Vacation

Oh yes, I've been on vacation. Since my parents were here this vacation was a bit slower and involved less beer than usual. Some impressions:

* The service staff in Banff seems to consist to 50% of Australians left over from the ski season.

* The road between Lake Louise and Jasper has to qualify to the top ten list of the world's most beautiful highways.

* It is almost possible to get tired of waterfalls and canyons.

* It is understandable that some hockey players are sceptic towards living in Edmonton.

* Animal sightings: deer, elk, mountain goats, bald eagle and an awful lot of squirrels.


More photos at Picasa.

Hello global warming

It's been sunny and around 30 degrees C for about 3-4 weeks now. Apparently unusually warm, unusually long for Calgary. In Sweden it's been raining since May.

View

View from the kitchen window.

Freak of the Week?

Saw a dude with a helmet on at the gym today. That was a first...

Mountain of the Week - Sentinel Pass and Wasatch Pass

Okay, mountain of the week should really be pass of the week and was more of a hike than a scramble. A fantastic hike, I might add. We started at Moraine Lake (which is depicted on the backside of Canada's old 20 dollar bills) close to Lake Louise. The first three k:s are not very exciting, switchbacks through pine trees, but then you reach Larch Valley full of larch trees, meadows and wild flowers. Around you you have the ten peaks and the majestic Mount Temple, the highest mountain in the region with its 3544 m. We went over Sentinel Pass (2606 m), between Pinnacle Peak and Temple, and into Paradise Valley. Sentinel Pass got its name from the high pointy rock formations.


Paradise Valley lives up to its name. Surronded by mighty mountains where you can hear avalanches roar down the mountain sides, forest covered slopes and meadows in the valley with small streams, it is an impressive valley.


After a few kilometers in the valley it's time for the next pass, Wasatch Pass. You work your way up boulder fields, scree and steep snow slopes to reach the top and catch a glimpse of Eiffel Lake. After the descent to Eiffel Lake there is easy hiking for about 6 km back to Moraine Lake. The trip was in total about 17 km and 1200 m total elevation gain. Anyone visiting the area around Lake Louise shouldn't miss Larch Valley and Paradise Valley. No bears this week, we had to be satisfied with chipmunks, a deer and a porcupine.


Picasa.

Super-K

Cool pictures from Super-Kamiokande (after the repair).



Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Canada Day

Canada's national day today. It's 140 years since Canada became independent from Great Britain. As an independent nation Canada is not very old...

Mountain of the Week - Mt Kidd North

No more 85-year olds or women with bionic feet, this week's mountain was a real scramble with an elevation gain of 1350 m over 11 km and the highest point at 2950 m. I was tired when I reached the summit. Walking up scree sucks, it's two steps forward and one back. Walking down scree is much better, you're basically gliding down the mountain. An even more entertaining way of getting down the mountain is glissading, which means that you find a snow covered slope, sit down on your bum and slide.

The weather was so-so, during the day. It was raining during the night which made me worry that there would be new snow on the mountain. You do want snow because it is easier kick stepping up snow covered slopes rather than walking up scree but new snow lays itself in a layer on top of the old one and it can easily cause small avalanches leading to accidents. Luckily there was no new snow and it didn't start to rain until we returned to the parking lot after nine hours. However, the mountain was covered in mist most of the time which made the navigation a bit tricky. The guide book said "after the ridge you will see an obvious gully to follow to the top". We saw nothing, but our organizers got us to the summit even if we did take a bit of a detour.


This day 85 year old Ed wasn't on the trip but instead we had a 66 year old crazy Iranian. He is fitter than most of us but has a tendency to wander off on his own and get lost. Once they had to call in the rangers (or Bush Police as he called them) to find him. They found him on the highway trying to hitchhike back to Calgary.


The bear of the week was on the roadside when we went past in the car. Someone yelled "oh, a bear" and this time I actually saw something black by the road.

Tesla music

More on the subject of tesla coils. Check out Steve Ward's Singing Tesla Coil. Coooool.

