Installing chrome

[Update: there is now an easier, more hassle free, way to install Chrome, which can be found here.]

This post comes to you courtesy of the web browser Google Chrome. In fact so did the last post, but that was from my Mac laptop, whereas this is from my office desktop which runs Ubuntu. Installing this development version of Chrome has been a bit more trouble on my office machine than on my Mac, so I thought I'd document how I did it. The first thing to do is to download the .deb package from here (I've got the version for 32-bit systems) - this is a development version, so be warned that it could be buggy. This should then be relatively easy to install, i.e. I should just be able to type: dpkg -i google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb and away it goes, but unfortunately it defaults to trying to create, and then install stuff into, the /opt/google directory and for me, even with sudo, I can't write to that directory as it's not local to my machine - I get an error stating:

dpkg: error processing google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb (--install):
error creating directory `./opt/google': No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

However, much searching has led me to find a solution to this (mainly from this page) that enabled me to install chrome in the directory of my choosing. Here's how it goes:-
Say you've downloaded the above .deb file to ~/Desktop, then create a directory to unpack it into:

mkdir ~/Desktop/chrome; cd ~/Desktop/chrome

then unpack the .deb file

ar -x ~/Desktop/google-chrome-unstable_current_i386.deb

Now uncompress the lzma file

lzma -d data.tar.lzma

Next you want to figure out where to install Chrome (i.e. somewhere that your permissions allow you to write to). I, for example, created a directory called /data/matthew/chrome. cd into that directory and then run

sudo tar xf ~/Desktop/chrome/data.tar

(If you're just writing to somewhere that your normal permissions allow you to write to then you don't even have to run sudo.) This will add opt, etc and usr directories to the directory you are in, with the main stuff for Chrome being in opt/google/chrome. I can therefore run Chrome with the command

/data/matthew/chrome/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome.

You can then just remove all the files you downloaded in ~/Desktop.

You can now also use flash with the development version of Chrome (as shown here), so it's all working pretty nicely now! [But, hey, Flash "...who uses that"!]

Highlands and Islands

Yesterday saw only my second trip to a Scottish island (the other being the now legendary trip to Gigha) - this is a rather paltry number of islands for having lived in Scotland for seven years. The new island I went to was Arran, which is one of the closest and most accesible from Glasgow.

To get there you can take the CalMac ferry from Ardrossan. We got the first train from Glasgow to Ardrossan that supposedly connected up with the 9.45am ferry. However, on arrival we found a massive queue that meant there was no chance of getting on the ferry we'd planned. There were at least 300 slightly annoyed people left with us at the ferry terminal, at which we weren't allowed to use the waiting room, and so had to brave the elements outside. Because there was a Highland Games in Brodick (one of the main villages on Arran) there were a few extra ferries on, so we waited for the 11.30am crossing. Again this was filled before we made it on (in fact it was mainly filled with pre-booked car passengers, so hardly anyone from the queue got on). After this we had to make the decision as to whether to bother waiting for the 12.30 crossing (it was to be the big 600 seater ferry) and thought that given we'd already waited 2 hours we may as well sit it out for another hour. We did however get given a boarding card for the ferry that we were told would guarantee us a place on it, and were allowed to actually wait inside in the waiting room (in which, for some reason, they'd decided to not open their cafe despite apparently being their busiest day of the year). When the ferry arrived everyone rushed to get on, but we thought we'd let the queue diminish a bit before we attempted boarding, safe in the knowledge that we had our "guaranteed" boarding card. However, on getting to the gang plank the CalMac employee who had guaranteed our place on the ship and told us we could go off and wait inside decided he'd refuse us boarding and told us we should have been there earlier (we'd been waiting for 3 hours by then, so I don't think we could really have been any earlier!). We started arguing our case and fortunately the guy from on the boat decided to let us on. Needless to say the first few hours of our trip did not give me a good impression of CalMac, especially as while we were queueing we were given no information about what was going on and just had to rely on hearsay and chinese whispers from other, equally irate, people in the queue.

Anyway, we did eventually make it out to Brodick by about 1.30pm. Our main plan was to climb Goat Fell and this is exactly what we did. We walked passed the Highland Games site, most of which had taken part in the morning and we'd therefore missed. The base of Goat Fell (and Brodick) was alternatively sunny and overcast, but the summit was completely hidden in a cloud, which we hoped would clear by the time we reached it. It didn't clear. Due to the cloud we had no idea of how far it would be to the top (our visibility was about 20-30m, which enabled us to see the path, but not much else), but had many false dawns when we thought we spotted the peak only to find it to be nothing of the sort. We passed one group who were on the way down and asked them how much further it would be and they looked quite dejected and said it just kept going on and on - I didn't believe them, but they proved to be right. Despite this it was still a fun climb though and we made the top in just over two hours - there was obviously no view! They way down was a less dispiriting experience, but was quite harsh on the legs and knees. It only took about an hour and a half to get down and it was glorious to get out of the cloud and see Brodick harbour again.

The other plan we had, being on Arran, was to have some Arran Blonde beer. We didn't want to miss our only chance of a ferry home (the last one being at 7.15pm), so instead of heading straight to the pub we dragged ourselves, on tired legs, to the ferry terminal to check on the length of the queue. It wasn't too large, so we risked a brief trip to the pub. Around this time there were a few pipe bands marching down the main street who'd been there for the games. After our pint we went back to the ferry terminal where all the pipe bands had gathered and were playing for the queueing crowds. Now I don't mind the odd lone piper, but I didn't find that the pipe bands sounded very pleasant. That's maybe just because I'm English, or it could be just that the pipe bands I heard weren't very good, or were drunk (I think a lot of the pipers had been drinking most of the day), but really it wasn't something that could be listened to for any great length of time - unfortunately we did have to listen to it for a considerable length of time as they all boarded the ferry and continued playing (there are also only so many times you can hear Scotland the Brave and Flower of Scotland!)

As we crossed the sea and made it back to Ardrossan the sun came out and everything looked lovely. It was good to get out for the day and was a fun walk, but I hope my next trip to an island goes slightly more smoothly.

Science monitor

A few days ago (despite being on holiday) I had to join a three hour conference call. The reason for this was to train me up to be a SciMon (I think it stands for Science Monitor). Very soon the LIGO detectors will be starting their sixth science run (a period when we stop, to an extent, fiddling with the detectors to improve them, and take data for astrophysical analysis) and during these periods we need people to be monitoring them. The detectors have full time staff who are trained to operate them, but during science runs we also have a scientist there to monitor, and comment on, the state of the data that's coming out i.e. if the data gets noisier, or glitchy, can you see a reason for it (an earthquake for example). These things can be fed back to the operators to see if they can improve things in the detector, and they are also very useful when analysing the data to know the time of good, or bad, data quality.

In previous runs I've haven't taken the SciMon role, but this time I volunteered to go out for a couple of weeks. So in October I'm going to be spending time at the LIGO Hanford Observatory. During the conference call I actually learnt quite a lot about the detectors that I only vaguely knew before, so I think being at the detector will be a valuable learning experience. I also found out that SciMons have a lot to do during the 8 hours shifts that you take (the detectors require 24 hour monitoring, so there's a midnight-8am, 8am-4pm and 4pm-midnight set of shifts - I managed to get the most reasonable middle time slot). It should be interesting being out there and I expect I'll write a few posts about the experience (there's a few months to go yet though).

Small world

For the last week I've been down south visiting friends and family. As is normal I've been into London a few times to meet up with various friends. In the past when wandering round London I've spotted the occasional celebrity, but this time has been a bit weirder. On walking through Trafalgar Square (to see the plinth-based art installation One and Other) I passed one of my neighbours from Glasgow! She didn't seem to notice me, but it was definitely her. Strangely this isn't actually the first time I've bumped into someone I know from Glasgow randomly in London, but the last time it happened was with someone who was originally from London anyway and it was around Christmas (so wasn't quite as odd for him to be there).

It's not just folks from Glasgow that I've been randomly bumping into though. Just heading down the Strand yesterday I noticed a couple of old university friends, so had a chat with them. Later, on the train back from London to St Albans, I got off and realised that the girl in front of me was another old university friend (she definitely wasn't from St Albans, so I'm not sure what she was doing there).

Football on Riverside

Following an impromptu game of nighttime beach football at the GWDAW meeting earlier in the year, it was decided that there should be a more organised (and daylight) match at Amaldi. A group of 16 of us, made up from Europeans (a large chunk of whom were Italian, although unlike at GWDAW we didn't play Italians versus the Rest of the World), bar a couple of Antipodeans, went down to Riverside Park, in which we'd noted that google maps showed a football pitch-like shape. The shape we'd seen turned out to be a big astroturf pitch, which had a couple of baseball games going on in the corners and a football match in the middle. We tried squeezing in, but soon got informed by the coach (or some official-looking guy) of one the baseball games that we were supposed to have a permit to play there.

