Dead Reckoning

Science at All Cost (almost)

2006-05-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

What my minor advisor did with his mid-winter break in 1995: the norwegian rocket incedent.

Early Morning, No Signal

2006-04-24T08:56:00.001-07:00

The prototype Galileo satellite that's been in orbit since December, 2005, flew over this morning, and we decided to listen to what it was broadcasting. By we, I mean me. I had to be in the lab soon after 6:00 a.m. to capture the satellite in exactly the right position. You see, it doesn't broadcast all the time, but it does (sometimes) when it flies over Chilbolton, England, where the system's signal verification group works. So, to increase the likelihood that we'd get a signal, we chose a time when (1) it's at least 45 deg above the horizon in Ithaca, (2) setting in the East (and thus visible from Chilbolton), and (3) during business hours in England. Its a surprisingly rare occurance that all these conditions are met, but when they are, I wake up in the middle of the night to go listen.

So, early morning, hours of work, successful data grab, some analysis, and...no signal. There's probably a cricket match today, or something. I hope it's raining in Chilbolton. Those people have ruined my day.

Back to the Cottage

2006-04-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

Herdis has just boarded the plane to come home from Hawaii after five weeks. I'm never letting her go anywhere ever again. (And I'm taking tomorrow off.)

The Most Worrisome Thing about Bush

2006-04-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

I just read a disturbing article by Seymour Hersh in this week's New Yorker about the Bush Administration's ideas on Iran. The problem is simple. Iran wants nukes and the US wants to stop them. My guess is there are a lot of ways to approach this, but here's the scary thing: according to Hersh, there's a growing consensus in military and international circles that Bush's ultimate goal in Iran is regime change. He notes the parallels with the build up to the Iraqi war: Cheney's recent speeches have focussed on the threat from an oil-rich middle eastern nation, Rice has told congress that same nation is the US's top security threat, and Rumsfeld has said that that nation is a leading supporter of terrorist groups.

Have you ever heard the expression "when you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail? " This Administration seems to have one solution for every problem. What if another oil rich nation starts acting up. Norway's got a lot of oil. Will we launch an invasion if the Norwegians get into a border dispute over the North Sea oil fields with the UK, our special ally? Would we use moral rational that that nation is a leading proponent of mass murder with their liberal abortion laws?

A House of Representatives member, quoted in the article, said, “the most worrisome thing is that [Bush] has a messianic vision [for the middle east].” A government consultant with close ties to the pentagon said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

I was surprised to hear that the pentagon is engaged in intense war planning and that there are already special forces units operating inside Iran, collecting intelligence on targets and making contacts with dissident groups. A former defense official said that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

This situation is bad enough when you only consider the insanity of the US government, but add to it an equally insane Iranian government, and we've got a serious problem. Many believe Iran wants to provoke a conflict with the West, and many also believe this is exactly what the neocons in Washington want.

Where is this leading us? What kind of world are we living in?

Not Much Damage After All

2006-04-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

It turns out my mother's very lucky. Somehow, nothing burned in her apartment. Amazing. There's only smoke damage. I was planning to drive down to Wilmington to try to salvage what I could from the place, but it looks like that's unnecessary.

It's a shame, I was using this as an excuse to put off my laundry.

Fire!

2006-04-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

My mother's apartment in Wilmington, DE, has been damaged in a fire. Luckily, she wasn't home when it happened, but some others in the building weren't so lucky. One person died. Can you believe that people still die in fires? A friend and I agreed that humans should have this hazard under control by now.

A tragedy like this was bound to happen in this building. First of all it's loaded with old people. (Invariably my ride in the elevator to the top floor is interupted by a smelly old guy with a tracheotomy and an oxygen tank who's going from the eighth floor to the nineth. ) What's more, it doesn't even have a sprinkler system. If it did, I doubt there would have been a fatality.

The fire started four floors down and directly below mom's apartment. I know from the news reports that the four apartments below hers were all gutted in the fire. There's no mention of hers though, but this photo make is look pretty bad. The apartment balcony and windows are completely obscurred by smoke in this shot.

Anyway, we'll know soon how bad the damage is.

