The Outsider's Inside View post #012 - Order and Chaos

Message boards : SETI@home Staff Blog : The Outsider's Inside View post #012 - Order and Chaos

Author	Message
KevinDouglasPhD Project scientist Send message Joined: 6 Feb 06 Posts: 107 Credit: 23,981 RAC: 0	Message 544025 - Posted: 11 Apr 2007, 2:31:39 UTC
	I've been back in the Bay Area for about a day now, after a very pleasant trip down south. Spent some time with the family at the San Diego Zoo, Cabrillo and Pinnacles National Monuments, and lots of other places too. Saw a very cool musical performance by Henry Kaiser and Mike Keneally, which included video footage of underwater Antarctic exploration for a forthcoming documentary. It was a most entertaining mix of academic and musical expositions. Right now at Arecibo the last observations with ALFA before the shutdown are being taken. I think the telescope goes offline completely early next week. The planned outage is 12 weeks - I think someone asked this question in my last week's blog. Data processing for the GALFA project should occupy most of my work time over that stretch, since the SETHI data is happily crunching in the background. My job on ewen seems to keep quitting, though, so I only have 12 reliable datacubes going right now. My vacation made me miss the last few days of the NHL season, so I was relieved to see that Calgary eeked into the postseason. Wish I could say the same for Montreal. It should be a very entertaining playoffs. San Jose just might be one of the teams with a chance to take the Cup. That would be big news in the Bay Area for all of, oh, 2 days. I learned Cheer Accident will open for Sleepytime Gorilla Museum when they play in SF this June. Cool, now I can bug Matt to lend me more Cheer Accident CDs so I can get into their music some more.
	ID: 544025 ·

Clyde C. Phillips, III Send message Joined: 2 Aug 00 Posts: 1851 Credit: 5,955,047 RAC: 0	Message 544372 - Posted: 11 Apr 2007, 19:02:34 UTC
	Twelve weeks. Doce semanas. I guess that means Alfa will be remounted in early July. I hope there's no slippage but usually that moves in. ____________
	ID: 544372 ·

ML1 Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 7140 Credit: 3,686,385 RAC: 972	Message 544388 - Posted: 11 Apr 2007, 19:41:51 UTC - in response to Message 544372.
	Twelve weeks. Doce semanas. I guess that means Alfa will be remounted in early July. I hope there's no slippage but usually that moves in. Reconnect the old linear aeriel to the new data recorder...? But then again, I would guess that the receiver for that is no longer in place, or is it?... It sure would give some nice steady slow sweeps across the sky for the 12 weeks + slippage time! Yes, no? Regards, Martin ____________ Mandriva Linux A user friendly OS! See new freedom Mageia2 The Future is what We make IT (GPLv3)
	ID: 544388 ·

1mp0£173 Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 3 Apr 99 Posts: 8423 Credit: 356,897 RAC: 0	Message 544408 - Posted: 11 Apr 2007, 20:55:29 UTC - in response to Message 544388.
	Twelve weeks. Doce semanas. I guess that means Alfa will be remounted in early July. I hope there's no slippage but usually that moves in. Reconnect the old linear aeriel to the new data recorder...? But then again, I would guess that the receiver for that is no longer in place, or is it?... It sure would give some nice steady slow sweeps across the sky for the 12 weeks + slippage time! Yes, no? Regards, Martin Remember that they're trying to clear the structure for painting. They're probably removing everything that isn't absolutely critical to safety or structural integrity. ____________
	ID: 544408 ·

