Chris R

Look! An update!

2007-06-27T19:31:40Z

Life is too short. But especially in the last six months things have been kinduv crazy ... and this will continue for a couple of months yet. So I've been pretty crp about staying in touch with folks.

So I started the new job about 7 months ago and moved to Swindon.

The thesis is now printed and submitted after ~6 months of sitting on my hard drive inactive. I'm currently waiting for an exam date.

We are in the process of moving into the new house in Lechlade which we are (very) busy trying to sort out... new drive should arrive on the back of a lorry sometime next week, lots of painting and gardening and so on been done already but still needs (lots) more work.

Learning to drive. Test next week which I expect to fail, but we'll see how it goes...

And also off to china in a couple of weeks to find the deepest cave in the world (aka mess around in the hills for a couple of weeks). Which should be exciting!

Then giving a conference talk at NuFact immediately afterwards... I have a deadline for everything finished by the end of next week or so. I might suggest to my boss to turn the work into a journal paper at some point as well. We'll see if it works.

Plus all the usual stuff ... competed in the Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon a couple of weeks ago. We entered the D (easy) course - 45 km through the Scottish highlands over two days, carrying all of our camping kit. We came in the top 40 in a field of 140 which I thought was pretty good for a first time.

Caving as usual, but also getting into the cycling (I commute 10 km each way on the bike at the moment). I'm quite keen to try a longer distance bike ride at some point (100 km+) but perhaps won't be time this summer.

Hopefully come September things should calm down a bit (but I doubt it)!

Uh-oh

2007-01-29T11:52:11Z

Gulp... I think we just bought a house...

New Year, New Journal Entry...

2007-01-04T13:15:20Z

Ooh look, it's a new year, time for a new LJ entry. One a year isn't bad?

So what... I've moved to Swindon, home of many roundabouts. Kinda dull, after three months I still haven't got off my as.s and actually met anyone. But nice to be living with Pip :)

New work place is nice - boss pays a bit more attention to what I'm doing which has both good and bad points. Commute is long - walk.train.bike takes about 1 hr 30... but at least I'm getting fit. Thus the inspiration for Learning To Drive. So I have my first lesson in ~10 years on Saturday (after I failed my test when I was 17).

Got thesis corrections back from my supervisor finally. Lots of stuff, but nothing too major. In general he seems quite happy with it.

I'm on the fourth book in the Wheel of Time epic - "Epic in every sense" as the blurb on the back says. I actually think it's one of the worst books I've ever read, and this one is almost 1000 pages long... but should be about half that. The characterisation is attrocious, the plot predictable and slooowwww... I keep saying I won't bother with the next one but then end up reading it anyway. And now I've read the first four I have to keep going? Mixing it with a history book on the train.

We have a vague date for the wedding, September 8th, but we want to buy a house before then so we haven't really confirmed anything yet. May take a while before we do.

So... life continues to pootle along...

chris1234 @ 2006-08-02T20:30:00

2006-08-02T19:32:37Z

Wandering around tescos (praise to tescos) wondering what to get when my eyes descended upon ... Jon Bon Jovi - Keep the Faith. I have sinned mightily and yet it feels so good! Mmmm guilty pleasures...

In other news Pip and I got engaged the other week - now sorted out a ring and everything - gosh we're organised ;-) ... now trying to decide whether it should be Pippa Rogers or Chris Crosby :P

chris1234 @ 2006-06-13T09:16:00

2006-06-13T08:20:11Z

After whinging last week - I saw a chipmunk and a pair of beavers (stop giggling in the back) on Sunday while walking in the woods around the lab during the coffee break... v cute. Back in the office, seem to have defeated the jet lag (hurray).

chris1234 @ 2006-06-09T03:46:00

2006-06-09T02:55:34Z

Sigh. There's something very depressing about Naperville. Maybe it's the stock phrases that the waitresses (always women) reel out to every customer in a mockery of friendliness
"Hi, my name's Wendy, I'll be your server today. The specials are ..."
"Sure, would you like a side with that?"

Maybe it's the fact that every shop is like one of those horrible trading estates. Somehow it feels like living in Alton Towers. But with motorways everywhere so you can't walk anywhere. I've eaten out every night and still haven't found a proper restaurant - just a collection of different tacky mass-produced theme diners.

I'm sure it's the same in England but I'm used to it there. And I don't end up working such stupid hours (70-80+ hour week this week!)

