Back in Ottawa

Haven't written my blog for a while. Jonathan and I travelled from Sydney to Vancouver (where we spent a day with Bill and family) before arriving in Ottawa (on Christmas day).

It's cold and snowy. So far, we've been flying, skiing, snow-shoeing, playing music, walking around museums and have met a whole heap of people.

The photos (which always seem to come out in a strange order) include 1) me trying to ski in the Gatineau park, 2) mum and Jonathan snow-shoeing, 3) getting covered in snow and 4) refuelling the aircraft.

For the end of the year we are planning to go to Maniwaki and then drive across towards Montreal.

My plan for sometime next year is to get to Churchill or Moosonee by train!

Fellini

I've just watched Fellini's "Satyricon". An amazing film and I didn't understand a word of it!

In Canberra

The PULSE@Parkes project was officially opened today in Canberra by the new science minister!

We have a press release here.

Very exciting!

An amazing evening

What a wonderful evening! I'm going to be enthusiastic and say that this was an evening that I won't forget in a while - basically because Nicole, Kate and I played a Boccherini string trio in a proper chamber concert. About 10 people were watching in Marueen's house. It was a perfect chamber music evening! Nicole and Kate both played superbly! There were also many other performances including us playing the Beethoven piano quartet, some Mozart piano duets, Alex performed the E minor Brahms cello sonata and I finished the programme with the Squire Tarantella! But the Boccherini was so wonderful to play.

I'm excited.

News report:

Bondi shark attack report

A swimmer has been bitten by a shark at Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach, leaving him with deep gouges to his arm. .. "That's a shark," the lifeguard said.

"Not a big one, because he wouldn't have had his arm left."

A swim

I went to the pulsar group beach picnic today. I was snorkelling at Shelly Beach, but left the water rather fast when a large fin was spotted just around the corner.

Now I know

According to facebook, my friends are doing the following:

1. Simon is finally starting to become less zombified.
2. Vernon is in St Brieuc, France for handball world championships
3. Jo is back in Nagoya.
4. Ilana is wondering how she is going to get through the next 20 nights of observing.
5. Bryan is not jet lagged.
6. Alison is helping her husband with his wing covers in the COLD.
7. Robert is listening to the rain...
8. is thrilled that we achieved some goals against Brazil... now it's time to bring on Russia! GO AUSTRALIA!
9. Naomi is now thoroughly educated on Strategic Innovation Management and wishing English were used more frequently in the corporate world.
10. Tara is dedicating a week to Centaurus A.
11. Ray is observing...rain, mainly.
12. Nanda is cat-sitting!
13. Rhiannon is in a place near you.
14. Elen is still a headbanger!
15. Faith is hoping it might be so.
16. Emma is feeling better as is Alexander on his birthday!

...

I know some strange people.

Students controlling the telescope!

The first PULSE@Parkes observation run was successful. This is a project run by Rob and myself to get secondary school students to observe using the Parkes telescope. The students undertake the observations remotely from Sydney! The day seemed to go extremely well although it was, apparently, rather hectic down in Sydney. We intend to put a press release out about this project in the next day or so!

I return to Sydney tomorrow (actually today, but I haven't slept yet). We're leaving a little early to try and get back before midnight. I then have to give my talk as the "astrofest" early Thursday morning.

At Parkes

Lots of kangaroos. The photo was taken from the kitchen window. Work is rather hard at the moment - I got up at 9am and I'm observing until 4am! The observations are basically going okay.

I've been asked to give a talk to the Parkes staff about the research being carried out using the telescope! We're also having the first PULSE@Parkes run on Tuesday which should result in a press release - the first time that Australian school students have been able to operate the Parkes telescope!

I'm trying to get all my scripts working correctly for the PULSE@Parkes run, work with my summer students, fix up some code and write some papers.

Ciao

A lot has happened!

David and I went on an amazing sailing course. We sailed a "Hunter 33" (see photo on left from the course website). Wonderful! We put up the sails under the harbour bridge, sailed past the opera house, dodged the Manly ferry (which does not give way to any other boats), had lunch moored in Watson's bay, headed out to the "heads" and then back around. We were in a group of 7 students and a great instructor. We all had a go at steering, moving the ropes and hanging on to stop falling out as we were generally at some incredibly steep angle!

Both David and I are planning to do this again!

I've also had some very enjoyable music nights and work has been as crazy as ever. I am currently supervising two summer students who are extremely good. Hopefully we'll get a few papers out.

I bought a suit!

I'm now at Parkes and will be on the late-night observing shift.

Manly

Good day today. I took the ferry to Manly (take a look at this movie of the ferry a few months ago). Jo, David and I went hiking around Shelly beach and then up to the top of the hill. Wonderful views over the ocean and of the many lizards and plants! David and I met up with Kate for dinner at a new Indonesian restaurant in Epping (I have no idea what I ate, but it was delicious) and then Kate and I played some duets.

It's election day here today and I spotted John Howard from my bus this morning as he went off to vote (I assume for himself).

Learning languages

Learning languages is odd! I was trying to remember how to say "How are you?" in Italian (the answer being "come va", or "come stai"?), but could only find phrases in my book like:

"On no account must you be persuaded to give up the cause" (in nessun caso devi ...)
"You are forbidden to contact my children" ("le e proibito ...")
"We cannot accept the view that the lack of research and development explains the decline of Britain" ("non condividiamo affatto l'opinione secondo la quale ...")

Why ?

Lots to do

I've just bought a huge Italian dictionary! Unfortunately, I seem to busy with work stuff to actually do any Italian. I'm going sailing on Sunday!

