FYI

FYI, the drive from Roswell to Houston is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever had to do, ever. This includes the incident with the septic tank. 

It was all worth it though. Let's start at the beginning.

I pulled up at a Super 8 because I saw a sign that indicated that it had wifi available (little did I know that it was 3.99 a night, wtf). I promptly fell asleeep on the bed fully clothed, as driving 1205km in 12 hours will totally take it out of you. It was usually too hot inside to keep the windows up, and too cold and loud with the window2s down (west Texas has an 80mph speed limit) so the drive was miserable. Not to mention that no matter *when* you start, you're going to be driving at night, the days are too short nowadays. 

You must be asking, "but Sean, how could anything be worth it at such a cost?". The answer was today. This summer, in Erice, I met up with someone who works in ISS operations, in the Solar Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) who offered to give me a visit of the Johnson Space Center ( a detail that I'm certain has been mentioned in this blog at least once or twice before ). 

So, this morning I wake up (quite miserable, the drive last night was *that* bad) and make my way to the JSC. I find the building where I'm supposed to pick up my ID / access badge, only to find out that not all the paperwork had been done. While waiting, my contact and I crossed the street to the Rocket Park, home of a Saturn V rocket. 

I knew it was big, but I was not prepared for what I saw; it really blew me away. I'm going back tomorrow to get some pictures, and just to get the feel for it again. They also have a Redstone and Little Joe rocket nextby for a sense of scale. The difference between sub-orbital and orbital flight isn't very much, but holy crow the difference between orbital and lunar is gigantic. 

I visited the ISS control room (from the observation deck) and then got to go up to the Apollo-era control room. Buttons, pneumatic tubes, the works. It was like being back in the 60s (not that I would know what they were like in the first place). 

So, SRAG monitors the sun for activity that might be dangerous to astronauts onboard ISS, and they have their own control staetion, albeit it is not housed in the control center, for understandable reasons. I got to see their stationa dn then my contact and I headed to (what I think was) building 7 which houses full sized mock-ups of ISS modules, Soyuz velssels, one full sized orbiter, the nose section of another, even a few Orion capsules (may they rest in peace...) and a rotary joint for the solar panels (probably there for the incident from a few years ago). 

I wandered around looking for 3 different breweries in Houston that my GPS reciever says exist but my eyes do not. I got to "admire" the highways for about three hours before ending up in BJ's Restorant and Brewery, a pretty nice place with a hug beer selection- 8 beers brewed in-house, Trappist beers imported from Belgium, and a plethora of others. Their beer is decent for a resto-brewery (as opposed to a Brewpub, this place is like a Cheesecake Factory crossed with a Les Trois Brasseurs), But I'm going to have to find something else to draw my attention, there is no free wifi here (for all you people looking down on me right now, you'd be looking for an internet fix, too, were you alone. 

What an adventure. I might also get to have lunch with a crew member from STS-131 tomorrow, but the details are still uncertain. I will visit the JSC visitor's center tomorrow ("Space Center Houston") and try to get a good night's sleep; the next day I make a B-line for Huntsville, home of the Marshall Spaceflight Center (and Space Camp USA). It's another 1200km. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be another incident where I drive a horrible number of kilometers before doing something really awesome. 

While I have 2 full days in Houston, I only have 1 in Huntsville. I will be meeting my sister in Cleveland on Friday. We'll scout out the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and then head on home on the Monday (7 days from now). I can feel that my tires are balding, if there's any snow at all the drive will take me many hours instead of "only" twelve.... I have a sneaking suspicion that I will taking advantage of a certain 300-minute energy boosting product that night. 

Data!

The past couple weeks have gone really well. I finished my detector and was able to start taking some preliminary data. My photmoeter is really just a high time resolution rate meter with many input channels (I have 8 active and can run up to 14 with some slight modifications). Apparently, a multi-input rate meter does not typically exist in the market. One of my colleges here at VERITAs needed such a device in order to determine some base characteristics of some new pixels that were installed in the camera of Telescope 3 (in preparation for a major overhaul of all the cameras that will take place in ~2012).

He was pleased to hear that my photometer, while not quite ready for taking astrophysical data, was more than ready to do the simple task of keep track of the rates on each of the pixels. The procedure was simple: Install my device and calculate the rates for a variety of different trigger thresholds. A trigger threshold is the minimum size of a signal that we require in order to register a 'hit'. If the threshold is set too low, we will trigger on electronic noise and light from the night sky, if it is too high, there will be too few incoming photons and it will take too long to acquire data. Hence, we must find the middle where we're not triggering on electronic noise or night sky background, but the threshold is also low enough to provide enough statistics. This measurement is called an "L1 Bias Curve".

After a few nights of L1 Bias Curve-ing, I caught a lucky break. There was about 45 minuts of moonless time available, which is below the cutoff for which VERITAS starts gamma-ray observations. Typically, one uses this time to take calibration data, which is often not as involved as taking gamma-ray data, but the 45 minute window was right before the Sun came up, from 5 - 5:45AM, and no one wants to stay up that late to get 45 minutes of calibration data.

Considering that I wasn't going to get *any* dark time at all, I got permission to take data during this time and took 45 minutes worth of observations on the Crab Nebula. THere is a well known ~33ms optical pulsar inside the Crab nebula, but it is very faint (Magnitude 16.5, this corresponds to something like 4000 photons / m^2 / s reaching the Earth in the wavelength range that VERITAS is sensitive to) and hence very difficult to observe with a traditional optical telescope. VERITAS has such a huge collection area, ~100m^2 that it makes it feasible to detect the pulsar for long enough runs.

I calculated that in order to get a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio (ie, 5 sigma for a detection) VERITAS needs about 2 seconds of data in order to detect the optical pulsar. The catch is that a VERITAS time detector doesn't have alot of live time (ie, it can take data for ~200ns at a time for at most 500 times a second - this correspinds to the detector being 'alive' for about 1/100th of a percent of the time). This means that in order to get two seconds of live time, one needs to take about 5.5 hours of continuous data. This is a significant amount of data, and VERITAS time is already oversubscribed by a factor of about 5 (ie, we have requests for 5 times more time than we actually have available). Conversely, my detector has 100% live time, I can continuously take data, so 2 seconds of live time is 2 seconds of data. This makes detecting things like the Crab Optical Pulsar much easier, but the devil is in the details.

