Once again the Blarney delivers

There a pub in Vancouver called the Blarney Stone where you get a stamp that says STONED. I find that it really is the best spot to go. You can actually dance to every song, both band and DJ. The place is packed early so it fun all night long.

We tried other places, 686, Buffalo (don't even get me started) but they're really a disappointment because they have fancy chairs, beds and crappy music. Killarney, the band at BS plays all the good songs. The had a fiddler tonight who was old but wicked still.

My only comment is that they don't play Rocky Road to Dublin. They're Irish, they should. I'm confused on this point??

"Well, it was about that time that I notice that girl scout was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the protozoic era." - Chef's Dad

Finally

Finally I finished my Thesis, 98 pages, but I forgot my abstract so that should push it over the century mark, beyond. Now I can sit back and watch some good quality South Park Season 2, Happy Birthday Evan

Stan: "Hey Cartman, how come the birthday invitation you gave me says Green Megaman?"

Rollin through the Rockies

I've recently visited Calgary. I forgot about the tower until I was literally one block away and looked up when I went outside. We saw all the sights, saddle dome (did you know that it is round??) stampede area, many bars including Tequila (with crappy tequila or was I too drunk to notice the burning) and the Rancher.

Why was I there you ask, CASCA 2006, the Canadian Astronomical Society of Canada annual meeting/conference. One of the best parts about it was the grad fair, I'm a little bit closer to deciding where to go now, or am I, I don't know. *sigh*.

While I flew into Calgary, I got a drive back with Brian and Michelle who are in
Victoria this Summer, trip was awesome. We stopped in Banff, Invermere, and Kamloops technically. Golfed at Eagle Ranch Golf Resort and saw a Black Bear. We played the Heritage Minute game on the way home, quite fun.


Cartman: "Okay, Token, give me a sweet bass line."
Token: "I don't know how to play the bass."
Cartman: "Token, how many times do we have to go through this? You're black. You can play bass."
Token: "I'm getting sick of your stereotypes."
Cartman: "Get as sick as you want, just give me a goddamn bass line!"
Token: [Plays the bass expertly] "Oh, goddammit. "

Enter the Dragon...

Hello all (Edits are in red, this took a few days, I can't pop them out like Neil, 6 in one day, beyond)
So a week (and a half (+ half)) ago I arrived in Vancouver for the summer. The last week has felt like forever. On Saturday I was up early and went to the airport, remember last two Saturdays all those on the Island. Power on/off/on/off/on/... at the airport, I was hoping my flight would be canceled and then I would get moved to first class, no such luck. Met up with André in Toronto and flew out west, it was cloudy.

We stayed at TRIUMF house for a few days while we waited for May 1st to come around when we moved into our apartment and started work.

I'm working at TRIUMF with the DRAGON team (Detector of Recoils And Gammas (go look the rest up...) Of Nuclear reactions).

TRIUMF is quite cool, We got a tour the first day and got to see all the different areas. I'm working in the ISAC section which deals with radioactive nuclei (formed from the 500MeV proton beam) and in particular the DRAGON group which takes these radioactive nuclei and bombards either protons or alpha particles to observe nuclear fusion.

The instrument, starts by taking a beam of these ions (they don't have to be radioactive :) )(lets say 12C(varying charge but around 5+ when it gets to DRAGON)) and accelerating it to ~12MeV per particle. Just to note, average air particle has 3/2kT energy < 1eV at room temperature.

The beam is shot through a gas, lets say alpha particles, and on average 1 in 10^12 12C fuse with an alpha to make 16O (varying charge). DRAGON separates these recoils (16O) by mass and charge to determine the rate at which 16O is formed. What is interesting about this reaction is that there are certain energies of the beam (~12MeV is one) that the rate has a resonance in 16O production.

This is what happens in stars when they go supernova or nova, the kinetic energies of the surroundings allow for this fusion to resonant and an increase in O production happens. (There are many resonances for different atoms not just O, DRAGON also does proton capture experiments too for many different reactions)

My job is testing GEANT, a simulation program for 'ion optics' (focusing the beam of particles with magnets, turning around corners, etc) to match up with experiment, then possibly make experiment better.

