World music

Hannover was abuzz with music yesterday as they were hosting a Fête de la Musique. This involved putting up a load of stages at various places around the centre of the city, each having bands with a certain musical style e.g. there was a pop stage, a jazz stage, a rock stage, etc. On wandering through the city with jakeybob for a bit of a look around we saw various of these stages. We didn't stay in any one place very long and didn't hear anything particularly great, but there was a generally happy atmosphere about the place which was nice - it was a really nice day to, so that might have added to the feeling of pleasantness. Other than the music festival our best discovery was that at the reservoir in the town (the Maschsee) you can hire sail boats, row boats, or pedalos. This has now been put at high priority on the things to do while here list.

Een nieuwe start

Unsurprisingly Steve McClaren's had to move away from England for his next football management job (he's gone to FC Twente, a Dutch top flight team, with a prospect of qualifying for the Champions League.) Also, unsurprisingly a large proportion of his new team's fans aren't best pleased - "Ninety per cent of fans think why him? But he is used to working with top players," said club chairman Joop Munsterman!

Changing priorities

A while back I briefly posted about the release of STFC's programmatic review in which it ranked the priorities of varies particle physics and astronomy research projects (much, much more can be found all over the internet e.g. here and here.) The programmatic review was based on the advice of the Physics, Astronomy & Nuclear Physics Science Committee (PPAN) which was made up of a relatively small group of physicists and astronomers. This process was highly criticised by the wider UK physics and astronomy community for not being informed by a much broader consultation of experts. So for the last few months the priorities have been reassessed by a variety of ad hoc panels with the aim of giving a more truthful representation of where the community believes the UK's priorities should lie (although even this process has not been entirely well received, due to it's untimely and hurried nature.) Obviously it would be nice, and most profitable scientifically, to see everything being given a high priority, but with the current climate some hard choices have to be made. For the projects receiving high to medium priorities I think things should be reasonably safe funding-wise at least until the government's next comprehensive spending review, however it does leaves the projects with the lowest priority facing the very harsh reality of having funding completely pulled. The reason I'm writing this post is that yesterday the reports from these ad hoc consultation panels were released. I've not read all of them, but from this BBC article it's seems that things are in pretty similar shape priority-wise to how they were after the programmatic review. However, various things like eMerlin and some solar projects seem to have been slightly bumped up the list (although I think it's mainly a result of another tier being added to the bottom of the priority scale and they've been moved off the bottom one.) The one report I have looked at is that for Astro-particle physics, in which gravitational wave research lives, and it seems to have been kept at the highest level of prioritisation. According to the report there had been some grumbling from the wider community that there were too many high-to-medium priority gravitational wave projects in the list, but I think the report answers the that criticism well. For the relatively small level of funding that we (the UK) put into gravitational wave research (a few million pounds) we get a disproportionately large amount back i.e. we have access to all the data from the current GEO600, LIGO (a billion dollar scale project!) and Virgo detectors, as well as that which will come from the next generation of detectors. Also the potential reward for being the gravitational wave game is very high. People may well disagree and cite the fact that nothing's been detected yet, but I think these are very valid reasons to keep up the funding of these projects. Of course I would say this as it's my field of research. These reports aren't yet the final outcome though and we'll have to wait until 8^th July until the final version of the programmatic review is published.

Not the 9 o'clock news

In my apartment in Hannover I have access to a variety of TV channels (I don't know if it's satellite or just plain digital TV) in which I have two English language news networks: CNN and Sky News. In the past I've occasionally flicked past Sky News, but I've never really watched it for an extended period. Until now. It really is bad, despite proclaiming itself "News Channel of the Year". It's like the Sun, but on TV - even having right-wing pundit, Sun columnist and talk radio host Jon "Gaunty" Gaunt doing its newspaper review. This probably isn't surprising given it's ownership by Rupert Murdoch's News International, but it is slightly disappointing (I at least want BBC World and even that's pretty shit.) It's only saving grace is that it has that nice Eamonn Holmes presenting its breakfast show.

Germary, Germany over all!

So long UK, guten tag Deutschland. In a work-motivated move I have come out to the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover to experience how working life is out here and hopefully get lots of important stuff done (a paper here, an analysis there, etc.) This is going to be an extended visit lasting until late September (when a trip to Munich for a certain event know as Octoberfest might be happening.) I arrived today, after a being delayed a day due to a plane cancellation, and since then things have gone smoothly - that's your typical German efficiency in action. With the help of a couple of ex-Glasgow colleagues I was escorted from the train station, taken to lunch, shown were my apartment was, and given a tour of the institute. I've taken up residence in a office and been given a key and security entrance key-fob thing. Now all that remains for the day is to sample some beer and sausage.