Remember I was talking about thresholds? Well, the light coming from the Crab comes at various intensities, so the magnitude of the pulsar light could often dip below my threshold, which I have set so that I'm not triggering on noise. This essentially just amounts to needing to take longer data runs in order to get a detection. Assuming I'm only triggering on 1% of the Crab photons (the others being too low intensity), I still only need about 90 seconds of data. So, 45 minutes should be much more than enough to get a detection, unless I'm capturing some absurdly small fraction of the incoming photons.

I haven't had the chance to analyze any code just yet, I've been too busy with other things, such as working on the actual alalysis code and filtering out sources of noise (or at least trying to, it is very nontrivial to do so). I have determined that there's a 1kHz source of noise somewhere in the VERITAS system. Usually, VERITAS operates with a threshold higiher than that of the of the noise, so it's not a major issue, but I am operating with slightly lower thresholds that put me right on the border of being in the area where I can pick it up.


So that's work aside. I'm currently sitting in a garage having my car worked on in preparation for my depature from the Whipple Observatory on Saturday. Just some routing stuff, but I'm also having the timing belt changed. It's not due just yet, but I'd rather not have it break while I'm somewhwere with a population density of zero.

Stops on the way home include the Johnson Space Center (Houston), the Marshall Spaceflight Center (Huntsville, AL) and the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. I'm really excited for these, but particularly I was invited to the Johnson Space Center by someone who works in ISS operations. I got word yesterday that it'll be ready by the time I'm in Houston.

Well, I have to finish (/start) packing up my room in preparation for my departure. There's US Thanksgiving dinner on the Mountain soon, too, I heard a rumor that there is 40 pounds of turkey lurking somewhere.

Delays

So, what have I done since I've been in Vegas...

Correction. What have I done since the last time I updated this blog.
It was a crazy busy month. Let's start with my trip to Las Vegas for
my birthday, shall we?

My first night I wantered the Strip a little, made my way from my
hotel (New York- New York) to Bill's Gambling House and Saloon. It's
only two blocks or so but those are not small blocks. I had originally
intended on staying at Bill's, so I went in to check it out. It's a
nice western-style place. I sat down at a slot machine and won a
couple beans, and then made my way around in an attempt to find a
kitchen was still open (at this point it was kind of late).

As it turns out, the closest was this avergae looking restorant in my
hotel, so I got some particularly tasty and inexpensive ribeye before
miandering about somewhat in the vicinity of the slots. Lured in by my
previous luck, I sat down at a machine and began pulling the lever. By
1:30 I was up five hundred dollars. Epic success.

The next morning I got up and drove myself to the Las Vegas Gun Store,
where I proceded to fire off some automatic weapons in celebration of
the previous night's victory. That went as well as I could have hoped
(ie, it was fun and I didn't shoot myself). The next stop was a local
brewpub. I had a tasty plate of what was some sort of chicken, mashed
potato, asparagus with poutine-sauce concoction (it looked much better
than it sounds and was very tasty). I picked up a brewery pint glass
and then made my way back to the Strip.

I wanted to see the Blue Man Group, so I found the Venetian, navigated
my way through the maze of shops and indoor canals, and then finally
fount the Blue Man Group Theatre. If you don't already know, the first
five rows from the stage are referred to the 'poncho zone'. The
principle is that within this zone you can get splashed with paint and
whatnot from the performance. After having seen the show from this
position, I highly suggest that if you do go see the Blue Man Group,
to see it from the poncho zone. At no point in time was I ever in
danger of getting splashed (I was in the fifth row from the front).
Judging from the amount of splash I saw, I don't really think that
even the front row seats are in any real danger. The show was very
interactive, it was really great. Alot of climbing through the crowd,
a couple 'volen-tolds', and the music was epic. I would definitely go
again.

The next day I drove to the Hoover Dam and did the Power Plant tour.
It wasn't expensive (12$), but it was really short, only about 30
minutes, and you didn't see much more than the power generators on the
Nevada side of the Dam and a room above the passageway where the water
flows from the collection towers to the generator room. It was neat to
see, sure, but I was expecting a bit more. There is, however, another
tour available for 30$ that allows you to visit "two additional places
in the Dam". I doubt it'd be worth it, after having seen the Power
Plant tour.

Walking over the Dam was my favorite part. You can walk all the way
across and see the famous winged figures. I don't really believe in
luck, but I rubbed their toes anyways, as a symbolic gesture more than
anything.

That night I went to see Penn and Teller. I showed up at the Rio a few
hours early and assumed that the Rio would be like my hotel in that
the interior would be filled with restorants and other things to do. I
was unfortunately wrong. I found one pub, had a very reasonably priced
Guinness, and then walked over to the Penn and Teller theatre. THere
was a Starbucks across the hallway (closed, way to go Rio), so I
plumped down in one of the chairs and waited for the gates to open.

The show started at nine, and there was a one hour jazz "show" before
the start of the act. There was one pianist (I cannot remember his
name unfortunately) and an upright bassist. Though "cleverly"
disguised in a hat and using the bass to block his face from most
viewers, I determined that this was, in fact, Penn Jillette.

Penn & Teller were fantastic. Prior to the show, we were asked to
inspect a wooden box and sign an envelope that would be used during
the show. I did so, took a good hard look for anything hokey in the
design, but to no avail. Once we had all retaken our seats, the lights
dimmed, the spotlights came on, and Penn walked out onto the stage,
Teller popped out of the box, and the show began. Awesome.

Afterwards, they made themselves available for autographs and
pictures, I got the guide that came with my seat (4th row from the
stage) signed and had my picture taken with both of them. It was
really great. If you are a Penn and Teller fan, or not, the show is
very good. I quickly retired to bed, as the next day (yesterday, from
my current point of view) was going to be very busy.