Stolen from A World of Abstinence.

Mountain of the Week - w 23

This week's mountain is Eagle Hill and Deer Ridge in the Sibbald Creel area. After seeing photos from last week's hike my Chinese room mate wanted to join me. Even though he is used to mountains from his province in China I didn't want to lure him into something too difficult (his outdoor gear consisted of runners and an umbrella). We ended up doing a fairly easy hike of 16 km and 400 m elevation. Mostly forest landscape but once we reached the highest point we got a nice view of the valley. Close to the start of the hike I almost got eaten by a bear.
OK, I didn't almost get eaten but I almost saw a bear, i.e. some of the others in the group saw a bear.

Home sweet home

The New York Times visits Göteborg. Not a fantastic article but still...

Alice and Bob are getting farther apart

A new length record for quantum communication is reported by New Scientist and Nature Physics. The record is 144 km and the signal was sent by free space link.

Via Abstinence Kid.

Thunderstruck

It's been nice and warm (25 ^oC) in Calgary for a couple of days and therefore yesterdays lightning/rain storm was not unexpected. But what a storm it was! It was a magnificent lightshow that me and J watched from the open garage door while drinking brandy. Some pictures from the Calgary Herald are available here.

Mountain of the Week

This week's mountain was Heart Mountain, an easy scramble. About 10 km round trip, 875 m elevation gain and the highest peak is at 2135 m. A very nice trip with quite steep hiking in the begining up to the first summit, two-three easy ridge walks with nice views and then an easy descent. Brilliant wheather and no hurting IT bands made the day even better. I was sweating buckets though, and since I didn't bring enough water I had to rehydrate with two pints at the pub when we got back. As one of the girls cut her knee on a sharp rock and got a fairly deep wound I also realised that one should not only carry a first aid kit, one should also know what's in it and how to use the stuff...

Black holes is da shit?

Two PRL:s within four months is something that Campanelli et al seems to have achieved. They have developed a new computational algorithm for gravitation and have used it to perform simulations of two black holes merging Phys Rev Lett 96 (2007) 111101. The paper (or its animations?) were noticed by Physics News Graphic which I found via Dark Roasted Blend.

This weeks Physical Review Focus mentions two papers looking very similar to Campanelli's, and indeed, one of the papers have basically the same authors as the article mentioned above. It is not unusual that one project renders several similar papers. Usually one writes a short paper briefly describing the finding and then complements with longer, more detailed papers. Two PRL:s though is very well done. My gravitation and cosmology and my knowledge of computer algorithms is a bit rusty but I suspect that the authors got some extra attention since they produced some cool pictures and animations. The research is probably top class (they did get it in to PRL) but if you want to make your voice heard in the scientific noise it doesn't hurt to have some fancy graphic.

Birthday present

Got $1100 back on my taxes. Nice. On the other hand it means that the Canadian government has borrowed $1100 from me without interest but I prefer to look upon it as bonus money.

Time goes by...

So, one year older again. This time I have become a bit wiser, or at least richer in experience. I still claim though, that surviving one more isn't that big of an achievement. This does not mean it's not a reason to celebrate, I'm just saying that there are bigger achievements more worthy of celebration that tend to occur more often than birthdays.

I'm slowly, but reluctantly, starting to accept that I'm not 25 anymore. Despite of that, a small part of me was still happy when I had to show ID at the liqour store the other month.

Castle Mountain

This week's hike went to Castle Mountain Lookout in Banff. This time we didn't only have 85 year old Ed in his runners with us but also a girl with a bionic foot.

What's next?

Ha Ling Peak

On Saturday it's above 20 degrees and one gets sunburned whilst sitting on the deck drinking beer. On Sunday, when [cmh] is going hiking, it's 7 degrees and raining. Despite the grumpy weather it turned out to be a good day arranged by the Calgary Outdoor Club. The destination was Ha Ling Peak in Canmore, a peak which looks very impressive from the highway but the backside offers an easy scramble, i.e. steep hiking. On the way up it was not raining but on the other hand there was a fog that robbed us of the view. On the way down it started snowing and we got lost. After quite a bit of walking in knee deep snow some coward pulled out a GPS and got us back on the trail.

