A little aside/warning - I used screen capture to put some lovely results in a report once rather than plotting them in excel (the equipment came with software for displaying results on screen). The results looked so good that my interviewer thought they were faked!! (had to ask, 'are these actual results?')

I find curves really difficult - you just can't draw a good curve in word! And 3D stuff's not great, I'd like to be able to do 3-D rotating objects...

aaw, thanks for the mention. I admired your decision not to go to the protest, not simply because you didn't go, but because you obviously thought carefully about it and found your own way to express your opinion - that's cool I worry about the kinds of assumptions people make about me - if I was to join some 'bandwagon' or another and things were moving away from what I hoped or anticipated, then I'd have sort of been responsible, and not have the power to say, 'hang on, that's not what I want' or not be able to make people hear my real message. Did you hear how it went? What happened?

No, I mean from the BBC's point of view - they're trying to convice you that Israel are good, but you hear it as anti-Israel.

So the subtleties that pea describes aren't working on you - on your subconscious...

sorry, that (above) was directed at golfpro

I'm not very knowledgable about the situation and I've only seen BBC, but yes I think they've been even-handed. They do seem to lean towards coverage from Lebanon, but this is understandable since ten times more (so the BBC tell me) Lebanese citizens have been killed than Israelis.

DanB, what's wrong?

So, the 'we' in 'why did we not bomb Northern Ireland?', is not Israel in the Israel-Lebanon situation.

re Northern Ireland
"As for the communities under fire being "harbourers" of terrorists, well why did we not, as Ali G suggested, carpet bomb northern Ireland?"

(I can't find Ali G's comment, but remember reading it at the time - why can't I ever find anything using the search function here??)

My basic understanding of Israel-Lebanon (why I freely admit I just gained from wikipedia: Hezbollah was founded in 1982 to fight the Israeli Defense Forces who occupied southern Lebanon until the year 2000) as it relates to Northern Ireland is that Northern Ireland 'harboured' two sets of opposing terrorist organisations within the one country (ignoring the terrorists operating mainly in the Republic of Ireland); while there were attacks in England, the conflict was mainly contained within Northern Ireland. So 'us' ('we') - I guess you mean England? - bombing Northern Ireland is not directly comparable to Israel attacking Lebanon. The English weren't one side of the terrorist conflict in Northern Ireland - loyalist terrorists weren't operating in and on behalf of England.

can't find the thread.

I do this almost every week - Im always making lists of what I have done, what needs to be done, but I've found it really difficult to estimate the time things will take - there are so many obstacles! I think we talked about this before - you don't think more time is necessarily the answer (correct me if I'm wrong, I'll have a search for the thread in a minute). I know it might not be, but I'm *hoping* it is...

thanks Hilly, I guess that's what I wanted to hear - that it's not a big deal. I've started the ball rolling with my supervisor.

weather-wise I took my thermometer outside today and measured temp. of over 30deg! record for our little part of the country is 30.8 (I actually managed to measure this, but don't trust thermometer enough to let the media know ) Not sure if it's affecting my work - my lab's still pretty cold.

Also, I have to fill in reasons why I need the extension on the form - I don't know why I need it!!! I'm just not finished! I can make stuff up, there are valid reasons I can think of, but who's to say they're the real reasons I haven't finished?
(I know 'being finished' is subjective in itself, but I haven't got enough results for one publication yet so that's why I say I'm not finished, as well as 'not having done everything I wanted to do' which is another thing altogether)
I think my approach with my supervisor is going to be that I need the extension mainly for security - to finish up a few things, or incase something important crops up when I'm writing up and I need to do some more experiments. I'll tell them I don't intend to be in the lab full-time, and try to stick to this when the time comes.
Or...should I just tell him what's maybe closer to the truth - that I reckon by October I won't have enough results to write a good thesis?