(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
anarchist_nomad Apr. 19th, 2007 09:35 pm)
anarchist_nomad Apr. 19th, 2007 09:35 pm)First things first: Once again, just after sunset tonight, look to the Western sky. The two day old sliver of a crescent moon returns to hovering nearby Venus. Very pretty! I am amazed that the clouds of England have permitted me to see the one and two day old moons thusly for two months running!
That duty tended to, here is what I have been up to lately:
Last night, after a yummy dinner prepared by the marvelous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshcat, I was off for a dip at the Ferry Sports Centre. Swam another mile, which feels wonderful. I am amazed to find that I can already see a difference in my arms from these workouts. Have to remember to stretch more, though. When I last swam regularly (1993 - 1999), I never stretched and, thus, lost much flexibility.
Today has been a very pleasant day. The weather is phenomenal -- warm with clear skies -- making every moment I spend outside a joy. At lunchtime, I attended a meeting of the PGJCC. This god-awful acronym -- don't even try to pronounce it! -- stands for the "Post-Graduate Joint Consultative Committee." Essentially, it is a council that responds to the concerns of graduate students and post-docs here in the Oxford Physics Department. There are six graduate student members, one to represent the students at each of the six sub-departments, and there are two post-doc members, each representing the post-docs at three of the sub-departments. That's right -- yours truly represents the post-docs of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics. Ooooh, I can feel the power going to my head already! Actually, the meeting was pretty good, and I brought up issues that have been of concern to me since starting my post-doc here. Foremost of which was the isolation that we have from each other -- heck, I don't even know the vast majority of the people I am supposed to represent! Fermilab, for all its bureaucratic flaws, did a good job of organizing interaction time for its post-docs, and I made suggestions based on my experiences there.
Other than the meeting, work is going pretty well, too. After finishing some electronics work on the cryostat, we mounted an old proto-type detector onto the experimental plate of the Kelvinox-400. When next we cool down, I should actually be able to make some measurements. So things are proceeding apace... and are very exciting! Wish I could say more about where this is all heading, but it is best not to do so in a public forum. Those of you who have requested private e-mail can probably expect something on this topic in a couple of weeks time.
In the evening, I crossed the road to get to a bell ringing lesson at St. Giles. I ascended into the bell chamber for only the second time, and watched the #5 being tied so that it would be silent during my lesson. I need to take a picture of the actual bells; those old things ave quite a beauty to them! The process of tying a bell is different from what I would have expected. I'm sure thatresourceress -- rope-goddess that she is -- would have an easy time of it! After practicing on #5 for the better part of an hour, I ascended again and I untied the bell so that it would sound during practice.
Over the course of the practice, I rang several bells. I rang rounds and called changes, as well as practicing my dodging. However, I spent a very sizable part of the practice ringing on the tenor -- usually covering as the lower five or six bells rang a method. I am starting to feel a fair bit of affection for the tenor. This is the oldest bell in the tower, as well as the heaviest. It was cast in 1632 and bears the inscription "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" on it. It is an F-sharp bell[*] and has a mass of 13 cwt (or "hundredweight"). To translate units, that is 1456 pounds of bell that I was swinging about less than an hour ago! Being so heavy, it is a challenging bell to control. I don't always have it right, but I can say that it feels so fantastic when I hit my groove and it all flows smoothly! Alas, I suspect that my affection for the tenor is likely to mean little to her; with a life so much longer than mine, I must only be a flash in the pan -- just another in a very long line of lovers!
By the way, for anyone who is interested, the bellringing webpage for St. Giles church can be found a picture of the ringing chamber can be found here. There is also a picture taken inside of the ringing chamber, though it is not terribly impressive, I'm afraid! Especially since you cannot see the horrendous patchwork carpet!
Off to Skullcrusher Mountain now, to spend a little time with my belovedcheshcat before the evening is out...
[*] There is a very, very obscure Green Lantern reference here. I will be extraordinarily impressed if anyone other thanashnistrike knows what it is.
That duty tended to, here is what I have been up to lately:
Last night, after a yummy dinner prepared by the marvelous
cheshcat, I was off for a dip at the Ferry Sports Centre. Swam another mile, which feels wonderful. I am amazed to find that I can already see a difference in my arms from these workouts. Have to remember to stretch more, though. When I last swam regularly (1993 - 1999), I never stretched and, thus, lost much flexibility.Today has been a very pleasant day. The weather is phenomenal -- warm with clear skies -- making every moment I spend outside a joy. At lunchtime, I attended a meeting of the PGJCC. This god-awful acronym -- don't even try to pronounce it! -- stands for the "Post-Graduate Joint Consultative Committee." Essentially, it is a council that responds to the concerns of graduate students and post-docs here in the Oxford Physics Department. There are six graduate student members, one to represent the students at each of the six sub-departments, and there are two post-doc members, each representing the post-docs at three of the sub-departments. That's right -- yours truly represents the post-docs of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics. Ooooh, I can feel the power going to my head already! Actually, the meeting was pretty good, and I brought up issues that have been of concern to me since starting my post-doc here. Foremost of which was the isolation that we have from each other -- heck, I don't even know the vast majority of the people I am supposed to represent! Fermilab, for all its bureaucratic flaws, did a good job of organizing interaction time for its post-docs, and I made suggestions based on my experiences there.
Other than the meeting, work is going pretty well, too. After finishing some electronics work on the cryostat, we mounted an old proto-type detector onto the experimental plate of the Kelvinox-400. When next we cool down, I should actually be able to make some measurements. So things are proceeding apace... and are very exciting! Wish I could say more about where this is all heading, but it is best not to do so in a public forum. Those of you who have requested private e-mail can probably expect something on this topic in a couple of weeks time.
In the evening, I crossed the road to get to a bell ringing lesson at St. Giles. I ascended into the bell chamber for only the second time, and watched the #5 being tied so that it would be silent during my lesson. I need to take a picture of the actual bells; those old things ave quite a beauty to them! The process of tying a bell is different from what I would have expected. I'm sure that
resourceress -- rope-goddess that she is -- would have an easy time of it! After practicing on #5 for the better part of an hour, I ascended again and I untied the bell so that it would sound during practice.Over the course of the practice, I rang several bells. I rang rounds and called changes, as well as practicing my dodging. However, I spent a very sizable part of the practice ringing on the tenor -- usually covering as the lower five or six bells rang a method. I am starting to feel a fair bit of affection for the tenor. This is the oldest bell in the tower, as well as the heaviest. It was cast in 1632 and bears the inscription "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" on it. It is an F-sharp bell[*] and has a mass of 13 cwt (or "hundredweight"). To translate units, that is 1456 pounds of bell that I was swinging about less than an hour ago! Being so heavy, it is a challenging bell to control. I don't always have it right, but I can say that it feels so fantastic when I hit my groove and it all flows smoothly! Alas, I suspect that my affection for the tenor is likely to mean little to her; with a life so much longer than mine, I must only be a flash in the pan -- just another in a very long line of lovers!
By the way, for anyone who is interested, the bellringing webpage for St. Giles church can be found a picture of the ringing chamber can be found here. There is also a picture taken inside of the ringing chamber, though it is not terribly impressive, I'm afraid! Especially since you cannot see the horrendous patchwork carpet!
Off to Skullcrusher Mountain now, to spend a little time with my beloved
cheshcat before the evening is out...[*] There is a very, very obscure Green Lantern reference here. I will be extraordinarily impressed if anyone other than
ashnistrike knows what it is.
Tags: