CompilerBitch's Journal

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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On the nose

As most of you have probably figured out by now, I'm currently in Resolute Bay in the Canadian high arctic, waiting to be flown over to the HMP field site on Devon Island (most likely tomorrow or the day after that). I've been armtwisted to process some photos and get them online, so here you go.

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Just a quick message to say that we arrived safely in Resolute Bay last night. Today is going to be cargo sorting mostly. I'll hopefully be back online a bit this evening. I think the plan is we're going to the island tomorrow, but that's not definite yet.

I'll try to post a few photos later, but for now I have to run to head to Polar Shelf.

This may be my last post for a while. I'm currently in Vancouver, finalising loading the C-130.

Current plan is, we leave early tomorrow morning, takeoff should be around 9am. We're refuelling in Yellowknife, then continuing on to Resolute in one go so I should be there by evening. I may or may not have comms there -- likely yes, but it's possible I won't. I'll be in Res a couple of days, then we'll be heading to Devon Island most likely on Monday and opening camp. Latest news is that we'll most likely not have comms until sometime around mid-July, maybe the 10th but possibly later (or even not at all).

I'll be shooting photos as always, but there may well not be much in the way of updates. Apologies in advance for that, and please don't worry if you don't happen to hear from me.

Zoom!

But I don’t.

You see, I have my own moral compass. This is not an easy path, particularly if you really mean it.

Jesus would have forgiven you…

But I won’t.

Not for this. Not for selling out like that, not for forgetting the basic message of your own religion and giving in to the hatred of the people who would seek to control you.

But, what about Leviticus? What about Paul?

Well, what about them? Leviticus was an extreme homophobe with a bizarre dislike for seafood. Paul was a misogynist. I see no evidence that Jesus was any of those things. What, are you telling me that you don’t believe in Jesus? That you prefer the opinions of a couple of hangers-on (who, it should be said, never met the man Himself?)

Jesus would probably have forgiven you for that, too.

Oh right, it’s in the Good Book.

So who put it there? Was it Jesus?

No, it was the centuries of church leaders who sought to control you and your ancestors.

So why did you let them?

Oh, that’s right. They had a bit of a liking for burning people at the stake for disagreeing with them. Not being burned at the stake is a good plan, in my opinion.

But, this is 2009. No stakes around here. No public crucifixions.

You are allowed your own moral compass. No one is going to burn you at the stake for it. Jesus will still love you.

So, evolve yourself a spine. Do the right thing. Stop listening to the people who would control you through their hatred and your fear.

Do the right thing.

Then, I will forgive you.