Brokeback Mountain Trip to Jackson Hole

2006-04-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Lemon

2006-04-10T20:03:00.000-07:00

Well, my 2000 VW Jetta's in the shop again. This time it's the power steering rack. It leaks, no, it drains hydraulic fluid. It only takes ten minutes to empty completely. This car never ceases cause aggravation and expenses. Since I've lived in Ithaca, I've had to replace both front bearings, both front control arms, a brake light switch (after driving around for a month without brake lights), front and rear brakes, a belt tensioner, and, get this, THREE oil pans. And before I even got to Ithaca, I had to have the transmission completely rebuilt at 50,000 mile! What a piece of junk!

I wish I could sue the guy who sold it to me, but sadly he's was one of my closest friends. So, as payback, I'm posting this picture of him. Do you think this post will cause him the same amount discomfort the car has caused me over the years? I doubt it. If he doesn't apologize to me soon, I have a few pictures I could post that would. (Yes, Alex, it's a threat.)

Cracking Galileo

2006-04-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

The GPS group at Cornell had a pretty big week last week. My advisor was awarded a three year grant to develop FPGA and software GPS receivers. We've already made significant progress on these technologies over the past couple of years, but it's been through side projects, leeching off of other funded research. Now, we can finally put real resources behind it, and maybe even get a PhD student to work on it full time. I just hope it's not me...too much coding.

The second bit of good news is that my advisor has been awarded the Burka Award from the Institute of Navigation for the best paper published last year in Navigation. Truthfully, I haven't even read the paper, so I can't comment on its quality. The only thing I can say about it with any certainty is that it has a lot of equations in it.

The final bit of news, and the most exciting, is that the group has published the Galileo navigation codes. Let me explain. Galileo is the European global satellite navigation system that will compete with GPS. They plan to be operational between 2008 and 2010, or something like that. So far, though, they've only launched one satellite, which is up there broadcasting the signals. The problem is that the Galileo people want European companies to have a competive edge in developing receivers that can navigate with these new signals. They haven't yet published the navigation codes, +1/-1 sequences thousands of digits long. These codes are necessary to acquire and track the signals.

Well, we figured them out and have published them against the Europeans' wishes. As expected, we've gotten a tremendously positive response from everyone else. Check out the website: Galileo Codes. This project has been a lot of fun, but I have to be careful about offending Europeans lest I might offend my Icelandic girlfriend.

Speaking of whom, I have something I want to say about her: she is the best girlfriend ever. What a comfortable fit and what beautiful eyes! Come home soon astin min.

Cycling Health Hazards

2006-03-29T15:16:00.000-08:00

I started another biking season this week. Three rides so far, about 50 miles. These early season rides are absolutely excruciating, not on the heart or lungs or legs, but on the ass. There's no way around it, you just have to ride through the pain. Next week everything will be fine, and by June we'll be doing hundred milers without complaint. Amazing how the body adapts to environmental stimulus. Some of the effects are good: the body's desensitization to new pressure points on the sit bones, for instance. That's nice. Others aren't so good: erectile dysfunction, for instance. Yikes!

I happen to believe this is more myth than medicine. A friend, a grad student with a wife and a 5 year old daughter, living on a very tight budget, actually could have benefited from a little cycling-induced ED last summer. He road 2,500 miles last year and look what happened last Friday:

At least one of these guys is thinking about riding 5,000 miles this summer. Will that be enough?

Halloween

2005-11-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

We modelled our pumpkin after Kira Salak's scary Papua New Guinean warrior. Our mighty warrior was so scary, there wasn't a single kid (or parent) in Ithaca brave enough to approach our door. Good thing too. All we had to give the trick-or-treaters were Turkish peppers, the Danish candies that taste of strong licorice and salt. Among our friends, the hard little lozenges typically elicit a violent gag reflex followed by a sprint to the bathroom. A rarer but quicker reaction is to simply spit the candy out onto the floor. Our glowing warrior saved halloweeners from embarassing themselves. Sadly, though, he was no match for the local squirrels who wasted no time eating out one of his eyes. We ended that indignity by smashing him into 5 pieces behind the barn/garage. He now rests among all the other fallen warriors of halloween.

Okay, Five Random Things

2005-10-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have been asked by Herdis to post five random things about myself. Here they are.

1. In my life, I've wanted to be a helicopter pilot, a ski instructor, a cosmologist, a geneticist, a lawyer (briefly), a yacht designer, a writer, a professional sailor, an ethicist, an architect, an orthopedic surgeon, and a race car driver. I never wanted to be an aerospace engineer. How did this happen?

