After 10 days in Ireland, I am now back in the US. I had an excellent vacation hiking around the south of Ireland. The scenery was incredible and we had a good group (14 + 1 guide). I took over 1000 pictures (100+ of them medium format film!). I’ll be editing them and paring them down over the next week. There are quite a few panoramas in there as well. The pictures will be uploaded to flickr as I finish editing them.
While on the trip I kept a journal. Over the next week, I hope to type up the relevant portions of the journal and post them here. I’ll link in some of the pictures from that day. All of the pictures will be available on flickr as well.
Other than picture editing, my plans for the upcoming week will be low-key (hopefully). I am on jury duty, so we’ll see if I end up getting called or not.
Keep an eye out for the Ireland journal entries!
Despite my lack of posting, I am still around! I am currently at Notre Dame, while my brother moves out of the dorm. We spent the weekend attending graduation ceremonies. There was certainly a lot of controversy surrounding the Commencement, as Obama’s stance on abortion and stem cell research conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church. However, outside of 4 protestors who attempted to interrupt his speech, the actual ceremony was not derailed.
Overall however, I found it disappointing that there was such a focus on the abortion and stem cell issues as a result of the controversy. All of the major speeches, with the exception of the valedictory address, heavily focused on the strife. It is truly a shame that it distracted from the true purpose of the event: honoring and celebrating the graduates.
I spent last week in Rochester, NY at RIT. I successfully defended my thesis 6 days ago and have spent the intervening time making some relatively minor changes to the text. Moments ago, I emailed out what should be a final draft of the thesis! I am very excited to be done. I got some work done while at RIT, and have some more things to do regarding Cygnus A. That, plus my thesis work will be incorporated into a paper, which will hopefully be written up this summer.
I have another 24 hours or so in Indiana before moving on to the next stop… I am joining my family for a vacation in Ireland! I have never been and am very excited about the trip. As might be expected, I am bringing two cameras and expect to get some good pictures on the trip.
The past week has been packed with work. I have mostly finished the talk for my MS defense at RIT. In fact, on Wednesday I gave a practice talk for the “Compact Objects” group here at UVa. I got very positive feedback and ended up hitting my targeted time almost perfectly!
In addition to wrapping things up for my coursework, I was also busy helping compute the final grades for the intro. to observing class. It was somewhat straightforward, although difficult coordinating things with the professor. It all worked out fine in the end though.
Yesterday I drove up to Rochester, NY. It was a fine drive, with only a short burst of awful driving weather in the form of a horrendous rain storm. But, fortunately it passed rather quickly. Its nice to be back after two years. I’ve only done a bit of looking around, but it seems there have been quite a few changes around campus. I’m sure later this afternoon I will wander around and check things out.
Right now, I’m back in the Imaging Science building at RIT, working on my thesis defense. I’ve got a few things to change in response to the feedback I’ve gotten. But it hopefully won’t take too long. Just about two days to go until my defense!
As noted before, the semester is winding down here at UVa. As a result, a good chunk of the weekend has been spent grading the flood of labs that always appears at the end of the semester. Pretty much all day yesterday was absorbed grading the labs for the Intro to Observing class. As I am head TA for that class, I am intimately involved in helping assign final grades for the semester. With a somewhat complicated set of deadlines, it will involve lots of checking to make sure the labs have been properly dated.
On Friday I put in a good chunk of work reducing the GBT data I had acquired in March. I am about 90% done with the first galaxy, just a bit of double-checking to do for quality control. I think we have made the first measurement of the neutral hydrogen gas in this particular galaxy. While that is nothing special in and of itself, I believe we have also detected absorption of the radio source by another component of neutral hydrogen. Unfortunately, due to the fact that we used the GBT and the beam is significantly larger than the galaxy, we can’t localize any of it. However, the existing data will be included in a paper currently being finished up (and hopefully published soon).
Continuing with the working theme, this morning was spent on the take-home portion of the final exam for the Extragalactic Astronomy II class. Fortunately it turned out to be fairly straightforward. Since then I have been writing my thesis defense talk. It is just over a week away and I must admit I found the prospect of writing a 45 minute talk somewhat daunting. However, now that I’ve actually started working on it, I feel better about it. It is probably easier since I can use my thesis for an outline to guide the talk. There are already 18 slides and I am still working on background information. At ~1 min/slide I should manage to get it around 45 minutes without too much trouble.
I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon working on the slides. My last final (ever?) is tomorrow afternoon so this evening and tomorrow morning will be devoted to studying. Then, back to grading and working on the defense.
The next week and a half will be quite busy, but at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! On May 14th I will get to see my brother graduate from Notre Dame! Following that, I’ll be joining my family for a vacation. Looking forward to the break!