At 5AM my alarm went off and I quickly got ready to go on my
airplane-helicopter-pontoon boat tour of the Grand Canyon West Rim. We
boarded what I think was a Dash-6 and got a nice arial view of the
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead from about 8000 feet altitude. We landed at
the West Rim airport, had out safety briefing ("this is how you put on
a seatbelt") and boarded a Bell Jet-Ranger. We flew down to the
bottom, about 1.2km, and disembarked. The ride was very smooth, much
more than I was expecting.

On the same tour as me were alot of Chinese tourists. Most of them
spoke no english at all, and there were one or two that spoke a few
words (yes, no, toaster). This made everything we did both incredibly
difficult and usually incredibly funny. All the aircraft are loaded by
weight, so you have to stay int he same seat as you were assigned to
keep the aircraft balance correct. This is a very hard concept to
depict, but we managed.

The tour was now officially over, but I had two hours to wander around
the west rim. I had lunch at the Native's outpost (some sort of really
salty beef with potatoes) and went and sat out on the rim. There's not
much else to tell, apart from that it was really pretty. About an hour
later, we flew back to Boulder City and were bussed back to our
respective hotels.

At this point I was seriously running out of steam, so I made my way
back to the hotel, changed into less dusty clothes, and went out for
my last night. I made my way to the Rockbar, I think it's called, and
bought a 100oz margarita in a yard glass that had its own strap and
walked to the Bellagio fountains. I guess it was cliche, sipping
margaritas while watching the fountains, but it was a good way to go
out, I think.

The drive home was eventful to say the least. Well, trying to get on
the road was. It was mighty complicated. Another post's worth. Gods,
another one at least.

--
-=//\=-

What it means when you say "literally" - The Oatmeal

This is what it means when you say 'literally'.

Commissioning

VERITAS is now operating at full capacity. Over the past two weeks we successfully repaired most of the primary systems that had either             been taken offline by the computer hack or somehow got broken over the summer. We're now operating with ~1% dead pixels across the telescopes of the entire experiment (this is about 10 times less than we typically operate with, we were really efficient at diagnosing and fixing problems). 

I have finally got my equipment set up in one of the telescope control trailers. It's a pretty nice setup, I've got a nice big screen, all my electronics, decent internet, and because I'm alone working in there, I can play music and such without any issues. Tonight I'm replacing one of my colleagues on shift, so I'm not working on my photometer (I am also pretty pooped and would rather take a bit of time off to watch a movie or something, so I'm not going to be doing any FPGA debugging tonight.

It's my birthday in a couple weeks, and I've decided to go on a road trip to Las Vegas. I'm going to spend a few days there and also visit the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater. I'm planning on going to see Penn & Teller live at the Rio while I'm in Vegas, but I'm not sure about the other shows (Treasure Island sounds interesting). I've reserved 5 nights at the New York - New York Hotel and Casino on the Strip. I spent a little more than I was hoping to, but the place looks really nice and I don't often get to splurge like this.

There has been some interesting science going on here recently. The Crab Nebula (M1) was detected flaring by AGILE at which point a few other observatories (at various wavelengths) started observing it also. To my knowledge, no one else got any data on this flare (including VERITAS) as it only lasted two days. The Crab is supposed to be the standard candle for Gamma-ray observations (ie, it is not supposed to change), so there has been alot of discussion on this matter as of late. Once I track down the interesting ones, I'll link to the ATELs (Astronomer's Telegrams). 

Flat-fielding 101.

I have spent a good portion of the last few days trying to take telescope alignment data.The first night, we had network issues and weren't able to start until about 9PM. The process should start at 7, when the sky is still a bit bright, so that you can see the different mirrors of the telescope properly. This acts as your template. Once the sky gets dark, however, it makes it alot harder to get a good template. In prinicipal you can use the moon to light up the mirror facets, but the moon was too low the first night to do so. Last night, the weather was pretty bad, cloudy and such, so we didn't even bother setting up the alignment tool, and finally, tonight, I got lucky. We only managed to get a template image once it was fairly dark, but it should still be fine.

The way the alignment works is really interesting. You begin by pointing the telescope at a star. In prinicple, all the mirror facets should be lit up if you are at the focal point of the telescope and looking at the dish. However, some mirrors will be misaligned and they won't be lit up. If you move the telescope up, down, left or right with respect to the target star, eventually you can find a position so that a misaligned mirror facet will be lit up. Then, the angle difference between the star and your new pointing direction is related to the angle that the mirror is misaligned by simple geometry. 

A coworker of mine, Andrew McCann, who developed this method, has published a paper. The arXiv print can be found here. If anything, the figures are interesting.

I had to change dorms this morning. I have relocated to one of the sub-summits of Mount Hopkins, to the location of an automated telescope array called mEarth. I have the dorm to myself, which is both a blessing and a curse. It does get mighty creepy staying up on the Ridge at night, and the bed in the mEarth building is pretty tiny. 

mEarth has 8 16" telescopes. Note that this image is not my own; I pulled it from  rcopticalsystems.com

Back to work.

After a valiant effort by the day crew here, the VERITAS computer array is back online (mostly). This means that we (the observers) can start getting the array working again. I've been put in charge of getting one of the calibration systems (called the LED Flashers, I'll write about them later) up and running. Luckily, it's not time critical, I can do it at any time of the day, which makes life a lot easier. 

Hack'd

So, the VERITAS computer network was hacked at some point last week. Out of some 80 machines, we found 7 compromised machines, including our array controller box, and all of them have to be rebuilt from scratch. We are currently operating in a state where we can't even steer the telescopes (which means that for people like me who are not system engineers, there isn't much to do). 

So, Saturday another observer and I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum (a few photos have been attached) and then yesterday to the Pima County Desert Museum. Both the museums are really nice (even though the Desert Museum is essentially just some fenced in desert that you need to pay admission for) but they have some pretty cool animals. 

