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?