After some milling around and discussion of what to do we found a nearby patch of park ground that wasn't covered in trees (or fences designed to discourage ball games, which were quite liberally scattered around the most open of spaces) that would make a serviceable pitch. It had quite a slope on one side and was pretty uneven, but we made do. The game took a little while to get going and most people were showing signs of general lack of fitness, but towards the end (of our arbitrarily designated match time) we had a reasonable, and competitive, match going on. It was at 3-3, so we had a next goal wins situation, which through some brilliant touches of skill I scored.

I could definitely feel the effects of the match the next day as my left knee was suffering.

Intergalactic planetary

As with all major meeting's this one had a conference dinner - it was, rather impressively, held in the American Museum of Natural History. The highlight of the night was getting to go into the planetarium there and being shown a fly through of their very nice software for visualising the universe (well, we didn't fly through their software in the sense of having code projected onto the Planetarium ceiling and scrolling through it - we saw pretty pictures). The software tries to make as much use as possible of real astronomical data sets, so it doesn't project up artists impressions, or simulations (other than it's representation of the Milky Way as observed from outside), but tries to be a close to reality as allowable from current knowledge. All the data went together pretty seamlessly (they said that there are a few bugs to iron out, but it worked surprisingly well for a beta version - we were in essence getting a sneak peak that the generally lay-public won't get to see quite yet), from the visualisation of the Earth and it's satellites (after having zoomed out from a view of Manhattan) all the way out to the 2dF and SDSS galaxy and quasar surveys. One thing we got to do in the planetarium that you don't normally get to do (in big museum-style planetariums at least), was to lie on the floor in the middle and look up - it's a cool way to view it and saves you from getting a crick in your neck. Being able to observe the 2dF and Tully (a big space cube) surveys in 3D was cool, and looking down the 2 degree field beams was a way I'd never seen it before.

Apparently all the software that they use will be freely available at some point, but I forget who's developing it and where it lives. I think it's partially based on this Digital Universe package.

Edoardo's get together

I've just got back (well part of the way back) from a few days spent in New York for the Amaldi 8 meeting (the last one was in Sydney and I got to have a little holiday afterwards, but this time I've headed straight back). This meeting is entirely gravitational wave-based and embraces the whole GW community - involving experimentalists, data analysts and theorists using (or studying future aspects of/designs for) interferometric, bar and pulsar timing-based detectors, and covering ground and spaced-based instruments. It was an interesting meeting and I got a lot from it in terms of talking to new people, especially people from the pulsar timing community. All the talks are online here (including mine, which was given on the back of an unintentional hangover [this is not a recommended way to give a talk, but the majority of people I know have given a talk whilst hungover at some point in their career, and in some cases still slightly drunk from the previous night's excesses]), so you can give them a browse if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.

The meeting is actually still going on today (mainly talking about third generation detector designs e.g. for the Einstein Telescope), but I had to leave early as I'm heading to a friends wedding tomorrow - there will be astrophysicists at that to though, so I could pretend it's like a meeting... of course I won't do that Kirsty ;)

6 hours in Heathrow

I am currently sitting in Terminal 1 of Heathrow Airport waiting for my connecting flight back to Glasgow after flying in from New York. Unfortunately I have a 6ish hour wait in Heathrow. I tried getting put in an earlier flight, but apparently if you have luggage in transit they can't move you! So, to ease the boredom I have signed up to one of the wireless networks - in this case Boingo. One of my boredom relieving activities was going to be to catch up on some TV via iPlayer, but this has proved a problem. Despite being in the UK at the moment it seems that Boingo don't use a UK-based IP address, so I'm being denied iPlayer goodness. One way round this would be to use my Glasgow University VPN account, but I don't seem to be able to log in to that. I think I may just have to resort to good old fashioned torrenting, or even just satiate myself with some stuff on youtube.

I suppose I could even try doing some work instead, but I don't think my sleep deprived brain is quite up to that!

Not leaving New York

So, my travels to the US continue to provide fun times.

Today I have been traveling out to the Probing Neutron Stars with Gravitational Waves meeting at Penn State. To get there I've been traveling through New York, and unfortunately I'm still in New York, rather than being in the air nearing State College. I'm also lacking my luggage, which I expect is sitting somewhere in Heathrow airport, but is hopefully closer to me by now.

The latter issue seems to have come about due to my luggage not making my connection from Glasgow via Heathrow - despite there being a two and a half hour layover, so it's not as if the bag had to be rushed between planes. The transatlantic leg of the flight was with Continental, and so far they've been ok for helpfullness on my lost luggage situation (although a couple of the Newark baggage ground staff weren't so useful - if I'd followed their original advice I'd have been screwed), but we'll see how things pan out over the next few days i.e. whether I get my luggage or not. Can they echo BA levels of incompetence?

For my flight to State College I've had to go through La Guardia airport (I spent a few hours in Manhattan between flight connections) and I got there with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately my plane wasn't quite so punctual. The journey consisted of two legs: first to Philadelphia and then on to State College; but due to a delayed first leg there was going to be no way of making the connection. So, I'm now in an airport hotel near La Guardia. At least they have free wifi.

Hopefully my travel will work out better tomorrow. I'll be slightly late for the meeting, but not too late.

[Update: For the leg of my trip described above it took my bag an extra couple of days to reach me out in State College - in fact it arrived just as I was about to leave to come back to New York (I had to pick it up at the airport). On my return from New York to Glasgow, surprise, surprise, my bag also went missing! It seems it didn't leave New York when I did and spent an extra night there. I'm either jinxed or have a poor choice of bag (a big rucksack), which is disliked by the baggage staff at airports.]

Astroparticles are the best particles

As I've been fairly lax (and in reality a bit too busy) in the past month or two about writing blog posts I've decided to take the opportunity to write something while I'm on the train back from Edinburgh to Glasgow after a day at the IoP Astroparticle Physics meeting (there's still another day of meeting, and I am talking tomorrow, but now's the best chance I've got to write anything - at least until my laptop battery runs out). We've just had the meeting dinner (at the Caves), which was designed to appeal to the non-Scots, by consisting of a (decent) starter of haggis, and finishing with some Crannachan (spelling not-withstanding) [and also some of the worst tablet I've had!] followed by a Ceilidh. I had to commentate on the meal to my fellow table-mates due to my knowledge of all things Scottish (I have been here getting on 7 years now, so can interpret the native ways [although those East coasters's could do things slightly differently!]), and during the Ceilidh I was involved in all the dances (until I had to leave to catch the last train back to Glasgow) as I had a slight advantage in knowing what was going on. It was good fun, but dances generally should involve a higher female-to-male ratio! I don't mind dancing with other guys, but I think as a first go at Ceilidhing for some it may have been too much man-on-man action!

Prior to that we had a rather good speech by Sir Tam Daylell (former Labour MP and father of the house, who was slightly embroiled in the recent expenses stuff by claiming for some expensive book shelves prior to leaving office in 2005). What I didn't know about him was that he'd been very active during his time as an MP at promoting science and scientific outreach (he'd been told to do this by C. T. R. Wilson on meeting him during electioneering in 1958, when Wilson invited him in out of the rain for a cup of tea), and has met pretty much all the major physicists of his time (often by accident) - his parents hosted Born for a while.

In general the first day of the meeting has been good. It's a smallish meeting, which actually makes it easier to listen to the talks. One of the best talks was by Malcolm Fairbairn about the velocity distribution of dark matter (he amusingly illustrated the talk with images of Gordon Brown!) - he showed some interesting statistics and gave an interpretation of the DAMA results that I'd not heard before.

Like at NAM, one of the best session was actually about outreach. Astroparticle physics is a rich seam to tap for outreach. It's quite easy to set up detectors to show cosmic rays and is a very good way to enthuse school kids about the subject. I'd not really thought much about this before, but it's definitely worth more consideration.

Right, my laptop battery is about running out, so I'll have to actually upload this when I get home. There maybe more to write about tomorrow and hopefully I'll get back to blogging more soon!

[I uploaded this when I got home after a brief snooze on the train and having to be woken up by the conductor when we reached Queen Street. I should really be asleep now as I have to be up early.]

My second Etive weekend

Last weekend was the GUCC annual Etive weekend trip (see here for last year's post, which it also appears took me about a week to post) - this involves a weekend camping in Glencoe and kayaking down the Etive. Last year the weather was gorgeous, which made the camping pleasant, but meant the river was very low. This year the weather was pretty awful, wind rain and wind for most of the weekend, but it did mean that the river was higher. I also didn't have to drive for the whole weekend this time, which was nice.