Most of the excitement started when we left the Desert Museum. In a nutshell, the catalytic converter on my car rusted through and detached the rear exhaust system from anything structurally sound. So, the entire muffler assembly was just holding itself on by the oxygen sensor and a set of bolts on the back. I managed to fix it with 2 coat hangers and some duck tape, but the car is crazy loud now and I need to replace the catalytic converter. It's a good thing that this didn't happen on (for example) one of the highways in the middle of Oklahoma. I didn't have a chance to take pictures (too dirty) but as soon as the ground dries I'm going to grab my camera so I can take pictures of my handiwork. 

Here are three videos that I've decided to post. Two of which are a bit old (one dating from when I was driving through New Mexico), but one from earlier today. Near the end of the third, there is a lightning strike in the field of view, then some crazy loud thunder. Unfortunately, neither of these effects came out well. 

Mirror swappage

Two days ago we began pulling mirrors off of Telescope 2 so that they could be replaced and recoated. It's a lengthy process where two people go up with boom lifts, take off a few mirrors at a time, and then bring them back down to the people waiting on the ground who package them up and then wait for the next batch. The pictures below are somewhat self explanatory.

"This picture doesn't encapsulate how bitch-ass hot it was outside." -Emmett 

Yesterday we put the mirrors back on ( a horrible job consisting entirely of 'hurry up and wait'). It's been really hot here, 35C and higher, so I'm pretty toasted right now, even by local standards. 

6 week update...

So, I've been incredibly busy recently. As a good recap, please find the following blurb I wrote about a week ago. Following the jump, is an update to date and some pictures. 

=========

Captain's Log, stardate 201008.21.

To my followers (both of you), I am sorry about my inability to update this blog recently. I've been preparing for my three month exodus to the deserts of Arizona (ie, my return to the VERITAS site). 

I've finished building my detector. Adam and I designed and built a mezzanine to connect to the FPGA so that I can actually test some real signals. I only got the detector working fast the day before I left, however, so I'm going to have to do some work on it once I arrive on site. 

I left home at 9AM yesterday and arrived in Columbus, Ohio some 14 hours later. I crossed the border at the Thousand Island Bridge (beautiful). The line I was in at Customs was very slow, I figured that the agent was being thorough, and so I got ready to whip out my travel itinerary, the letters from my supervisor and the VERITAS basecamp manager that prove my intentions. 40 minutes after arriving, I pulled into the booth, handed over my passport, informed him that I was, indeed, driving to Arizona, and he just waved me through, to my surprise. I was expecting him to pull me over and go through all my equipment (I have my detector and three computers including my desktop tower with me), a telescope and a guitar.  Hell, the car in front of me was from New York State and they had their trunk opened at least. 

I'm not complaining, by any means, just very surprised. Totally painless.

By about 7 I was in the vicinity of Cleveland, so I pulled over at the first place I saw for food (a Waffle House), had some mystery meat (they called it a steak but had the wrong texture), and left again. Right around Columbus, I saw this mad accident, a guy my age or yonger with the back end of his car bashed in. Some 200 feet later, the car that hit him was in considerably worse shape. Once the traffic cleared, I was forced off the highway by some police cruisers. I tried to go around them, but couldn't find the detour. Talking this as a sign, I crashed at the closest inn I could find. 

This morning I was up at 8AM and out the door some half hour later. Breakfast at a Waffle House (closes thing that I could find that wasn't already serving burgers), coffee frmo the connected Tim Hortons, then back on the road.

I've been tanking every 400km. This marker leaves me with a quarter tank safety margin in the event there are no fuel stations around. So, at around 2, I was getting close to the 400km mark when I asked my GPS reciever where the closest gas station was. The answer was "Dale's Fieworks". For obvious reasons, I took the exit. As one miguht imagine, Dale's was not a gas station, but a fireworks warehouse. I went in, bought some firecrackers and other things that explode, tanked (elsewhere), and got back on the highwar. 

Writing this, I'm in a Steak and Shake diner in Lebnon, MO, some 375km from Tulsa OK which is where I hope to spend the night (to stay on track with my Monday arrival at VERITAS). I've done enough Westward travelling to give me an extra hour of daylight, at least, so the only thing keeping me from getting there is potentially fatigue, but I'm not worried, there's enough "real fruit" in this strawberry milkshake I just had to keep an army of six year olds moving for a week. As much as I like diners, I'm becomming a bit oversaturated. I actually thought this place was a steakhouse, but had sat down before I noticed that they were a cheap burger joint. 

=========

The day after that I drove through Oklahoma and New Mexico, and I drove by the Tom Stafford Air and Space Museum 9and obviously went in) and past the Very Large Array (which I also visited). Two panoramas are included with this entry. 

This week the weather was really bad, thunder and lightning. We hadn't had a clear night before last night. We're finally going to be able to take some good measurements tonight; we're going to make a measurement of the reflectivity of the mirrors of one of the telescopes. 

=========

Shortly after I finished that sentence, we went outside to take the data and for the second time, we were unable to get the telescope to slew in azimuth (side to side). This was strange because twice now the telescope had been checked out during the day, and twice at night it just wanted nothing to do with pointing at a target. 

So, we drove up the mountain and parked at the Bowl dorms, had a beer and went to bed. This morning, I got an email from one of the VERITAS directors. We had left the telescope exactly as we had used it, so that if we hadn't plugged something in, for example, he'd be able to point to it and blame our issues on it. This was not the case, he had no issue slewing the telescope around. 

We're not quite sure what's going on, but tonight one of the experts is going to stick around until we start to take data to see if the problem crops up again. 

So, tonight we're going to try and make the measurement again, take some measurements to test the alignment of Telescopes 2, and then finally take some data so that we can align the mirrors on T4. All in all, it'll probably be a busy night. 

Dear followers, I am sorry for ignoring you. As one might imagine, I have been very busy since my return.
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BMW donkey.

A BMW donkey.

Something I threw together yesterday in various little bits.

Captain's Log, Stardate 101007.22 or something along the lines.