Ha Ling Peak got its present name in 1997 when it was changed from Chinamans Peak to the more politically correct Ha Ling Peak. Ha Ling was a cook in Canmore that made a bet that he could reach the summit and be back in Canmore within 10 hours. As proof that he had really reached the top he placed a flag there. We actually only had to climb 734 m to reach the top from the parking lot. Still, one gets 2407 m above sea level which actually is higher than Kebnekaise, the highest point in Sweden.

One other noteworthy thing is that our organizer was 85 years old and did the scramble in runners.

Big in Peru

The amazing goal that IFK Göteborg's midfielder Andres Vásquez scored this Monday was for a while the most popular video on YouTube. However, the coolest video about this goal comes from Peruvian television (Andres is, despite his thick Göteborg accent, born i Peru).

Miscellaneous

There is green stuff coming out of the trees, the grass that has always been yellow starts taking another colour and the mercury is approaching 20 degrees C. Can this be spring? Probably best to wait until after the May long weekend before proclaiming that.

The house now only has one dog. Lady got her final rest this Friday. Lately she didn't want to eat very much, she had problems walking and her kidneys were bad. Her time had come but that didn't help the landlord J from feeling a bit low. Lady was half german sheperd and half greyhound. Can't help to wonder how that happened.

Hurting IT bands suck.

Getting a new room mate. I wore down one Dutch guy. Next in line is a Chinese post doc.

Click here. Close to pornography.

Feed the monsters

I'm sitting and writing "Personal visions for career development" which is a compulsory part of a certain job application. I can't help but to think of the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin feeds garbage to the monsters under his bed to keep them quiet. In the Calvin and Hobbes book where Bill Watterson comments on some of the strips he says that this one is about his feeling that he is sending his editors crap just to keep the deadline. One gets a similar when trying to write some mumbo jumbo reagarding "personal visions".

I should state that I'm of course not trying to compare myself with the genius Watterson. Wonder what he is up to these days. Biking around in the woods probably...

Sucks to be me

Second and last skiing day of the season took place at Sunshine yesterday. Off at 6:30, cholesterol breakfast at Denny's (eggs, bacon, sausages and pancakes), a drive through London fog to Banff where the fog cleared and revealed a bright sun. People are tired of skiing a weekday this late in the season which means that there are no line-ups for the lifts. The snow got quite wet at the end of the day but that was compensated with a few cold beers in the sun. Sunshine is smaller than Lake Louise and has the disadvantage that one has to take a gondola up to reach the lifts. On the other hand it is half an hour closer to Calgary and this time it offered a much better wheather than Lake Louise did the last time. Traditional swim in hot springs and steak at Bumper's in Banff on the way home.

Back to the angstgrotte...

Followup

Today there was a departmental seminar with some guy from Ottawa who got his PhD like three years ago and already had his own group that were producing Science papers. The talk (Catalytic Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation without Activating Groups: A New Biaryl Synthesis) only rendered two marks on the bingo sheet; the two giveaways "You've no idea what's going on" and "Master's student bobs head fighting sleep". In other words a pretty good talk. It is not unusual that I have no clue what the speaker is going on about, especially if it is not physical chemistry. If it's chemistry chemistry I'm totally lost. Unfortunately I think most other people are lost too. Can it really be so hard to get people to speak at a lower level at a departmental seminar? Is it really that important to show off?

Will be tested on next seminar

Regarding the second frame on the fourth row it can be noted that I rarely ask questions at departmental seminars. The third frame on the fifth row is a giveaway though...