I've seen the Etive quite high before, but never when I've gone to run it myself, so it was quite daunting looking down the first section (in the middle part of the river) at Triple Falls. [In reality the water wasn't that high as many people said it could be a lot bigger.] On the first day it took a bit of convincing myself to take the plunge and take on Triple Falls, but once in the boat things were fine. I got down the first two drops fine, but then had a really stupid swim before the final fall. Last year, due to the low water, we spent quite a while redoing Triple and then jumping from the rocks into the pools (very nice in the sunny weather), but this year we where easily able to paddle between the main rapids and drops (without having to scrape our boats over rocks), so traveled on straight away. We took on Letterbox, Ski Jump, Crack of Doom (where I swam down the waterfall and got a few bruises to boot), Crack of Dawn (well none of us ran this except for Chris on the second day, due to a new boulder being in the way), Waterslide (can't remember if those are in the right order) before reaching Right Angle. With more water Right Angle looked at bit more daunting than last year, and again it required a bit of thinking about, but most of us decided to take it on. This year I managed to make it round the dog leg at the top of the main fall without swimming, and after going off the fall I came up upright and again didn't swim. It was great to do! After Right Angle (where we had to get out last year) there was more river we could do - in that section I managed to have a couple of really poor swims (giving me a total of either 6 or 7 swims for the day). After the days paddling most of us went straight to the pub back at the Kings House to get somewhere warm and dry.

For the second day we had quite a few more people join us (I think there must have been about 20 of us in the water at once, and there were other non-GUCC paddlers out to). I think that the water was slightly higher due to the night of rain, although other people maintained that it was lower, or at least the same as the day before. This time it was the third drop of Triple that got me and I swam at the bottom, but I made it the rest of the way to Right Angle without any more swims (there was a close thing on the small drop after Letterbox, but I managed to roll by pushing off the rocks on the river bed). This time most of us decided Right Angle looked a bit too dangerous to run, but the more experienced guys made it down fine. Most of us then just got out as the coldness and general knackeredness was getting a bit too much. I was quite, quite horrible having to get the buses and load up the boat in the rain and wind, but as ever it was so nice to get back into dry clothes afterwards. Luckily I didn't have to drive back to Glasgow as I was half asleep for most of the journey. Two days of kayaking and not much sleep can take its toll.

Despite the weather it was a great weekend. Two consecutive days of kayaking (despite being knackering) is a great way to gain experience and confidence. I might try and get out boating sometime over the summer, otherwise it'll be the new academic year before I see a river again.

Mid-table glory

Yesterday saw the final day of the Championship season (bar the play-offs). For some the main excitement was near the top and bottom of the table where promotion and relegation battles were obviously taking place, but I was still mainly keeping an eye on the mid-table where Watford had an outside chance of clinching a mighty 12^th place (i.e. the top half of the table) should they win and other results go our way. We got our win against Derby, but with Sheffield Wednesday also securing a win we have had to settle for 13^th - maybe that's better though as it means we're top of the bottom half the table, which is more impressive than being bottom of the top half isn't it!?

In other games Birmingham City managed a win to give them second place and automatic promotion to the Premier League (but will Alex McLeish still be there?), which means that they'll be two West Midlands clubs to replace West Brom when they get relegated (whcih I'd say is a certainty now). And down at the bottom Barnsley managed to secure Championship survival at the expense of Norwich City - if only they'd had some drunken shouting by Delia to get them worked up they might have been safe.

Twittering NAM

Just as a follow on from my last post...

There was a bit of twittering going on at the meeting to (although it took a while to get going and I didn't contribute much myself), so if you want to see what went on then search for the hashtags #jenam and/or #nam2009, and carolune had extensive coverage of the RAS community discussion at the end of the meeting.

Those of us from Glasgow were taking particular note of the meeting organisation as we're hosting it next year. There's already a basic webpage, a twitter feed to follow and a flickr photostream.

Astronomers in Hatfield

This week I've been attending the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) - this year held jointly with the European Astronomy Society European Week of Astronomy and Space Science giving the new meeting title of JENAM. Last year the meeting was held in Belfast (see here for my exceptionally meagre coverage of that meeting!), but this year was held at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, making it a perfect opportunity for me to combine a meeting with a trip back to my home town of St. Albans (which is right next to Hatfield, although I did spend the first eighteen months of my life living in Hatfield) - this also reduced my costs as I've been staying at my parents house and they've been giving me lifts to and from the meeting [obviously I got them to drop me off far enough away from the meeting venue, so as not to embarrass me in front of my cool astronomy friends ;-)].

Last year I noticed quite a few people were blogging the meeting, but a google blog search of this year's meeting doesn't throw up much (the usual astronomy blogging force of Chris Lintott wasn't here for one), so I'll summarise a few of the highlights I saw.

As with most major meeting's I got most out of the plenary talks. On Monday we had a great talk from Richard Harrison about the STEREO mission, which involves two spacecraft - one advancing in front of Earth's orbit and one trailing it - that monitor the Sun, and the space in between the Earth and Sun, to give a unique 3D view of solar activity and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). We got some really nice videos of data from the craft showing the two opposite views of a CME heading towards the Earth, although we didn't get to see any of the 3D images of the Sun itself. For the next two sessions of the day I went learn about Supernovae and γ-ray bursts (GRBs). Avishay Gal-Yam gave a nice overview of the different types of core-collapse supernova that happen to stars over the full range of masses. These include electron capture supernova at the lowest mass end (for which there have yet to be any completely convincing observations); accretion induced collapse (AIC) supernova from two white dwarfs ripping each other apart; supernova that don't produce an observable explosion (meaning event rates could actually be higher than observed); and really massive (of hundreds of solar masses) stellar explosions, which may not even lead to a core collapse.

On Tuesday morning there were a couple of really good plenary sessions. The first was from Tim de Zeeuw from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) talking about current and future ESO plans. There were some brilliant photos of the ESO Paranal site in Chile, home of the VLT (and the building that was blown up in Quantum of Solace), and impressive information about the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA). Most exciting was the part of the talk about the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), a planned telescope with a 42m diameter mirror(!), which I was surprised to find out has progressed very far in the planning and design and has a fantastic science case. After that we heard from Michel Mayor, one of the original discovers of the first exoplanets, who gave a very nice talk about a load of new planets discovered using radial velocity measurements, including the lowest mass (~2 Earth masses) exoplanet yet found. Later on I found out a bit about the LOFAR radio telescope and dark matter detection experiments, but the stand out talk of the afternoon, was my talk on searching for gravitational waves form pulsars! ;-)

The first plenary talk of Wednesday was given by David Southwood, director of science for ESA. I missed the first half of this talk as I'd decided to walk from my parents house rather than get a lift and I misjudged how long it would take, but arrived to hear about Mars missions. As ever David spoke his mind and didn't hold back his opinions (which is quite refreshing from someone who has to move in the political sphere, but at times verges on just being a bit too open with his views!) Later that day I mainly heard about gravitational lensing, including a talk by John McKean (a former Glasgow graduate) about detection of a water maser at a redshift of ~2.5 - the most distant water even seen - in the lensed image of a quasar. In the afternoon I went to a session on outreach done for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA09). Particularly interesting was the planned astronomy exhibit, and associated events, at the Science museum (they apparently have a massive collection of astronomical instrumentation from over the ages, but it's mainly in storage) and the events happening at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. There was also a talk about the making of the educational film The Starry Messenger that was made by people in the astronomy group at the University of Hertfordshire - it was premiered at the meeting, but I didn't see it, although if it gets released online I may well give it a watch.

Today's plenary session saw another couple of good talks. Firstly Joseph Lazio gave a nice overview of some of the science that will be possible with the Square Kilometre Array (a future radio telescope). He couldn't touch on all the things it will do, but did give a nice little introduction into it's potential for making a pulsar timing array to detect gravitational waves (something I'm particularly interested in). I then heard the status and results of a selection of ground-based γ-ray observatories. Later I saw an interesting talk by Prof. Sir Arnold Wolfendale (he's a very prominent old astronomer and one of the founders of cosmic ray astronomy, and as he's been around so long he's not afraid to be controversial and speak his mind, although for some reason he does seem to be a global warming denier) who was discussing whether certain cosmic rays sources seen by the Pierre Auger Observatory that had been tentatively identified as correlating with AGNs, are actually extragalactic or not - his opinion, backed up with some evidence, was the latter. The final talk of the week was an invited lecture by George Ellis who was discussing current topics in cosmology. His main talking point was to say that some current trends in cosmology to talk about multiverse theories as if they are a scientifically valid position to take, as opposed to being philosophical speculation - this is due to the fact that you can't think up any experiment, or make predictions, to test these theories, so they don't stand up to a standard scientific definition. He also discussed various cosmological theories that could be tested, for example that the universe could be small and have a closed topology. Finally the meeting ended with the RAS community forum, which had some interesting discussions, but wasn't particularly controversial.

