Saturday loose ends

Santiago is still standing after the storm yesterday which caused a couple of blackouts through the night (link from here).

I fear that this means that my code which was running overnight will not have been saved, so I'll have to go back and restart that some time this weekend.

In the meantime I've been trying out a new piece of software: Mnemosyne, which is similar to the interval learning software, Genius, which I wrote about some time back. The benefit of Mnemosyne is mostly that there are plenty of ready made word lists in Spanish and Chinese (amongst many other languages). The interface takes a little more time to get comfortable with, mostly due to its simplicity, but it seems like another good system for interval learning. (NB. See also Kevin's page with some great links to more Chinese files for Genius)

This morning I also found a series of lectures at the Perimeter Institute (as I followed a link from Bee's blog) which look excellent. In particular, this course from Alex Buchel which is an ongoing course on String theory promises to be a valuable resource for those starting off in this subject without any other directed learning. Also check out the extensive course on Quantum field theory.

(Random, no context link to a multigigapixel panorama from the Online Photographer. I shan't be processing anything like this any time soon!)

Anyway, another busy weekend beckons including the promise of plenty of good Chinese and Korean food tonight with a Korean birthday to go to. Kimchi supplied by yours truly.

Incoming

Record low pressure is predicted, the rain is building and the wind is whistling. Schools are closed and classes canceled in the university today (though we're all still here, listening to any word from the Galician weather services working down the corridor). It could turn out to be nothing but the promised storm may be a biggie. I'll keep you up to date.

Olympic warmup

A collective breath was held here in Beijing yesterday evening as 8.08 pm on 8.8.2007 came round. One year to go until the Olympics and this year is the trial run. Note that in Chinese numerology the number 8 is deemed lucky.

One of the biggest questions running up to now has been whether the weather will cause problems. With Beijing's chaotic weather, a storm during the opening ceremony could spell disaster. Well, it seems that the government has that in hand. Some 30,000 people have been employed around the country, especially in the North, to control the weather, in particular by seeding rain.

The last few days has seen tremendous thunderstorms across Beijing, coming in at around 7 o'clock in the evening and lasting for 2 or 3 hours. The lightning has been more frequent than I've ever seen, with flashes and blasts echoing around Wudaokou once every 5 seconds or so. Some of the lightning has been spectacular, but most of the time I was in the office, not able to get up to the roof of any of the larger buildings in the area to get photographs.

The one time I did have to make a break for it I find myself calf deep in water as the drains struggled to keep up with the massive downpour. The times I was safely inside I watched others struggle through similar flooding.

Along with snow seen over Chengfu lu (very close to me) - which is a sign of silver iodide seeding - speculation has been rife that the chaotic weather have been artificially created. It may just be a coincidence, but yesterday was a perfect blue-skied day and at eight o'clock the blue sky was simply dappled with small clouds. Rumour is rife on the Chinese blogosphere that this is no coincidence but truly the government proving that they can indeed control the weather.

Today temperatures are up to around 37 and the sky remains blue. A million cars have been taken off Beijing's roads for the next 20 days, so it will be interesting to see if the fine weather and reduced pollution continues.

As I have mentioned before, this face saving exercise will not impress the citizens who, after the games have finished and people are looking ahead to London in 2012, will again be cloaked in the deathly smog which we all know so well.

Anyway, for now I will try and enjoy the blue sky and clearer air in the knowledge that it's not going to last long.

beginnings and endings

End of a tiring, stormy week. The CSSS summer school, which I've popped along to when I had some free minutes, has been fantastic and very well organised by Dave Feldman and others, lots to think about after that. New projects taking off, others fluttering to the ground, some of them falling harder than others, papers in the making.

Less than three months to go here in China so plans are afoot for travels both work related (I'm presenting at a school in Wuhan in a week or so) and extra-curricula (plans for doing China in October have been scaled down to tackling Sichuan for two weeks at the end of my stay).

In the humid, stormy summer months I feel like I'm running low on steam a little. The program starting here on string cosmology in September should certainly perk things up and there are still many things to see here in Beijing before I leave.

The huge midweek storms were not captured on camera as my camera had been lent to a movie director (who needed a digital SLR). He was the same movie director who came down with appendicitis earlier in the week and so the camera was inaccessible. He has now, quickly, recovered, thus the camera is back.

A random end of the week post I'm afraid.

Anyway, before a friend's birthday last Saturday I was stood in Wudaokou taking shots of the local hustle and bustle and got a fun shot of some of the Wudaokouites whizzing about on their scooters.

Wudaokou deluge

I know Britain is having a pretty hard time of it at the moment with so much rain, but, at least from the point of being drenched, if not flooded, I can sympathise. I took this photo while sheltering under a bridge in Wudaokou. We're having hot, muggy days (often about 90% humidity) at the moment with frequent rain or storms in the afternoon. The storms can be a lot of fun but the rain is just getting tedious.

Random images

I've been in contact with the people over at SciTalks about extensions and the future of the site. There are some incredibly exciting prospects for it but it deserves my full and undivided attention to write about it.

For now I will just urge you to go over there and start posting videos to build up the database. I'm told that the short URL problem has now been fixed.

For now I'll give you a couple of slightly random images.

The first is from my office window a couple of days ago, taken at about 2 in the afternoon. The sky changed from the usual hazy grey to a dark brooding mass of fast moving clouds, thunder and lightning over the course of about half an hour. This was just before the rain really started pelting down:


and secondly a picture of a painting from the school I visited with my uncle when he was out here. We went to play parachute games with the kids (photos of the afternoon are here). Following the games we walked around the school and found this painting in the main lobby. It was a little while later that I found that this is a painting of the businesswoman who had founded the school and commissioned the picture. You can form your own opinions.

Breath and stop

It's that time of year once again when the sky turns to ochre and you feel constantly like you're having a picnic on the beach. Each year the sand from the Gobi desert heads Beijing way, and beyond, last year getting far enough to hit Tokyo. This year apparently the Chinese meteorological association, in cahoots with the army have been seeding the clouds in order to try and limit the effects of the incoming cloud of dust. Though this has come to me only through complicated routes of hearsay it seems reasonable as we've been having rain for the last few weeks, whereas last year there was virtually no rain in Beijing for 6 months, give or take.

This weekend has been a respite for me as the last week was an intensive mix of research with my collaborator, new insights into the power of language and me giving a rather last minute talk. I took the opportunity to give the talk (on heavy quark potentials in AdS/QCD) as a blackboard talk, my first talk of this kind and something which I can see takes both careful planning and practice.

I spoke for a little over an hour from a few sheets of notes and though I hope I got the general idea across, this is clearly something I need more practice at. I've been asked to give a couple of review lectures on AdS/QCD at an upcoming workshop in Beijing so may take this as another chance to use this technique which, when used appropriately, can produce very effective presentations. In particular this is because the pace is automatically slowed. The chance of large equations, which rarely elucidate a problem in a seminar, is small, and it makes the whole process a more active one for all involved.

I still have numerous projects on the go but hope to post up a few things of note over the coming days.

Type rest of the post here