KevinDouglasPhD Project scientist Send message Joined: 6 Feb 06 Posts: 107 Credit: 23,981 RAC: 0	Message 544504 - Posted: 11 Apr 2007, 22:04:01 UTC - in response to Message 544388.
	Reconnect the old linear aeriel to the new data recorder...? But then again, I would guess that the receiver for that is no longer in place, or is it?... It sure would give some nice steady slow sweeps across the sky for the 12 weeks + slippage time! Yes, no? Regards, Martin The line feed is still in place, but I doubt connecting it to the new data recorder would work very well, since the recorder expects 14 channels of data, and the receivers are just different epochs of technology in the first place. We could in theory turn on SERENDIP IV again, but I don't know whether the tape drive is working or how many tapes are left. Worst of all I'd assume would be the interference caused by the mechanical devices used to blast off the old paint. No, let's move forward... ALFA is now off the platform, as of about 3 hours ago - I was just leaving Dan's office after our science meeting and our engineer friend at Arecibo called with that piece of news. It was a good meeting; Eric's working at home this week but he thinks a client for multibeam SETI@home could be ready for public in maybe a month (stop groaning everyone). There are some graphics issues but nothing major holding it back. Jeff suggested trying to crunch the multibeam data with the current (enhanced) client, so that might happen, internally at first of course. It's an interesting question: would you rather be crunching multibeam data with the current client right now, with less than complete information about which ALFA channel observed that part of the sky, or wait a while until the new client is released, which can tell you which beam and polarization your work unit came from? If we took a poll I think I could predict the outcome. I heard that my abstract for the Bioastronomy 2007 conference in San Juan PR was accepted, so I have to get going on the poster/paper for that soon. The conference isn't until July, and I'm not even attending it (Eric & Dan will though), but I'd rather get my contribution out of the way quickly so I can concentrate on more HI analysis. I'm about to start merging the TOGS data with another GALFA project so I can get better calibration corrections for the final datacubes. That should take most of the next week or more. NHL playoffs start in about an hour. My favourite time of year.
	ID: 544504 ·

Dr. C.E.T.I. Send message Joined: 29 Feb 00 Posts: 15969 Credit: 625,669 RAC: 239	Message 544955 - Posted: 12 Apr 2007, 13:52:59 UTC - in response to Message 544504.
	Reconnect the old linear aeriel to the new data recorder...? But then again, I would guess that the receiver for that is no longer in place, or is it?... It sure would give some nice steady slow sweeps across the sky for the 12 weeks + slippage time! Yes, no? Regards, Martin The line feed is still in place, but I doubt connecting it to the new data recorder would work very well, since the recorder expects 14 channels of data, and the receivers are just different epochs of technology in the first place. We could in theory turn on SERENDIP IV again, but I don't know whether the tape drive is working or how many tapes are left. Worst of all I'd assume would be the interference caused by the mechanical devices used to blast off the old paint. No, let's move forward... ALFA is now off the platform, as of about 3 hours ago - I was just leaving Dan's office after our science meeting and our engineer friend at Arecibo called with that piece of news. It was a good meeting; Eric's working at home this week but he thinks a client for multibeam SETI@home could be ready for public in maybe a month (stop groaning everyone). There are some graphics issues but nothing major holding it back. Jeff suggested trying to crunch the multibeam data with the current (enhanced) client, so that might happen, internally at first of course. It's an interesting question: would you rather be crunching multibeam data with the current client right now, with less than complete information about which ALFA channel observed that part of the sky, or wait a while until the new client is released, which can tell you which beam and polarization your work unit came from? If we took a poll I think I could predict the outcome. I heard that my abstract for the Bioastronomy 2007 conference in San Juan PR was accepted, so I have to get going on the poster/paper for that soon. The conference isn't until July, and I'm not even attending it (Eric & Dan will though), but I'd rather get my contribution out of the way quickly so I can concentrate on more HI analysis. I'm about to start merging the TOGS data with another GALFA project so I can get better calibration corrections for the final datacubes. That should take most of the next week or more. NHL playoffs start in about an hour. My favourite time of year. Keep Up with All the Info - It IS Much Appreciated Sir!!! Berkeley is the SCIENCE that makes for 'it's worth being with the Project . . .' Thank You Each . . .
	ID: 544955 ·

Message boards : SETI@home Staff Blog : The Outsider's Inside View post #012 - Order and Chaos