Other then that I've been really busy, moving in, groceries, thesis work needing finishing up etc. Laura is coming in 3 days yesterday to go to a conference. Should be fun.We met today and walked around abit, she came and saw our house. BBQ tomorrow :)

"Dude haven't you ever had intercourse Mr. Mackey"
"Well sure I have... it's just... I was about 19 at the time... it been about 21 years... Mmmmkay"

PEI Celebrity Spotting Game

Ever see someone famous and just couldn't wait to tell the next person you saw. It happens to me all the time, especially on PEI. Pat Mella at the grocery store (or her twin, who knows), Lawrence MacAulay at church on Saturday in Souris, Blair Ross 'hobbling' down University Avenue with his cane.

A few years ago my sister started a game, the PEI celebrity spotting game, its main mission, to reward people for seeing celebrities (Canadians only) in random places. There are only a few rules and exceptions. In general though, you see a celebrity and get points based on their, lets say, rarity, infamitity or current state of reputation. A few examples:

MLA or MP's more for MP because they're more rare (In general federal out ranks provincial). Elections don't count, oh leadership races are out too, that's right no go for Belinda.

More rare celebrities like Peter Mansbridge are worth a bit more (especially dressed up incognito and on a plane :) ). Ben Mulroney :, not so much.

Infamous people actually get negative points, I know what your thinking: If I see a person with negative points I just wouldn't say anything and therefore no points taken off, Good Luck with that, I know I can't hold it in, its so funny. You can only (sit/live) in a (potato field/tent) in front of (everyone naked/province house) so long before your points go negative :).

There are several ways to win:

1. Reach a billion points, this takes a lot of hunting.

2. Become a celebrity worth 1 million points, if someone is playing the game and spots you, gets 1 million points, you win, footnote here: if the million points puts them over the one billion mark, they win, you don't; but since this probably wouldn't happen you should be safe.

3. The last way is special, If you see someone on unsolved mysteries /rescue 911 / America's Most wanted, and your tip leads to their arrests. You win. This happened to someone in Eastern Kings, he had the guy working for him, paying him under the table, and one night was watching AMW, saw him, called them up, JAILED. Needless to say this was before the game so he didn't win.

Before you start request points for people you seen in the past, you can't go retroactive. I would still love to hear your celebrity stories though, Neil: Wrestlers don't count. You can't get points for seeing someone doing their job, no hockey players if they were playing hockey, Ian Hanomansing doesn't count if your looking though the CBC window in Vancouver.



Kyle: "Well maybe I'll take just half a hit of acid"
Ike: "I want three"

Garfunkel and Simon

Hey

Who is better Simon or Garfunkel, I recently and am right now watching Simon and Garfunkel: Live in Central Park and pondering the question who is more of a contribution to the duo.

At first (before watching this) it was clearly Paul, (a) his name comes first (b) he writes most of the songs (c) and he always plays the guitar (d) all Art does is do vocal.

After watching the concert I noticed that Art has more of a vocal part then I originally thought and clearly is a better singer overall.

I'm now even more undecided.

Paul Simon looks like Jonathan Vickerson, who is Andrew Vickerson's brother who lived in Souris before he moved who apparent went to an international sailing competition with Jessica Ma (just found this out) who is in Physics at UPEI, beyond

"Stan, don't you know the first law of physics? Anything that's fun costs at least eight dollars. "

Enjoy your week

Heard - Yap - Apparently

I want to induce some dicussions but I'm just not passionate about any recent news stories. Sure there's lots out there but I don't really care, here's some on my mind (giving in the style of an email from my sister 3 years ago :) it still makes me laugh, I'm not as good as her at it )

Heard Gretzky in a bit of a sitch
Yap
Apparently his wife keeps secrets from him
What do you think of that?

Heard that the girls won 16 - zip
Yap
Apparently 15 wasn't enough
What do you think of that?