Down the Doon

[Reposted from here]

Yesterday a small group of us (Euan, Nick, Rupert and myself) took a departure from the normal north westerly or easterly river trips and went south of Glasgow into Ayrshire to paddle the River Doon (aka the Ness Glen). This river runs out of the Loch Doon dam through the Ness Glen gorge, straight over a small weir followed by a quick succession of rapid sections for about a mile.

The weather on that day was pretty overcast, but it was reasonably warm (although a bit breezy when standing by the Loch getting changed) and decent paddling weather. On heading down from the road to the river we were told by a nice old couple that the river looked "sporting", which we didn't really know what to make of, but hoped it boded well. After getting in above the weir we decided to give it a miss as there was some nasty looking metal underneath it (which from reading this has apparently taken the end off at least one boat), and started up proper just below it. It didn't take long to reach the first major rapid which we all navigated safely and were quickly onto the next. The next section saw my first swim of the day when I got pinned on a rock (which became a bit of a recurring theme for me) and the water coming over the back of my boat sent me under - I blame this on the low footbridge that I hit with my paddle just beforehand and made me lose control, but the other swims weren't so easy to pass the buck. The river was pretty shallow and narrow all the way down the gorge, so it was easy to make my way out, but my boat and paddle were a bit harder to reach and Euan bravely went in to fetch the paddle. At the next, slightly larger, rapid (I may be getting the ordering mixed up) we got out to have a look for the best route first. Then Rupert showed us the route not to take, before Nick showed a far nicer line and we followed over without any incident. Following that I had a couple more swims and pins (I had to be helped out of one pin by an old man walking by who gave me a shove with his walking stick), one of which was particularly gimpy when I just hit a log and went over, but everyone else made it down fine. This section of the river was great fun as there was always something to do and the rapids were challenging, but not too intimidating. There were a lot of low bridges, branches and obstacles to look out for, although that added a bit of character to the river.

The worst bit of the day was the next half hour (probably far longer than, but I kind of lost track of time) paddling almost flat water to the get out. I'd recommend for future trips to the Doon to get out at the bottom on the Ness Glen section and potentially just walk back to the top along the footpath, that is unless you really enjoy dull paddles, scraping your boat along shallow sections and weaving in and out of overhanging trees and bushes.

Overall it was a great trip and it's definitely a river I recommend again. Swim count: 3 (all me).

Getting shirty

For some reason today I decided to buy the new England football shirt (if you can tolerate the stupid amounts of flash used on the webpage have a look). On seeing the last couple of England matches I've rather liked the new strip (it was debuted [is that how you spell the past tense of debut? - in fact is that even how you spell debut!] on Saturday's match against Slovakia) - it's nice and simple and looks good. However, the main issue on buying it is that it costs about £50! I knew it was going to be pricey, but that was about 15 quid more than I expected. I bought it anyway and will try and get as much wear out of it as possible despite living in Scotland.

I've nothing really to add about the actual football that took place other than I'm pretty please that we're still on winning form. Saturday's friendly was a good watch despite the opposition being poor and yesterday's qualifier was reasonably dull, occasionally frustrating, but got the job done.

The real G20

This BBC article pointed out something I'd yet to notice (not that it's a particularly pertinent thing to notice) - my home postcode, G20, is the same as the name of the big meeting starting in London today between the Group of 20 top economic nations. Wow! That's such an amazing coincidence isn't it! The article throws into contrast the difference between the expected topics of discussion at the G20 meeting and the real life issues that the decent folk of Maryhill (i.e. me) are having to face on a daily basis. It's a depressing and gloomy place is Maryhill, with barely a shop left open; all of us living in boarded up, piss-stinking hi-rises; spending our lives shuffling between the bookies and the pub, with only a thin drawn-out roll-up (that has to be smoked outside in the dirty, rain sodden street) as meagre comfort; tripping over the homeless and destitute as we queue for any work we can get at the job centre; giving in to the syringe as the only release from our miserable existence; lying by the side of the road covered in vomit with a smashed bottle of Buckie and your last shred of self-worth seeping into the gutter. Compare that to the lives of these leaders of nations, with their fancy suits and cars and staff of thousands. They don't know what it's like! Damn them, damn them all.

Drumming solo

Last night I went along to A-side studios for the first time since my last band attempt (that band attempt may not fail, it's just been on the back burner while I've been busy - and too lazy to get my arse in gear and sort it out). Anyway this time I went along on my own to just go into a room and bash some drums for an hour. They've essentially turned the smallest rehearsal room into just being a drum room, mainly I think due to it really being to small to get full band in to practice (we tried it a couple of times for band practices before, but you just got deafened in there), so I was in there for an hour at the small cost of £5. One of the main reasons that I went along is that I've not played my electric kit at home recently due to fear of waking up the baby that my downstairs neighbours have, but I also wanted to get behind a real kit again as it's much better to practice on. On playing about for an hour I realised that a) I'm not very good (well I'd realised this a while ago, but it struck home again), and b) I need some structure in my practices, so I can get good. This lead me to think about getting some actual lessons where hopefully I can lose any bad drumming habits I've taught myself, learn some drills to perfect the basics and pick up some new skills. I've yet to book a lesson, but am thinking I most likely will, and I chatted to the guy who offers lessons at A-side and he seemed very nice.

Altering my experience

This morning I went to a proper tailors (well more an alteration place than tailors) for the first time ever. I wanted to get a suit jacket altered to have a more fitted look, as all the suits I've bought are off the peg things, which generally look excessively oversized and wide on me. The tailors I went to (Skint Alteration Tailors Ltd) was located in an unassuming doorway that I had to look hard to find and I had to be buzzed in and walk upstairs. Looking through their front door I could see another slightly ajar door marked staff only through which I glimpsed a couple of little old ladies at sewing machines. But I imagined this was only the tip of the iceberg and if I'd ventured into that room I would have seen a sea of blue rinses, hunched over their precious Singer's, with the deafening sound of thousands of needles punching through cloth. I didn't get to see behind that door however, so that world will remain a mystery to me. Instead I went into the reception area and was greeted by a man who was seeing to another little old lady's turn ups. The room was the only reception I've ever been in that came equipped with changing rooms, although these changing rooms weren't for the shy as the doors to them would only really have covered a standing persons midriff. Obviously my main fear, but also slight hope, was that the man who saw to my tailoring needs might be of the Suit's You Sir! variety. In fact he was almost the exact opposite, in that he got straight on the job with minimal of fuss or innuendo. I didn't even get measured and subtly felt up, which I mentally prepared myself for. He just pinned my jacket gave me a receipt and I was away. Maybe one day I'll have to venture into a more authentic tailors (one that makes entire bespoke suits, rather than just doing alterations) to get the experience I expected - on the other hand getting in and out with the minimum of fuss is not bad thing (had to get a last bit innuendo in there).

What I done

Despite doing a fair few things in the last week I've been very lax in posting about them, so I'll try to rectify that by writing something now. Previously on Cosmic Zoo you saw me flying out to Los Angeles for a collaboration meeting and doing a bit of celeb spotting in Heathrow airport, but what happened next...

My first day in LA (a week last Saturday) was my only free time before the meeting started on Sunday morning, so I met up with my friends Ben and Erin who live there. They kindly offered to show me some sites for the afternoon and evening. We started with a trip to Santa Monica, which was busy with people out shopping and visiting the pier. We headed down to the pier (which has a fun fair on it), but decided to avoid the crowds and stuck to the beach end where we had a decent fish and chips [or fish and chip - singular - as it was called] (in fact some of the best fish and chips I've had in the last year or so have been bought in the US!) and a nice afternoon beer. That evening after relaxing back at my friends flat we headed to a new caf&ecute; that one of their friends had recently opened. It was called the Golden State Café and I'd recommend it if you're in the area. The burger was really good and there were a very nice selection of local beers. Later we went to another of their friend's brothers 21st birthday up in the Hollywood Hills, which was a nice and relaxing event in a really nice place. The jet lag eventually got the better of me and I had to get a lift back to the hotel. During the whole day we apparently travelled on all four main highways that cross LA.

The rest of the week was filled with the meeting schedule, but the hotel we were at was determined to try and screw with this by providing free drinks at every opportunity. Embassy Suites hotels have a policy of free drinks receptions every evening from 5.30pm to 7.30pm (supposedly limited to 6 drinks, but this rule seemed easily circumvented - not that you needed to circumvent it as the six drinks were ample). These drinks weren't meagre measures either. I assume the policy was meant to get to too drunk to move out of the hotel and keep you spending money in their bar, and in fact it seemed to work as I barely went to anywhere else.

