So, this is what the wrong side of my very, very late 20s looks like. At least I have tea and a pony [Bob, short for Kate].
LHC
It worked!
Clockwise and anti-clockwise beams though the ring with minimal tweeking of the focus and steering parameters. Yay!
Geekery.
A few days ago I built a radio receiver out of junk, because my usual radio had died a death and I wanted to listen to a specific part of the shortwave bands around 3.5 – 4 MHz.
Last night I scanned up and down the band and located what sounded like a fax transmission, a short while later and I’d recorded several minutes of the signal. A litter later still and I’d decoded it using some software I wrote nearly 10 years ago.
It looks a little messy, but it is quite obviously a weather map showing iso-bars and weather fronts over the Atlantic, the UK and Europe. Not bad for random DIY experiments.
Enough with the conferences!
I returned from a Canadian conference had barely a day and a weekend to recover from jet-lag before the kickoff of IVESC in London. IVESC ended on Wednesday, Thursday was a mad rush to arrange stuff before the Boss heads off to India for the rest of the month. Friday was a one-day meeting elsewhere in London, I only made half of this due to the Great British Beer Festival attendance the night before.
No more conferences this month, please!
Some notes:
- Alcohol – the USA and Canada issue drink tickets at conferences. The UK issues bottles and cans (especially at poster sessions).
- Apple Macs (all sorts) and Asus Eee PCs seem to be the favourites with scientific conference delegates.
- You can really only get a decent cup of Tea in the UK.
Oh look. Another conference I’ll be at. Not until November though.
Eclipse Images.
Between gaps and breaks in the clouds I managed to record pretty much the whole eclipse. The filter I used gave a slight ghoating to the edge of the sun, making it look out of focus.