I write this entry from a TGV as I depart Paris. Internet access was so horrible in the hostel I was staying in that it made it incredibly difficult to get online, and when I did, I would be sitting haphazardly on some stairs along with a dozen other 20somethings asking their boyfriends if they could hear them because the Skype connection was so bad. So, needless to say, I didn't spend much time online.

I did however have a really good time in Paris; I went on a tour in Normandy at the beginning of the week, saw Omaha, Point d'Hoc, the artificial harbour, some surviving German gun batteries, the American graveyard, and we had a guided tour of the Caen Memorial.

I highly suggest anyone who has an interest in WWII and would like to see some of the sights to go on this tour; the rates were pretty reasonable (170 USD) considering we had lunch included (steak and wine) and our groups were very small, at most 8 people per guide. The fact that the groups are small really made it worthwhile, you didn't have to wait for the guide to finish repeating their speil in four languages before you could ask a question. It was really great. The visit is organized by the Caen Memorial, but I bought my tickets through http://www.linkparis.com. If you can get a good deal on your train fare to Caen and back from Paris, it should cost you no more than about 200 dollars. Sure, it's a good chunk of money at face value, but if you're interested in the material, there's nothing like getting taken around by a professional.

The next day I went to the Eiffel Tower. I was there at a time that I thought was early (10AM), but when I showed up, the lines were huge. I spent at least an hour waiting to get my ticket to the second floor, at which point they informed me that the top of the tower was closed due to congestion (not unjustifiable, at least). I didn't really care, going to the second floor is better than not going. Up there, however, they were selling tickets for the tower, so I queued again for about half an hour, this time. I was luckily able to get a few kerbillion pictures as the line wrapped its way all the way around the second floor.

Upon reaching the top, I declined getting a 10 Euro glass thimble of champagne, took a couple pictures and essentially got right back in line for the elevator down. 45 minutes later, I was back on the ground looking for the Notre Dame cathedral. The line to Notre Dame had a lineup akin to that of the Eiffel Tower so I took some outside pictures, sat down in the park behind it, and crossed it off my list.

Ah yes, now, the adventure for supper. I had read about a Canadian pub (yeah, apparently they exist?) called the Moose that actually looked like it would be interesting, so I tried to make my way over there. Epic fail. About an hour into the 13 minute walk I ended up at a tavern that had some nice looking beer and food for less than ten euros. It was pretty simple, I had a "tartine", some sort of bread with cheese melted onto it and toasted. It was simple, but tasted good; mine had goat's cheese and another kind I couldn't pronounce. For desert, I found a crepe shop and had a nutella/Gran Marnier crepe, scoffed it down while it was still warm, then walked what (at the time I thought was) the road back to the hostel. 20 minutes later, I realize something is up; I should have at least seen a building or street that looked familiar... or the frakking Pantheon that I knew was on the way. I was really, really lost, and naturally without a map. I had somehow ended up in a part of town where metros were scarce, so I couldn't even figure out what stop I was at. Eventually, though, I found a metro, managed to misinterperate what direction I was facing, and then stumble somewhat in the direction of where I was going.

By the time I got to the hostel I had been wandering around for about 90 minutes, was drenched in sweat, and fell asleep on my bed fully clothed (minus the shirt I was wearing which had to be burned), with the lights on.

My last day in Paris (yesterday) I went to the "Cite des Sciences et Industrie", a purely immense science museum geared towards everyone. It has to be at least 3 times as big as the Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, which in itself is pretty huge. In the 6 hours I was there I saw a 3D IMAX show in their theatre, a planetarium show that was pretty fantastic, and two and a half out of maybe a dozen exhibits. I can't imagine anyone actually having the time to visit the entire museum in one day.

That night, I met up with a coworker from McGill who was in town for a high energy conference (TeVPa), and he, his girlfriend, sisters and myself went on an hour long boat tour. You couldn't really hear the guide which was a bit of a drag, but the experience was still nice (albeit a bit of rain). We had supper at this South American place, then my coworker and his girlfriend and I went out for drinks. We ended up at this royally expensive (but really cool) place next to the Pantheon. I had a 1L "glass" of kreik (a sour cherry beer) out of a kwak bottle.... The pictures can explain more than I can with words.

Today, I made my way to Ghent, got royally lost on my way to my B&B, checked in, took a 4 hour break (was pretty pooped), and now I write this sitting on a terasse, drinking a Duvel, surrounded by live music, magicians, street performers, this creepy girl in a dress (see the pictures) and swaths of people. Ghent looks like it would be a blast to visit when there isn't a festival going on, this is nuts. It's like the Montreal Jazz Festival on crack with a small section of LaRonde thrown in (did I mention there are rides set up here?). I missed the Ghent jazz festival, which is too bad; I was hoping to be able to compare it to Montreal's. Oh well, it gives me an excuse to come back. Also, at (I think) 45 Euros a night, my B&B is really nice; nicer than some (most) hotels I've stayed in.

Well, my glass is empty. Time to order another bottle of something that'd cost me three times as much back home.

*caveat: I do miss my brewery. I should be taking notes on all the things I try; it would be really cool to try and figure out what makes then and attempt to duplicate some of the flavours. I don't want to clone them, there's no fun in that. Instead, I would like to be able to pull together something similar.

PS, there are some really, really pretty girls in Ghent.

PPS, most of them smoke.

PPPS, I hear that there are all you can eat ribs somewhere around here. w00t.

Partial update

I'm at this crazy huge museum in Paris, called the "Cite des Sciences et Industrie". Saw a 3D movie (unfortunately spoiled by the daycare groups who were there) and a planetarium show (fantastic; I almost want to go to the second show). 

This place is way too big to see in one day; I've still got most of the museum to visit, there's a 50s era submarine parked outside that I have tickets to go see, and I've just discovered that the Louvre is on a direct metro line from here. 

Not sure if I'll be able to make it to the Louvre; I have plans to go on a 1 hour boat trip tonight at 8PM with one of my colleagues (and his girlfriend and sisters) who is in Paris for the TeVPa conference (I love being a physicist, we get to go to all these cool places). 

Internet access in Europe is very meh.

