Hey...good luck for your presentation. In our lab we have lab meetings every 2 or 3 weeks, where we just present a short presentation of what we achieved the previous period and what we plan for the coming time. I find it good to have all my supervisors at the same place. At the beginning I was like you, not knowing what to say or do. Just give the background of what you have read. I found that instead of going through the details of the papers I have read, it was better to give an overview of what the new concepts to me were. Presenting is scary, but it is better to do it within your research group at first cos it prepares you for bigger, better things :)

I also use Dropbox, and I find it a wonderful way of working, especially as it joins synching and backup. Dropbox gives 2GB free, but there are ways of increasing space such as linking with Dropbox through facebook etc (I had put some information online a couple of weeks ago on how to do this). It is quite easy to do a backup of Dropbox itself. It is like having a folder called MyDocuments, but instread it is called Dropbox, and you just copy and paste. What I just recently found out (and saved my ass) was that Dropbox keeps backup files of anything you delete or so for 30 days :) Good luck to whatever you choose. I would definitely suggest dropbox. For added peace of mind, perhaps you could use an external hard drive and backup on it every now and then (the beauty of dorpbox is that you do not need to remember to back up...it does it all automatically).

I never used to indent paras but just put the double space...but yest I gave my first draft of my lit review to my supervisor (new Uni) and she told me to indent the paras. I still personally prefer the double space, but Oh well...I am interested to see what others say as well. Thank you for this

Thank you!

This is probably a stupid question, but here goes. I have some questions re writing units.

Having for example 5mg/l...do you write it 5 mg/l or 5mg/l...i.e. is there a space between 5 and mg. Also is the l for liter capital or not? Thank you

Hello Cakeman...the Euraxess website is always a good place to look for positions in Europe (and some not in Europe). Try also Academic Transfer...it is mainly for the Netherlands. Good luck.

Some tips...Breath in, and out and calm down :)...I do not think they will be expecting much from your first meeting. For me the first day meeting my supervisor we barely talked about the project. It was more logistics, getting acquainted with the University, and paper work etc. When we discussed the project it was more about how to organise it, rather than expecting me to know too much subject specific stuff.

When is the panel interview? If it is soon, I would try to stall the job offer acceptance. I would (if I have not heard anything by then) accept the job offer and then see how things go. I guess you will always have a sort of probationary period for your job, where, if you get the PhD, you can just leave right? I had a similar problem when I started my PhD. All worked out well. Declined job (after accepting) and accepted the PhD. They seemed to be pretty understanding, so no issue there. Good luck!

Some good links:

To find the name of the journal from the abbreviation: http://www.efm.leeds.ac.uk/~mark/ISIabbr/E_abrvjt.html

To find some E books: www.library.nu

Thats all

Hey...something which I always liked when I feel cold is a hot water bottle (not sure it is the exact name...you fill it with hot water and it remains that way)...similar to this ...

http://www.drnickcampos.com/health-newsletter/hot%20water%20bottle.JPG ... it keeps warm for very long and can keep you warm...maybe one to put under your feet or on your lap...good luck

Thank you...they generally do some track changes and comments to my word document.

Hello...I have used Latex for my BSc and MSc and now have changed universities. An issue I have is whether you have had success with converting Latex documents to word (to send to a supervisor for example who has no Latex knowledge). I really like the way it looks, and so would like to use Latex for the PhD too.

Thank you

Hey...just a comment...what systems do you use to synch your PCs and backup your data? I have only tried dropbox to date...but if anyone has any comments I would really like to hear them.