Interesting hike

Wow - another interesting hike. Dick, Alma, Bill and I went hikeing around the Manly Dam on Sunday. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but should get some photos from Bill and Dick to add to this blog. The main interest was 1) Dick almost falling over the edge of a waterfall, 2) watching a red-bellied black snake swim around into the pool that I was considering having a swim in and 3) having a rather dramatic encounter with a deadly brown snake. The snake was huge - about 2m long and the width of my arm. Dick was about 1m from it when it reared up and then shot off at great speed (luckily in the opposite direction to us). As Dick said in an email to Maryam: "It's the largest snake I've ever seen in the wild and probably the closest I've ever been to one! They are pretty dangerous - most venomous in Australia".

Reading about these snakes afterwards is quite interesting. Apparently they sometimes chase after people! I also discovered that there is a 4m long python that lives in the Sydney region.

By the way, I've given up on trying to convince Emma to visit me here (or even probably look at my blog again)!

Italian is going well. Io ho fame. I also learnt that the word for "finger" is masculine if it is singular and feminine if it is plural.

Getting on with things

I'm still rather down about M. and cleaning up all her stuff, but lots of good things have also happened recently. I'm just back from a wonderful concert with the Sydney Symphony conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy (THE Vladimir Ashkenazy!) performing Rachmaninov's Vocalise, the 3rd pieno concerto (Garrick Ohlsson on piano who also played a Rachmaninov prelude as an encore) and the symphonic dances. I went with Nicole who kindly drove me back home. She has convinced me to try and learn a piano piece properly - i.e. take months over the piece and slowly work up from one hand at a time etc. I've never learnt a piece like this before - any ideas? I'm torn between a Schubert sonata and some Liszt.

Other good things: tomorrow Kate and I are going out to look for a 'cello bow. I'm going to buy a bow to celebrate getting a PERMANENT RESEARCH POSITION at the ATNF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've just got the documents: I haven't read them in detail, but am being offered an indefinite appointment as follows:

Title: Research Scientist
From: 01 Jan 08
Duration: Indefinite
CSIRO level: --- about 4 steps higher than I'm currently at!!!

Signed by the ATNF director!!!!

This is all conditional on me being granted a permanent residence VISA in Australia. I really hope that all the crazy stuff that has happened with Maryam doesn't cause a problem, but I don't see why it should.

Work is going very well. I've almost finished my tempo2 paper III and Bill and I are working on another paper to study error analysis in pulsar timing. I also have to go down to Canberra in mid-December to talk to some important politicians about our project to make the Parkes telescope operable by high school students.

Lots to do ... (including learning some more Italiano)

How things change ...

Well, I was in a wonderful mood yesterday, but am feeling rather down again today. I went out with Rick and David for an Indian curry - the first Indian curry that I've had since I left Maryam in Manchester. I've now been trying to do some more packing of M's stuff, but I keep getting distracted and looking at her photo album of "M and G in Australia" and "M and G in New Zealand" and "M and G in Canada" ... I 've boxed up to post to her our wedding album and all sorts of other emotional pictures. I don't even have a copy of most of our wedding photos and certainly don't feel like scanning them all in.

I'm going to bed.

Wonderful music

Again some stunning music. Nicole, Kate and I went through some Boccherini string trios before Maureen joined us to work on one of the Beethoven piano quartets.

Wonderful!

Friday the 17th ...

I've just learnt that Friday the 17th is an unlucky day in Italy (whereas the number 13 is considered very lucky)! As you may have guessed, I've just returned from my 5th Italian lesson. It doesn't seem to get much easier. Mi chiamo George, sono inglesi.

I had an incredibly busy weekend. On Saturday evening a group of us went out to Eastwood for a few drinks, a Korean BBQ, followed by some burgers and chips (as a few members of the party - i.e. Rick and Jonathan - were very greedy, and/or burnt all of their food at the BBQ). I discovered on Sunday morning that Jo (an English student doing her PhD in Japan and who can cook a mean Korean BBQ) was excellent on the recorder. So we spent the morning playing recorder duets. Nicole then came around with a HUGE CAKE! It was (and still is) enormous (see photo)!!!!! We played heaps of music again. Later in the afternoon Jonathan and I went out to play some squash (which I lost badly because I had eaten much too much cake).

Tomorrow Nicole, Kate and Maureen are coming around to play some piano quartets.

I never thought ...

... that I'd be playing guitar and violin duets! Again Nicole came around tonight and we got through heaps of different music (including Beethoven's 5th for piano duet and the slow movement of the Elgar 'cello concerto). We finished off by score reading the Schumann 'cello concerto. Nicole, David and I are taking a sailing course in 2 weeks and there is even a possibility that I may be doing some tango dancing (don't laugh!)

I had heaps of meetings at work today. It looks like Rick and I will have to go down to Canberra to meet some important politicians to talk about my project to get high school students to use the Parkes telescope. We also had a meeting with members of the ICT centre who are heavily involved in developing virtual spaces where people can interact etc. (Their main project at the moment is to have robots in iron-ore mines, but the controllers feel as if they are in the mine). They are interested in how their work can be used to give the students a feel that they are actually at the telescope!

Milwaukee

It's almost 2am here. I'm waiting for people in Milwaukee (not Milwauki, mum) to wake up. I've put lots more photos of the 6 foot track on http://picasaweb.google.com/george.b.hobbs/6FootTrack

Enjoy!

Huntsman and rabbits

Sarah doesn't like my pet huntsman spider that is currently living in the spare room. It's about as big as my hand and lives in the top corner of the room. It looks rather impressive! It came wandering into my room this morning and works much better than an alarm clock. At 5am I found myself leaping into the air trying to extract the spider from my hair. This was just as well as I had to finish my talk for the "Science at Parkes" meeting this morning. The talk went well although it turned out to be rather controversial - one pulsar astronomer said that he disagreed with almost everything I said!

