Friday, December 16, 2005
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
A Look into the Mind of a Parking Cop
I'm not sure whether this is just a Midwest thing, but my local newspaper has provided a quick little insight into the daily life of a Madison parking meter reader.
It goes to show that it takes special people to become what most of us despise. :)
It goes to show that it takes special people to become what most of us despise. :)
Thursday, December 8, 2005
A Landmark, Steps Forward and Back
Today the nurses at the Red Cross told me that I had passed the two gallon mark! Those sixteen pints of blood have gone to help forty-eight people, which is in itself its own reward.
Of course, the spiffy two-gallon gold pin doesn't hurt.
Seriously though, if you can, consider giving blood. I saw the difference that it made in my mom's life when she was fighting leukemia -- like night and day. I suppose it's harder to see in those who recover from surgery. The fact that the nation's supply of blood can run low in the holiday season makes it that much more important to give if you can! (And to all those savvy world-travelers and others otherwise on deferral lists, I can end my preaching now. No offense intended. :) )
In other events, it's been interesting to be a resident of Wisconsin these past few weeks. The Democratic attorney general has recently asked, and today received, permission of the Democratic governor to sue the federal government regarding the FDA's refusal to certify Plan B emergency contraception for sale over-the-counter, despite independent scientific analysis proving it safe and effective, as well as internal review boards approving the move. The lawsuit purportedly will claim that political pressure is the reason behind the foot-dragging. (I am one among many who have also talked about that angle.) It will be a landmark suit that will, with luck, enable much greater access to a medication whose effectiveness critically depends on the time with which it is taken following unprotected sex.
At the same time, the Republican controlled Legislature have been busy pushing their agenda, including an attempt to place a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution (which recently passed the Senate the second year in a row) and dramatically expanding conceal-and-carry laws for handguns.
Sometimes it's just hard to know how to feel about the state government. I had almost forgotten how it felt good to know that people in power were not only looking out for the average American, but were doing the right things because they were the right things to be done. At the same time, seeing people deliberately writing discrimination into other state constitutions (and even trying to write it into the US Constitution!) seems to fundamentally against what the US has traditionally stood for that it's scary to see their success.
Of course, the spiffy two-gallon gold pin doesn't hurt.
Seriously though, if you can, consider giving blood. I saw the difference that it made in my mom's life when she was fighting leukemia -- like night and day. I suppose it's harder to see in those who recover from surgery. The fact that the nation's supply of blood can run low in the holiday season makes it that much more important to give if you can! (And to all those savvy world-travelers and others otherwise on deferral lists, I can end my preaching now. No offense intended. :) )
In other events, it's been interesting to be a resident of Wisconsin these past few weeks. The Democratic attorney general has recently asked, and today received, permission of the Democratic governor to sue the federal government regarding the FDA's refusal to certify Plan B emergency contraception for sale over-the-counter, despite independent scientific analysis proving it safe and effective, as well as internal review boards approving the move. The lawsuit purportedly will claim that political pressure is the reason behind the foot-dragging. (I am one among many who have also talked about that angle.) It will be a landmark suit that will, with luck, enable much greater access to a medication whose effectiveness critically depends on the time with which it is taken following unprotected sex.
At the same time, the Republican controlled Legislature have been busy pushing their agenda, including an attempt to place a ban on gay marriage into the state constitution (which recently passed the Senate the second year in a row) and dramatically expanding conceal-and-carry laws for handguns.
Sometimes it's just hard to know how to feel about the state government. I had almost forgotten how it felt good to know that people in power were not only looking out for the average American, but were doing the right things because they were the right things to be done. At the same time, seeing people deliberately writing discrimination into other state constitutions (and even trying to write it into the US Constitution!) seems to fundamentally against what the US has traditionally stood for that it's scary to see their success.
Wednesday, December 7, 2005
The Components, they are Gathered...
It's been a while, mainly because things have been going crazy at school and work. Despite working long hours (I am a grad student, after all) I have been able to devote some more time to my pet project at Pegasus -- the Plasma Control System.
Essentially, what we would like to do is to enable real-time detection and correction of plasma physics parameters such as plasma current, plasma position, shape, etc. By real-time, I mean "fast on a timescale relative to the discharge length." In Pegasus, for instance, we can only keep plasmas around for a few thousandths of a second; my first ballpark correction rate will be on the order of tens of millionths of a second. I'll be doing this with a state-of-the-art acquisition and control unit coupled with software based on that used on DIII-D, one of the major research facilities in fusion research.
My job has been to assemble the hardware, get the software components up and running, and then somehow turn this PCS into a working tool for Pegasus!
This summer, I was able to get the hardware up and running, which in and of itself involves a bit of geek factor -- an embedded Linux system (the digitizer), linked as a virtual PCI card in another Linux system, itself controlled by -- wait for it -- another Linux system! The software is written in bits and pieces of four programming languages I've found so far (C, IDL, stitched together with serious bash and csh scripting). On top of that, it interfaces with an independent data acquisition, storage, and retrieval solution, MDSplus, the de facto standard of the fusion community. (It works well, but is very poorly documented.) After I get that working, I just need to patch it into our existing bunch of independent LabView codes! (A programmers nightmare/delight, depending on your point of view.)
Recently I was able to get an MDSplus system up and running, so all the pieces are now on the proverbial table. Now I "only" need to get them to all talk to each other correctly, when not doing real plasma physics or finding vacuum leaks. :)
Thanksgiving was good -- lots of food, friends, and family. I'm looking forward to Christmas, however, since by then I'll be done with this semester! Since I've passed my qualifying exam, I only need to wrap up my courses before I start serious, in-depth research on my thesis, which will likely be coming from using the completed PCS system to study physics issues on Pegasus. The upside: only a year to go, entailing much lighter semesters than I've been pulling in the past while at UW-Madison.
Essentially, what we would like to do is to enable real-time detection and correction of plasma physics parameters such as plasma current, plasma position, shape, etc. By real-time, I mean "fast on a timescale relative to the discharge length." In Pegasus, for instance, we can only keep plasmas around for a few thousandths of a second; my first ballpark correction rate will be on the order of tens of millionths of a second. I'll be doing this with a state-of-the-art acquisition and control unit coupled with software based on that used on DIII-D, one of the major research facilities in fusion research.
My job has been to assemble the hardware, get the software components up and running, and then somehow turn this PCS into a working tool for Pegasus!
This summer, I was able to get the hardware up and running, which in and of itself involves a bit of geek factor -- an embedded Linux system (the digitizer), linked as a virtual PCI card in another Linux system, itself controlled by -- wait for it -- another Linux system! The software is written in bits and pieces of four programming languages I've found so far (C, IDL, stitched together with serious bash and csh scripting). On top of that, it interfaces with an independent data acquisition, storage, and retrieval solution, MDSplus, the de facto standard of the fusion community. (It works well, but is very poorly documented.) After I get that working, I just need to patch it into our existing bunch of independent LabView codes! (A programmers nightmare/delight, depending on your point of view.)
Recently I was able to get an MDSplus system up and running, so all the pieces are now on the proverbial table. Now I "only" need to get them to all talk to each other correctly, when not doing real plasma physics or finding vacuum leaks. :)
Thanksgiving was good -- lots of food, friends, and family. I'm looking forward to Christmas, however, since by then I'll be done with this semester! Since I've passed my qualifying exam, I only need to wrap up my courses before I start serious, in-depth research on my thesis, which will likely be coming from using the completed PCS system to study physics issues on Pegasus. The upside: only a year to go, entailing much lighter semesters than I've been pulling in the past while at UW-Madison.
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