Some Saturday Shopping

By | |
4 Comments

Well, of course I made it to the Aspen farmer’s market. Why would I pass up the opportunity to pay $3.50 a pound for assorted squashes? (And that was some of the more reasonably priced stuff…) I like to support these things, and mingle with the people, so I go anyway. Also some of it is very good, even though there are very few actual fresh produce vendors compared to the farmer’s markets I’m used to in Los Angeles. (This latter fact is not entirely traceable, I think, to having a smaller target population, or being at high elevation.) (Of course there’s a lot of selling of knick-knacks of various sorts of the tourists…. you know: hand carved dual dog bowls with Western outdoor themes and so forth…)

Here’s the (half-folded) bike with some of my findings:

saturday pickings from the market in Aspen

You can get a closeup on the basket by clicking the image on the right. Some apricots, Click to continue reading this post →

Altered Saturday Plans

By | | , ,
3 Comments

river in aspenWell, I was supposed to go for an early morning hike to start off the day, but it has not happened. It was just meant to be a short one, since I’m staying in a little cabin out of town not too far from the start of a lovely trail. Then I was to go to the farmer’s market (more on that later) and then after lunch go to pick up my ticket for the chamber music concert I’m to go to this afternoon. (I say “pick up” and not “buy” since I was the lucky winner (well, one of them) of a little ticket lottery at the Aspen Center for Physics for tickets to concerts in the neighbouring Aspen Music Festival. Hurrah!)

Well, the hike did not happen. Why? Well, at about 6:30pm yesterday while scribbling fragments of equations and furrowing my brow while sitting in a cafe in town (a change of venue after a day at the Center(re) sitting in the office, you see), I began to realize that a computation I was stuck on might actually be becoming unstuck! Various parts Click to continue reading this post →

Although No News is Good News…

By | | , ,
6 Comments

…(as the saying goes) it’s nice to get the real thing from time to time.

I’m almost fully in retreat mode now, being back at Aspen and settled in to my office at the Center and so forth. It’s good to see some familiar faces and catch up a little on physics news, and gossip (still waiting for some good juicy stuff there). I’ve settled into my accommodation (which on the plus side has no wireless or other web connection, but on the minus has HBO, which I shall have to studiously avoid), and have done a quick cycle around town (brought the Brompton again of course) to check that everything is in order. So by mid-afternoon on day one, yesterday, I was settling into my project(s). All good.

The good news of the title? Well, usually when someone contacts me about my book, Click to continue reading this post →

Stuff

By | | ,
5 Comments

Spent Sunday intensely preparing to leave on a trip, starting at 6:30am, with few breaks. This involved time spent preparing the garden to look after itself (I’d added several plants over the last six months that were not on the drip system), preparing various rooms to be more easily traversable for some contractors to do some plumbing and other work while I’m away, doing endless bits of paperwork and related things that I don’t want to deal with while I am on retreat thinking (almost) exclusively about physics, and so forth. At 3:30pm, in a panic I began the run around the house grabbing all the stuff I wanted to take with me, and going down to storage to bring up the two large bags I always take with me to Aspen.

hard case for the bromptonStuff includes notebooks, computer, hiking boots, bike, helmet, books, water bottles, drawing equipment, raincoat, umbrella, sketchbooks, shorts, t-shirts, underwear (yes, I did fly to a workshop one time and discover that I’d forgotten all my underwear…), various cables for charging various bits of consumer electronics, consumer electronics, shopping bag, small hiking pack, the pens I like to write with, the pencils I like to draw with, good tea, medium hiking pack, cloves, black peppercorns, good sea salt, whole nutmeg and a big stick of cinnamon (sort of hard to explain why these last several are important unless you’re also into a certain sort of cooking, and are familiar with Click to continue reading this post →

Fourth Thoughts

By | | , , , , ,
3 Comments

Have a Fantastic Fourth of July, to everyone who is celebrating it!

fantastic four promotional skywriting over LA on the July 2005

It’s been several days since my last confession. Sorry about the silence. I’m honestly not sure exactly what I’ve been doing, since it has been a mostly fragmented set of things, coupled with a generally down mood of introspection over matters personal. Hmm… So nothing new there.

Physics-wise I’m a bit stuck. Not on a particular project this time, but stuck on Click to continue reading this post →

Launch of an Idea

By | |
1 Comment

150 years ago today, Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution to a group of his peers for the first time. It was read at the Linnean Society, and the reading didn’t really rock the world. That came later when Darwin published the Origin of Species. Either way, it is quite an anniversary today, since evolution is without question one of the single most important scientific discoveries ever made about how our world works. (Have a look at my earlier post on the Darwin Online Project, by the way. Lots to see there.)

Actually, Wallace had the idea some 20 years before Darwin, it is said, but few remember him. A recent NPR piece quotes the author David Quammen (“The Reluctant Mr Darwin”):

Click to continue reading this post →

Goodbye to Correlations and WIRED Science

By | | , , , , , ,
2 Comments

Over on Correlations, we’re in the process of saying goodbye. The PBS experiment with a genuinely new (for them) and fun science format, WIRED Science, along with its really fantastic online component (with resources for schools, the general public, the blog Correlations, and so forth), is officially over.