Hmm. Don't like travelling.

chris1234 @ 2006-05-18T10:11:00

2006-05-18T10:18:17Z

I just sent someone an email asking them to reverse the polarity of the solenoids. My job is to try to figure out why there is a matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. How cool is that!

chris1234 @ 2006-05-04T11:51:00

2006-05-04T11:00:30Z

I was surprised to see police officers armed with machine guns outside my polling station this morning. Article from the Beeb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4970794.stm

"Police officers are being deployed at several inner-city polling stations to protect against vote-rigging."

Should the police be involved in this way? Is this dodgy or is it just me? It's a bit intimidating walking past a bloke with a machine gun to get into my polling station... should civil servants be overseeing elections of their bosses in this way? Who else could/should do it?

At least they weren't inside the polling station - when that happens we are living in a police state.

ps: it didn't change my vote... just a shame that out of the ~20 candidates there was only one that I wanted to vote for.

pps: forgot to mention - recently been listening to Soma FM - good music!

chris1234 @ 2006-04-19T10:10:00

2006-04-19T09:17:06Z

Nice - but if Greenpeace (1 Mb) are to be believed, it's only a matter of time before the wildlife around Chernobyl mutates into evil monsters intent on ruling the world.

In other news, I heard semi-officially that I got the job at Rutherford Lab - now waiting for the offer letter... and need to make the choice of Didcot vs London.

chris1234 @ 2006-04-12T16:53:00

2006-04-12T16:03:23Z

Just back from a conference in Warwick - nice to see some old faces, including Evil Will, Vladimir Gligorov and Elmyra_Delmar. Got rather merry last night at the conference dinner in Coventry Guildhall (Tescos sells booze at one in the morning nowadays, apparently).

Good fun until I got fined by Virgin for buying a ticket for the wrong train company. Cynical Chris suspects they've set up the system to earn revenue from fines. I haven't paid yet - let's see how long I can hold out.

chris1234 @ 2006-04-06T16:38:00

2006-04-06T15:43:48Z

Geeky comedy:

http://giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=301

Well, I am a physics PhD, need to do something while my code compiles... :D

chris1234 @ 2006-02-24T09:22:00

2006-02-24T09:48:29Z

Hmm, been a while since I updated - haven't really had much to say ;).

Work - been keeping me busy. This year my funding runs out and I will write up before that happens... Most people overrun by up to a year or more. I have a meeting in Japan next week (flying on Sunday), so I'm finishing work on that atm. When I get back, I am keeping 1-2 weeks free to sit down and start writing. The idea is to produce 0th drafts of several chapters so I at least understand where the holes are so I can start plugging them.

Unfortunately, that means getting stressed and working long hours. I missed a long weekend in ?Northumbria? because I had too much work to do which was a real shame... but I was karmically rewarded when I found a rather nice paper on momentum acceptance of solenoidal focusing lattices, which I've used to explain some of the slightly odd behaviour of our cooling channel. (As the advert says, "Karma's a funny thang"). Still, I've been putting in the long days/weekends in the last couple of weeks (sleep-work-sleep-work...) to try to get everything in shape.

So I'm reading a bit of Wodehouse at the moment. I think I shall have to hunt out some more as it's rather good. Embarassing trying to stifle a giggle on the buses in the morning. I should watch out though - after reading Patrick O'Brien (Master and Commander etc), I started dropping the occasional "Foretopgallant" and "Main stay" into everyday conversation. If it's Wodehouse then it'll be "What ho!" and "I say!" which isn't too bad I guess... but I might mix the two, and that'll be trouble.

So as I said, I'm finishing up soon, and that means I need to start hunting for jobs. I quite enjoy the work I'm doing, so I'm pursuing a few different things. I had a sit down with my boss here at Imperial before christmas and he indicated that there would be a place for me if I wanted it. But there are now adverts for positions at Rutherford Lab and Oxford for similar positions. I put an application in for the position at RAL and I should see the guy advertising for the Oxford job in Japan. I know them all reasonably well and I think I'm in with a very strong chance for all of them. Lots of pros and cons to the different jobs...

Umm, what else? Pip's doing well, off up on a winter mountaineering course in Scotland this weekend. It's funny, but there aren't many girls I know that take on such tough things and come out on top. She works in engineering, in a male dominated environment, and is clearly doing really well (probably one of the youngest people in the company at her level of seniority)... she takes on cool, ambitious, daunting hobbies like caving and mountaineering and performs extraordinary feats like discovering some of the deepest caves in Europe, probably the oldest sandstone caves in the world in venezuela, etc... and she still finds time to smile and bake bread and go out cycling on weekends! All in all, she's a pretty amazing girl.