On the final day the meeting finished at midday, so a few of us (mainly Cardiffians) decided to head to the beach for the afternoon before catching evening flights. We went via the airport, so people could check in their bags and not have to carry them to the beach, but the main thing of note was the mode of transport we took there. We were driven there in a limo, complete with mirrored ceiling, flashy lights, and free drinks. There were 10 of us in the limo, so in fact it worked out as a cheaper option to take than the normal Super Shuttle minibus service! After the airport the limo then took us on to Venice beach (we got a couple of strange looks from people as we got out). The previous weeks weather, in Arcadia at least, had been gloriously sunny, but down at the beach it was really hazy with no sight of the sun. However, we were at the beach, and we were British, so we were going to stay there, goddamnit. The main thing that Venice Beach seems to have, other than a huge stretch of golden sand, is a very long boardwalk (without the boards) lined with shops full of tat (mainly bongs and t-shirts) and street artists/vendors. This was interesting to see, but not necessarily the sort of place you'd want to spend too much time. However, it was really good to relax on the beach for an afternoon despite it getting chilly later on and the sea being to cold to swim in (well it was possible to swim and people were doing it, but I wasn't going to give it a try).

That was all for my latest US trip. At the end I was torn between wanting to come home, but also reminded of last years excellent road trip and wanting to see some more of California. I think next year, if we're back in California in the spring, we might well have another road trip. No more celebs spotted in Heathrow on the return journey.

Sorry I couldn't inject much excitement into that recap. There is a bit more I did, but that may just have to go undocumented for now.

Arcadia

Yesterday I arrived in LA for yet another collaboration meeting. This year, unlike the same time last year, I've arrived with my luggage, which is a major improvement. The meeting isn't being held on the Caltech campus this time round and is instead in Arcadia at an Embassy Suites hotel. I'm not sure if there's actually anything to do in Arcadia, but will have to have a brief scout about this afternoon.

On an unrelated note I had a couple of celebrity spots when I was passing through Heathrow airport yesterday morning. Firstly I saw Julian Clary at the Bureau de Change, although there was little novelty to this spot as I used to see him quite a lot when I lived in a flat opposite his in Camden. The second person was former Man Utd/Denmark goalkeeping legend (and more recently BBC pundit and Strictly Come Dancing star) Peter Schmeichel. There may have been more famous people passng through, but two is a decent number to see.

Boarding in Glencoe

Yesterday I went on my first snowboarding trip in Scotland (not including the indoor slope) to a real mountain ski resort (well calling it a resort's a bit much, more like ski set-of-huts). I tagged along with a few people from the Glasgow University Surf Club, who had been planning a weekend surf trip down to Wales, but had to cancel that and instead decided to hit the slopes for the day as they still had a minibus to use. We went up to Glencoe for the day.

When we got there it was apparently a borderline decision as to whether they'd open the skilifts or not due to quite high winds. They did open up and stayed open all day despite conditions actually getting worse throughout the day. When we first got up the main chairlift to the bottom of the ski runs the weather and wind wasn't actually that bad. The was some light sleet, but it was quite bareable. The hardest thing to start off with was getting the hang of the Poma tow that takes you to the top of the beginner slope. It didn't take me as many attempts as my first ever go on a tow, but it was probably four attempts before I made it all the way up to the top (the main problem was keeping your weight over the centre of the board when the pull initially kicked in and gave you a big jolt - many people, me included, were falling off as soon as it started). I stayed on the lower slopes all day (a few other went to the top, but I didn't really feel up for it after hearing what the conditions were like up there), but they provided a good enough challenge for me to practice improving my boarding.

As it got later the rain got heavier and there were more and more parts of the slopes that were turning slushy. By the time we went down for lunch we were all soaking wet. Lunch gave us a little time to dry off and warm up, but when we went back up the rain and wind had again picked up and the bottom of the beginner slope was now more slushy mud than snow. However we persisted. I had to regain my ability to use the tow, which I'd somehow lost over lunch (this got quite frustrating and almost led me to calling it quits straight away - luckily I managed to get up the slope a bit and as soon as I was boarding again I realised that I wanted to stay on the slopes longer). Once I was able to use the tow properly again I had quite a lot of good runs down the beginner slope. The main thing I tried to get myself to do was bend my knees more - I'm generally quite upright and use my body and back foot to turn, which isn't that good and made turning quite an effort. So I took more of a crouched position, which gave me a lot more control and felt more natural. During this time I got thoroughly soaked through and the slopes became more and more slushy and cut up. Everything on me was wet and my gloves where full of water (and bits of ice) - this was fine when I was doing stuff and my body was producing heat, but it wasn't so nice when getting the chairlift down. It was very nice to change into dry clothes in the end.

Despite the weather's best attempts to make it a miserable day I actually had a great time and it was good fun to be on a real mountain slope for the first time in just under two years. I need to get out somewhere else soon.

Zoo too

Today I had my first look at Galaxy Zoo (it's been up for well over a year and I've known about it from the start, but I'm slow on the uptake sometimes) - an online project that uses the online masses (i.e. us web users) to classify galaxy images in the Sloan Digital Sky survey. Part of the reason behind the project (I think) is that people are actually rather good at image processing in a way that it's quite hard to get an automated computer program to do. So by getting people to do the classification (with multiple people classifying each galaxy for verification purposes) you get a pretty reliable and accurate catalogue - and sometimes get new things spotted. Basically what happens once you sign up is that you get shown a picture of a galaxy and then asked a couple of questions about it's morphology answerable by clicking simple icons, i.e. is it smooth and regular looking, or does it have spiral features, and that's about it - you can then move on to the next image, and the next, and the next... I only did two images on my first go and they were both fairly ordinary looking ellipticals. [ooh, I just got a spiral - there were lots more questions for that!]

One thing I have wondered about Galaxy Zoo before is whether I've inadvertantly got any hits from people who were really looking for it (with this post it'll probably become more likely). Well if you were looking for Galaxy Zoo you now have the correct link to it.

Ah, Vienna

This weekend just gone I have been having a holiday (not associated with a meeting or conference, just a regular break) in Vienna. I have a friend who lives there and decided that it would be nice to visit her and see a new city (I'd heard good things about Vienna from couple of people). I'm very glad I did have my friend there to visit, because otherwise I may have wasted the weekend due to a complete lack of preparation. I have discovered (well it was partly evident from my Caribbean holiday) that I'm not really the type who plans ahead that much, so I'm in debt to my friend who took it open herself to find things for us to do. And a good job she did to.

On Saturday (after a late brunch) we took a wander through the city centre (via the University - I'll pretty much always head to the nearest University wherever I am, I think they make me fell more comfortable), before going on a guided city tour. This started off from behind the famous Opera house and took us through the Hofburg Palace (which houses, to name one thing, the national library), then down some of the major shopping streets, and finishing at St. Stephen's Cathedral. One thing I'd also not done prior to travelling was check the weather - I'd expected it to be quite chilly, but not as cold as it actually was. The walk was very nice, but had left me lacking feeling in my toes and face, which I tried to remedy by climbing up the Cathedral Tower, but was more comprehensively dealt with when we went into a cafe for hot chocolate and cake - as we were in Vienna I had some of the famous Sachertorte. That evening, after getting ourselves properly frozen again by walking around outside (and with a brief look into one of the best known Viennese Café's - Café Central) we went for dinner. I had the biggest Schnitzel that I'd ever seen, probably about 12" in diameter, which I struggled to eat - a German guy sitting next to us told me that if I didn't finish it there would be bad weather the next day, but even with that incentive I couldn't manage the whole thing. After being so massively stuffed with food the only option was to digest the food by going to the cinema, where we saw Frost/Nixon.

On Sunday, again with no planning on my part, we had a busy schedule. First stop was the Schönbrunn Palace, which was the summer residence of the imperial family. We took a tour round the family rooms, in which I was most impressed by some of the beautiful wood panelled floor, and I also learnt a bit of history - my knowledge of the Austrian Hap/bsburgs is now greatly increased (although it started at a very low level and I hadn't even realised [or maybe very vaguely knew] that Marie Anionette was one). The snow out by the palace was quite a lot thicker than in the city centre, but we walked though it in the gardens. We headed back into the centre for our lunch of kaiserschmarrnn [corrected at the request of my friend] (a thick pancake-like thing, covered in icing sugar and served with plum jam - very tasty) before more culture in the form of an art gallery. Vienna has many, many museums and galleries, and we went in to the Leopold Museum, where there was a large exhibit of the musuems extensive Egon Schiele collection - I liked a lot of his work, but my friend was horrified to hear that I'd never heard of him before going to the musuem (this happened with a lot of the artist's she mentioned - what can I say, my knowledge of large swathes of art, history, classical music, etc, is very poor). During our time in the museum the snowfall had picked up considerably and there was a thick covering as we headed to the openair ice rink in the park in front of the Rathaus (apparently, according to our tour guide the day before, the largest outdoor rink in Europe!) It was a lovely scene seeing the rink and town hall in the snow and all lit up, and it was fun to get out on the ice (the rink had two main skating areas that were connected by an ice path through the park), but we eventually had to stop as my feet were hurting from the hired skates (I later found a very large blister on my foot!) The evening ended with what my friend told me was one of the best foods in Vienna - Käsekrainer - sausage with bits of cheese through it, served with mustard (or horseradish) and bread. I enjoyed my Käsekrainer and it was a very nice way to end the day.

