Friday, July 28, 2006

Say it ain't so...

Dammit Floyd Landis. I really really REALLY do not want to believe that you doped.

The tests are rather damning, but the rest of it doesn't add up.

I mean, he was tested 8 other times in the race, and none of those turned up positive. Testosterone seems to be a long-term effect steroid. There wouldn't be much use to just use it once.

They didn't publish the actual results of the test, but I think they should. Do they know all the effects of all the drugs he'd been taking? He's taking cortisone for his hip, and another hormone for his thyroid. And besides, he got drunk the night before. Does alcohol affect it? What if he got laid with a cheap french whore the night before? I'm sure that would do something to his testosterone levels.

That would be kinda embarrassing to admit though... especially since he and his family are strict Menonites.

I believe him.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

My Mountain-Biking Mantra

While on the trail at Emma Long park last weekend, I came to terms with the fact, that indeed, I will probably break something if I keep this up. Not looking forward to that, but here's something I keep telling myself:

Everything the helmet doesn't protect will grow back.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Nerd Post - Point Spread Functions

Ok, as the title suggests, this will be a nerd post. Since my blog is named with an optics term, I figure I should probably write some science in here too.

Definition of Terms

  • Point Spread Function: Measuring the spot created in the focal plane when you focus a beam of collimated light down to a point.

  • Collimated: All travelling in the same direction. Laser light is collimated light.
  • Grism: a combination of a grating and a diffraction grating. Splits up light into its component colors (aka wavelengths).

  • Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM): A measurement of how steep a peak on a graph is. Imagine a mountain. You take the peak elevation, divide it by two, and go find two towns on opposite sides of the mountains at this elevation. Then, you measure the horizontal distance between the two towns. The smaller the distance, the steeper the slope.

  • CCD: Charge-Coupled Device. In laymans' terms, a digital camera, just more expensive. The one I'm using has a cooler on it which can cool the chip down to -20 C. It's also $5,000.



Doug and I got the optics bench pretty well aligned and focused. Since our optics aren't achromatic, we have two focii for our two laser beams (one green, one red). We've got our camera lens on a linear adjustable stage so we can repeatably focus the camera on the two laser spots.

Anyway, once we focused the system, we inserted the grism that Doug's been working on. It's still got some plastic on it from the time when he accidentally melted some zip-ties in 180 C phosphoric acid. After two further rinses with the hot phosphoric acid, we've managed to get most of the plastic off, but there's still a little bit. Anyway, we were able to measure the FWHM of the PSF of the grism, and found it to be approximately 2 pixels, which is no worse than the FWHM of a flat mirror. This is pretty good, implying that our grism is not any worse than a flat mirror, which is good.

Tomorrow, I get to take it all apart and put a faster lens in so we can get more orders on the CCD chip. Then we get to measure the efficiency of the grating, i.e. how much light is reflected into the different orders versus how much light we shine onto the surface of the grating.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Road Bike! (Part Deux)

Yes folks, I have done it! I now own ~15 lbs. of aluminum, rubber, and probably some steel which have been fashioned into a mode of transportation. I am as giddy as a school girl.

Since my car is dead, I rode it to Ginny's tonight to play my leauge match. While it could be that I just normally kick ass, I'm pretty sure my stellar record this evening (3 wins, 0 losses, two of which were in leauge play) was due to the fact that I HAVE A ROAD BIKE!

I feel a bit like a little kid, not only because I'm still a little shaky on it, as the pedals are kinda funky, but also because I'm going to take it to work tomorrow and show it off. :-D

Fixing my car will have to wait, because there's not much left in my bank account right now. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to ride my bike everywhere. Oh darn.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Piece of Shit Car

So my car died today. Which sucks royally. I'm pretty sure the alternator died, but I think it took my battery with it, which sucks even more because the feng-shui masters at Pontiac thought it would be better to bolt the wiper-fluid container right on top of the battery. Maybe it pleases the Chi of the car, but it annoys the hell outta me. Eh... it'll give me an excuse to give my new bike a workout.

Road Bike!

Come monday, I will be the proud owner of a Trek 1200 road bike! I just have to draw out $450 of my hard earned cash and go pick it up. It's going to be awesome.

Jarrett and I went mountain biking today. It was a lot of fun. And f-ing hot. It must have been at least 100 degrees out there. I couldn't suck down water fast enough. I think I'm still a little dehydrated.

I think I'm getting over my fear of death and dismemberment on a mountain bike. While there are still drop-offs I don't think I'll ever be able to ride off of, I am getting braver and willing to take a few more plunges. And even the ones where I pull up short, I know that it's just a matter of getting a little more speed and leaning back a little further, and I'll be alright. I think I'll wait until after I buy a new helmet to try these though... I got my current one second hand, so it may have a history of which I'm unaware.

Courage is a bitch to build up...

-------------------------------
To a certain someone...

While you're not the reason I come to domino night, you are the reason I stay so long...

Thursday, July 20, 2006

A night at the alamo

I. Love. The. Alamo.

They did a Queen Sing-a-long tonight. It was glorious. They played Fat Bottomed Girls, Killer Queen, Bicycle, Don't Stop Me Now, and to finish it all off, Bohemian Rhapsody. It was so cool.

If I were gay, I would be ga-ga for Freddy Mercury. As it is, I think he's pretty awesome.

Anyway, at the Alamo, I sat next to another astro student, and she grilled me on the tryst I had last semester with a certain other astro grad student. Kinda made me realize that I'd been a bit of an asshole about the whole thing... I should probably call/email/talk to her about it. Hopefully we can still be amicable about the whole damn thing.

I'm watching the office right now. It's solid gold genius. Ricky Gervis is a comedy god.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

the cat has come back... playtime's over

So Dan (my advisor) gets back in town tomorrow.

I've been working... but I'm not sure it's been enough.

I've made progress, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to be able to publish the paper when Dan wants me to.

I'm nervous...

In other news, my friend who's sleeping on my couch just got fired. Seems the eccentric rich dude didn't want to pay him what he thought he was worth... Man... I hope he's gonna be able to find a new job before he signs his mortgage.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Found on the back of a cereal box

Q: Who would you call if you find Chicago, IL?

A: Baltimore, MD.


Think about it.