OK, I have to make this short, the internet access here is flakey. I will post the links to my pictures, and then tonight from my room I'll write up a proper log entry.

Last Days in Erice

First Hours in Paris

Normandy D-Day Tour

Apparently, I did get a tan the other day.

Friday morning. Need moar coffeeeeee

OK, at this point I think I'm running out of steam. Since I've been here I don't think I've had more than about 6 consecutive hours of sleep. We spend alot of time out at various places (two nights ago after our banquet we discovered a bar next to the Castle with a nice view of over the cliff, for example). 

The fact that at 9AM we have yet to have coffee or any real kind of breakfast, combined with the lights being off, make for a very difficult time staying attentive. The last talks are going on now; the current presenter works on VERITAS out of University of Delware and just gave my research on a shout-out. 

This afternoon, there is no Science program; the bunch of us who have been spending time together (representative of at least 50% of the attendees) are going to take a cable car down to Trapani, the town/city at the base of the mountain, for the day. I[m not sure how I feel about staying late, though; I've got to pack my bags, do a bit of laundry, if possible, and finish getting ready for tomorrow.

My flight leaves Palermo around noon, landing in Paris CDG some 4 hours later or so. I've got to decide whether to taxi or public transit my way to the dorms I'm staying in; clearly, public transit will be cheaper, but I'm weary of public transiting with a big bag and my backpack. I'll have to think about this tonight, I guess. 

Tomorrow night I'm going to try and take it easy, maybe get some work done instead of go wandering around, because I've got a train to catch the following morning at 6:50 or so. I'm going on a D-Day tour and I really want to be well rested. At least that will be a change from the hardcoreness that was this week. I think I only made it to bed early (before 1AM!) one night....

--
-=//\=-

The Excursion

Yesterday was a big day.

At 8:30 we left Erice for a visit to some Greek temple ruins. We began in Segesta, an ancient city that was abandoned some 700 years ago, but since Antiquity has been occupied by many cultures (Greeks, Muslims, Normans). The interesting bit about Segesta is that it contains an unfinished Greek temple that has somehow managed to survive over the millenia. There are pictures of this available here. The city also contains an ancient theatre that was once capable of holding 4000 people.

Afterwards, we went to Selinunte, which is a host to a number of temple ruins. The temples themselves were destroyed during an earthquake some time ago. Of the three we visited, one has been raised, one does not contain enough surviving material to be rebuilt, and another (the largest, a temple to Zeus, I believe) needs only the money to be rebuilt. 

It was very hot, so we went swimming in the Mediterranean, where I had the honor of getting a pretty nasty sunburn on my forehead, which makes it pretty difficult to, for example, move my face.

I realize that I haven't spent much time talking about the conference. There are alot of people from the Pierre Auger observatory (Argentina) here, and IceCube. There are two of us from VERITAS and a few Fermi people, so there's an interesting mix of talks. Given that most of my work has been hardware based over the past 14 months, I am not giving a talk. For my project, there just isn't enough known about the science for me to be able to go down that route; I'd have to talk about hardware, and not everyone (experamentalist or not) is interested in instrumentation. After I take some data I'll be able to talk some more about the science of my research.

Pierre Auger (www.auger.com) is an interesting experiment that is bound to make some neat discoveries as soon as they have taken enough data. One of their most recent results is the detection of an anisotropy in the cosmic ray background (ie, there seems to be a source of cosmic rays somewhere but we don't know where). This is big news in the Cosmic Ray society. 

I can't believe that it's already Friday; tomorrow is our last day in Erice, afterwards I head to Paris for the beginning of my vacation. Due to some timing issues, I'm going to have to be up early on Monday, though, I'm heading to Normandy to go on a D-day tour. 

Anyways, I've go to go get some aloe or something to soothe my face. Also, can't wait to see what's for lunch today. 

Two more days of pictures.

I just got in from visiting the Castle of Venus Erice with some friends. Pretty stuff. Now, more talks, later a concert.

Day 3: Erice Day 3
Day 4 (the afternoon of): Erice Day 4 Afternoon

No regrets.

While we're at this summer school, we have a list of ~7 places that we can eat at at no charge (except drinks (including water)). Last night it was Elimo, a great place with an entryway that looks like a stereotypical "old person" house, with old furniture and carpets everywhere, hanging plants and a distinctive smell (not necessarily a bad smell).

The man typing next to be can be described in no other way than smashing his fingers on his keyboard. I can hear him from 10 feet away. Hell, I can feel the table moving.

The dining area was really interesting looking. Very brown deco, alot of plants, elaborate tablecloths and carpets, and a view that looks out at Tripani. The meal started with a plate of cold couscous made with tomatoes, wine and (I think) anchovies, and was followed with some slab pizza (so-so) and prosciutto. 

During the meal I had a long conversation with one of the speakers at the conference, Kerry Lee, a scientist working in the Space Radiation Analysis Group at the NASA Johnson Space Centre, who offered to give me a tour of the JSC when I drive through Houston on my way back from VERITAS in early December, which is pretty awesome.

We made out way back to the free wine room (which I've since learned serves "marsala"), but there's only so much of that you can have before the heartburn sets in due to the acidity. A group of us, mostly astrophysicists but a few new people who are here doing a summer school on acoustic photonics, went to the closest cafe for gelatto and a pint. 

This didn't last long as it was about 1:30 in a town where everything closes at about midnight (at latest). Three of us (for some reason) decided that it was far too early to go to bed (not sure it was a great decision) so we decided to track down a shop that was open (ambitious at best) and grab a bottle of wine to have at the castle. While wandering the streets, we found a shop that was still open, and we made out way to the castle where we shared the bottle while sitting at the benches on top of the Temple of Venus. 

I'm somewhat tired right now; we took our time with the wine (with good reason, it was really cool to be at the castle). 

This conversation actually just happened as the speaker was briefly inturrupted by the cutoff alarm:

Speaker: "How much time do I have left?"

Chair:      "Three minutes plus ten minutes for questions."

Speaker: "Okay, I will try to finish in five minutes."