I travelled home this morning (my friend even helped with this by looking up the timetable of buses to the airport for me - I am useless!) after a very nice weekend. I now have to go back there when it's a bit warmer. I also now have another airport to add to my pointless airport list :)

Plug

After my last post about science on TV I just thought I'd plug my friend Michelle's appearance on last night's episode of BBC's The One Show - she can be seen here demonstrating how science shows that you can break a plank of wood with your hand (whether she'll thank me for pointing out her appearance or not is another thing!)

Can we make... an inappropriate cut scene?

I wasn't really planning on watching tonight's episode of Horizon, but I was sat in front of the TV and it came on after MasterChef, so I stayed seated and gave it a look. Now the reason I hesitate to watch Horizon is that I (like many people I've talked to) have got more and more frustrated with it over the last few years. It's gone from a respectable science program that was informative and inspiring, without being too stuffy and impenetrable, to a gimiky show that is more about fancy computer graphics, wierd camera work, controversial titles, and very little (and also badly presented) science content - this may be just the way you have to do things in TV these days (and I probably have a rose-tinted view of some of the way it used to be - in fact I generally preferred Channel 4's Equinox), but I doesn't seem a good method to present science to the public (and actually get them to be interested and learn something) to me.

Tonight's episode was entitled "Can We Make a Star on Earth?" and was presented by Prof. Brian Cox - the BBC's current go-to guy for physics related programming (he's already got at least a couple of other Horizon's under his belt). The program was essentially about investigations into using nuclear fusion as a future power source, as well as a fair amount of the background science leading up to fusion and our energy needs. I actually was rather surprised as I thought the program was pretty good, but with some reservations. The science content of the program covered a good deal of topics at a nice level and was generally well presented. The scientists that were interviewed were well chosen and did a good job explaining and enthusing about their subject. The experiments were impressively presented and you got a good idea of the challenges that they face. So the general things that I liked about how Horizon used to be were there. The problems came when they did pieces to camera - they just didn't work or add to the program. We don't need the bizarre camera angles and weirdly positioned shots (including strange almost subliminal close-ups of his food) and cut scences. We don't need the opening minutes of random pointless musings, which almost made me switch off. When Cox was just there as a narrator, or interviewing others, all was rather good and he can do it well, but when he's on screen they decide to take it too far. In reality I don't really think Horizon requires having a presenter - a good narrator can convey all the information as well as adding awe, excitement and perspective about the science being presented.

Seeing as I know exactly how the show should be I think the BBC should ask me to take over. I'm sure it would be easy... ;)

Six Cups

Yesterday I went to the pub for a double header of sport - I was watching both the Wales v. England Six Nations Rubgy match and the Watford v. Chelsea FA Cup 5th Round match at the same time (there were side-by-side screens showing the games). Neither match went the way of my hoped for results (i.e. England and Watford wins), but they were both enjoyable nonetheless.

In the rugby the fact that England were beaten by Wales wasn't a surprising or unexpected result, but the way England played was the most surprising aspect of the match. We actually played a decent game! We played some good rugby with movement and attacking options and managed to score two rather decent tries, and if it hadn't been for giving away too many silly penalties and getting players sin binned we could have taken the game.

In the football the excitement mainly came in the form of nail-biting tension as Chelsea pummeled the Watford penalty area, but without managing to score (for the first 75 minutes at least). And then Watford got a surprise break and a goal to take the lead! We obviously got the goal too soon as we then managed to concede a hat-trick to Anelka, but it was very nice while it lasted. Chelsea deserved the win, but we at least made them work for it in the end.

Rock the boat

Today I was out on a river trip to the Lower Orchy (which was the first river I ever went out on). I didn't have to drive the club minibus this time round, which was quite nice as I could just sit back and relax in the bus for the journey. For this trip I was able to borrow a friends boat, which worked out well as it was a perfect size for me and I felt nice and stable in it. The river was good fun with some decent rapid sections that had slightly larger waves than I remembered, however the weir at the top of the run was rather smaller, and far less intimidating, than I remember from my first trip. I got down fine without any problems and wasn't close to having to swim.

Our plan after doing the Orchy was to check out the middle Etive, but this was scuppered by the car accompanying our group being involved in a slight accident (effectively shutting down the B8074). After this was dealt with we then had to give aid to some paddlers from the Edinburgh University Canoe Club, one of whom had damaged his shoulder getting out of a boat, and so we had to shuttle their driver back to her car. Further on the way home we helped out a member of the Glasgow University Mountaineering Club, who had been out for the weekend, but needed a lift back to Glasgow. These all added to a slightly more eventful trip than normal, but an enjoyable one.

Pointless airport post

This post is a rather pointless post in which I've decided to list all the airports I've been through. There's no reason to it and it's not some internet meme (which I generally dislike and ignore), it's just a list I thought I'd create (just because I occasionally like making lists - I once, many years ago, listed [in my head] all the London pubs I'd been to - maybe I'll write them down if I'm bored [I semi-joke]). Here goes:

Europe

• Glasgow International Airport (GLA)
• London Heathrow (LHR)
• London Luton (LTN)
• London Gatwick (LGW)
• London Stansted (STN)
• London City (LCY)
• Glasgow Prestwick (PIK)
• Birmingham International Airport (BHX)
• Manchester Ringway International Airport (MAN)
• Cardiff (CWL)
• East Midlands (EMA)
• Paris Charles De Gaulle (CDG)
• Amsterdam-Schipol (AMS)
• Hannover (HAJ)
• Berlin-Tegel (TXL)
• Pisa Galileo Galilei (PSA)
• Geneva (GVA)
• Palma Mallorca (PMI)
• Corfu International Airport (CFU)
• Vienna International Airport (VIE)
• Budapest (BUD)
• Munich (MUC)
• Dusseldorf International Airport (DUS)
• Southampton (SOU)
• Cork (ORK)
• Nice (NCE)
• Paris Orly (ORY)
• Rome Fiumicino (FCO)
• Faro Airport (FAO)
• Verona Airport (VRN)
• Tenerife South Airport (TFS)
• Reykjavik Airport (KEF)
• Dublin (DUB)
• Arecife, Lanzarote (ACE)
• Pula, Croatia (PUL)
• Billund, Denmark (BLL)

North America and Caribbean

• Newark (EWR)
• Boston (BOS)
• Miami (MIA)
• Los Angeles (LAX)
• San Francisco (SFO)
• Burbank (BUR)
• Phoenix (PHX)
• Baton Rouge (BTR)
• Detroit (DTW)
• Atlanta (ATL)
• Memphis (MEM)
• San Juan (SJA)
• Houston (IAH)
• Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW)
• Austin (AUS)
• Seattle-Tacoma (SEA)
• Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP)
• New York JFK (JFK)
• Jacksonville (JAX)
• New York La Guardia (LGA)
• State College (SCE)
• Philadelphia (PHL)
• Beef Island International Airport, Tortola (EIS)
• Pasco Tri-Cities Airport (PSC)
• Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)
• Chicago O'Hare (ORD)

Rest of the World

• Sydney (SYD)
• Melbourne (MEL)
• Brisbane (BNE)
• Singapore (SIN)
• Jakarta (CGK)
• Dubai International Airport (DXB)
• Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)
• Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport (HGH)
• Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)
• Hong Kong International Airport (HKG)

[I may rate each one in terms of how much it has pissed me off whilst travelling through it - I can tell you now that Newark rates high on the piss-me-off-ability scale.]

Survivor

When I arrived back yesterday I found I had a stowaway in my luggage - a cockroach had smuggled itself into one of my hoodies and made it back with me. It still seemed to be slightly alive as it was twitching a bit, but I flushed it down the toilet, so it may have died by now - it was a big bastard though and may have found a way to survive (hopefully it won't seek revenge).

In Da'House

If you are looking for a hotel in old San Juan (Puerto Rico) then I highly recommend Da'House hotel. We got taken here by a taxi driver after arriving at San Juan airport and not really knowing where to stay and just asking to be taken to a cheap hotel. The driver did very well as this place is really nice and very reasonably priced. It's in a lovely building with a great local character. It has local art on all the walls. The rooms are modern and clean. There's a roof terrace, with hottub, with views over the whole city. It has free internet and wifi. It's right in the heart of old San Juan. It's a great random find. [I should note that this place has no TV in the rooms and no restaurant or bar, but there are plenty of places to eat and drink just outside it.]