C'est trop cher

One of the things you notice when staying in central Paris is how expensive it is to buy drinks. I think this is especially the case in the more touristy areas, in one of which my hotel happens to be. Now drinks in London are generally considered to be pricey by UK standards, but they're nothing compared to the cost over here. For example last night I paid €8.50 for a half litre of Heineken - at current exchange rates that's £6.72, and it's not even quite a whole pint!

Your goose is cooked

After the other days culinary adventures I had another first last night. I ate some, most likely inhumanely (or ingoosely) produced, foie gras. It was very nice and I would recommend force-feeding grain to a goose and eating its distended liver to anyone.

When in France... eat weird shit

Just to give a context I am at the moment in Paris (at the Universite Paris-Sud) at a collaboration meeting. Last night going out for dinner allowed me to try a couple of dishes that I'd normally wouldn't expect to eat (and no, it wasn't frogs legs and snails - don't stereotype.) A friend of mine ordered Os a moelle not knowing what it actually was (well none of us really had an idea until it arrived and we remembered what the word os meant - bone. It was a plate of bone marrow served from some nice bits of femur by the look of it - it looked like something you might put on the floor for a dog to gnaw on. I ventured to try a bit of marrow (which I suggested might have been better off being used to cure a poor calf with leukemia) and have to say it wasn't bad - it's pretty slimy, but is fairly tasteless and just kind of like eating fat (which I'm not averse to.) The other dish I tried was again sampled from another friend order, which was Steak tartare. This was essentially a quarter pound of raw beef patty. It was also quite good and nicely seasoned with herbs, but you couldn't get over the fact that you were eat raw meat. These are both things I'm glad I tried, but I'm also glad I didn't order them myself and had more conventional food choices. Maybe I'll have the snails and frogs legs tonight!

[Update: I actually did have a frog's leg on my last night in Paris. It was tasty, but lacking in quantity of meat.]

Weekend break

After heading out to kayak on Loch Lomond a couple of weeks back last weekend I got out on a river for the second time. About a dozen of us from the canoe club went for a weekend of camping and kayaking on the Etive (near Glencoe.) We drove upon Friday night, with me again taking the wheel of the minibus (a different one than the previous week) - there were still quite a few stalls, but in general my driving got more confident over the weekend and I managed to get by without any crashes or scrapes and I am now reasonably proficient at performing three-point turns on country roads. We camped on some ground behind the Kings House hotel, which is semi-officially a campsite - at least it seems to be quite well used. The campsite sits near the head of the Etive and from looking at the level of that, and due to it having been pretty dry during the week, we knew that the water levels for our kayaking were going to be pretty low. Heading out to the river the next day confirmed this, with our main view of the river being stone dry rocks. However, we headed to a section called triple falls (a series of three small waterfalls unsurprisingly) where there was enough water to go down. Despite the falls looking quite daunting from above, especially for a relative beginner like me, they were reasonably tame to go off. Later on we headed to another waterfall called Right Angle, which was quite a bit higher than any of the drops at triple (about 20 feet.) As I'd been down the earlier falls I decided to give this one a go as well. Even quite a few of the experienced guys going over the falls were capsising at the bottom (although they were all able to roll themselves back up.) The three times I went off I also capsised, almost managing to roll on the first time, but then having to swim. The following day we again went to triple falls and right angle and also attempted to kayak between the to. This mainly involved scraping the bottom of our boats over rocks, but there were a couple of other good falls along the way. Overall the trip was really good and great experience for a beginner like me. I'm pretty eager to get out again, but will have to wait for Autumn when the university starts back up. Hopefully next time I'm out they'll be a bit more water and fewer midges.

Euro-phoria

Tomorrow (or today as it's past midnight) the European Championships start. This fact would be slightly more exciting if a home nations team were in it [I would have been supporting Scotland if they'd got through and England hadn't cos I'm above petty national rivalries ;)], but I'll have to cope without a local team to cheer on - at least there won't be the huge disappointment, frustration and pain of watching England fuck things up. During the competition I am mainly going to be in countries with teams involved as I'm in France next week and will be heading to Germany the following week. This could add to the excitement, although I'll have to deal with foreign commentators (at least that means I'll avoid Motty.) Other than that I'll have to add to the excitement by hoping my work sweepstake (there's a huge prize of £16 up for stake) team of the Netherlands (I know they're in the group of death and they notoriously managed to implode with internal squabbles during major tournaments, but its not the worse draw - I could have got one of the hosts!) and my fantasy football team do well. I may comment more on the tournament as it progresses.