Anyway, hopefully I shall be less antisocial when I get back from Japan!

rant

2006-01-13T13:02:36Z

The new sports centre at imperial is to be called "Ethos". Bullsh-t is the antithesis of science - I hate the way they are introducing BS into Imperial.

chris1234 @ 2005-12-23T21:57:00

2005-12-23T22:02:11Z

Happy christmas everyone! Get it in early before the rush starts. If anyone is in the Red Lion in Barnes I can say happy christmas in person...

Take care,
Chris

chris1234 @ 2005-12-08T16:42:00

2005-12-08T16:43:12Z

Just (finally after loads of hassle from estate agent) moved in today... woo hoo! Off home to unpack!

chris1234 @ 2005-11-30T09:17:00

2005-11-30T09:19:44Z

A day of a ROCK methinks

chris1234 @ 2005-11-24T10:42:00

2005-11-24T10:50:06Z

Getting the goss off one of the girls from work last night - some nice stories about various different senior physicists in various states of indecorum. Thanks to El for her help with the vital question "what was that song from bridget jones??" ...

chris1234 @ 2005-11-23T13:22:00

2005-11-23T13:54:17Z

The Daily Mirror reported yesterday that the government entered into discussion with Bush on the bombing of the hq of Al Jazeera in Qatar. The government did not deny these allegations, instead issuing a banning order as some of the documents involved were rated Top Secret. From the government this is tantamount to admitting that the report is true in the central allegation. Note that this is the same Mirror that published the faked photos of prisoner abuse by UK soldiers in Iraq. Fine.

But I was gobsmacked when a senior American politician (I can't remember the name now) appeared on Newsnight and said that such an act was okay.

And if they talked about bombing Al Jazeera in Qatar, what of the "accidental" bombing of Al Jazeera in Baghdad and Kabul?

This government, and their party, is evil.

chris1234 @ 2005-11-01T08:10:00

2005-11-01T08:29:11Z

A busy couple of weeks... building up to the Collaboration Meeting weekend a week ago, where everyone working on my experiment turns up. Plenary talk on the Monday followed by software workshop all week. Not enough sleep!

Now have a house for when I get kicked out of my current one. The location is Fentiman Road, a mere cricket ball's throw from the Oval and Vauxhall tube. Well we paid a holding deposit at least. The plan is to walk into work, may prove infeasible - I guess about 45 mins. Or get a bike, possibly a nice route along the tow path. Move date is beginning of December (I think I'm homeless for three days, planning to invade parents...)

Oh, by the way, my fellowship application went in, thanks for all the comments. Contemplating applying for a fellowship in geneva/CERN - a long way to commute but the pay is good enough to afford it! The application round is in March so plenty of time to think...

Work is bubbling over - I'm trying to swim in two groups at the moment, contributing to the Beamline group that is designing the beam transport line from where we make our muons, and trying to emerge as a big wig in the Analysis group that studies how we make our results and turn them into useful physics. Probably doing too much but it is good fun!

chris1234 @ 2005-10-18T09:31:00

2005-10-18T08:32:52Z

Pub til 1 in the morning last night, in at 8 am, pounding dance music while my code compiles, drowning in coffeeeee.... geeky heaven :D :D

chris1234 @ 2005-10-06T14:58:00

2005-10-06T14:02:20Z

Happy birthday to me!!! Spent last night dancing to cr-p music and baking a cake. It's now sitting in the office waiting to be cut... then later this evening shall be boozing with Kate n El ?n Helen?.

In other news, I am currently writing a grant application for three years funding to continue work on my current experiment. Now, it so happens that one of the questions on the grant form is "Describe the proposed research in simple terms in a way that could be publicised to a general audience [up to 4000 characters]"

So I was wondering if I could cheekily appeal to the lj masses for help...

Every second, each one of us is bombarded by hundreds of millions of subatomic particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos and their antimatter partners, so-called anti-neutrinos, have been observed in a number of different experiments. However, we rarely observe the particles as there is only a small chance that the neutrinos interact with matter instead of travelling straight through it, making it difficult to characterise the particles. To overcome this, physicists want to make an intense beam of neutrinos, called a “Neutrino Factory”. I will design and optimise a fundamental technology, ionisation cooling, that will enable the construction of a Neutrino Factory.

