Labmates make the work environment

This blog is veering further and further from its original goal, which was detailing my cooking and baking exploits. Then again, its name has a connotation of emergency, which is pretty widely applicable.

The real reason I wanted to write today, though, is more out of appreciation. One morning this week, my labmate arrived and we started talking. After a while, he said to me, I have a question for you. He told me about his program, which required solving a matrix calculation using a series of different parameters. He needed to solve this nine times, changing one of the parameters each time and saving the values.

About three weeks ago, I encountered a bug in one of my own programs, where I needed to solve some differential equations. While trying to set up a vector of solutions, I accidentally created a four-dimensional array, which promptly screwed up the rest of my indexing.

I recalled this and searched in Google (my default method for exploring the capabilities of MATLAB...). Lo and behold, multi-dimensional arrays, including the "cube" of values that worked perfectly for his project. And, I think I've found the solution to a problem that's been bugging me (sorry...) for a couple of days now.

This would never have happened last year, simply because I was the sole inhabitant of our lab. Even after a master's student joined the lab group, we were rarely there at the same time due to classes (mine) and work (his). This joint problem-solving was a small thing, and quite common in our lab, but in the long run, it makes me glad to be in a lab where questions are encouraged and collaboration flows naturally.

Next time, I'll return to food, a semi-recipe that this particular labmate first made for our friends, then taught me to make :)