Sloooow Shift February 1, 2007
Posted by gordonwatts in science.add a comment
The Tevatron is busted. Magnet replacement and ion pump replacement - they have to break part of the ring’s vacuum. This involves warming part of it up to 100K (liquid nitrogen temperatures) which takes a day each way - warm up and cool down. So no beam until late Friday. This sucks because the only two shifts I’ve got on this trip are before Friday afternoon: so no data.
When the accelerator is as dead as this we send some of our shifters home (and keep their phone numbers). So the control room is quite empty. People fall asleep in their chairs. Analysis gets done. The monotony was broken up by only a request from a friend from NIKHEF (in Amsterdam) to reset a local computer. This was nice because it involved a walk outside: it is cold and snowing here. Great way to wake up!
Photo Storage February 1, 2007
Posted by gordonwatts in computers, life.add a comment
The New York Times has an article on storing your photos - a bit of software I need to update. They mention how nice it is to be able to download free trials and try out the software. They are right. I’m about half way through the list of programs and trying them out on a small library of 100 photos (this is on hold until I get back from Fermilab).
The Daily WTF February 1, 2007
Posted by gordonwatts in computers.2 comments
I stumbled on this web site preparing for my owl shift tonight (i.e. surfing the web while eating Burger King). It is mainly tech related (sadly, not science), but contains suchcoding gems as:
// MUST be set to 1! Params->ParentalLevel = 3;
// QA now insist this is set to 2.
Or the hilarious integer lookup routine. Or the idiot contractor (are there really people like that? And they get paid!?). I also like the site because they don’t always post why the code is stupid and if it isn’t an area that you are familiar with you’ll be left having to puzzle over it: sort of a brain teaser.
