A neutron star and associated gravitational waves, yesterday. Thanks to NASA Explorers
Hubble, our media whore of a telescope observatory has been in the press again after the last mission to service was successful. The James Webb Space Telescope is in the “final” stages of clean up and test and ready to roll out soon (and I can’t wait!). But what else has been going on? Well, SWIFT has been re-certified as a NASA top priority, the recent Planck and Herschel observatories are still the talk of all the juke joints in town, and obviously we’re all chatting still about the successful launch and deployment of the LRO, sending man back to the moon for the first time in decades… Seems BIG space science is all the rage nowadays.
Most of my co-workers are Thai (maybe 50% anyway). I do my best to learn a little Thai, and I’m a fan of the Thai-language dictionary which has phonetic dictionaries and lots of helpful things.
Most of my coworkers have, to me, long and modestly unpronounceable names, but everyone has a nickname: Ying, Neht, Tee/Jiew and so and so forth.
My chief programmer invited me to a party this weekend, but with the “warning” that everyone would be Thai, so I said I’d look for my Babel fish but had plans already (UFC99 baby!).
My friend said they’d be doing karaoke and I pointed out that I can’t hardly speak Thai, let alone read Thai characters. He said not to worry because they always have the phonetic guide up to help with pronunciation.
Although there is a semi-enforced phonetic spelling guide it’s very adaptable, and I see how my co-workers refer to our boss by nickname (Auntie), but spell it differently, Nah Dtim, or N’Dtimm etc. I wondered what I’d do in the reverse if I was to move to Thailand; how would I spell my name.
My friend paused and said, “Actually, your name already is a Thai word.”
“Really? Ian?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Neht…what does my name mean?”
“Well, you know when you eat too much fatty food? You feel…”
“Bloated?” I suggested.
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “Bloated, or sick”.
GRRRREAT
My name in Thai is เอียน meaning the feeling you get when you’ve eaten something nauseating or sickeningly sweet. This must be addressed. I’m going to find out what the traditional meaning of the root of my name is (John) and find out the Thai version of that instead…
UPDATE: 06/12/09
Speaking with my boss about this post she corrected Neht’s translation. My name is actually Nauseous Sideburns Brooks. Great.
I was going to post a little update on my progress as n00b programmer (programs = 2.5 (from the tutorial)). But then I stumbled upon this over at Twenty Major
The sight of the dude at the Hammond (Henry?) made me have to click it and what would be it be, but an impromptu jazz jam of “The Grandstand” theme tune. To non-Brits, Grandstand was the weekend sports show in the UK. I think it might be off air now, but it was an absolute staple in my house as a kid and in my houses/apartments/flats as a young man, first away from home. Me and the lads would gather round the telly with a few beers and cheer, yell, scream & vomit as appropriate.
I’ve not heard this tune in 11 years, since leaving the UK, and I’d completely forgotten it, and Grandstand the show.
I’ve not been back to the UK in almost a year. Richard just moved over there, I’ve got to now a lot of Brits through Nature Network, I have a lot of mates getting ready for their holidays and a lot are going back to the UK/Ireland for a break. I was hoping to be back in August for me mates wedding, but it’s off cos of work. So, no trip this year. I am increasingly feeling overwhelmed and in need of the solace of Albion, if only as respite. In other words, I am feeling desperately homesick recently
The YouTube clip started to play, I saw the words “Grandstand theme Tune”, and from the opening notes I was suddenly back in England, in London, with my friends, in my 20s, having the best time of my life. In reality I was sat at my desk, sobbing like an infant, blinking through the tears at the monitor, but “seeing” my dad on the sofa waving his arms and yelling at the football.
What a strange organ our memory system is. So vital and so intricately connected to other centers, so that emotions I’d not felt in years came back, memories of long forgotten faces, places and friends suddenly swam into clarity. Were these things forgotten? Or were they just indexed away somewhere? How many other thoughts and memories lie dormant, synapses, not yet re-routed for other tasks? My next experiment: record my dreams for the next few days. Let’s see what else got stirred up just now that might re-surface when my conscious mind takes a break…
Been a bit quiet on the old blogging front recently. Things were joyously hectic up until recently with grants and manuscripts and the usual academic…stuff. then I was ramping up for a new project when one of my co-bosses told me not to bother, and we had to cancel it. Mixed feelings about that: nice to be told to work less, but it was something I was looking forward to playing with.
So now my team is in maintenance mode. A couple of the PIs we’re working with are getting ready to begin their clinical trials so there’s some background checks going on. We have to make sure the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approvals are kosher, and a couple of these have been waiting in the wings for so long my guys have to go blow the dust off them and have a look around to find out what the fuss was all about way back when. But it’ll be fun to start some new science.
I’m hoping to begin work on a couple of manuscripts in a week or two; waiting for my clinician friend to get some family business out of the way first. And we’re prepping for three (3) more R01 grant applications this fall (October deadlines, I think), so I’m also reading a lot about open source development and end-user driven modification and software adaption; and e-health policy & procedure.