2. Over the years, I've been employed as a gofor in a law office, a janitor, a cashier in a pharmacy and a boat supply store, a short order cook, a salesman at a leather shop (in Provincetown, MA!), a mainenance man at an armored car company, a painter, a driveway resealer, a breakfast cook, a busboy, a barista, a secretary (at the archdiocese of Boston!), a ski technician, a waiter in a sushi bar, a sailmaker, a boatbuilder, and a baby sitter. I've never really worked as an engineer.

3. For about 10 years now, I've had a fantasy of building myself a Buzzards Bay 25, a 32-foot, gaff-rig sloop designed by Nathaniel Herreshoff. She will of course have white topsides and a green underbody, just as the original four did in 1914.

4. I think human space flight is a waste of money.

5. I love paperclips.

My duty is now done.

India Has Arrived

2005-09-18T20:12:00.000-07:00

My brother's beautiful 8 1/2 lb. boy was born on September 1, 2005. My mother's first grandchild, my first nephew. Congratulations Shad and Theresa. And welcome India, kallinn minn. Can I call you Indie? When do you want your first pair of skis?

Our New Roomate

2005-09-06T06:05:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, Herdis found a huge spider in the bathroom. With a solid black body and thick legs spanning perhaps one and a half inches, the insect showed no fear of humans whatsoever. In an impressive show of courage and humanity, Herdis caught the beast and released it into the back gargen. Yesterday, however, it was back. That's when I got involved, I being a man of action. I captured the spider in a plastic cup, marched it around to the front of our building, and released it near the front porch that belongs to our neighbor who's been stealing our Sunday NY Times. This morning, I awoke with a spider bite on my wrist. So that's it. This calls for drastic measures. I'll try to hunt down the determined little insect this evening to announce my full and unconditional surrender.

Klein must think I'm stupid or insane or both....

2005-08-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

This photo works well in an abstract art sense. Maybe I should give up grad school and biking to pursue a career in photography, my subject of choice being broken machines. I wish I could look at this and see beauty, but it only serve to remind me of how Klein, the manufacturer of the bike, turned my hobby into a constant source of worry and irritation. This story has taken three months to play out. I'll try to be brief.

It all started when the fork and front wheel of the bike decided they had had enough riding for one day. I was riding with friends, just reaching the bottom of a 30 mph hill on smooth road, when one in the group spotted the Varna town line. He began sprinting. I, not seeing the sign until after he was going for it, had some ground to make up. I shifted up, got out of the saddle, and started to work hard on the pedals. One second later, I hit the pavement, landing hard on my left hip and elbow, then sliding on my left shoulder, then on my head (helmet), right shoulder, and finishing off squarely on my ass. Beautiful. Needless to say I lost the sprint, but that was the least of my problems (although it still bothered me).

The fork had broken completely off the bike just below the headset. It broke during the sprint, that is while I was still riding the bike. I didn't hit anything, not a car, or a pothole, or a stone, or a fly. It just broke. I've heard of carbon forks failing sometime after they have been in a crash, the damage concealed under the surface until it finally yields catastrophically. My bike, though, had never been in an accident. The largest impact it ever experienced came when I knocked it over in my apartment a few times. So, this looks like a clear warranty issue, right?

Wrong.

Klein told me failure was my fault, although they couldn't tell me exactly how. You should have heard the conversation I had with this Klein guy. It was unbelievable. He insisted that the damage that caused the failure occurred after the fork was manufactured and therefore wasn't Klein's responsibility, and that was that. I tried reasoning with him and got nowhere. I tried threatening a law suit, nowhere. I try personally insulting him (told him he was a moron), nowhere. He just couldn't accept the reality that the fork just broke. Anyway, out of sympathy or something, he offered me a replacement fork, free of charge. Perhaps he was trying to buy my consent that the failure was my fault. I told him to shove it. Klein must think I'm stupid or insane or both. I'm not putting a Klein fork on my bike, free or not, ever.

Okay, so their reation was disappointing, but I decided to get on with my life and fix up the bike on my own. I asked Klein to send the bike back as is and decided to replace the fork with a Reynolds Ouzo Pro. End of story and back on the bike in a couple of days, right?

Wrong again.

The bike came back destroyed in the box. The cranks were broken (imagine the force required to do that!), the rear derailleur was smashed, and the rear triangle of the frame was bent.

The story really just getting started, but I'll have to wait until later to tell the rest.

An Ill-Defined Problem

2005-07-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting experiment. Who knows what I'll write about, or to whom. More later...