It is so pretty. I uncaged MNI-glutamate onto a spine that was about 50 microns away from the cell body. I uncaged at 720 nm with ~80 mW in the back focal plane and ~ 5-7 mW at the spine and the uncaging pulse was 0.2 ms. The noise is a bit much I think because sometimes the rig has under 4 pA peak-to-peak but that was not the case today (~10 pA). On the plus side, there was no 60 Hz noise. Sometimes the 60 Hz is absolutely rediculous and I have not a clue as to its source. I suspect that someone in the building is turning on some big peice of equipment or something because it doesn't seem to be anything in the laser room or on the table.On other pictures note, I also have pictures of the spine but they haven't yet undergone beautification, and even when they do they'll still suck because they're really low resolution. However, a few days ago, I took a really high resolution image of a cell at 630X that was totally gorgeous. You can even make out the spines and my patch pipette is protruding from the side of the cell body. I'll post one of those when I look at them and if they meet my exacting standards. There's also some yellow stuff on my kitchen floor that looks kind of neat, but I'm afraid to touch it. It's not pee and its not from me - the landlord thought it was a stain but about a week ago, I dropped some frozen grapes out of my freezer and one of them rolled through it and it came off on the grape, which makes me want to stay away even more. It looks sort of like antifreeze and it doesn't seem to be evaporating. Maybe I'll post a picture of that too.
