Astroprof

"Not everything that counts is countable, and not everything that’s countable counts."

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:57:16 -0700

“Not everything that counts is countable, and not everything that’s countable counts.”

- Albert Einstein

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders...."

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:37:41 -0700

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"We will restore science to its rightful place…"

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:32:39 -0800

“We will restore science to its rightful place…”

- Obama’s Inaugural, 1/20/2009

In my slow quest to move old photos to flickr, I’ve just...

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:44:59 -0700

In my slow quest to move old photos to flickr, I’ve just posted a bunch taken in Athens and on Crete in 2002. This image is of some of the ruins on Gramvousa Island, the legendary home of Aeolus in the Odyssey, and the site of a 16th century Venetian fort (full set of photos is here).

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:37:18 -0700

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

- Marcel Proust, on why we do gamma-ray astronomy

clivethompson: I want a Higgs Boson plushie for my infant son! —...

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:47:02 -0700

clivethompson:

I want a Higgs Boson plushie for my infant son! — from Boing Boing

Dipity

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:09:46 -0700

Dipity:

I signed up with Dipity, to try out a timeline view of my blog. Still seems a little buggy, particularly in the preview version 2 release, but cute.

via Dynamics of Cats

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:50:08 -0700

via Dynamics of Cats

I’ve had an idle Flickr account for years, as I’ve...

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:00:04 -0700

I’ve had an idle Flickr account for years, as I’ve used Zooomr to store online photos. Zooomr’s great, but there just aren’t many standard tools and plug-ins that have been converted to use the Zooomr API, and the user community is still pretty small. So I’ve decided to explore Flickr, starting by uploading some of my oldest digital pictures. This one is of Silver Pass Lake, in the Sierra south of Yosemite.

The sunken garden at dusk

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:02:37 -0700

The sunken garden at dusk

Great LHC and ATLAS pictures

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:15:26 -0700

Great LHC and ATLAS pictures

NSPIRES announcements

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:32:09 -0700

NASA’s grant selection page doesn’t have an RSS feed, so I built one with Yahoo Pipes. It definitely should be considered a beta version.

"In God we trust, all others bring data."

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:15:11 -0700

“In God we trust, all others bring data.”

- W. Edwards Deming

Pulsar papers on astro-ph

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:10:22 -0700

I really struggle to keep up with the crush of new papers appearing every day on astro-ph, especially when I’m on travel or otherwise not paying attention for a few days and suddenly there are hundreds of new papers to scan through for something interesting. Rather than declaring astro-ph bankruptcy, I’ve figured out how to make Yahoo Pipes do the winnowing for me. Here is an RSS feed that tries to filter out pulsar-related papers. For fun, I’ve also set up a FriendFeed room that accumulates links to all the papers. I’ll keep tuning the filter to try to match just the right set of papers. Check out all the options for the pipe — you can even have it call you with updates every day. Cool and easy.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thorsettrss

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:40:38 -0700

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thorsettrss:

I’m attempting to merge the RSS feeds from my various sites into one easy-to-remember location. Probably things will be temporarily messed up.

2008 Wharf to Wharf runners (via evadedave, CC...

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:35:07 -0700

2008 Wharf to Wharf runners (via evadedave, CC attribution-noncommercial license)

Wharf to Wharf 2008

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:13:00 -0700

We had great weather this year for the 36th annual Wharf to Wharf run in Santa Cruz, after a really hot race the last two years. The race is capped at 15,000, a crowd that fills up Beach Street between the Boardwalk and the Wharf. The pace signs don’t do much to sort out the crowd, so unless you are running with the Kenyans and Moroccans and Ethiopians up front, the first mile of the six mile run is more of an obstacle course than a race.

The crowds really make this one of the truly great races. This year, there were 52 bands along the course (according to the announcer at the start). Some of them come back year after year, and become a real part of the race. My favorites include the bagpipers near the beginning and the lone bagpiper around mile 5.5; the pots and pans band of Crow’s Nest employees; the Great Morgani, who is always at the top of the first hill; all the drummers; the groups playing Mustang Sally and Johnny B. Good; and all the hard rockers who seem so out of place on a misty Sunday morning unless they’ve been there all night.

Despite a really slow start, I managed a pretty good race, and set a personal course best at 46:31, which was a full 7 minutes faster than last year (!). The first mile was just over a minute slower than the average, and I was overcautious in the middle part of the race. Probably with a better start and a smarter race, 45 minutes would have been reachable. And if I stay healthy and actually do some speedwork next summer, maybe I’ve still got a few minutes to go after.

Of course, some might say that finishing within twenty minutes of the winner (Gebo Burka in 27:48) isn’t a very aggressive goal.

[Photo of 2007 race leaders (c) sgrace on flickr, used under cc license.]

recovery

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:05:00 -0700

With the Wharf to Wharf coming up this Sunday, and my long-term right hamstring problem acting up, I’m taking a rest from running this week. The same problem made me pull out of the last marathon I entered, NYC ‘96, and has led to a couple of long recovery breaks since then. This time, maybe I can ease off enough that I don’t have to give up running entirely. But if I can’t run the Wharf to Wharf, what’s the point?

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer."

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:33:18 -0700

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.”

- Douglas Adams