Astrophysicist of the Caribbean 2

Last Friday I embarked on the holiday part of my trip (yes, the rest of it had been purely work-based) as me and my friend (former officemate and bandmate Chris) headed off to the British Virgin Islands (BVI). [Actually the first thing we'd done on Friday (with a few others, in a hired Jeep) had in fact been to drive out to the El Yunque National Forest (still on Puerto Rico) and do a bit of hiking.]

We were going to the largest island in the BVIs - Tortola - which is only a short 30ish minute flight from Puerto Rico. The plane levels out at only 6000 feet before starting it's decent again, but this does offer some great views of the islands.

When we arrived in Tortola we got a taxi across the island to Cane Garden Bay where we we're to be staying for the weekend. The first thing I noticed when getting driven across the island was how steep the place is - the roads are at crazy angles and are far steeper that any I've seen before - but somehow our taxi made it over okay. When I got over the steepness of the roads (and the occasional cow in road) I started to notice the views (and the many chickens!), which allow you to see over large chunks of the island and some of the other islands beyond. It was a really great view when driving down into Cane Garden Bay and realising that this is where we'd be staying.

Cane Garden Bay is apparently one of the most popular locations on the island - it certainly does look very nice and has a really good beach. When you first drive through it some parts have a slightly run down look, but outside of the modern expensive resorts this was how most of the island looked (people seem to leave their houses half finished, or at least they leave them with the option of extending them a bit, so many house had piping and cabling sticking out their roofs for when they decide to build the next floor). It was in reality perfectly nice and our hotel (the Elm Beach Suites) was basic, but very nice - and most importantly pretty much on the beach. We had a relaxing first night and sat around having barbecued meat, a few beers and the local drink - the Painkiller - and the whole place was pretty quiet with a nice atmosphere.

The next day the beach by our hotel became very busy. There was a cruise ship docked in Road Town (the capital of the BVI) and large numbers of people had come through to Cane Garden Bay. This made the whole place not that nice - it was similar to any Spanish beach packed out with touring Brits (and Americans)! We sunbathed and swam in the sea for a bit, but got a taxi into Road Town for the afternoon to get away from the beach crowds. Road Town itself seemed to have nothing really going for it (and according to our taxi driver apparently on Saturdays it's quite dead!) We wandered around for a while, but couldn't find a tourist information office, or any sites to see, so we ended up just having a drink in Pusser's Pub (where we ended up watching the end of the Man U. vs. Spurs FA Cup match). Going back to Cane Garden Bay that evening it had calmed down a lot as all the cruiseship crowd had left. We had dinner in Quito's where later the local band played. The day was slightly disappointing, but our main problem was not having had any plan of what to do.

The next day we did make a plan. We decided to walk west along the coast (the less steep option) from Cane Garden Bay (on the north west of the island, but looking out more south west toward Jost van Dyke Island and the US Virgin Islands) towards the western most tip of the island and see what we could find. Our own bay was also a lot nicer due to it being empty of the cruiseship crowd. After a bit of hill negotiations getting out of the bay we eventually got into Little Apple Bay, where we saw a few people surfing (the waves were pretty small, but there was enough to catch a bit of surf). We stopped off for lunch at Sebastian's on the Beach (a hotel I'd looked at when booking, but was a bit more expensive, which did look very nice). We hired body boards and spent a couple of hours there (I did manage to get a bit of board rash from mine, but it was fun). We next carried on into the next bay, Long Bay, which contained a really nice looking long bay - this place was home to a rather fancy looking resort, which identical modern villas. We attempted to scramble around the rocky point at the end of the bay, which would have lead into Smuggler's Cove, but we didn't manage to make it all the way around due to fear of killing ourselves (there was a plaque near the point we reached commemorating someone who'd maybe been unlucky when attempting to get around) - if we'd had extra gear and more time it would probably been doable. We took the easier road option around to Smuggler's Cove and found a cool beach that seemed popular with the locals. Later (after having a rather strange vegetable/cheese pizza from a very nice woman called Annie, who made us listen to Christian ballads as we ate) we headed back to Little Apple Bay to go to Tortola's "Number 1 Party Spot", the Bomba Shack, which was a literal shack on the coast that had many pairs of pants hanging from it's ceiling. Here we met a group of American's, well mainly this guy Marcus, who we had a pleasant chat with - they we sailing the islands and off to a party on Jost Van Dyke the next day (Marcus did invite us, but we had to decline). All-in-all this was a far better day that the previous one as we'd actually done stuff and been productive.

The next day, Monday, we were leaving, but still managed to get out for a bit of sea kayaking in the morning before our flight back. On driving back to the airport the whole island looked really nice and it felt like a shame to be leaving already after only just discovering what we could do. It was also annoying that we found out that the following evening 800 blues musicians were going to be descending on Cane Garden Bay and playing on the beach!

In general I'd recommend traveling to the BVI, but do have some idea of what you want to do (unless you're happy to just lie on a beach all day). One thing we should have done is try and get on a day's sailing trip around the islands - sailing is the main thing to do there, and it looks a great place to do it. [Do also note that they charge you a $20 departure tax!]

Restaurant tip

If staying in San Juan in Puerto Rico (and you're near the hotel I've been staying at, around here) then I'd recommend checking out Cafe del Angel for some Puerto Rican cuisine. It does nice, simple, tasty food and is very friendly - some local things to try out are the fried plantain and mofongo.

The dish

Today was the last day of the meeting and involved a trip to the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (aka the Arecibo Observatory - or the big dish where Bond fights Trevelyan at the end of GoldenEye). Travelling there, through the rather hilly and forested terrain, we first got a glimpse of the three ~100m towers that support the receiver instruments from a few miles out. They got more and more impressive as we approach and could really start to appreciate the size of them. When there we got to walk down underneath the dish, which is a mesh of aluminium panels formed into a spherical surface and kept to an (rms) accuracy of 2mm using many metal cables under tension. I'd always been under the false impression that the dish was situated in a crater caused by a meteor strike, or an extinct volcano, but it (and the formation of the generally hilly terrian) is actually a sink hole formed from a collapsed cave system. Rather than resting on the ground the dish actually is supported around the edge and sits quite far above you - the plant and animal life still lives quite happily under there and there's plenty of room for people to wander about. After seeing the underside of the dish we went into the control room, which was quite interesting (for us astronomy types) and consisted of banks of computers and electronic equipment, but wasn't as exciting an experience as looking at the main dish (I've seen computers before). We got into the control room just before a torrential downpour, but other groups touring the telescope weren't quite as lucky and they ended up getting thouroughly soaked. After that we headed up to the main visitors centre from which you got a great view of the platform on which the antenna feeds are placed - there are two main feeds: the older line feed [the thing pointing down in the right of this picture], which sits along the focal point of the spherical dish (waves reflected from the edge of the dish get focused lower down than waves reflected from near the middle, so to get them all your antenna feed has to cover many focal distances); and the newer Gregorian dome [the domey thing in the previously linked to picture], which focuses the waves to a single point. [I may have to incorporate this, and my own photos, into my next lecture]. Unfortunately most of us didn't get to go our to the antenna array platform, which can be reached by a cable car or catwalk, due to restrictions on the number of people who can go at one time - so we didn't get to reinact any GoldenEye fight scenes. It really was a cool place to go and very impressive, so I'd recommend it to anyone visiting Puerto Rico.

I should just note that the next GWDAW meeting (GWDAW 14) is going to be hosted by the University of Rome and will take place around (I think) the 25th Jan 2010 [let's see if this post becomes the number one google hit on searches for GWDAW 14!].

Night swimming

Tonight, after the conference dinner, we indulged in a couple of activities that are only really practical in tropical seaside locations. The first was a game of beach football, which is far more knackering than regular football due to the extra effort needed to run about on sand; and is also more painful, due to having to kick a sandy ball, with sandy bare feet, leading to much loss of skin. Despite the slight pain it was good fun and we beat a team of quite competitive Italians [plus one Irish] (they may claim that they won by default as we kind of abandoned the second half, but they know that they were just outplayed by a more fit and superior team).

The second activity was swimming, both in the sea and the hotel pool. It's such a great thing to be able to jump into the water knowing you're not going to die of shock, or have your testicles retreat as deep into your body cavity as they can. The temperature is pleasant being neither too hot (although there's also a hot tub for when you do want some hot, bubbly action) or too cold. I've also discovered that I'm a better swimmer when slightly drunk (this isn't a endorsement of drinking and swimming kids - I'm sure it can also be quite dangerous) - I'm just more relaxed and don't rush my strokes, also I can hold my breath for longer without panicking.

Basically what I'm saying is that we should all live in the Caribbean, cos it's great.

It's the time, it's the place, it's the motion...