I don’t know exactly what went on behind the scenes at the PBS mother ship, but frankly, it seems that they just did not have the guts to try something new at this time, and are returning to their standard stuff. I thought that the show had a lot of good work in it, including several shining portions, and deserved a bit more time to find its feet. It may well have got there, building followers that would have tuned in regularly for years, becoming a sort of US (and science-oriented) version of the UK’s Tomorrow’s World (a BBC show that ran for 38 years and -despite its flaws- is fondly remembered by many generations). Oh well.

The mood at KCET (the local Los Angeles PBS affiliate that was making the show) was Click to continue reading this post →

Going Bananas…

By | | , ,
10 Comments

…in the kitchen. A friend of mine has a number of banana trees that are producing fruit right now, and to help her get rid of her surplus I accepted a generous gift of bananas last week. (Thanks M!) It turns out that they have a remarkably strong flavour, concentrated a lot by the fact that they were already quite ripe when I got them. That strong flavour meant that I only managed to eat one of them in a given day, even though they are quite tiny.

Well, after some days I still had many of them, and now they were rather far gone down the road of ripeness. Too far, for my tastes, but I did not like the idea of throwing them away. It did not seem in the spirit of the gift at all. Then I hit upon the solution. This means, of course, a long overdue episode of: Asymptotia goes to the kitchen…!

My mum’s recipe could not be used at this point since she was travelling, and there’s an eight hour time difference, so I could not call her to ask for her method. Instead I consulted a replacement that’s sometimes acceptable in times like this: Jim Fobel’s Old Fashioned Baking Book. What was I looking for? Banana Bread.

Most, if not all, of what you need for a quick banana bread is probably in your cupboards already, if you’ve much of a cooking bent, so no special shopping Click to continue reading this post →

I Went Walking…

By | |
16 Comments

stairs in the hills. Los Angeles In some parts of the city, mostly older parts, while out on a walk you can stumble across lovely staircases nestled between houses.

Like many things in Los Angeles, they’re hidden gems – you’ll hardly hear about them outside the city, or even much beyond the neighbourhood they’re in, and you’ll certainly never encounter them by staying in your car.

So they remain largely unknown to that majority who don’t walk – even if they live near them! Here’s a particularly lovely one, spotted while I was lost in thought on a long wander (right: click for larger view), which had lots of welcome shade on a hot day.

-cvj

Thesis Thoughts

By | | ,
15 Comments

Recently I was reading the PhD thesis of my student, Veselin. He was going to have his examination and so I was looking through a draft. He recently received a fellowship to go to do a postdoc abroad and so has decided that it’s best to write up and get everything done before it gets too late into the Summer. His new job requires him to have a PhD, of course. (He was, I’m happy to report, successfully doctored (as it were), after an excellent performance in his exam.)

I recall being in the same situation myself, 16 years ago. (Wow, so long…) Happy memories. I got a fellowship to go to my first postdoc in the mythical land across the sea, where so much of the wonderful physics I’d been studying was done by the giants of the field. I was going to get to go there and join them. But I had to write up and graduate first.

I loved writing (and, as you may have noticed, still do) and so relished the prospect. I procrastinated an awful lot (as I do…) for a while before getting down to it, even managing to catch chicken pox for a while (which helped keep me at home for a bit, usefully), and then eventually settled down to it. I essentially locked myself away at home for three or four solid weeks, with a little computer, in my room at the top of the Click to continue reading this post →

News From The Front, III

By | | , , ,
8 Comments

[Note: Originally posted on CV on 4th November 2005. 25 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
___________________________________________________________________________________

[Warning! This is an unusually technical post.]

Ok, so last time, I told you a bit about the motivations for what I’ve been up to. Now I want to simply show you some of the product. I’m going to use pictures, words, and equations. I will lose some of you, and for that I’m sorry. But I hope that the words will still give you the gist of the thing. I’ll answer some of your questions in the comments.

Consider the following equation (first found and studied in this context in about 1991/1992 and reported e.g. here, and here, and here):

string equation

Click to continue reading this post →

News From The Front, II

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

[Note: Originally posted on CV on 31st October 2005. 31 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
___________________________________________________________________________________

Well, I suddenly have 45 extra minutes on my hands as I was supposed to be at a very interesting two hour lunch meeting which I’ve now missed. I learned the hard way that we have in addition to the Annenberg School for Communication, the Annenberg Center for Communication, which is of course in a completely different location, North of main campus. I spent half the meeting running around the wrong place trying to find it, and no-one at the School could help me because they did not know anything about it, until after a long time someone had the bright idea of telling me about the existence of the other place….sigh. So I have some time to devote to you, dear Reader, and it will help me calm down from the frustration of it all.

Well, I promised a long time ago (since some of you asked) to tell you what it is that I am working on in my physics research. The problem always was that if I had time to Click to continue reading this post →

News From The Front, I

By | | , , ,
7 Comments

[Note: Originally posted on CV on 3rd October 2005. 65 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
___________________________________________________________________________________

Below is a snapshot of a computation I was working on earlier this Summer. Will explain later. Spoke about it at the Southern California Strings Seminar.

I’m curious about what a physicist’s scribblings look like to others, regardless of field (science or non-science). So, non-specialists: What does this all look like, to you? What impressions do you get, if any? Do tell.

There’s no wrong answer here.

aspen black board

-cvj