CompilerBitch's Journal

Like, seriously. This is truly awesome.



And there are several more here. I'd say more, but I'd need to swear a lot. In lieu of that, here is some punctuation: *&$^!(&*^$!)($*^!*&^!!111!!!

I am currently considering putting a fancy web based interface together for some of my 'work stuff'. I am
incredibly lazy/impatient/protective of my time. Therefore, I wish to get the greatest bang for my (time-related) buck. I would like to put together a web based interface that has an application feel to it, in the sense that Gmail or Google calendar does. I'd like a bit of animation, like the iPhone interface maybe. At the back end, Apache on Linux is mandatory -- I need to be able to trigger server side scripts, and do MySQL as necessary. The front end should run on any current browser and use only HTML and Javascript -- Flash is out, because I hate its programming language. I would like the framework to do the bulk of the job of generating the HTML and the Javascript. Whilst I could code all of that at a low level if I have to, I need to get too much done too quickly for that to really fly as an option.

If I can avoid learning another language, that would be good -- something Java, C or C++ based would be favourite. I will go for something else if it is really good, and let's me do a huge amount with relatively little code. Open source is really a big big plus, but something that requires me to apply the GPL to my own code would be unusable for stupid reasons that I have no control over.

So, what does LJ land recommend, and why?

4.1, close to Ames. Felt it as a vertical bang, like something large being dropped or an explosion, followed about a second later by a lateral shake. I was standing at the time so I felt it more strongly than I otherwise might. No damage, but people did leave the building until the fire chief gave us the OK.

So, if you want questions, reply with one, two, many, lots, loads, buckets, Standard Poodles or whatever units you prefer and I shall oblige in return. You should offer to do likewise, blah blah whatever meme stuff etc.

From fluffthebunny:

1. Imagine there's nothing but digital media anymore for photographic imaging. Would you miss film, or say good riddance?

I'd personally not notice. I've exclusively used digital for some years now, and I don't feel that film offers anything useful that digital does not. Sure, I'm looking at this from the high end, dealing with digital medium- and large-format, but also I don't feel any lack in using a DSLR like one of my Nikons in comparison with 35mm film. 6x6cm medium format film or 4x5" large format film is probably still superior to most DSLRs, but digital medium format beats 4x5 film, and digital 4x5 is frankly staggering. This is just physics. Also, the artistic control afforded by Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom and the like far exceeds anything possible with silver gelatin processing, even going all the way with very advanced processing techniques like Ansel Adams's Zone System. I know, I've done that stuff, and digital is sharper, more flexible, easier to use and usually way cheaper if you factor in ongoing production costs. So no, film can die in a fire. :-)

2. At this stage of your life, do you think you'd enjoy teaching in higher ed?

Teaching, yes, no question. I love teaching. Research, not sure, I am not really turned on by how vicious things get when a people fight bitterly over a small amount of funding. I'm kind of burned out on that -- NASA is basically the same internally in terms of the way that funding works.

3. What were you most proud of, before you came to the USA?

Wow, difficult one that. Finally getting my PhD, probably. But there are lots of other candidates.

4. What color is your hair today?

Blonde. I look almost respectable. :-)

5. Where's the best korean food in your area... and can we share some when I'm visiting next month?

There is a decent place on Castro Street, very close to the Mexican place I think I've taken you to before. I've liked it there the couple of times I've been. We should do that. :-)

From tenacious_snail:

1. If you could magically relocate something from the UK to California, what would you pick?

Kebab vans. All of them. The US lacks kebab vans. And chocolate that doesn't taste like plasticised vomit with brown food colouring.

2. Has anything about dating a man surprised you? What?

Being bugged about going Steampunk more than before? ;-)

3. If money were no object, which would you choose as a career: musician, fine art photographer, sound engineer?

Of the three, photographer, I think, or maybe the 4th that's not on there, which is for me an extension of photography, which might be film maker.

4. Do you want to be able to have a dog again, or is Hooch Just That Special?

I would like a dog again, but only if I could take him or her to work with me. I don't like leaving dogs at home alone for long periods. It possibly also predicates a more settled home life than I currently have.

5. If you could no longer wear black clothes, what would your wardrobe look like?

Very, very, very, very dark blue?

Yes, I named him Malcolm. I'm like that, deal with it! :-)

Isn't she just awesome? These arrived at my office today, packaged rather effectively, to the extent that I had to go to the lab downstairs and get tools so I could get through the packaging. :-)

Wow!

Can has colour in my office to go with the black and white on the walls. :-)

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“Teach me, Kali-Ma. What is my purpose?”

“You are a sword.
Swords can cut,
swords can cleave,
swords can divide,
swords can block,
swords can control,
swords can lead,
swords can command.
Yet, swords can never help.”

“If I were not a sword, what might I be?”

“You might be a shield.
Shields can protect,
shields can reflect,
shields can return force as like unto its source.
Yet, shields can never help.”

“You might be a cup,
for cups are the repository of power.
They hold strength and space
for others, never for themselves.
Cups can never help.”

“You might be a flower,
for flowers carry beauty and truth,
and thus they illuminate the worlds.
Yet, they can never help.”

“Who then, teacher, can truly help?”

“Only thyself, child, only thyself.”

We had some time to kill this morning, so brian1789 and I took one of South Camp Inn's vans out and did a bit of exploring. I'd not previously visited the aircraft crash site or the Thule remains, so I took it as a chance to do a bit of photography.


Rotary
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And now for a bath!

Plane has launched, 11amish I'm outta here!