We eventually made our way back to the free wine room and I had a long c

--
-=//\=-

Re: awesome.

I'm off to supper then wine drinking at a 1000 year old castle.

Night 2 and a bit of the morning

Last night after the conferences, a bunch of us went to the Venus pizzeria (there's a temple to Venus in Erice), had some pizza (no charge because of the conference) and 4 bottles of wine (we were 14 people). The entire meal cost us less than 5 Euros each, and our wine was pretty tasty. Afterwards, a couple of us made our way to the San Rocco Cafe for a pint, before we remembered the existence of what we call the 'free wine room', a piano room containing two casks of something that looks like amaretto but is somewhere between that and wine. 

Interestingly enough, when the casks are empty, they magically get replaced.

The talks this morning were a bit theory heavy, not exacctly my cup of tea, but after lunch at Ulysses (sardine pasta and fried fish) I walked back to the castle in an attempt to get a picture form the very top. Unfortunately, access to it seems to be closed off, albeit there does seem to be a (and I quote) "Cafeteria / Long Drinks" built inside the castle, but I've yet to see it open. 

There is however a part of the castle that you can visit, but I didn't have enough time this afternoon. It's likely tomorrow's activity. On the way back, I tried going a different way back to the hotel and ended walking halfway around Erice. It was a nice walk, byt my shoes are on their last legs, especially considering the cobblestone roads, and it is hot. 32C in th sun. It's not too humid, but I'm burning through my clothes twice as fast as I thought I would be.

Erice Day 1/2 Pictures

As promised... Erice Day 1/2

The International School of Cosmic Ray Astrophysics - Erice 2010

So, I can't remember if I'm mentioned this before, but this week I'm attending a summer school in Erice, Sicily. 

I flew out last night at 7PM (EST). The flight was OK. I had an exit row window seat, which would have been great, but it was extremely cold on the plane; cold enough to not be able to sleep very well, which was a bit of a drag. The time change is such that when I arrived in Rome, it was 9AM. Considering the absurdidty of my regular sleep schedule, it wasn't that bad. About an hour and change later, I took off again for the second legof the trip, from Rome to Palermo, Sicily. I wasn't awake for a second of the trip. 

The first thing I noticed about Palermo airport ios that it is tiny. There are (apparently) 6 belts for luggage (albeit I only actually found three), and one set of doors that every landing flight comes through. I didn't mind this, because I figured that it implied that I would find the guy who is supposed to pick the school participants up easier. This was not true. I kind of stood around awkwardly for an hour until someone else waiting for their lioft tracked me down. Eventually, after about two hours total, we left on a minibus for Erice.

Erice is a smallish town built on a mountain at ~750m altitude. The roads are at least 75% cobblestone (and my shoes are garbage, but that's another story). There are a few castles here (or I suppose it's really just one castle spread out?) so my new friend and I spent the day wandering around the city. The school openening 'ceremony' was only at 10PM local time, so we had something like8 hours to explore.

Eventually, we met up with some other students. Therew's another summer school going on here at the same time, on Quantum Electronics. So far as I can tell, most of them are Italians. We ended up walking around with some of them for awhile (which was great because there are not many English-speakers in Erice). 

At about 11PM I konked out, fell asleep without even setting my alarm. 

The internet connection here is tenuous at best, and there isn't wifi everywhere, so I'm going to have to figure out a system for uploading pictures without blowing all the bandwidth for everyone. Alright, it's breakfast time. 

--
-=//\=-

I still do this.

Tiles in the eyes of children.

science ... SCIENCE!

Um.... 'kay. Magnets.

Seriously?

How can she see anything on her utility belt?

Just saw two guys fishing in the Lake of Two Mountains while standing in it. Not a bad Yay to cool down.
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The AC in the physics building is out. Has been all week. At least the humidity has dropped somewhat.
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I stand corrected.

It has been brought to my attention that my most recent post was not, in fact, a Pokemon hanging out at a bus stop. He is called Totoro, and this picture makes the last one even funnier.

Meanwhile, in Japan...

A wild Pokemon appears!

Drawings of Scientists

Drawings of Scientists made by children before and after a visit to Fermilab.

Spiders

Your daily 'What the frak?'. How many guys in Spider-Man suits can fit inside Jamba Juice

The guy in front of me is smoking a pipe. i am very jealous.
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Shuttle launch as seen by a skydiver

Epic.

Back at VERITAS

I flew to VERITAS yesterday. A fairly uneventful flight, except for the super creepy 900 year-old woman sitting next to me, I will admit that I was pretty fed up of being seated down by the end. 

I leave Saturday morning, David (my supervisor and I) are going to be setting up a reflectometer; we're trying to measure the reflectivity of the mirrors on each of the telescopes. I'll try to grab some pictures while we're working on it.

Last night I was invited to go check out a 60" optical telescope that is also on the Ridge here. It's a one-man job (compared to the three observers required for VERITAS). They only do spectroscopy there, so unfortunately I haven't any pretty images from a giant telescope to show. 

I was using my camera, however. The sky was incredibly clear, and the galactic plane is starting to come up (i.e. we can see the Milky Way). I grabbed one good picture of it on a 60-second exposure; the issue is that any longer and we start to see star trails due to the Earth's rotation. Too bad, because at about 120 seconds, the colors of the Milky Way start to really come out.

I am a scientist.

This is how we see the world.

Mezzanine Complete

Yesterday, Adam (an engineer in the lab downstairs) and I managed to complete my MkI mezzanine board, and it seems to be working splendidly. I've only got one channel (of seven) running because the chips we're using are really tiny, and we accidentally destroyed one while setting up the first channel. Given that they are seven bucks a pop, we decided to hold off and just have a circuit board printed, rather than breadboard it. I'm at home now, but I'll snap an image of it tomorrow.

Apart from that, I'm off to VERITAS Tuesday of next week, to test out a reflectometer and maybe do take some alignment data for the telescopes. It'll be my first time working there at night, I'll learn how to operate the telescopes, at least a bit.