Another Italian lesson this evening: We learnt something about a rabbit being -- in/ on/around/ behind/ in front of/ next to -- a box.

Even more photos

Another busy day. Played squash with Jonathan for an hour, had lunch (a healthy lunch!) in the Macquarie centre and then worked on my write-up for the Amaldi conference, talk that I need to give tomorrow on Science with Parkes and produced a newsletter article on the Pulse@Parkes project. I still need to make myself some dinner, finish tidying the house (and boxing up the remainder of Maryam's things - I've now run out of boxes!), do my Italian homework, work through a few guitar pieces and start to learn some of the Liszt piano music that I bought yesterday.

Various photos of our wonderful hike on the 6 foot track are dotted around this post. These photos include (they seem to be coming out in a random order so I won't try to describe each one individually): Albert meeting a red-belly black snake that wasn't going to get off the path for us, a rock-wallaby hiding in the bush and various images of us relaxing at the camp-sites.

Quick update

Sorry, I still haven't copied the other photos of the 6 foot track onto my blog yet. I'll try and get this done tomorrow. On Wednesday night, Joris, Kate, Albert and I went to celebrate our walk by eating at Harry's cafe in Wooloomooloo. This is an interesting place! You buy a pie (in my case a curry pie covered in mashed potatoes, mushy peas and gravy) and sit eating it watching the rats running around the wharf below you.

Tonight I had a guitar lesson with Kate's dad. I can now play some simple melodies.

A few photos

I attach a few photos of our hike. The hike was from the road near the Jenolan caves to Katoomba. In total this was around 45km and took three days. My first photo is of my "bivvy" - a rather small tent that lets the rain in (as I discovered on the first night when a thunderstorm passed overhead). The next photo gives some idea of the type of hiking! For the first two days we were walking along quite a wide dirt road through some rather spectacular scenery.

The biggest problem for me was carrying the rucksack. Mine "weighed" 20kg at the start and even though I drank about 8lt of water enroute, it didn't seem any lighter at the end!







One of the most exciting (and for me, the most scary) parts of the trip was crossing a very wobbly bridge (that felt as if it was about to turn upside down) over a river bed (about 30m down).





Climbing out of the valley at the end was rather challenging as well. However, the views were really spectacular.

I'll add a few more photographs tomorrow. We spotted a wallaby, snakes, various lizards, heaps of parrots ...

Overall, a great hike!

Poor neighbours

Another wonderful evening. Nicole came around again to have a meal and play lots and lots and lots of music. We succeeded in playing an entire Haydn symphony for piano duet! After dinner we moved on to the Kol Nidre and Kreisler's Praeludium and Allegro.

Wow!

We then score-read the final movement of the Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto. It's amazing listening to music like that with somebody that could, potentially, actually play it!! Anyway, we are going to a concert in the Sydney Rachmaninov festival (conducted by Ashkenazy) sometime next week. We also hope to play the Messian Quartet for the End of Time in concert sometime, perhaps, in December!

I've got heaps of photos to put on this blog from the walk. Unfortunately, I left my USB disk at work and so won't be able to transfer them to this computer until tomorrow.

The Italian course is getting harder and harder. I felt like a school-boy again as I was trying to finish my homework on the bus to the course. Oh well, I cannot get any worse! The teacher, Laura, has given us about 30 verbs to learn for next week.

Quick, before it crashes

I'm excited about writing about the hike across the blue mountains, my recent Italian lesson and the forthcoming Rachmaninov festival. Unfortunately, my internet connection only seems to stay up for about 5 minutes and so I'll have to stop now and write more details tomorrow.

Anyway, the hike was stunning, but very, very hard work.

On my way

I'm ready and packed for the 6 foot track starting tomorrow with Albert, Kate and Joris! The weather forecast is good (i.e. not too hot) and my pack weighs 20kg! That includes 9lt of water!

Hopefully I'll have lots of photos for this blog when I get back!

Not complaining today ...

I've just had a wonderful evening playing music with Nicole. Work went reasonably well and Jonathan, Mike and I missed lunch to play squash. In the evening I cooked Nicole a chicken stir-fry and we just played music for hours and hours. We got through various piano duets (including the Faure Dolly suite), various cello and piano duets (including plenty of Vivaldi), heaps of violin and piano (her sight-reading of the Haydn violin concerto was great), viola and piano (the Eccles) and then recorder (me) and cello (Nicole) duets. We hope to get to the Rachmaninov festival in the opera house sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Tomorrow Joris, Kate and Albert are coming around to finalise packing and planning for our 3 day hike.

I'm going ot make this blog more interesting sometime soon - I'm always too tired, or have too much to do, to write anything particularly exciting at the moment.

Geocache

I spent this morning boxing up more of Maryam's stuff - this job still has no sign of ending. Joris and I cooked lunch, walked to the Macquarie centre to buy stuff for our long hike next weekend. We then went to find a geocache and failed completely - I'm completely covered with scratches and bruises from the rather crazy route we took through the bush. Anyway, we then went for an easier cache and managed to find that one!

The photo is of me returning from Parkes to Sydney after our last observing trip.

I now need to learn my Italian vocab very fast -- I'll be tested on it tomorrow!