Now these two are obviously not inter-related, and that’s one of the things I love about my job. When my head gets too full of O’Reilly media and programming, I switch to Federal regulations and public health policy.
I am a geek
And for fun, because of what I do and with whom I work, I’ve decided I need to learn to program, so, you’ll see above the first program I’ve written since Bro. Paul’s BASIC programming in 7th grade (a long time ago, never mind exact dates! Ed.) I’m just happy that I managed to get as far as finding the interpreter, downloading and opening it. Let alone that my first attempt was so utterly successful it can only be a matter of time before I graduate from Python to go on and conquer Perl & PHP…
Anyway, I’ll keep you updated. In fact…I might write a little script that does it for me…
My best friend works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and she sent me the link to NASA TV to watch the live launch of SS Atlantis at 1:01CST. Atlantis is off to visit the Hubble Space telescope for the last maintenance run. This is a momentous moment; Hubble has done more for the popularisation of space science than any other experiment since the moon landings. I’ve waxed lyrical about the effect the Hubble Deep Field images had on me in other venues. As sad I am at the thought of Hubble dying alone in the cold, I am immeasurably and childishly exited about the next generation James Webb Space Telescope that will replace our favourite, fault ridden behemoth.
Goddard played a major role in building Hubble, so the employees were treated to a live-feed in the campus auditorium. When I visited GSFC to see SWIFT, the satellite she was working on a few years back, I got to see the HST mock-ups, the clean rooms it was assembled in and so on. It’s amazing, and I recommend anyone who has never visited a NASA site to do so immediately. Preferably taking a few compliant employees with you so you get the insiders tour!
Aside from the live-feed dying at t-10s it was great. Yeah…missing the actual launch sucked, but the feed returned at ~t+45s, so you could follow the climb up & away from Kennedy, with communication to Houston. My friend wondered if NASA had deliberately cut the feed in case something (bad) happened, but it seemed to me to just fizzle out from over subscription to limited bandwidth. Who knows. I prefer to think that Big Brother isn’t editing my viewing of our most amazing scientific adventures, but…I also hope that an institution that regularly puts mankind in space, both literally and vicariously, doesn’t suffer from limited bandwidth problems…so who knows?
Watching the two boosters drop away from the shuttle from a camera mounted on the fuel line to the main booster was awesome, and then at t+6 minutes or so the shuttle rolls to become “top-up” from our perspective and you can see the curve of the earth below. It looks like they must be “in space” already, but they have a long way to go yet. Houston is feeding them information about possible alternative landing sites if something happens, whilst at the time time letting them know they will be able to reach orbit even if two of the three engines fail.
At t+8 minutes the main booster detaches and the feed is lost, but by now they’re reaching a safe altitude (orbital altitude) and beginning to go through their post-launch procedures.
It’s wonderful and I love it. Watching the shuttle launch (albeit by replay), and watching it blast up and away, climbing and accelerating faster than anything we’ve created, defying gravity and our Home World’s eternal pull, makes me proud to be human. More than that, it makes me proud to be a scientist.
To be a tiny part of the human scientific endevour is an honour we should never take lightly.
This happened a lot faster than I thought it would. After being stuck in re-review hell for a couple of months the whole copy-editing/proof reading part took only a few days. Within a couple of hours of mailing back corrected proofs I received this:
Dr. Brooks,
You and your co-author’s manuscript, “Slim-Prim: A Biomedical Informatics
Database to Promote Translational Research” has been posted to the
Perspectives section of theAHIMA Web site. I have attached a direct link as
well as a final version of the PDF.
Thank you once again for your interest in Perspectives in Health Information
Management.
damn near 5 years of postdoctoral slavery research….but there it is in…in immutable Black & White. The word “Faculty” next to my name.
OK…so I’m actually the “staff” part of that, seeing as I’m a Research Associate, but good grief, it feels a whole lot closer than having “Student-Trainee” there…
So, I got my new MacBook Pro today. Shiny, fresh…got that ‘new computer’ smell.
And I HATE it
This is the least intuitive, most fussy, arse-backward, complicated piece of over-priced tosh I have ever had the misfortune to waste my time with.
None of the keyboard shortcuts I’ve been using for the last decade work/the keys that do things are not where they’re supposed to be
None of the programs respond in ways I’m used to, and all the things I took for granted are missing, like task bars, menu bars
I’m downgraded to Office ’04, which sucks worse than Office ’08
Entourage has re-written the file structure of my email account on the server so I can’t use my email properly
The display & fonts are too small…no wonder y’all said get a monitor
What else… Nothing particular springs to mind, but I am most hacked off. I’ve wasted the last 6.5hrs trying to do stuff that should have taken an hour at most.
I know, I know, I’ll get used to it in time, be indoctrinated to the cult of Mac, I’m sure. I am feeling unusually hormonal for the last 48hrs too, so I’m sure that’s not helping.