Eyes to the right

After a bit of a boozing session last night I suffered today, not from the regular hangover experience of a headache and general lethargy, but rather from an eye related disorder. I've had this problem before in that a night on the piss leaves me with degraded eyesight the next day, but from last night it was more acute - my right eye just couldn't focus at all. This lasted a good 10 hours from when I got up, initially starting with my right eye being all but useless as an optical device, to earlier this evening when it was just giving me a bit of double vision. I'd prefer a regular hangover than this style of alcohol infliction, but maybe it was just what I was drinking that caused the problem - for the time being I'll lay off the £1-a-can Red Stripes.

Budgetary constraints

Way back at the end of 2006 I wrote about a project I'd been working on about searching for gravitational waves from the Crab pulsar (see that post here for more links and details) and how that work had lead to an exciting new result i.e. that we beat pre-existing limits on the amount of energy that could be released via gravitational radiation from the Crab pulsar as it's rotation slows down. Since then we've added more to the search and firmed up the result and I (and others) have presented it at several meetings (e.g. at the AAS) , but we now finally have the paper submitted to the pre-print arXiv (you won't be able to see it until Sunday evening unless you have the secret password.) In my previous post I wasn't able to say what the result was (we'd embargoed the exact numbers until our collaborations internal review process was finished), but now I can reveal them. The main result is that we can say that less than 4% of the energy available from the slowing down of the Crab pulsar is radiated away via gravitational waves. This is a result that it's not currently possible to get via methods other than direct gravitational wave observations, because electromagnetic observations and models of the Crab pulsar and it's surrounding nebula (which is powered by the pulsar's slow-down) are full of too many uncertainties and assumptions that they can't give a good constraint on the energy budget i.e. you can't accurately add up all the possible mechanisms which could contribute to the Crab pulsar slowing down. There should be a press release about this on Monday, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Update: The University of Glasgow's press release can be found here.]

[More updates: The paper has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, which is pretty prestigious :)]

Mac life

Last week I crossed over from a loyal PC person to being a Mac user! I needed a new work laptop as my previous Dell was getting on a bit and not quite able to hack the fast pace of life as we live it today. Seeing as several of my friends and colleagues (not to mention all the new research students in my group) have gone the way of the Mac, and were generally very happy with them, I thought I'd join them. So now I have a swish new Macbook Pro (although I was told that a newer version was being released in June I couldn't wait.) So far I've been very impressed. I've had some issues with the keyboard not being as I'm used to ("@" and "~" are in a different place for a start, there's no "Home", "End" of "Delete" keys [although via a bit of googling I've found replacement for these - Ctrl a, Ctrl e, and Fn backspace respectively]), but other than that it's all been good. I'm sure I'll find more annoyances in the future, but at the moment I'm just liking the way it's Linuxy but with everything still working straight off.

Do you remember the first time

Just for the historical record I should note that last week I bought and ate my first ever donner kebab - well maybe it's not noteworthy, but I'm going to write about it anyway! I generally shun the donner in favour of a more healthy, from the look of it at least, shish kebab - shish's also consist of an identifiable meat. This is mainly to make me feel superior to the far more numerous donner eating hordes. However, I put my hands up, I have eaten donner meat in the past, but only small morsels picked off from other peoples kebabs/donner meat and chip combos (people I knew that is, not randoms or from discarded polystyrene trays off the street.) So it was about time that I lowered myself to the level of the ordinary man and got one for myself (plus it was late at night, I'd not eaten dinner and it was one of the cheapest things on the menu in the take-away.) I was reasonably impressed with my first donner. One of the main things to note about donner meat, other than its hideous appearance, is that it has very little taste. There's only the vague notion that it's some form of meat and the fact that it's lamb can barely be discerned. But, you see, the lack of taste really doesn't matter, because the whole point of a donner is to smother it in hot chilli sauce. So when I say I was reasonably impressed what I mean is that they did a good chilli sauce, supplemented well by some tasteless, greyish-brown, greasy slithers of meat, and some not-yet wilted salad. I'm not going to be adding donner's to my regular menu, and I'll probably more often stick to the shish kebab when I next visit a kebab shop, but I definitely won't be as disdainful of them as I've been in the past and, you never know, the feeling for one could grab me again in the future.

The bonnie banks

Yesterday I had my second ever kayaking trip out on actual open water (the first one was a couple of months back on a river called the Orchy, where we went down the relatively easy lower section [it was a beginners trip], but I neglected to blog about it.) The plan had originally been to get on a river and see some white water, but due to safety constraints we ended up on the rather more sedate waters of Loch Lomond. The trip was also my first time driving the GUSA minibus since taking the test at the end of last year. During my test I managed to stall the bus a considerable number of times and getting going yesterday was a similar experience with multiple stalls just reversing out of the parking space. After getting out on the open road I did improve and the stalls became far rarer as I gained a bit more control and experience of the clutch (although when they did happen it was generally only when I had a police car sitting behind me!)