Another sporty day

Spent the morning packing another 3 boxes full of Maryam's stuff. This work seems never-ending! Jonathan and I then played about 1.25 hours of squash. We returned home to make a simple lunch for us, Joris, Albert, and Kate who discussed plans for our huge hike next weekend (3 days across the Blue Mountains). Afterwards we all headed off to work to play a few games of ping-pong. Jonathan, Joris and I then met Natalie to play an hour of tennis. Jonathan, Nat and I headed to Eastwood for an Viet. meal, before returning to my house to sit around playing music and chatting.

I'll spend a lot of tomorrow continuing to tidy up the house and try and learn the Italian that I need to know by Monday evening.

Music and film

Another odd day. Had a reasonable day at work, although I didn't seem to get anything done. In the evening Sarah and I did the first two clues of our first geo-cache. We had only one hour to complete the clues and so we jogged for about 3km along the Lane Cove hiking trails. We'll get up early tomorrow to actually go to where the cache is hidden.

Kate then came around and we played various pieces of music. I had another attempt at the Kol Nidre (sp?) ... I really must learn that piece properly!

Sarah and I then watched a depressing French film about a man losing his wife and I'm feeling rather down at the moment. However, a good night's sleep should sort that out.

Musical evening

Had a great evening playing various combinations of cello, recorder, piano and violin with Nicole. Her playing is stunning!! We got through a whole heap of piano duets (including a Haydn symphony written out for piano), the Vivaldi A minor violin concerto, the Rachmaninov Vocalise for 'cello and piano, some Beethoven violin/cello duets and a whole heap more. Sarah kindly cooked a great meal.

A wonderful evening!

Great ...

What a day. Woke at 3am, observed until 8am (whilst watching the rugby and doing some calibration tests), sat in the car back to Sydney (with stunning views over the mountains, crazy driving from A.), had a chocolate bar for lunch, worked for a few hours, went home (found key under a plant pot), went back out again to the City, had dinner, bought my Italian text book (which is entirely in Italian - I don't understand a word of it), bought a GPS (Faith and Mel know why!), went to my first Italian lesson (from 7:30pm to 9:30pm) and then caught the bus back home. I then played various pieces by Chopin and Bach to Sarah and am now writing my blog (at five minutes to midnight).

The Italian lesson was great fun. I'll write more about it in my next blog entry. In brief, there were five students and the teacher (a lady from Rome). She waved her hands around a lot, spoke almost entirely in Italian and taught us words like "white-board marker" (pennarello).

Tomorrow, Nicole is coming around to play some duets! On Wednesday, Joris arrives back in Sydney. On Thursday both Sarah and Max will be staying at my house.

England won the rugby

Another early day. Woke at 3am, headed up to the control room, helped J.J. for a while and then watched the France-England rugby match. I'm now trying to get obtain the best quality J1939+2134 arrival time file. This is not simple, I plan to 1) use analytic templates, 2) DM correct the data and 3) properly calibrate the observations. Dick has already phoned my up (7am on a Sunday) to ask to me produce him a few plots! I'm also trying to test the calibration signals here at Parkes.

Joris will come to the ATNF next week. We have a crazy plan of trying to finish a paper within his two week trip. So much for my day off! I'm chatting to J. on the phone now so I'd better sign off ....

Back at Parkes

Back at Parkes again. I think that I'm going to take a couple of days off next week. Last night was wonderful - I went to an Italian restaurant with Kate + family - but staggered back rather late. I got to sleep about 11pm, but had to wake again at 5am to go to Parkes. The work at Parkes, this afternoon, was as crazy as ever. We were trying to send a very well-defined signal through the processing chain to try and understand the time delays in the system. We succeeded to some extent. Anyway, I'm off to bed now ( 8:45pm), but have to wake again at 3am.

The sign on my door that used to say "George Hobbs + wife" has now been modified (rather poorly) to say just "George Hobbs". Oh well.

I've also got a busy week ahead. Maybe I'll have to take a day or two off the week after.

Snakes at Parkes

We had an interesting finish to our Parkes observing which involved meeting a very large brown snake, climbing to the focus cabin to discover some nesting parrots in the feed, narrowly missing some kangaroos on the road, eating in a diner in Bathurst, discovering that the mountains were all foggy and finally getting home by 1am.

Today, I was a little tired, but had to give a talk at the pulsar timing array meeting in the morning. Work went remarkably well. In the evening, Jonathan and I went out for a Viet. meal in Eastwood, before I beat him a table tennis (ha, ha - hope he's reading this). Sarah is coming to stay tomorrow and then I'm off to Parkes again on the weekend.

I sat around drinking wine and playing Chopin waltzes to myself this evening- this leads to some rather depressed thoughts and so I switched to Scott Joplin and coke. Now, I'm feeling wide awake and cannot get to sleep.

Last night of observing

The observing for the GLAST NASA mission finished a few minutes ago. Now I can actually sleep for 10 hours or so! I "worked" today from 3:30am until 9:15pm. Actually, I found it impossible to concentrate after lunch and so planned another trip across Australia. I'm not sure when I'll fit this one in, but it seems possible to travel overland from Sydney to Darwin, but taking a non-standard route. The route that I've planned is train from Sydney to Brisbane. Change to the sleeper train from Brisbane to Winton (in the middle of absolutely nowhere). From Winton it is possible to catch a bus to Mt Isa and on to Tennant Creek. From Tennant Creek, I will be able to pick up the Ghan train to Darwin. This journey should take me from the coast, to outback, to the desert, to rainforest and back to the coast.

I'm also interested in driving from Broome to Darwin. GOOGLE maps gives directions as:

Turn onto Great Northern Hwy: 967 km
Turn right at Victoria Hwy: 554 km
The road bends to the left: 202 km


I showed around a bunch of 10 yr old girls around the telescope today. They seemed more interested in my ability to turn them into aliens using my mac - see photo

Observing at Parkes

No text necessary ...