Heard that Western Standard published some pics
Yap
Apparently they're a little more successful then UPEI
What do you think of that?

Heard that the VP shot someone
Yap
Apparently he though it was a quail... a bright orange quail
What do you think of that?

Heard that I'm heading to Vancouver in the Summer
Yap
Apparently I'm working with a Dragon, blah
What do you think of that?

See, nothing really interesting, except maybe the last one :). I'll get back to my molecules.

"Its not potholes you got to be worried about, It's potheads" Episode 902

Catch ya later

I know, I know

Just give me five more days, thats all I'm asking for.

"No, dude, independent films are those black and white hippie movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding." Episode 209

Listening to Super iTunes on Ising Morning

So I was asked recently why are you using Winamp? My response was 'because it has a neat jump feature', that's about it. Sure it is good for videos but I find it isn't. VLC works with the videos, even more so. So therefore I've switched. Planning for my future, I'm using iTunes, it seems okay, has a jump feature that may not be as good as Winamp's but I can change. Part of the switch was influenced by my Sister's iPod, they are quite nice little machines; love the click wheel.

Santa came, dropped off a family game. Super Scrabble. 'More tiles, More points, More squares, More fun' I thought there was too many tiles in the first one, it takes forever especially with me playing, But I must say quadruple word score is a nice tile to get.

On the topic of games, Island Morning apparently has a yearly phone-in about boardgames, card games, and hobbies. I heard this on my way to town last week. I felt obligated to spread my families Actionary experiences to the world, sorry maritimes. Let me regale you in the instructions

1. Just like Pictionary except act instead of draw.
2. Refer to Pictionary rules.

Some may say, 'Oh it's like Charades'. NO, NO, NO, NO. While sharing characteristics of charades it is fundamentally different. It is like comparing C to Java, sure both are programming languages but whoever says they're the same should be shot. (This is beneficial since they probably are a Java programmer and don't know the difference, one less Java programmer is always good :) ). You don't have to act out tough clues like Yugoslavia and Wilt Chamberlain in Charades. Anyway, needless to say we didn't play this Christmas, I think that it starts fights in our family, we don't play it to save Christmas :) this may be linked to me not hearing "Evan, you ruined my whole Christmas" this year, maybe I am just growing up :) , nah.

I did something fun over Christmas. I programmed a simple Monte Carlo simulation of the Ising model of a ferromagnet. (See picture) a red surrounded by blue switches to blue, and vice-versa. But what happens if a blue is surrounded by two red and two blue, or even all blues. Well the corresponding Boltzman factor is compared to a random number. Eventually the system ends up is the most probable configuration. Pretty cool, nice pic too.

I've dug this out of the archives

You will never have a period because you are a man ... with titties.
Says God to Stan on News Year 2000

Have a great 2006

I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition

The lesser know quote but essential to understanding all this Spanish Inquisition (SI) stuff. I had no clue what "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquistition" came from or meant until I used my good friend Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is Wicked (some may say Wikied) anything you ever wanted to know, such as anything and everything about the SI. As for my new blog, I am going to try to find a Wiki article (or something else fairly interesting) to comment on each post. Taking a leaf from Jason's book of spending an hour a day researching something interesting. Today is the SI.

Monty Python, who knew (probably everyone but me). I'm just making a guess here but is this group connected to everything? What's more important is the quote in my title, it makes the whole situation much more clear, let me elaborate. In many MP skits randomly (although clearly scheduled) people would say "I didn't expect a kind of SI" when questioned about something, kinda like "Why are you wearing that empty computer moniter?" or "Isn't that your 20th glass of wine?". Then a bunch of, I'll call them inquisitors, jump in and say ... "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition".

On a blog related issue, as most of you know I am obsessed with South Park to put it lightly. Their quotes randomly turn up everywhere, or I make them turn up every where :). I'll finish off with a quote:

"And when you all get shot and cannot carry on, though you die, La Resistance lives on"

Happy Holidays