Posted by barb on Dec 18, 2003 in
Thesis/Grad Life I’ve still been going around the block on my MCG -6-30-15 fits. I was at least able to reproduce the published results, which had been a goal for last month, but this still doesn’t explain what’s going on. Basically, we are finding that cutting spectra one way produces one set of results while cutting them a different way produces different results. This might mean that the published method is not the right way to do things. However, it might also mean that there is not enough signal in my method to get good results.
My next step will be to fit the full MCG -6-30-15 XTE data set — this is nearly 7 years of data, and will take a lot of computer time. Hopefully I can get it running before the holidays, and just leave it going uninterrupted for that week (though there is always the possibility of a power glitch or infinite loop to mess things up). Kim thinks it might be interesting to plot the results in a way that we can see the time evolution of some of the relationships, so I’m going to look into using numbers as plot symbols in ppgplot. I’m also going to look into doing color-color diagrams (or hardness ratios) of the data to see if there is some way to see where the changes are really occurring. That will require writing some new code for the pipeline.
Posted by barb on Dec 14, 2003 in
TV A few months ago, I ranted about SciFi channel’s new Battlestar Galactic miniseries, based on the things I had read on SciFi’s official BG site. I was concerned that they were going to offend fans of the show with some of the changes they made. Now that I’ve watched the show, I thought I should write some of my reactions.
I haven’t decided how I feel about the miniseries — I’m torn. As a fan of the original show, I must say that this was not the original show. But then, it wasn’t trying to be. I think that if this was the only BG I’d ever watched, I might have been able to enjoy it quite a bit more. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this one — I did.
The series was quite good. It gave much more background to the story than the original series, and made the story much more “human”. We had time to get to know the characters and their back-stories more than in the original movie.
Having said that, there are some glaring differences from the original movie — and I think watching these and mulling them over was one reason I couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the new series. Not all the changes are bad or unsettling, but I wanted to catalog them nonetheless, in order to decide if I liked them or not.
<spoilers ahead>
I liked the new cylons (though was happy to see that the machine-looking ones still had the hypnotic red eye).
I’m not sure I liked that Baltar was an unwitting accomplice to the cylons — in the original he was the picture of pure evil, a conniving human looking for power. He’s too sympathetic for my tastes now.
I don’t like that Starbuck is a woman. She’s not Starbuck. She might smoke a cigar, play poker, and punch a superior officer, but she is not Starbuck. They did try to give her a few campy, cheesy lines, but they didn’t work. She’s not Starbuck.
I think the initial conflict between Adama and Apollo is growing on me, though I’m disappointed that Zach is already dead.
I’m hopeful that Boxy will not become a major character, especially now that he’s not Apollo’s step-son.
<major spoiler>
If they had to change Starbuck into a woman, I’m not happy that they changed Boomer, too. And I don’t like that she is a cyclon sleeper agent.
</end major spoiler>
I’d certainly watch the series, if it gets picked up, but this is not your childhood BG.
Posted by barb on Dec 12, 2003 in
Science Musings Influence of Solar Activity on State of Wheat Market in Medieval England
From the abstract:
The database of Prof. Rogers (1887), which includes wheat prices in England in the Middle Ages, was used to search for a possible influence of solar activity on the wheat market. We present a conceptual model of possible modes for sensitivity of wheat prices to weather conditions, caused by solar cycle variations, and compare expected price fluctuations with price variations recorded in medieval England.
Usually the articles on astro-ph relate more to the state of astronomy today, rather than historical applications of astronomical data. Astronomer William Herchel noted that a relationship between wheat prices and sunspots in 1801. This work is a more detailed account of that relationship.
The authors found that during the 17th century, minimums in solar activity directly correlated with higher wheat prices. A BBC article talks about some of the theories sparked by this relationship.
The effects of the solar activity on Earth’s weather is not clearly understood yet, and is still being studied . A recent study has shown that, at least in the United States, periods of increased solar activity are usually accompanied by periods of greater cloud cover. In addition, storm tracks are pulled north by about 400 miles during solar peak activity.
Posted by barb on Dec 11, 2003 in
Wedding I actually left my name with four different wedding coordinators, and only one got back to me. The only thing I can think of is that our wedding is does not have a high enough budget for the others to bother with us.
Fortunately, we liked the coordinator. She doesn’t have a lot of experience herself, but has been working with the company for about a year. The company, however, is owned by someone who has been coordinating weddings for years. The owner also makes sure she knows what’s going on with the various weddings of all her coordinators, and would certainly be a resource for our coordinator if there was anything we needed that she didn’t know how to help with.
Also, there will be 1-2 interns working our wedding on the wedding day, so that the reception site will be ready when we are, even with our coordinator overseeing the wedding itself. Since she is part of a larger company, should she have a family emergency or for some reason be unable to oversee our wedding, there are other coordinators who will be available and up-to-speed on what needs to be done.
Unless we hear from the other coordinators, or unless there is something weird in the contract, we feel comfortable enough with them to sign on.
Posted by barb on Dec 10, 2003 in
Saxophone Fred and I were working on a duet this evening that I wasn’t yet very comfortable with, and he suggested that it might be a good time to work on playing vibrato. Vibrato is where rather than playing a note smoothly, you hover around it in a controlled fashion. Sax players used to do this all the time to hide the imperfections in the tuning of their horns. Since I have an old horn, and there are a few notes that are just not in tune, it’s something I should know how to do. The trick is that vibrato is done with the jaw. Not the lips or the mouth, but the jaw.