Becoming a paper clip at Parkes ...

I've been asked to become an animated paper clip for the Parkes visitor centre. Apparently when a visitor has a question for the computer then I'll pop up and give the (hopefully correct) answer.

Gosh.

We're also planning a movie for the Pulse@PKS project that will allow high school students to make observations with Parkes. The movie will show the students how we unstow the dish, start the observing, etc. etc. We're planning to get Sarah to take the main leading role, but hopefully I can hang around in the background and help move the jacks or press a button.

Lots more interesting stuff happening. David locked himself in the shower, all the fire alarms were set off, all the systems crashing, interesting results being obtained, kangaroos hopping in front of the car, huge trucks backing into the visitor centre, us demanding that the visitor centre switches off all its lights to see if they are causing interference ...

Ciao

A department of astronomers ...

... is the correct answer to Faith's question "what is the collective noun for a group of astronomers"! What a boring answer!

Observing went better today although CPSR2 kept crashing.

TCS wordt totaal waanzinnig met kaketoes.

TCS blir helt annorlunda med kakaduor.

TCS devient tout-a-fait ridicule aux Cacatoes.

TCS wird total wahnsinnig mit Kakadus

Thanks to Joris and mum. This came from Joris emailing me "If CPSR2 has a reply timeout, TCS goes absolutely ludicrous with cockatoos." which got me thinking about how many people around the world would understand that sentence. Any more languages?

Not a quiet day

Everything went wrong today! I was trying to observe for the Parkes pulsar timing array project using 3 backend systems (the DFB1, DFB2 and CPSR2). Initially everything started off smoothly, but the signal from the DFB2 seemed rather noisy. This was tracked down to some incorrect wiring. Okay, not a problem. Then the DFB1 stopped working. I phoned the director of Parkes (who was on holiday - today is a public holiday) who suggested switching the system on and off. Unfortunately this caused a power surge which caused the circuit breakers to jump. Now, I had managed to switch off the power to all our observing systems. It took about 1.5 hours, climbing on ladders, pressing buttons, moving cables etc. to get all the power back on. I observed for about 20 minutes before the wind arrived. We had 60km/hr winds for about 6 hours! During that time David and I managed to fix a problem with the calibration source that had been bugging us for ages. During this time John "fixed" the telescope control software. Finally the wind died down, but then neither the control software, nor CPSR2 was working.

I've left David and Ramesh to sort it all out and will hopefully come back at 4am to find that everything has been fixed!

In the meantime I decided that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on any difficult work and therefore updated my work web site instead (click here). What do you think? Any suggestions?

Another quiet day

It's terribly quiet here. As this is a long weekend most people have gone off on holiday somewhere. The pulsar astronomers at the telescope are currently myself, David and Alessandro. We spent the day working, observing and watching various sporting matches on the TV.

As this is a rather boring blog, I've uploaded the conference photograph from the Montral meeting. I'm somewhere on the back row.

At Parkes

The observing went well today. Not too much to report. In the evening I went jogging!!! I'll try and write a more interesting blog tomorrow. Lots of kangaroos.

Arrive in Parkes

Feeling rather good today. I woke about 5:30am, had some breakfast, packed my bag and then met David. David drove the entire way whilst I map read. We stopped for breakfast in the Wattle cafe in Blackheath, had a quick detour to see the stunning views (see photo) and then drove straight through to Parkes. The observing didn't start off well as we had very strong winds. However, David got trained and we managed a few hours of observing by the end of the day. I'm now going to study a little Italian and then get an early night. I start observing at 5:45am tomorrow.

Down from the high

errr ... work went well today. I got heaps of congratulations from all sorts of people including:

"Fantastic news on the QEII Fellowship. Well done." from Matthew B.

After work, Jono, Matthew (a different Matthew), Albert and I played ping-pong for a few hours and then went off to the Epping "hotel" for a meal. It was all great, but I still feel very strange coming home to an empty house :(

I'm very tired and need to be awake again at about 5:30 am to drive with David to Parkes.

QEII

I got it! I got it! I got it! I've suddenly cheered up as I was successful in my application for a QEII fellowship. This means that I'll stay at the ATNF for at least another five years. It seems that a total of 31 QEII grants were given out this year. The titles of the approved grants include:

"Human time perception: A crossmodal investigation"

"Persistence and transformation in Ancestral Oceanic Socity: the archaeology of the first 1500 years in the Vanuatu archipelago"

"Understanding social cancers: Intra-sepecific parasitism by honeybee workers"

"From print to the internet: the media in Australia since 1803"

"Environmental and genetic risk factors for anxiety disorders in children"

"Dynamic spectrum access in multi-hop wireless broadband networks"

"The structure and geometry of graphs"

and, or course,

"Gravitational wave detection through millisecond pulsar timing"

There were two astronomy QEII's awarded and I was lucky enough to get the only award given to CSIRO. Thanks to everyone who read my application! Jonathan, David and I went out for a Thai meal to celebrate.

sleep ... sleep ... sleep

errr.... I need to go to sleep. ....

I've just finished watching "The Red Violin". It's marvellous.

il gatto, il fratello, lo zio, un figlo, il padre, un cugino ... gosh learning languages is soooo exciting! I've looked ahead to discover that after lesson 14, I'll be able to say "My sister buys fruit everyday". I can imagine saying that a lot in Italy! It's probably a bit more useful than the phrases in my Urdu book which teaches me "my cowardly servant wouldn't go near the dead tiger", but such sentences do make the Urdu rather more interesting.

