Success!

...mostly. But I'm feeling great about today. And, I would have never imagined saying that only a few hours ago.

So, my morning was not-so-fun. Mostly struggling with this foreign language of IDL. My goal was to read the Kalirai data table in to IDL, and so I spent most of the morning aligning columns and then failing to understand what I was supposed to do next. By lunch, I was pretty frustrated, and wondering why I'd chosen to go into an academic field that required so much computer knowledge that I didn't know, and didn't really want to know.

But, thanks to Mimi, who told me to relax over lunch and sit in the sun, so I could return with a clear head and a relaxed mindset, I was able to tackle IDL this afternoon. I have now successfully read in the data table (!!) with the readfmt command passed on to me by Beth.

I also started calculating the average surface brightness at the half-light radius in IDL. Something's still a little off there, though. The final result I get is not quite what I get when I work it out by hand. I'll look at this again tomorrow...

The moral of today's story is a motivational one. I am capable of figuring this stuff out, (given some patience and time). And, when I do accomplish something that seems impossible, it feels pretty good.

(Too many feelings for a science blog? Not sure... Still new at this.)