Back in Vancouver

After a very busy but fun trip to Japan I am back in Vancouver. WeI left KEK (the research facility I was staying at) around noon. We had some lunch in Tsukuba before taking the bus to Narita Airport. There we finally boarded our flight and headed beack home at about 5pm. I got me some good duty free liquor at the Airport too :)

During the flight i finished reading "The Face" by Dean Koontz. A quite creepy antagonist, but aside from that a marginally allright book. Good enough to keep you reading but not to get you truely absorbed in the story.

Shawn picked me up at the Vancouver airport on Sunday morning. Big thanks man, I was in no shape to bus back home. I was slightly intrigued by hearing Nena's "99 Red Ballons" (If I remeber correctly we listend to the English, not the German version) since it seemed to fall somewhat outside our general Heavy Metal/Punk Rock cuisine of music. But hey it's retro so I didn't think too much by it. Hence I was pleaently suprised by finding my closet filled with 99 red ballons supplyed by Aleks, Shawn, Calum and Parie (I hope I included everyone involved). Thank you guys for the welcome home. That was awsome! Here is a shot Aleks took when I found the ballons, too bad I was turning my back to the camera, so he did not get the look on my face, which must have been pretty funny :)



Afterward we had the Anime movie night, also great fun. We whateched Neko no Ongaeshi (The Cat Returns) a fun little anime. Wierd, but I enjoyed it either way. Amber braught some pie to share during the movie, damn that pumpkin pie was good. Thank you Amber, you're best!

Tonight (in case you were wondering where I was) I went to visit Lauren and Jason, two friends of mine living in Surry. They are both working at The Keg, in Surry relatively close to the Surry Central Skytrain station. I had what must have been the best steak of my life after, especially beiing beef-deprived for about two months. Damn that was good! Thank you guys for having me over :)

U.S. credit card breach

This article by CBC is another story of our credit card records being acessed by hackers. This apparently happened a few times over the past year or so ... what I find scarier then some hacker getting into another database, is the fact that our purchases are monitored like this. But hey who the hell cares, soon enough they will also know that the internet is used for two things only pirating and pr0n ... well and gaming, but that is a just a small fraction occupied mostly by geeks like me.

Free Beer!

Thanks to Rich my flight back to Vancouver was upgraded to first class. Right now we are chilling out in the "Skynet Lounge" at narita airport, an area for first class and eliet travellers. They give you free wireless acess, muchies, and most importantly BEER! Only have about 10 minutes left to use all this though. Damn.

And all will turn to silver clouds.

Well It's time to go back to Vancouvers white shores. I'll make it down there about now (Vancouver time) meaning it just a short 16 hr sprint home, fun!

Empire Earth II

So we are currently on the HARP section of the K2K experiment. If tht does not mean anything to you that's ok, you are not missing too much. So for the last few hours i sepnd my time half listening to the speaker half reading about Empire Earth II. I am very impressed with the review of the game. I played the demo, and I got a glimps of what they meant with the long learning curve the article is talking about. I was however very impressed with the game, and the previews and review I have been reading very much motivate me to pick up this sequel to the old RTS gem.
Sadly this means I will likely let my WoW accound run out (o.O), but I am just not playing that game enough to justify spending $15 a month on it.

Photos of Kyoto.

I put up most of the pictures I took in Kyoto in a photo album under the photos section of the site. Check 'em out.

K2K Talk

Whee! I just finished my talk. It hope it went realtively well, I can't really tell whether I was sounding like a complete dimwhit up there, but I think I am getting better at this presentation thing slowly :)

Got Milk?

During my stay in Kyoto, Jeff and I found the next step in this line of questioning:



Now I better get some sleep so I can be all good and ready for the collaboration conference and my presentation tomorrow.

Crackpot science?!?

So while reading my mail today i get thies goolge add, which looked to me (as a physicist) possibly qite interesting (or possibly like a horrible headache):
New Physics -- The Theory Of Everything Has Arrived!
This dude does not have the answer to life the universe and everything (physics). He may know it's 42, but I am not too sure. He just serves you an extra load of bullshit that made it impossible for me to read more then the first few pages of his book. Not only is he bashing physics as it is today, he is clearly showing that he did not do his research right. Here is some entrees from his introduction to the four fources of nature:

1) "Gravity -- the familiar attraction between all matter, first described by Isaac Newton."
OK buddy if you want to challange todays scinece through gravity at least try looking at Einstein's GR. If you lack the brainpower or conviction to talk about it, rethink writing a book criticising physics.