Today has been an historic day. A day that many people thought, or imagined, would never come. But the prospect of hope and change meant that anything was possible... yes, it became the day that I first played pool volleyball.

The net represented the challenges to overcome (and a literal net) and the ball (other than being a ball) was the American spirit of forging a better future from determination, hard work and high ideals - unfortunately in the game I was playing the ball didn't manage to make it over the net most of the time, but we can only hope that Obama's a better volleyball player (and President) than me and, obviously, Bush.

[As a more serious aside to this post I do hope that Obama can live up to at least part of his hype (which is obviously far too high at the moment) and restore some credibility to the US political system in the eyes of the world. I did like his specific nods towards science in his inaugaratuion speech, but other than that I would like him to live up to his promises of a transparent and open government.]

First day in the tropics

I arrived in Puerto Rico without any incident (and with my luggage), other than a 1 hour delay on our flight from Miami to San Juan. The hotel that we're staying in is pretty nice - it's the Condado Plaza Hotel, and the main thing to note, apart from the pools and casino, is that my bathroom has an entirely glass (well for three of the four walls) shower! It's all rather swish basically (and this internet connection is free with the room).

Today we (by which I mean myself and several other gravitational wave types from Glasgow and elsewhere) went for a wander into San Juan's old town. A carnival of some sort is on this weekend, so there was a fair bit of build up to that going on. Some of the streets were, I assume, more crowded that normal and there were various stages being set up. We didn't pay too much attention to this, but did wander towards the fort (Fort San Felipe del Morro) and had a good look round - it's a rather cool place to go to and is actually rather a bargin for the $3 entrance fee.

The weather so far has been mixed, but nice, with a lot of (warm) rain until about 2pm (before which it was a bit too humid) and then glorious weather after that. I would write more, but I need to go to sleep as the meeting starts in the morning...

Astrophysicists of the Caribbean

What's a nice reassuring thing that can happen the day before you get a flight? Well it's certainly not this - the link is, unsurprisingly, to the plane crash in New York today. It's obviously great news to see that everyone survived with minimal injury, but I think it's amazingly lucky and I expect the pilot deserves a great deal of credit. The current best guess as to the cause of the accident is a flock of birds getting sucked into the engine, so I just hope that large groups of birds steer clear of Glasgow, Heathrow and Miami airports tomorrow.

I should just note that the reason I'm flying tomorrow is that I'm off to GWDAW 13 - a gravitational wave meeting being held, this year, in Puerto Rico. There's ligitimate reason for it to be held in Puerto Rico (honest!) It's the home to the Arecibo radio telescope, and radio pulsar observations are one of the ways to detect gravitational waves - see that's a good reason to be there isn't it! It just so happens that I'm taking a few days holiday in the Caribbean afterwards, but that is not, I repeat not, the reason for going.

[I think maybe I should have saved the title of this post until my next one, but there were sequels to the film, so I can do sequels to this title]

Back to the chalk board

Tomorrow see's me restarting my lecture course (same one as the last two years). This year I've LaTeXed up my lecture notes (well a chunk of them so far), so that they're readable to both me and the students. Hopefully it'll be worth it! Let's bring the joys of Observational Methods to the students...

Double feature

Last weekend saw me taking two trips to the cinema, which is way more than my usual no trips. I went to see two quite different style films that I've been trying to think of similarities between, so as to make this post more interesting, but I've been struggling a bit.

The first film I saw late on Saturday night (after an aborted earlier evening effort due to rather large queues) was Role Models. This star's Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott (with Rudd playing a kind of Paul Rudd character and Scott doing an excellent job of playing Seann [why the extra n] William Scott aka Stifler) as two guys who have to do community service by being mentors for a couple of wayward kids (kind of like the "Bigger brothers" from that old episode of the Simpsons where Bart disowns Homer) - one who's a bit geky and shy and the other who's a sweary tearaway. It's not a particularly novel film and is very much in the style of other recent comedies (Knocked Up, Superbad etc), but was entertaining enough. I think Rudd (who co-wrote the film) tried to inject a few in-jokes into it, some of which were ok, but other's didn't quite work on my non-late-thirties not-American ears. I laughed a good amount of times (mainly at Bobb'e J. Thompson's character, who did very well delivering many a foul-mothed line), so I'd say the film worked overall, but isn't going to be a classic.

The next film (seen on Sunday night) took me from the afluent suburbs of the US into the poverty stricken slums of Mumbai - yes, you've guess it, I went to see Slumdog Millionaire. Is it worth it's current crop of Golden Globes? I'd have to say yes (despite having not seen the majority of the other films that were nominated - partly cos they're not released in the UK yet). The film is visually really good for a start, so just watching it is a treat. I'd say that the parts of the story that aren't flashbacks to the characters as kids aren't quite as engaging (good though they are), because the actors playing the young versions of Jamal and Salim are amazing (sorry Bobb'e J., they're better than you) and there are great moments of comedy and tragedy. As Andrew Collins says don't go to see this film as it's been marketed ("the feel-good film of the decade") as it's brutal at times, but do go and see it.

So what is there linking these films? I suppose you could say that both films show triumph over adversity for kid's who've had it hard (mind you the kids in Slumdog have it a few orders of magnitude harsher that those in Role Models), but then that's just the classic underdog does good plot of most stories. But should you want to see a classic underdog story I (and the Golden Globe voters) think Slumdog just edges it.

The draw

After our 1-0 win in the FA Cup third round against Scunthorpe (I have no idea how the game was as I missed the highlights and the BBC website has very little to say on the matter), we (Watford FC) have been drawn against the eventual winners of the replayed Leicester vs Crystal Palace match. So it'll either be a fellow Championship team we'll be up against, or Leicester who are leaders of League One, which I suppose isn't too bad, and I'm not really sure who I'd prefer. Maybe we can have a good run and emulate the (partial) successes of a couple of years back.

Desktop band

Today I started having a play around with GarageBand on my Mac. It's essentially a piece of software that allows you to create music tracks either by recording your own stuff, or piecing together the music with software instruments. I've used it a few times to just record one channel of stuff through the inbuilt microphone on my laptop, but have never tried experimenting with it as a way of putting together music. Essentially all I did today was see what all the different instruments and effects it has sound like (I did create a very short [about 15 seconds] tune with three instrumental parts, but realised that it requires a bit more than a couple of hours pissing around to put together something more layered and melodious i.e. good), but may in the future try to create something real. I say this now, but it'll probably be one of those things that never really gets off the ground - like learning the keyboard (which as it turns out would come in handy for trying to built up a track on GarageBand)!

Another music related thing is that I found what looks like a rather decent website containing free video tutorials on drumming techniques - it's called onlinedrummer.com and looks very useful from the three videos I've watched so far. Maybe my drumming could make a sudden leap from my usual rather simple beats.

Happy New year

Happy new year everyone. What did you all do to celebrate the change from 2008 to 2009?

I had a different new year location this time compared to the last three years. After spending Christmas with the folks I stayed down south rather than travelling back up to Glasgow (as I have for the last three years), so that I could go into London for the night. I didn't have much of a plan, but met up with an old university friend with the intention of finding a pub somewhere in the centre and then heading to the Thames to watch the fireworks. The first part of this plan worked and we started off in a Samuel Smiths pub called The Chandos just by Trafalgar Square - these pubs generally provide a place for a cheap beer even in central London, but they'd hiked up their prices by 1.5-2 times the regular price especially for the evening. After a few pints in there we moved on to a Pitcher and Piano pub next door which had slightly cheaper drinks, but also a slightly poorer atmosphere. We left leaving the pub a bit late to make it down to the Thames given the size of the crowds, so decided to stick around Trafalgar Square and party with the people there. Before the millenium Trafalgar Sqaure used to the the place to celebrate new year in London, but since then it seems that the banks of the Thames is the place to be, and there's actually not much in Trafalgar Square other than a big screen. At midnight we jumped around a bit and opened a rather nasty bottle of Champagne and had some very harsh tasting cigars, but everyone was having fun. We did however forget to sing Auld Lang Syne!

We followed this up with another pint, but then had a few problems. My friend who I was out with, and who I was going to be staying with, lives near Wimbledon so we left to the pub to get the tube back there. Unfortunately we got split up and decided to make our own ways back. I attempted to get into Charing Cross tube station, but they seem to have closed off all the entrances, and everyone was getting herded away from there. I decided to head north up Charing Cross Road to a station further up the Northern Line. This worked and I managed to get on a train at Goodge Street, but my friend hadn't been so lucky and was still stuck down on the Strand and had been corraled into a fenced off area by the police. I got back to my friends flat and was stuck outside for a couple of hours before he made it home. I had curled up and managed to get a bit of sleep on his doorstep, but it wasn't the most warm or comfortable time. I did have a good night, but it could have ended a bit better.