March 2009 Archives
March 27, 2009
Temporal Disturbance
I am really confused. Until about half an hour ago, I was completely convinced that it was Thursday today. Utterly, totally, 100% convinced. Despite having seen probably hundreds of instances of the word "Friday" today, on things like emails and the bottom right of my screen, I remained completely sure of this.
I even assumed that when someone asked me for details of a birthday dinner on the 27th, I sent them to them, and thought they were being keen for getting the details a day early.
Then I went to eat in college, nicely filling my stomach before the (expensive-ish) birthday dinner.
And it's my brother's birthday tomorrow, and I was going to sort that out "on Friday"...
And I had a work plan involving reaching a certain point by the end of the week...
Really confused.
I even assumed that when someone asked me for details of a birthday dinner on the 27th, I sent them to them, and thought they were being keen for getting the details a day early.
Then I went to eat in college, nicely filling my stomach before the (expensive-ish) birthday dinner.
And it's my brother's birthday tomorrow, and I was going to sort that out "on Friday"...
And I had a work plan involving reaching a certain point by the end of the week...
Really confused.
March 13, 2009
I Want One of Those
Pictures of an abadoned outdoor Marx generator facility somewhere in Russia.
Sooo much "high-voltage paraphernalia"...
Sooo much "high-voltage paraphernalia"...
March 12, 2009
Sleep Weirdnesses
I'm having a somewhat sleep-deprived week. Staying up all night on Saturday night to help with the lighting for a show at the ADC Theatre, more of the same in the evenings, and getting up as early as I can (which admittedly isn't very early) to work on the thesis during the days. And then doing thesis / other work stuff in my spare time during the evenings as well. It seems like an appropriate time to write about sleep disorders.
The usual proviso about my not being a psychologist applies, but I find the science of sleep quite interesting. When you're asleep, your conscious mind is disconnected from your muscles so that you don't act out the things you dream. When this goes wrong, you aren't properly "unplugged", and you end up sleepwalking. I did that once or twice when I was about 12: it felt a bit like I drowsily woke up and tried to start doing all the things I would normally have done in the morning, before realising that it was about 4am and I should still be asleep, so getting back into bed. I woke up, thought that I'd only dreamt it, but I had my trousers and socks on having put them on in my sleep.
The other way it can go wrong is sleep paralysis. This is essentially the opposite of sleepwalking, and happens to me quite often - around once or twice every month. You wake up, but can't move a single muscle. It's very similar to waking up very early in the morning with huge muscle weakness, but much more profound. A quite scary thing is that things like breathing are still being controlled unconsciously, so although you're still breathing fine you feel like you can't breathe at all. After a few times of it happening I understood what was going on, but usually I'm too drowsy at the time to really have a clue what's happening to me at the time.
If you've ever heard stories of alien abductions, people often describe exactly this kind of paralysis. Apparently some people see mysterious shapes or other things like that, but I've never experienced that. A few hundred years ago, people would report that they'd been visited by a witch or demon. These days, it's an alien abduction. Hmmm.
A final weirdness is lucid dreaming - when you dream, but are aware that you're dreaming. I haven't experienced this in a particularly clear sense, but sometimes I realise I'm dreamining while the dream is still going on, just before waking. A kind of "Oh, this is a nice dream. It'd be a shame if I woke up right now" moment between waking and sleeping, just long enough to perceive as the dream slips away and daytime takes over.
The usual proviso about my not being a psychologist applies, but I find the science of sleep quite interesting. When you're asleep, your conscious mind is disconnected from your muscles so that you don't act out the things you dream. When this goes wrong, you aren't properly "unplugged", and you end up sleepwalking. I did that once or twice when I was about 12: it felt a bit like I drowsily woke up and tried to start doing all the things I would normally have done in the morning, before realising that it was about 4am and I should still be asleep, so getting back into bed. I woke up, thought that I'd only dreamt it, but I had my trousers and socks on having put them on in my sleep.
The other way it can go wrong is sleep paralysis. This is essentially the opposite of sleepwalking, and happens to me quite often - around once or twice every month. You wake up, but can't move a single muscle. It's very similar to waking up very early in the morning with huge muscle weakness, but much more profound. A quite scary thing is that things like breathing are still being controlled unconsciously, so although you're still breathing fine you feel like you can't breathe at all. After a few times of it happening I understood what was going on, but usually I'm too drowsy at the time to really have a clue what's happening to me at the time.