2) "Weak Nuclear Force -- another nuclear force, considered to be much weaker than the Strong Nuclear Force. ..."
Hold you horses here. While the weak force is short range (making it similar to the strong force) it is not a "nuclear" force like the strong force. You are implying that the weak force acts on the same "stuff" as the strong force. This is not true. The weak force interacts with any type of matter we understand as of now. The strong force does not. At the same time the name Weak Force does not imply it is considered *weaker*, but yes it's coupeling constant is much smaller then the one associating with of the Strong Force in the ... uhhh ... current state of the universe.

Anyway enough pointeless ranting. I need to take a physics course again or something. Well I am just a lowly grad student tell me, what do you think about this book (if you feel like spending your gaming time reading this book instead). I just can't bear to read any more. I may cry f i do.

--- Edit ----

One more bit before I pass out:
"Since arrival at this deep physical understanding is expected to yield a common mathematical framework for all the forces of nature, it is often assumed that if we simply pursue this mathematical end result directly – using our current models – we will achieve this deeper understanding."
Now, I am not smart enough to be a theorist, but consider for example Einstein's Special Relativity. I doubt this guy ever read it, or if he did clearly he was too high to comprehend what he was looking at. Here we have an example of how a new theory of physics comes to be. Inspired by principles seen in our understanding of the world Einstein comes up with a new framwork describing motion starting not with any existing formulae, but with two simple assumptions:

1) Speed of light is a constant (A problem with the theory since it does not explain why the speed fo light is constant, I agree)

2)The laws of physics hold true in an intertial reference frame (ie. you can use the same physical theory to describe what you see whether you are ... ignoring acceleration for now to make things simple)

No use of F=ma. Spacetime follows as a result. Look more closely at your background ya crackpot.

Ohh it gets even better:

"Despite the ongoing energy expended by Earth’s gravity to hold objects down and the moon in orbit, this energy never diminishes in strength or drains a power source – in violation of one of our most fundamental laws of physics: the Law of Conservation of Energy."
Holy fucking shit dude ... you are looking at some very simple laws here and you can't keep up with what either of them means. No crazy math, no nothing. You can solve the moons orbit using newtons laws and forces, or by using Hamiltonians (applying Conservation of energy more directly). You arrive at the conclusion that the moon stays in the sky because of either law. Not that they vilolate each other. I wish I had my Classical Mechnics book closeby to smite this guy senseless with.

Frank: "F=ma, bitch!"
Mark McCutcheon: *screams as he whitnesses the awsome power of F=dp/dt *

Ok now I am about to puke thanks to that dude (not the b33r I consumed earlier). Time to go and relieve myslef.

K2K End Of Run Party

Tonight was the official end of run party for the K2K Collaboration. On Friday and Saturday we have the last Collaboration conference to follow. I had some sushi, talked to lots of friendly fellow physicists, in short: I dined, I dashed, and I consumed lots of beer in the process.
Now I am trying to avoid a hangover for work tomorrow by consuming lots of less-alcoholic liquid and I will have to make up my mind on whether I should play GTA: San Andreas or WoW. Decisions decisions.
Note; I replaced the picture under Kyoto, with one that is hopefully more illuminating on why Kyoto rocks :)

Best long weekend ever.

I had an awsome time in Kyoto, thank you for having me over Jeff! Now I am back at Tsukuba (as you may have noticed on my homesite) and got promptly buried in work. Held a presentaitno to the our group here this morning, on Firday afternoon I get to present to the entire K2K collaboration, and in the meanwhile we need to take apart the robot arm and ship it back to TRIUMF. Whooo! Wish me luck.

Kyoto!

So I made it to Kyoto. I'm too lazy to put up a full blog entry right now, but let me show you why this palce rocks:

Now that that is settled let me get some rest for a day of exploring tempels tomorrow.

Going to Kyoto

So, my work here is done. We have taken all the data we want with the robot arm. That means I get the next few days off. So I have promptly planned to go to Kyoto to visit Jeff Newmark and explore some of the shrines, temples and castles there. Sadly I will only have about 4 days before I need to get back to KEK to take apart the robot arm and attend the last K2K Collaboration meeting.
If I make it to Jeff’s place I'll probably have some really cool photos to upload tomorrow. If you don't see a post, either I am too busy being a lazy tourist or I have gotten lost on the way to Kyoto. Your guess is as good as mine at this point.