Mio padre prepara il pasticcio!

Any suggestions for phrases that will come in handy in Italy?

Sleep ... sleep ... sleep

Not a good day ...

This is not going to be a fun week. I'm in a bit of a mood at the moment and hope that ranting at my blog will allow me to calm down a bit. First, I discovered that I didn't get the CSIRO award that would have given me some sabbatical leave. Robert was very kind telling me about it, but it didn't make the day start off well. I then found out that I will hear about my QEII application on Wednesday. Two rejections in one week is not going to be great. I know that the chance of getting the QEII is very small, but I'm still going to feel rather down if I don't get it. I'm certainly being negative there - I probably have as good a chance as anybody else, but as I was told a few weeks ago, there's always about 100 excellent applications for about 5 positions. To make things worse I also spent part of the day trying to fix problems for Han which basically have nothing to do with me, or part supervising Bill's student. Most of the rest of the day was spent staring at my "to-do" list slowing growing.

Oh well, Jonathan and David came to the rescue (as always) and we went out for a pint and steak at the Ranch.

I then got home thinking that I'll cheer up by sorting out some photographs, but ended up looking through hundreds of pictures of my engagement to Maryam. As they say in Australia, I'm "like a bandicoot on a burnt ridge".

Okay. I'm going to learn lesson 2 in my Italian course now and then get an early night.

Arrivederci ....

A great curry!

Another interesting day. I woke up really early, had a good breakfast and then spent a large amount of time cleaning up the cupboards in the kitchen. I've moved all sorts of things around and now have a lot more space. How exciting! Before lunch I decided that I couldn't stay in the house any longer - the weather was stunning - and so went walking around North Ryde. I discovered a great Malaysian Hawker food place (which was rather unexpected). I then shopped for various items for the evening curry.

Jessica, Bob and David came around for the curry. I (with David's help) cooked a large butter chicken curry and a vegetable balti with papadums, chutney etc. Jessica and I then played some Vivaldi 'cello sonatas.

As my day was fun and enjoyable, but not incredibly exciting (the most exciting thing that happened to me today was being attacked from behind by some rather vicious magpies), I thought that I'd scan in one of my favourite photographs. This was taken when I was living near Geneva and took a trip up to Mt Blanc. There is a more serious reason for trying out my scanner. I'm going to send Maryam a large number of our photographs and want to keep an electronic copy of some of the photos that I particularly like. I'm not looking forward to going through a photo albums, but I'll have to get it done sometime!

errr ....

I haven't got a clue what to write in this blog. I went to the Macquarie centre this morning and purchased some more DVDs. Marta had suggested that I buy a bunch of Italian films - one "la meglio gioventu" happens to be 6 hours long - but the Macquarie centre didn't seem to have any of her selection. Instead I bought "The Red Violin", "Il Gattopardo" and (for light relief) "Those magnificent men in their flying machines".



I then planned to do heaps of work, but fell asleep instead. I woke up in the evening to cook an enjoyable dinner of Leatherjacket and then headed off to the Epping Hotel for a drink with David. Bill has signed me up for a 50km cycle ride in a few weeks. I'll have to mend the puncture on my bike.

I rather rashly promised to cook David, Jessica and Bob a curry tomorrow night. Hopefully that goes okay. My kitchen is now nice and tidy (although only on the surface - I still need to tidy up the insides of all the cupboards).

Changing emotions

What a mixed day! Last night Maryam phoned and we had a great chat. I'm absolutely amazed about how she is coping and keep realising how that I cannot predict her reaction to anything! I really thought that she'd be upset, but incredibly she seemed really strong and quite cheerful.

Work went terribly until about 10 minutes before I finished. I spent all day trying to solve a silly problem with my gravitational wave simulation. I thought the entire day was wasted until I decided to remove a DC offset from the gravitational wave background and suddenly everything worked perfectly!! Bill and I also discovered an issue about fitting for pulsar positions that we hadn't thought about before. Therefore, my work overall went really well!

My arm is still a bit sore, but I can move it reasonably freely now. In the evening I planned to cook a stunning dinner, clean up the kitchen and then put a photo of my sparkling, clean kitchen on this blog. In fact, I ate a pie and chips whilst drinking too much wine (okay, mum and Maryam, I won't drink any more for a while) and watching "la vita e' bella". I'm now in the strange frame of mind that occurs after watching a magnificent, sad, but beautiful film (or after enjoying a good Australian wine).

Marta is sending me an Italian word of the day. Today's word is "tastiera" which, apparently, means "keyboard". Well, that will come in handy! I plan to write an entire blog in Italian within two weeks - unless I get some more interesting suggestions my blog will be entitled "my family"! I know the word for father (padre), uncle (zio) and a few other masculine nouns. I'll try and get around to some femine words sometime next week.

Ciao,

Bottle on the bottle-brush tree

Hooray, finally a bottle appeared on my bottle brush tree! I've had an emotional day. I started off by writing an email to M. which was horrendously hard to write and probably completely inadequate. I really hope that she's okay - she deserves a lot more luck in the next few years. By the way, if anybody (Maryam in particular) reads anything on my blog that they don't like then just ask me to remove it. It's very easy to remove some text as I keep discovering when I write a blog and then accidently delete it.

My elbow is really bad. I couldn't sleep at all last night and felt that I was going to faint a few times. Everytime I turned over I got some excruciating pain in my left arm. Work didn't go to well, but I put that down to the lack of sleep and worrying about Maryam.

