Back to (Smokey) Melbourne

Well, I made it back to Melbourne safely last week, though I arrived to a rather different environment then I left: the smell of smoke was thick on the air, and making its presence known by the reduced visibility it was causing. We had a storm last Thursday which cleared it out (and some southerly winds over the weekend which helped keep it out), but by Monday this week it was starting to appear again, and Tuesday morning looked like this:

That's the train station near my house, and as you can see visibility was down to perhaps half a kilometer. Wednesday (yesterday) morning was like that as well, but thankfully a thunderstorm came through Wednesday afternoon and again cleared it out. (The forecast for next week looks pretty rainy, so hopefully it'll keep the smoke away and help with the fire fighting.)

Other than that I also started back up my research this week, and have been going through the process of figuring out what I was doing when I left off. I think I'm getting better at writing readable code, as it hasn't taken me long to get back to tinkering with it—in fact even my first day back I was making some fairly important improvements. I'm becoming keenly aware that I've got less than ten months left in my PhD, and need to get some results out soon. It's definitely getting there, at least, and I think it's now as much a matter of actually hammering out a first paper as continuing to analyze the data we have. But that's work for another day. Outside of work I've also taken up painting again, starting with this hilarious Christmas gift from my mother:

This is a rare case of me letting you see what I'm working on before it's done, so enjoy it while it lasts! No idea when it'll be finished, though I got a good start on it last night. But that's all for now, I think. A hui hou!