Japanese Fast Food Rocks.

Seriously, if we had more Japanese style fast food joints in Canada, the fast food industry would get a lot of money out of me. Instead of burgers these places sell beef, chicken, pork, or fish with some seasoning and over rice. Instead of fries on the side you get a small salad and miso soup (either with seafood or with vegetables). Iced tea is free! Have a picture of me chowing down some damn good lunch:

Mine-san introduced this place to me, seen here enjoying noe of the seafood dishes:

We need one of those places in the Village dammit.

I need some b33r.

Finally everything is working again! Replaced the laser this morning, and got the DAQ working again. Then the robot arm needed some fixing, which was done sometime in the afternoon. Finally the AC in the electronics hut had a heart attack, but has recovered now. After some more fidgeting with the laser optics we are finally up and running again. Now I'm gonna go get some sleep or something. Right after I frequent that beer vending machine at the dorm. Doesn't quite have the grace of a good bartender or a sexy waitress, but it'll do. It gives us precious beer.

What Keeps Me Awake At Night

It was a cloudy morning three days past. I arrived at the Neutrino Hall (where we are taking data) with my belly full of bacon, . Here I was immediatly assulted with a load of errors that data aqusition system (DAQ) of the detector system was throwing at me. As I grudgetly realized this means I have to actually earn my pay by fixing this thing rather then lazily sitting by whatching the data flow.
For a little while I was totally mystified. Diving though the software I could find nothing to fix (not that I understand any of it). So I wondered off to check out the electronics crates. There is no really good way to express this mess of wires with words, so have some pictures:

The main logic for the near detector.


The main logic racks are in the back, the power supplies are the racks at the right ...


The thick cables go to/fro the PMTs in the 1kt tank. The panel in the back seems to have only one purpose in life: delaying a signal.

After crawling through that for a while and marveling at my ignorance of this system I emailed out a pitiful little plea for help. Help soon eventually arrived in the form of our polish collaborator on the scene (Asia is her name). Later I got more hlep (via email) from one of the guys back in Canada. Finally Mine-san a Japanese collaborator (currently down here from sunny California) arrived at the scene. After a while of screahcing our heads we called in even more help, in the form of one of the experts on the DAQ (Hayato-san his name would be). Hayato-san quickly found out that the DAQ is functioning, but there seems to be trouble with our system. The problem apparently was that our system was telling the DAQ to take more data then it possible could. Here is a picture of the system I am talking about:

You guessed it ... more electronics.

Anyway after some inspection (ie. going awal with an oscilloscope) we found that the problem is with our laser (which generates the light for our data):

Apparently it has gone past it's prime running contiuously for the last month-and a bit. Now my hope for salvation lies in a plasma cartridge which apprently needs exchanging. Well it's either that or I'm running away to Kyoto to visit Jeff.

Good reading.

So yesterday I finished a thick historical novel (The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett). One of the guys that were here for the robot arm setup (Keith) left me the novel. It was a rather enjoyable side step from my usual litirary cusine of Fantasy, Sci-Fi and physics text books. The first half of the book had me enthralled, but the second half got a little repeticious. The end was quite good again though, and it felt good to se the main antagonist hang, altough I would rather much have liked to see him burn.
Along the lines of book I don't usually read: today I read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. And excellent read, and short (took me about 2.5 hrs this evening). Now I feel inclined to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, just to see if it's as good as the song :)

Pussy Galore

A couple of stray kats have decided to make the KEK dorm their home. Here is a picture of me feeding a friendly little balck and wihte cat:

An here is a picture of a rather timid little red and white cat. It must have just gotten into a fight just when I got here, but seems to be recovering well enough now. Still it won't come close to, in fact once when I tried to give it a little more food where it was eating it attacked me when I got close. Tsk tsk.

After giving those two cats a little breakfast I had some curry for breakfast myself:

Rice for breakfast in not such a bad thing, although I still preferr some pancakes.

On Raw Chicken

Now don't look at me funny it was delicious. Of course I forgot my camera to take a picture of the place where we went to eat (stupid me). It was a classical Japaneses grill. One of our Japanese friends took us out for dinner there. He ordered us up some really tasty dishes, one of the best actually was a barbecued chicken with a chunk of really good wassabi. The odd thing was that only an outside layer of the chicken was actually roasted while the inside was raw. It was quite delicious, although I was a bit superstitious about raw meat. Either way I loved the dinner there, too bad I'm all sick now. With that let me go and visit the enterprise.