The kayaking was enjoyable and we just paddled round the Loch for a few hours, stopping off for lunch on a beach, and generally enjoying the nice weather. It was occasionally a bit gusty and choppy out in the middle of the loch, but for the most part it was warm and calm. It wasn't the most taxing or exciting of paddles, but was still good experience of being out in a boat for an extended period. I ended up in the water a couple of times: the first time after my boat filled up with water and sank when we were playing a game involving two people swapping kayaks; and the second after I capsized when practising a high brace and couldn't manage to roll myself upright (this was just after I'd purposely done a roll and managed it fine.) The water was pretty chilly, but was bearable for a shortish period. I just have to live down the fact that I swam on flat water!

Next weekend we'll be out on another trip with me driving again - this time camping for the entire weekend and going on a river (the Etive). I expect I'll be in the water far more when there.

Staying put

It's been a few days since the sad events happened and maybe it's taken a while to sink in, but it's true... Watford will be staying put in the Championship next season. The play-offs against Hull didn't start off particularly well with us losing 2-0 at home, although we apparently didn't play too badly and were unlucky to have an opening goal disallowed and our captain sent off. Things went from bad to worse in the second leg with us being thrashed 4-1 - we started off fast and managed to pull a goal back early on, but obviously that was not enough. We've only ourselves to blame for the position we were in due to our very poor form towards the end of (well for most of the second half of) this season. If we'd kept going how we started we'd have walked it into top spot in the league, but I think our brand of dull, long ball football (the true lower league mainstay of how to play the beautiful game) wasn't something that we could keep doing and still guaranteeing decent results^*.

I'm sure all the Premiership clubs are bitterly disappointed that they won't be able to pit themselves against the might Hornets, but they'll just have to wait another season! However, if Hull do go up it could see a bit of a blast for the past for the Premiership what with Nicky Barmby and Dean Windass in their side - that is if they're not sold/retire over the summer.

^* My views are in no way based on informed opinion as I've not seen a single game this season, but are only speculation from the few things I've read/heard about our games.

To boldly go where no name has gone before

Get NASA to send your name to the moon (courtesy of some memory storage device on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.) It's ultimately a pointless exercise, but could generate a small frisson of excitement in you dull, workaday life - you get a certificate you can print off to!

Scraping into the play-offs

The Championship season's ended and Watford have just about managed to scrape through with the final play-off spot. We were saved from being in the dreaded seventh position in the table by virtue of having a goal difference one goal better than Wolves! After spending large chunks of the season in an automatic promotion place with the potential of winning the league we somehow managed to let it all slip away (by playing shit) in the last couple of months! The play-offs are a complete lottery, so who knows what will happen, but I do remember when we previously went up it was after finishing sixth.

Terror in the Arctic

Due to having being lax on the blogging front last month I'll begin with a post I meant to write a while back, but obviously didn't. It's a brief review of the last book I read called The Terror by Dan Simmons. In my opinion The Terror is a return to form for Dan Simmons after his last couple of books, Illium and Olympos, which tried to cover too much and ended up being rather convoluted and disappointing. The Terror is based on the the ill-fated Franklin expedition to find the north-west passage (a sea route through the Arctic between the Atlantic and Pacific) - the expedition consisting of two ships: The Erebus and The Terror. The fate of the ships' crews, and the ships themselves, was never discovered, making the story rife for fictionalisation. The book is presented as a horror book, with one of the main premises being of something in the Arctic night picking off the crew (you get this from the blurb of the book, so it's no spoiler), but don't let this fool you as the book a mainly a brilliantly researched and realised account of 19th Century Arctic expeditions, survival and maritime history. Simmons has done a great job in getting across the atrocious conditions that the expedition would have gone through. His characterisation of the large cast of people is also done excellently, obviously with some literary license, but also with a great deal of historical research. It's very easy to feel empathy with the characters and develop an attachment to them early on, meaning you care about their fate despite knowing that the expedition doesn't end well. The book is undeniably very, very bleak and this potentially could get too oppressive throughout a nearly 1000 page book, but it's so engrossing and interesting that you want to keep going. The end of the book does diverge substantially from the rest and I wasn't satisfied with it (except for the very end), but was obviously done to give the monster a meaningful background and again was very well researched. I would really recommend this book, but far more as a historical fictionalisation than for it's horror aspects.

Live from NAM

There are always a never-ending procession of meetings to attend and following the collaboration meeting I was at a couple of weeks back I'm now at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) at Queens University Belfast. I don't think I'll be blogging about it that much, but for news from the meeting you can visit the official NAM blog. Now back to the talks...