Spicing snaps

Since you can not get snaps or aquavit in Alberta I had to make my own for Easter. I tried two different kinds, both turned out fairly drinkable. The first one was about 350 ml vodka, the peel of one small lemon and a little less than one tablespoon of dill seeds. The spices where removed after 1.5 days. The snaps had a pretty strong taste of lemon so next time I will use less lemon and more dill. The second snaps was a bit more experimental but the goal was to get something similar to O.P. Andersson. Fresh fennel, aniseed, dill seeds, coriander seeds and some fresh coriander lay in ca 1 dl of vodka for 2 days. I also added some clove which I found in a cupboard. After one day I had to remove the clove since it dominated the taste too much. The outcome was pretty good, fennel and aniseed dominated with an aftertaste of clove. For next time, which probably will be midsummer, I'll skip the clove and add caraway.

It's April damn it

Alright, I know we can get snow any month here in Calgary but now I'm tired of snow and -5 ^oC. Bring on the spring!

Swedish football

The Swedish football league "Allsvenskan" is about to start. Another 6 months of anxeity, worrying, despair and maybe a tiny little bit of joy.

Here we go!

Funky

I discovered last.fm after a post by Dlade a while ago. Shortly it's a service/program that checks your taste in music and then suggests/plays similar music. You can either give your favourit artist or download a small program which "scrobbles" the music you play in i.e. iTunes. The program can then show you to other users with similar taste or create your personal "radiostation" based on your taste in music. The whole thing is based on that users tag music by genre for example. So far I've mostly used the program as a fun widget (here to the right) partly because I like the music I already have and partly because in the office my laptop is connected to the internet via U of C's lousy wlan, which can not stream music without interruptions.

However, the other day I started working more in the lab where the computer has a proper internet connection and after listening to Sweden getting beaten by Northern Ireland I switched to "my" radiostation on last.fm. After the bloody thing had played James Blunt I was ready to never ever use it again but decided to let it play music tagged "funk" instead. Now we're talking. There's a lot of Old School like Parliament and Sly Stone, some soul funk and some stuff goes towards hip-hop and acid jazz. One discoveres several good artists one never heard of before. Try for yourself.

Me like!

Calgary Transit

The bus and C-train drivers started a work-to-rule campaign today to get some momentum in the talks regarding the unions contract (which they have been lacking since June 2006). Since Calgary Transit will need to hire about 200 drivers during 2007 one might suspect that no overtime might affect them. Then, how do they go about informing their customers about possible disturbances? Well, not at all seemingly. Their webpage, which could be a good channel for informatio, says nothing about the conflict. They still have a thing or two to learn about public transport on this continent.

Excursion in Bimboland

This is the next part in the series where [cmh] explores various entertainment establishments. To celebrate that the speedskating season is over a party was arranged at the infamous night club Cowboys in Calgary. My speedskating dutch roommate had been kind enough to get me a ticket. Country music, St. Patrick's Day, speedskaters, students and bimbos made for a somewhat bizarre mix. Probably I'm not exactly the kind of customer Cowboys are aiming for, I'm too old and elitistic, one should be young and ready to paaaarty. However, it was not as bad as I had thought. One detail I'm not quite sure what I think of was the fact that most of the bar staff were siliconbased females with very small skirts. The oldest sales trick in the book?

I hope that the next issue on the agenda for bar and restaurant employees after banning smoking will be the soundlevel. I would not like to work five days a week in such an audio environment. Staff in countrybars ought to get extra pay due to the especially nasty noise the are exposed to.

Some figures:
No. of Dutchmen: >10
No. of Norwegians: >10
No. of physicists: >1
No. of three-time-olympic champions: >0
No. of fake breasts: >10

Road rage

Road rage, where people (Americans) after being treated unfairly by their fellow road users blow their top and shoot them, is a well known phenomenon. After spending a whole analyzing data I kind of wonder why one so seldom hear about computer rage. People going nuts from their computer not doing what they want it to or crashing for the millionth time ought to be fairly common. Among frustrated office clerks all revved up on caffeine in tiny cubicles the consequences could become severe. Maybe we should be glad that the Americans tend to keep their guns in the glove compartment rather than in the office drawer. Staplers make less damage.