Physicists have measured a number of properties of neutrinos over almost half a century. As neutrinos interact so rarely, the experiments must be performed on a massive scale, involving thousands of tonnes of material. Yet meticulous attention must be paid to remove false signals such as natural background radiation. Intriguingly, physicists have noticed that while three types of neutrinos exist with distinct properties, the neutrinos can change type or “oscillate”. This is an unexpected but extremely important property of neutrinos. If the theorists are correct, it leads us to the conclusion that neutrinos have mass, something that we can’t explain; and if they are wrong then further experimental study must reveal a rich tapestry of fundamental physics that will give us important clues to the nature of the universe.

The Neutrino Factory is widely accepted as being the ultimate tool for the study of neutrino oscillations. It allows us to produce an incredibly pure source of neutrinos free of the false signals that plague neutrino experiments, at high energy and high intensity. Uniquely, it allows us to produce two different types of neutrinos simultaneously giving a very precise measurement of the neutrino oscillations. Importantly, such a fine measurement of these elusive particles may allow physicists to finally explain why the universe is made from matter rather than antimatter.

The Neutrino Factory uses another type of fundamental particles, muons, to create the neutrinos. These muons are accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light in a few millionths of a second before they decay into neutrinos. Not only must the muons be accelerated quickly, but the initial melon-sized cloud of muons must be squeezed into a beam pipe only a few centimetres across to be accelerated efficiently.

The size of the muon beam is reduced using a special technique known as ionisation cooling. Muons are passed through liquid hydrogen, focussed by extremely strong magnets and accelerated using very powerful radio waves tens of millions of times stronger than the ones received by a common radio. I will study two aspects of this technique. Firstly, I will work with the Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) collaboration to build a part of an ionisation cooler and measure the effect it has. Secondly, I will work on the design of the Neutrino Factory to examine how much the size of the muon beam must be reduced and to cost optimise the Neutrino Factory design.

MICE has a difficult job to do. In order to determine the change in size of the muon beam for a full Neutrino Factory complex, it is necessary to make a very fine measurement of the particles before and after cooling, as well as checking that they are actually muons rather than some other type of particles polluting the beam. Once I have measured the cooling effect from a single part of an ionisation cooler, I will use this measurement to simulate several different types of cooler. I will combine these measurements with a simulation of the rest of the accelerator and use it to determine the most effective and cheapest design of a Neutrino Factory. In the end, this will allow us to measure the properties of these tiny particles and make fundamental discoveries about how the universe works.

What do you think?

chris1234 @ 2005-09-12T08:54:00

2005-09-12T08:07:27Z

Nicked from slashdot, but interesting... summary: scientists aren't to blame for bad science journalism, bad science journalists are. A refreshing view and quite true, although he spouts a lot of bull as well. Also interesting coming from the grauniad, the home of crappy science journalism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,12980,1564369,00.html

It's supports a view of the media that has been slowly growing in my head for the past few years. That *all* journalism in the UK and abroad is really awful. I mean, when was the last time you saw an article based on evidence - a well argued piece, where the journalist hasn't just interviewed a couple of politicians and spat it onto the paper, but actually gone out and found out what the truth is. Like with statistics or something, a nice well argued tightly put together piece of work that has taken more than five minutes of someone's a-hole to sh-t out.

Sigh, I guess it'll never happen.

Stuff

2005-08-19T16:33:34Z

Free stuff in fact. I just moved desk (well, on Tuesday at least) and the previous occupant at my desk left some Stuff. So now I shall be spending next week enjoying Orbital, Utah Saints and Moby while playing Sim City 3000 and, er, scanning some documents. Hurrah!

In other news I was just cruelly expelled from my office by the fire alarm in the middle of a phone conference where I was explaining how brilliantly wonderful I am :(. Worse still, we didn't even get any fire engines...

Here's a nice quiz, fits a couple of my friends disturbingly well.

Have a good w/e or holiday everyone who's going (seems to be the whole world)!

chris1234 @ 2005-08-16T10:31:00

2005-08-16T09:33:11Z

Just a quickie to say that I'm back in the country hurrah until at least mid september. But FFS how can the media still be going on about the f-ing london bombings with non-news like this (BBC's main story this morning).

chris1234 @ 2005-07-20T09:49:00

2005-07-20T09:02:35Z

Just got back from Espana - weird to think that 3 days ago I was perched 20 metres up a rift rigging a dodgy traverse 200 metres underground...

Won't bore with details of my holiday, but one thing has sadly changed since I returned - the number 14 route that I take in to work was always served by the old Routemaster bus, but now they seem to be in the process of retirement :(. Got one of the horrible new buses with the swishy doors and everything today, noticed most of the 14s were the new buses too.

The end of an era methinks.