Mezzanines

Back from CASCA since Friday. I've been working on getting a few things built, namely my mezzanine board which I'm going to mount on the FPGA board. The mezzanine is really simple; I have an input that takes the signal from each camera pixel and converts it into a signal that the FPGA can read via a really fast comparator.

For those of you who don't know, a comparator is (typically) an op-amp that compares two voltages at its input and then produces a high or low output depending on which of the two is greater. 

Once the mezzanine is on order, I have to buckle down and finish debugging a few pits and pieces of code that aren't working exactly like they are supposed to. Namely, some of my data isn't making its way into the packets that are being streamed to the computer.

The poster that I made for CASCA is available here.

Low voltage differential signaling is really fast, faster than a nanosecond response time,
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Spent the day working on my photometer. Could not have chosen a more obscure signaling standard.
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Back from CASCA. Crazy tired. Will blog about this later. On my way to Indigo with a friend, them nap.
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CASCA 2010 (Day 1 and 2)

Hello, everyone. 

I write this from my dorm room at St. Mary's University in Halifax. For fifty bucks a night, I can't complain. 

We're 20 minutes on foot away from at least two brewpubs (which are fantastic, for the record). The conference starts tomorrow, 9AM. I will be giving a poster presentation on my research. 

Right now I'm getting ready to go to bed, got a big day tomorrow. Talks all day, then a pub crawl at night (Canadians are awesome).

I'll try to comment on the more interesting talks tomorrow. 

On my way to the airport. Big Astro conference.
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Status report, Stardate.... 2010oh five point.... now.

Okay, so, needless to say, I've been pretty busy lately. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I'm flying to Halifax next Monday for a CASCA (Canadian Astronomical Society) conference at St. Mary's University. I'll be giving a poster presentation on my research project (which I'll be making available online once it's complete). I fly back to Montreal on the Friday night, right after the conference, so exhausted as I may be, at least I'll not lose out on the weekend. 

After that, I have a trip to VERITAS to test out a new piece of hardware we're building that will be testing the reflectivity of the mirrors of the telescope dish (i.e. how much light they reflect). That trip is a short one, only four days. 

Kegged a batch of beer last night. An apricot ale in preparation for a graduation party I'll be going to at the end of the month. I also bought tubing and fittings for my CO2 tank and regulator. I'm curious to see how it turns out; this is my first keg.

Anyways, back to work, got to get this poster in the bag.

Hey, Who Wants to See Jar Jar Binks Savagely Elbowed in the Face?

You're welcome.

Why does this exist?!

Seriously, Texas?

Oh noes!

I think that they don't understand what was done here.

Addict

I am correcting lab reports, looking for key words, and I tried to do a mental 'Crtl+F' to search for all instances of the word 'lag'. FML, computers have taken over my brain.

11 Recordings of Terrible Hold Music

11 Recordings of Terrible Hold Music. 'Nuff said.

//nonsense

I love finding comments in my code like:

//udp!!! Must be updated, maybe!

Because this clearly makes a ton of sense.

The "Don't be a Dick" licence.

I'm going to use this for everything.

Someone actually thought of this.

The weirdest thing I've seen today is
here.

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Being a TA isn't all correcting you know.

Every once in awhile we get a gem like this(via my good friend Nick):


"Hi Nick,

I am a student of u on Tusday 9am to 10am. Could you send me the
elaborate answers of our mid term paper? Appreciate!!

Sincere,
Katie"

nick says:
I have no idea what she means by elaborate answers.
does she want a story? or what?

Sean says:
I'm trying extremely hard not to laugh out loud right now.
I'm in my office and there are people doing science.

nick says:
hehehe
I guess they would Appreciate!!! it if you didn't laugh

Does my head look big in this?

Another week gone. Made some good progress at work today though. Must continue this weekend.
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Come along, Cinnamon.

There's nothing more fun then walking your pet.

#117 in the list of things I will never understand: Tattoos in places you cant see without a mirror.
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This website exists.

Nuclear Dance Machine

WIENER Product Discussion :: Register

Seriously???

----

Put a check mark next to all photographs of animals. (This is a spam prevention mechanism).

A Klingon Stout

I absolutely must brew this at some point:

"

Klingon Stout

Beer Style:	stout, prune juice
Recipe Type:	extract
Description: OK I'll admit that I'm a Star Trek fan, especially the Next Generation. One of my favorite moments on that show came when someone offered Worf, the fierce Klingon, a taste of prune juice. He tasted it and then with surprise and enthusiasm, declared it to be "a warriors drink". In that moment, a recipe was concieved. Before all the prune juice jokes start, let me point out two things. Number one, the laxative effect of prune juice is due to it's fiber content, most of which settles out following fermentation. Number two(sorry, I couldn't help myself) , this recipe contains only 2 qt prune juice out of a 5 gal (20 qt ) batch, or 10%. Thus a 12 oz bottle contains 1.2 oz of prune juice; not enough to trouble most GI systems. I originally intended this as a sort of novelty brew, but it came out excellent. The prune juice adds a velvety smoothness sort of like oatmeal stout. Next time I might dry hop. Let me know what you think. You will be a merry man! (That's not sexist--another Trek reference).
Ingredients: 6.6 lb dark malt extract syrup 1 lb crushed crystal malt 1/2 lb black patent malt 1/3 lb roasted barley 1.5 oz Northern Brewers hops--boil 60 min. 1 oz Tettnanger hops --finishing last 2 min. 2 quarts prune juice WITH NO PRESERVATIVES!!!! ale yeast 3/4 c. corn sugar to prime
Procedure: Steep grains 30 min at 150F. Strain into brew pot and rinse with one gal hot water. Add extract, boiling hops and additional gal. water and boil 1 hr. Add finishing hops last 2 min. Turn off heat and add prune juice to pasteurize for 10 min(probably not necessary since the juice is already pasteurized ). Pour into primary fermenter and top with cold water up to 5 gal. Pitch yeast when cool. Rack to secondary a week later. Bottle when ready. Age at least 4 wk.
Submitted by: Paul Busman"

Source:

Klingon Stout .:. BeerRecipes.org