In the evening, Jonathan, Kate and I cooked up some spaggetti bolognase which tasted fine (I'm still always shocked when my cooking actually is edible)! Richard then joined us to play some string quartets. We got through a Haydn quartet, followed by the complete Smetana "From My Life" quartet that mum bought us before finishing with a Mendelssohn quartet. Marcello (I think that's her name) was planning to come around to sing some Italian songs with us, but unfortunately had to finish off her paper instead. Richard invited me to go sailing on Saturday as "his dad needed some more people for his boat". Unfortunately, I'd already planned another trip and cannot make it. I'm really annoyed about this!

In the comments from a previous post mum had asked me how many instruments I now have in the house. The answer is: a quena, toy didgeridoo, electric piano, descant recorder, alto recorder, tenor recorder, viola, acoustic guitar and, of course, the 'cello.

Ciao

Sports injury

Well I must be reasonably fit. I was in work at 7am after a rather sleepless night. Apart from some work, today I did heaps of sport. I played ping-pong after lunch for about 30 minutes, from 5pm to 7pm I played tennis really, really badly against some very good players (I won a few games and slowly improved towards the end, but I was by far the least skilled player). Oh well, I can only get better. Then Jonathan and I ate a Thai meal until 8pm. From 8:30pm to 10:30pm we played badminton which almost killed me off. We played with 3 Chinese people + a guy who, I think, was from South Africa. I lost all the games I played, but have an enormous bruise on my arm as a memento.

I think that I'll add to the Australian drought by taking a bath now and try and be in bed before midnight.

Work went well. Bill and I have finalised our technique for spectral analysis of irregularly sampled data in the presence of steep red noise. It's complicated. We undertake various stages including interpolation, smoothing, pre-whitening, Fourier transforms, post-darkening and inverting the filters. Now I just have to get it to work within tempo2 and then apply it to 400 or so pulsars!

Success

Good! Today I've managed to 1) cook a good dinner, 2) get a reasonable amount of work done on the Jodrell timing noise paper, 3) do some exercise by playing ping pong in the evening, 4) book the hotel in Vancouver and 5) increase my Hirsch ranking! I've now got 17 papers with 17 or more citations!

I thought that I'd better put a photo on this blog of my nephew Alex!

I have some exciting plans now to travel to the tip of Portugal from Australia -- by train. My current plan is to take the train from Sydney to Darwin. Take the boat or fly to Singapore. Then take the train to Kuala Lumpur and on to Bangkok. I'd then head up towards Hanoi and across to Xian. I can then pick up the trans-China train to Urumqi. Across Kazakstan into Saratov in Russia. Across to Moscow and then to Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and then down into Spain and Portugal. Any volunteers for coming with me - language skills in any Asian or Continental European language would certainly be welcome!

On a more reasonable time scale, Joris and I are planning to walk the 6 foot track across the Blue Mountains sometime near the end of next month. This should take about 3 days in total.

Canada, here we come ...

This is the first time that I've had a flight itinerary that says that my flight time will be 42 hours! However, that does include a night in Vancouver on Christmas eve! The Air Canada web site was a disaster and it took me more than one and a half hours to complete the booking (which involved three phone calls and four resets of the firefox window!). I'll be travelling with Jonathan. This should be great! I think that it's Jonathan's first time in Canada and I'm sure that he won't be disappointed.

I've had an interesting day overall. I got rather depressed (not clinically depressed, I hasten to add) every now and then, but Bill, David or Jonathan would always turn up with some interesting new work. In fact, I don't think that I got anything done today, but we did make some progress thinking through some of the statistical problems. I really couldn't face cooking tonight so I went out for a meal. I now cannot face tidying up the house, so I've been playing the guitar and now writing this blog. I've really got to get this house in order!

I'm going to be spending an enormous amount of time at Parkes from the end of this month. I have to go for a week, come back for about 3 days and then go again for about 5 days. I'm trying to arrange the schedule so that I don't have to miss my first Italian lesson, but I may not have succeeded :(

... and who says the Poms spend all their time complaining! ...

A success!

Went hiking in the Lane Cove National Park with David this morning. Saw heaps of parrots, wonderful plants and lizards. I got through a little more work this afternoon (managed to simulate some gravitational waves and clock errors!).

My success was that I've managed to clear up one room in my house -- the spare room! This is a huge step-forward. See photo! However, all the other rooms are still a mess. I hope to clear up my bedroom tomorrow and then start work downstairs.


On the left is the clean spare room, underneath is my "living room"!







If you want to watch an interesting set of pictures then take a look at this site which displays all of the pictures being uploaded to the google blogs!


Ciao!

Vino blanco

Ciao,

Ho bevuto troppo vino bianco

Il cuore altrove was a great film. Especially whilst drinking a lot of wine. Unfortunately, Maryam phoned in the middle. I don't think that I was too coherent. Okay, I've got to stop drinking wine and watching depressing Italian films ...

Back to Lyne & Graham-Smith "Pulsar astronomy", not much emotion in that book!

Sydney is wonderful

Sydney was at its best today. The weather was superb, not a cloud in the sky, absolutely perfect temperature ... I went into the city to look around the botanical gardens. Wonderful - the spring flowers make the place stunning! I shared a fish and chips lunch with an ibis and ambled around photographing the flying foxes. The only disappointment was that the botanical gardens doesn't have any waratahs (and here is a link to a page about waratahs just to prove to my mum that I know how to make links). Anyway, the lady at the information desk told me that I need to head off to the Mt. Tomah botanic gardens to see some waratahs (I plan to do this next weekend). In fact, my plan is to go somewhere different in Sydney each weekend!