:-)

On the way to start the generator for the repeater station we use to get comms out at the drill site, I was waiting for brian1789, sitting on my ATV, and spotted something interesting next to the trail.



I GPS'd the location: 75 25.873N, 89 49.933W, for the benefit of any Google Earth addicts out there, and called it in to a group of paleontologists who are currently camped in the centre of the crater. They came out later and collected it, and identified it as the cast of either the movements or the burrow of some critter from the Ordovician period, roughly 460 millionish years ago.

:-)

Ouch, ow ow ow. Arthritis day today, and also last night. I didn't get a lot of sleep, I probably woke up every half hour. I'm currently in a fair bit of pain. It is quite possibly the damp weather we're getting currently (thick fog), and probably in no small part a temperature drop down to 4C over the last couple of days. Ouch. Ibuprofen is my friend.

Not long to go here. The plan for this week is more drill testing today and most likely also tomorrow, demos to CSA folks on Wednesday, tear down on Thursday and fly out on Friday.

Hi folks,

It occurs to me that I've been away for more than a month now, nearly a month of that being here on Devon. It's been interesting -- it's a great people watching opportunity, which I suppose is why it's such a favourite for biomedical and psychological research.

The first week on the island was mostly setup. It was very cold, I was wearing between 3 and 5 layers, big boots, and getting pretty tired pretty quickly just moving around in all of that. It was a few days before we got the diesel stoves up and running, so there really wasn't much in the way of heat to start with. My tent worked out very well, way beyond expectations actually. It's a Mountain Hardware Trango 3.1, specifically designed for extreme weather conditions. Most tent manufacturers make 4-season tents, but experience last year and this year shows that there are 4-season tents and there are 4-season tents. I bought a $250 Kelty last year, which lasted about 2 weeks here before getting blown flat, and had to move to a Eureka that was one of HMP's spares. This year, the Trango ($650 from REI) has been really amazingly good. It's withstood 45 knot winds, remaining surprisingly warm inside. I also went from a $250 North Face Snowshoe sleeping bag last year (which was woefully inadequate, causing a number of lost nights of sleep because it just wasn't warm enough) to a $650 Marmot bag this year which has been toasty warm and really comfortable. Yeah, this is the arctic.

Second week was pretty quiet, more setup, I was mostly doing comms stuff with Steve Braham from SFU. Last week, brian1789 arrived, so things kicked up a few notches. A bunch of us took most of our equipment out to Drill Hill a day ahead of time, so once he arrived we were up and running within a day. We're already past our depth target, over 5 metres now, so we're now into trying various combinations of torque, RPM, weight on bit and so on in order to tweak up the drill's perfomance and also hopefully induce some faults so we can collect the data and use that in taking the software further.

After a few weeks of long days, 24 hour daylight and 7 day weeks, it starts to grind a bit. We're taking the morning off today and going out in the afternoon. Tomorrow (Sunday) is going to be a proper day off, with a late morning too, so that's definitely something I'm looking forward to.

We have a bunch more to do next week. More filming, probably -- we had National Geographic out at our site yesterday evening filming brian1789 and myself and doing interviews with us, and there supposedly will be a BBC crew showing up during the week sometime. Wednesday will be an entourage from the Canadian Space Agency and the Polar Continental Shelf Project visiting camp, so Thursday will be teardown and packing for us, and then Friday (most likely) we'll be leaving Devon and heading to Resolute for a day or so. On Sunday, I'm heading west and catching the redeye in Ottawa to the UK, where I'll be hanging out for a week or two before heading back home.

And now... lunch!

(well, cam 1 and cam 2, anyway, cam 3 is showing Nick sitting in the office tent last summer!)



(Click here for the cam area on the HMP web site)

OK, it was only a 5cm test hole, but it's ours, and we're proud of it. :-) That puts us several days ahead of schedule. Tomorrow, we start work in earnest.

*happy*

Wow, that was awesomely fun. :-)

Myself and Dan each got to work on the patient, so we got to take turns doing some pretty (to me at least) nontrivial stuff, like intubation, putting an IV in and giving IV drugs and fluids, etc. All mentored remotely via a videoconferencing link by a medical doctor from his office elsewhere in Canada.

I think I'd like to learn more of that stuff.

One of the cool things that goes on at HMP are trials of telemedicine technology. Though it has potential applications on earth (nontrivial ones), the focus here is typically on telemedicine for manned spaceflight.

A couple of days ago, I got asked to shoot photos for the Canadian Space Agency's telemedicine team, which got sent out on the news wires. So, here it is:



Arctic simulations prepare scientists for space medical emergencies

(Click the caption to see the full story at the Globe and Mail's web site).

This morning, in about ten minutes actually so I'd best get on with finishing off my coffee, I'm going to be volunteering as someone giving medical care being mentored by an expert via Skype. I'll be trying to save the life of the chap you see in the picture above. More later!

Hi Folks,

I made it to Devon Island a little over a week ago now. I've not had comms until today because we only just got the Ka-band satellite dish working this afternoon, so this is the first chance I've had to get these out and to catch up on the week's backlog of email.


Windswept

It has been pretty windy here -- up to and just over 30 knots some of the time. It's forecast 60 - 75 in Resolute in a couple of days, which means we'll get hit pretty hard too. Hopefully our tents will survive, but cube law and all that -- double the wind speed, increase the force by a factor of 8. My tent is staked out with enormous tent pegs, fully guyed out, and every peg has a bigass rock sitting on top of it. It's also a brand new Mountain Hardware Trango 3.1, which is designed for nontrivially bad conditions, so I should be OK. I'll be tightening my guy lines and checking the pegs before bed tonight though.

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