I found out just before Christmas that I’ve been turned down for that SciArt grant I was applying for. This is not exactly a surprise, but I’m still not happy about it. Thankfully, my family took my hint when I told them and I didn’t have to endure a Christmas of them looking at me in that way and asking me what “my plans” are. I have spent the past three years making plans about my future that have turned comprehensively to dust, sometimes even after I’ve had actual positive letters of confirmation in my hand, occasionally so spectacularly that I have found myself laughing out loud at the extraordinary ability of Defeat to leap out from deep within the oesophagus of Victory, so my New Year’s resolution is to make no plans of any kind whatsoever. I’ll do what I do. If it works out then I’ll tell people about it; if it doesn’t then I’ll write a wry ‘Blog post about it. Either way someone wins.

So for the next few months I’m going to carry on with my experiments in photography and music, but I won’t be performing any experiments in biology or computing. On which note, I recommend that you check out “A Fibrillin-1-Fragment Containing the Elastin-Binding-Protein GxxPG Consensus Sequence Upregulates Matrix Metalloproteinase-1: Biochemical and Computational Analysis” when it appears later this year in the super soaraway Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology. It’s got it all: striking imagery, deep mystery, and great plots—Ramachandran plots.