Everybody in Sydney looked ridiculously happy. In the botanical gardens a young Chinese couple were trying to photograph themselves (with their camera's timer) leaping in the air, holding hands, in front of the harbour. They got quite a crowd of people around them who were all making "helpful" suggestions - mainly about how to levitate for 10 seconds. I bought an ice cream from a very cheerful Asian guy. I then bought a book and was given another book for free "because it was such a nice day"!

My free book is a lonely planet guide to Sydney which describes the "feeding of the lettuce to the giant dragon" that takes place in Sydney once a year. Well, I certainly have missed that in the last 5 years, but won't be missing it again!

In the afternoon I headed back to work and played a few games of ping-pong with Dick, actually did some work and then chatted away with Bill and his wife for a while. At home, I've been boxing up Maryam's stuff and rearranging the house. In the gardens I bought a piece of botanical artwork of a banksia which I now have up on the wall!

I'm now going to eat my dinner of rump steak and jacket potato (and whatever veg. I can find that's not all soggy) and watch "Il cuore altrove" which I bought on DVD a week ago, but haven't got around to watching yet.

Wow, another comment

Just to say that I can now play a few notes on my quena!!!!! However, as a website says "but the tone you achieve by force alone is likely to drive away all your sheep." There are now no sheep left in my house. Damn.

A mixed day

Work went extremely well today. Bill and I made huge progress on the gravitational wave simulations and correlations project that we're working on. I've also been invited to write up my talk from the Amaldi gravitational wave meeting - only 30 talks out of a few hundred have been selected for the conference proceedings! The house is still a mess. I got a tad upset this evening packing up some of Maryam's stuff. I've got heaps more to do over the weekend - although I'm planning to go the Botanical gardens tomorrow and a bit of hiking with David on Sunday.

I've almost bought my flight ticket to Canada. The Air Canada web site is a disaster and it still won't let me finish the booking, but I have managed to put it "on hold".

Again I don't have a new photograph for today, but have found a nice picture of Faith and Mel's cat! "il gatto" in Italian!

Quick update

Quick update for today. I finally got a bit more work done on the Jodrell timing noise paper. Had a long chat with Andrew about extra research required for the paper. Bill and I worked through a few more issues about our data sets. Went to the Macquarie centre for dinner and to buy a few more household items. The house is an absolute mess at the moment. I'm going to need the entire weekend to clean up. I finally signed up for my Italian lessons!

Procrastination

How on Earth do people get things done? Yesterday David told me that one astronomer decided not to shave until he'd submitted his paper. A year or so later he had a huge, scraggly beard! I need to do something similar. Perhaps no burgers until my Jodrell Bank timing noise paper (which I've now been writing for 7 years) is finished. Okay, Jonathan you read it here - don't let me eat any burgers.

Today I again don't seem to have accomplished much. I've rewritten about half of my Jodrell Bank paper and hope to give a copy to Andrew tomorrow morning (I'm going to have to stay up late again). I also attended heaps of meetings as always. I've got to 1) finish the Jodrell paper, 2) finish the third tempo2 paper, 3) complete the gravitational wave paper with Andrea, Joris and Bill, 4) finish reading in FITS files into our software, 5) develop some new software that carries out fast folding algorithms, 6) complete research into pulsar timescales (the advantage here is that I could present this work in Rio in 2009), 7) develop frequency dependent standard templates, 8) update all our data from Parkes, 9) finish documenting the DFB and 10) fix up all the issues in tempo2. There's probably heaps more, but that's certainly enough to be going on with!

Played tennis this evening. Jonathan and I beat the experts!!!! Ate a rather undercooked bangers and mash for dinner. I need to spend a little more time on my cooking from now on. Suggestions welcome!

I attach a completely gratuitous photo to this blog of the map on my last flight from England to Australia. I really enjoy flying. I've just had a phone call from Maryam (from a phone box) who seems okay although she'd recently had a seizure and suffered some depression. Hopefully she's getting through this okay. Interestingly we're both looking forward to trips to Italy! I'm still enjoying my "freedom" a little (I can stay late at work without having to worry about Maryam), but things still pop up (like the screen saver on my computer that says "Hello Maryam") that make me rather upset for a while. Oh well, back to work (and learning Italian).

5 years in Australia

I've now been in Australia for exactly five years. Gosh, what a lot has happened including losing my wife. I'm still trying to get the house in order to box up her belongings. Work today was rather fun. I still cannot seem to get down and concentrate on a paper for more than a few minutes before something comes up. Anyway, I managed to produce a few more data sets for Bill, wrote Chenni's reference, finalised the summer students and sat in a couple of meetings with Dick.
This evening was wonderful. Jonathan, Kate, Jessica, Nicole and Maureen came around to my house. We performed the Beethoven piano quintet, one of the Mendelssohn piano trios, a Schumann piano trio and the Brahms quintet.

I'm now planning to phone Sarah in the Parkes control room for a chat, clean up the house, do about 30 minutes of work and then try and be asleep before midnight!

Talking on second life

Pulsar1 raymaker giving a talk on the Parkes timing array project on the ABC island in second life!





Well I'm still trying to stay in the modern world. I've updated my facebook account AND gave a lecture on Second Life (see http://www.csiro.au/events/SecondLifeHobbs.html) which I think went okay. I'm keeping this blog basically as an update on what I've done at work - today I fixed up the byte swapping issues with the sigproc software and spent most of the rest of the day preparing for the second life talk. My plan tomorrow is to get stuck in to the tempo2 paper.




Okay, enough for now.

Starting off

Well here we go. I've now used a wiki, have a skype and facebook account and now a blog! I've no idea what the purpose is of this, but I'll write down stuff as it happens. Stunning music tonight at Maureen's house with Beethoven and Mozart piano quartets!

Okay, that will do as a start.