baseline was! I didn't get the chance to ask if he meant year-on-year, or from a baseline year in the past.

Well I dont want to be too boring today;
I have an important meeting for tomorrow, and its already 1am here in the UK, so, I am switching off!


The Physicist

Welcome to my new blog!

Hello!!

Wow, this is awkward... Its like im standing in front of the whole auditiorium again, doing a presentation..!

Oh wait, no one knows about this blog yet! ;)

Well! This is my first attempt for a real blog, should I at least explain why I started this?

Hm... The Physicist is a normal person that was lucky enough to be able to persue his/her dream, and would like to share this with you!

Enough said!

The Physicist