If you've ever heard stories of alien abductions, people often describe exactly this kind of paralysis. Apparently some people see mysterious shapes or other things like that, but I've never experienced that. A few hundred years ago, people would report that they'd been visited by a witch or demon. These days, it's an alien abduction. Hmmm.
A final weirdness is lucid dreaming - when you dream, but are aware that you're dreaming. I haven't experienced this in a particularly clear sense, but sometimes I realise I'm dreamining while the dream is still going on, just before waking. A kind of "Oh, this is a nice dream. It'd be a shame if I woke up right now" moment between waking and sleeping, just long enough to perceive as the dream slips away and daytime takes over.
March 10, 2009
Diffraction, Caustics and Null Hypotheses
I came across two interesting things while chasing up some references for my thesis today. The first is the research of Professor Sir Michael Berry, whose work lies in "the borderlands between physical theories - between classical and quantum, between rays and waves". This includes things to do with rainbows, levitating spinning tops (remember a news article about a levitating frog a few years ago?), the finer points of laser pointers shining through bathroom glass, and the diffraction of atoms by light. There's also a whole load of stuff that's relevant to my own research, which I'll need to take a much closer look at.
The other thing was JASNH, the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. This is a journal which provides a place for research to be published which did not demonstrate that observations of whatever phenomenon being investigated were significant to the usual level "required" for publication. That means, it contains articles with titles such as "Playing video games does not make for better visual attention skills" and "False Recall Does Not Increase When Words are Presented in a Gender-Congruent Voice". Possibly amusing, but with a very serious aim.
The other thing was JASNH, the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. This is a journal which provides a place for research to be published which did not demonstrate that observations of whatever phenomenon being investigated were significant to the usual level "required" for publication. That means, it contains articles with titles such as "Playing video games does not make for better visual attention skills" and "False Recall Does Not Increase When Words are Presented in a Gender-Congruent Voice". Possibly amusing, but with a very serious aim.
March 4, 2009
Introducing: The Triclinator
You can only imagine how much I needed to write a program to do the following:
You gave me these measurements:
--------------------------------------------------------------
h1 k1 l1 h2 k2 l2 Spacing Angle ESD
--------------------------------------------------------------
1 0 0 - - - 0.79900 - +/- 0.04000 nm
0 1 0 - - - 0.54800 - +/- 0.03000 nm
0 0 1 - - - 0.47500 - +/- 0.02000 nm
0 1 1 - - - 0.37600 - +/- 0.02000 nm
1 0 0 0 1 0 - 90.50000 +/- 0.30000 deg
1 0 0 0 0 1 - 95.80000 +/- 0.30000 deg
1 0 0 0 1 1 - 95.86000 +/- 0.30000 deg
--------------------------------------------------------------
Iterating...
---------------------------------------------------------
Itn a b c alpha beta gamma
---------------------------------------------------------
0 0.82100 0.49300 0.58500 90.00000 94.70000 90.00000 success
1 0.70848 0.58101 0.30065 89.78806 95.38217 89.82747 success
2 0.67458 0.48830 0.44046 89.36372 95.96973 89.38617 success
3 0.79505 0.54190 0.47809 89.43948 95.94105 89.55228 success
4 0.80376 0.55035 0.47971 89.44351 95.92759 89.55922 success
5 0.80385 0.55037 0.47977 89.44352 95.92762 89.55927 success
6 0.80385 0.55037 0.47977 89.44352 95.92762 89.55927
---------------------------------------------------------
Final status = success
chisq/dof = 0.00138664 / 1 = 0.00138664
I think the unit cell is:
a = 0.80385 +/- 0.04538
b = 0.55037 +/- 0.02869
c = 0.47977 +/- 0.02284
alpha = 89.44352 +/- 0.11985
beta = 95.92762 +/- 0.24502
gamma = 89.55927 +/- 0.25949
Your measurements when calculated with my cell are:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
h1 k1 l1 h2 k2 l2 Spacing Angle Deviation
--------------------------------------------------------------------
1 0 0 - - - 0.79900 - -0.00000 (0.000%) nm
0 1 0 - - - 0.54800 - -0.00000 (0.000%) nm
0 0 1 - - - 0.47499 - -0.00001 (0.001%) nm
0 1 1 - - - 0.37601 - +0.00001 (0.002%) nm
1 0 0 0 1 0 - 90.80437 +0.30437 (0.336%) deg
1 0 0 0 0 1 - 96.14916 +0.34916 (0.364%) deg
1 0 0 0 1 1 - 95.41835 -0.44165 (0.461%) deg
--------------------------------------------------------------------