I’m continuing on with duets, working on three (but I don’t have my book handy to see which ones they are).
I also picked up a book of Christmas music, but they are all fairly simple, so I’ll be just playing them for fun on my own.
Posted by barb on Dec 7, 2003 in
Pictures We went up to Cox Farms this afternoon to pick out a Christmas tree. I grew up with real trees in the house for Christmas, so for the years I spent in New Mexico as a poor undergrad and Maryland as an even poorer grad student, I really missed the smell of pine during December. (Though we did always have a Christmas tumbleweed in NM, and I put up a 3-foot fake tree in my MD apartment, it just wasn’t the same.) So, two years ago, after my first year as a “real world” employee, I decided to ditch the 3-foot fake tree and trade it in for a 5-foot real tree. I can’t see myself going back any time soon.
It snowed on Friday, so all the trees in the lot still had crunchy bits of snow in their needles. When we got our tree into the house, we threw bunches of towels around the base to catch the drippings. Ares promptly curled up on the towels, and stayed there until they got too wet. The tree dripped enough water that I didn’t need to fill up the stand with water last night (though I tried, and nearly overfilled it in my enthusiasm).
Today it was dry enough to decorate, and once again I was able to find places for all my ornaments. It doesn’t feel at all sparsely decorated, but I think this means that I need to collect more ornaments and continue getting larger and larger trees each year!
(That’s Ares sitting on the package. He didn’t like that I used up all the room under the tree for presents and stuffed toys.)
Posted by barb on Dec 6, 2003 in
Movies 0.5/5 stars
I watched this movie on the recommendation of a friend who usually picks great movies. Not this time. I was tempted throughout this movie to just turn it off — by the time we got to the end, I wished we had turned it off.
Ana Morelos hears disturbing news from her doctor, and the same evening she receives a drunken phone call from her husband who confesses to cheating on her. She decides to take up two teenaged boys on their offer that she accompany them on a road trip to a secret beach.
The story is old — someone finds out they have a terminal illness and decide to go on one last fling. In this case, it’s given a somewhat disturbing wrapper of a 30-something woman going on a road trip with two teenagers, both of whom lust after her. Intertwined into the story are short interludes with narration about various other people who peripherally come in contact with the boys — for example, they passed an accident scene and we heard about the man who had been hit. Andrew saw these as a means to show how our stories are all intertwined with others, but each of these interludes told of some tragedy or sadness, so I saw it as a means to show us how life sucks for everyone.
I can’t recommend this one.
Posted by barb on Dec 4, 2003 in Uncategorized
When we arrived home from North Carolina, there were two messages from my family on the machine. I knew something had to be up, even though neither message said what had happened. I tried my Dad’s cell phone first, but there was no answer. Then I tried Dave, and got through. Wayne, my grandfather, had suffered a major stroke Thanksgiving after he and grandma had arrived home from the cities. He died Saturday afternoon. If he had pulled through, he would have been paralyzed on his right side, would not have been able to speak, and certainly would have spent the rest of his days in a nursing home. He would have hated that.
Andrew and I made travel plans Sunday to fly out Monday. The reviewal was Monday evening, so the second we got off the plane, Dad picked us up and we were off to the funeral home in Maiden Rock, Wisconsin (just across the Minnesota border). Tuesday morning was the funeral, with a lunch afterwards (put on by the ladies of the church — Grandma and Wayne lived in a very small town, and had lived there their entire married life. In fact, Wayne had lived there his whole life.) Some of the relatives came by after the lunch, but Andrew and I escaped with Dad to the nearest grocery store (about a 30 minute drive), to pick up some meatless stuff for me (it’s farm country, so of course all the casseroles that were coming in had meat of some sort).
Later Tuesday afternoon, I took Andrew for a walk around the farm. I think that was the hardest part for me. As kids, we would go to the farm for a couple weeks (or more) every summer, so its hard to believe that it’s not going to be part of the family anymore. I took a lot of pictures.
Wednesday was the burial — surprisingly, he decided to be cremated. Mom said that he recently changed his mind when he discovered that it was possible to a reviewal and open casket even with cremation. Then we went back to Grandma’s to start writing thank-you notes. I think that just about put us all over the exhaustion threshold.
Grandma seems to be doing well — as well as expected. She was there when he collapsed, and called 911. He was to the hospital within about half an hour (not bad for the country). I think she’s still in shock. My mom is staying with her until Sunday, and I’m a bit worried about how lonely the house will be after that. But then, Grandma is probably the strongest person among the entire family. She has been through more than most of us put together, and I know that she will pull through this, too.
Posted by barb on Dec 4, 2003 in
Books by John Grisham
With their daughter heading across the world, Luther and Nora Krank decide that Christmas just won’t be the same. In fact, after crunching some numbers, Luther discovers that last year they spent around $6000 on Christmas — more than enough to finance a holiday cruise. So he talks Nora into skipping Christmas. Skipping the presents, the tree, the decorations (even the obligatory neighborhood Frosty on the roof), the parties, the cookies, the dinners. Everything. Instead, they book a cruise to someplace warm that leaves Christmas day.
This was a fun, lighthearted book.
Posted by barb on Dec 3, 2003 in
Saxophone I had to fly off to Minnesota unexpectedly, so no lesson this week.