Leeward Scuba

I went diving with Lysa and Cassie on the leeward coast. Of course, as soon as we got in the water, somebody drilled the lock on the car door and took bags from the trunk. Big drill - the whole lock was destroyed. That's the leeward for you. But, you don't bring anything important to the leeward so only books, sweaters and phones were lost. I got lucky - they didn't grab my shirt which had my phone in it. Anyways, we still had a good day there. Lots of honu time.

Sunset Beach

We went to the North Shore today to go hang out for a sunset. Beach days are always nice. Stopped by Billy's place and had little kids draw a bunch of smiley faces on my legs during their friends kid's 1st Bday party..... Do I really scream "jungle gym"?

Himalaya Mosaic from Space

They look so little......

It's Almost Over!

I skipped class today to stay home and read up for all the talks I'm giving next week. I don't remember why I registered for a bunch of classes this semester. I'm feeling pretty retarted about it since I was officially done last year. Listening to all the lectures was pretty nice, but the 1.5 hour commute sucks and I feel distracted. No more classes for a while. I did get to go to the park for a sunset timelapse and some quality liz time. I have to say that the SLR combined with "the box" is working out awesome. The next website addition will be sweet. I've been enjoying *tweaking* sunset pictures. Takes me back to those good old college days......

Calcite in a Bucket

The last week or so has been dedicated to seeing if I'll break some calcite if I cool it to liquid nitrogen temperatures (77K). I dunked a chunk a while ago and it fractured. As expected. Now I've built a low-tech "dewar" to try to slow the cooling rate down. This time it didn't break much, but it only came down to 100K or so in about 20 minutes. Oh well. Time to build a better dewar since styrofoam and cardboard didn't work. At least my temperature-sensor (diode) does.

Awesome Sunset

Sunday Night was Pedro's "going away" beach party. The sunset was incredible. Lots of good firetwirling too - mabye 7 people are decent at it now so there's always somebody spinning something. Here's the most "realistic" shot.

A screenshot from the timelapse just before sunset.
I used photomatix to average two pics to get the faint red cirrus next to the brighter orange reflection & the lower clouds.....
And then I opened a can of whoop-ass and went picasso on it. crazy.

neat afterglow too....

Sunday Twirl

Sunday makes a great beach day. Nobody stays out late and you have the whole thing to yourself. No loud groups of drunk 14 year-olds show up to bring the cops (like they did last time)!

The "golden-shower" tree

No, I didn't make the name up. Digging the SLR's pics though..... Spent a day at the park with Liz before heading up to the north shore

Website... Finally

I've learned a little more about html and redone a lot of my website - It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I've redone my whole timelapse site, index, added some "literature" links, etc. Check out the astronaut-photography favorites - Liz and I went through all the astropics and then I "enhanced" my favorites. Pretty neat shots. I also put up re-encoded versions of my older timelapse. It's a lot smaller than it used to be! Comments?

Hooking Up

Everybody is getting married. Why this year? I don't get it. Liz has 4 to go to in the next few months, and I can count 3. I guess it's about that time (mid 20's) but I'm nowhere near thinking about that kind of thing right now. I've got 3 years before I can even "get a real job", and I guess it's just not on my mind with school and setting up my "career". Besides, I'm practically married anyways. Liz and I can be very "domestic"........

Working Weekends

is a horrible, horrible thing. Saturday was the submission deadline for the Deep Impact paper. I had a draft done a month ago, but Karen couldn't find the time to really edit it until Saturday morning. I got a little beach time in, but didn't get the full paper finished until about 2am last night. I guess that's what happens when your boss is crazy-busy, but still.... Anyways, it feels really good to have this paper in and everything basically sorted out. Now I can get down to thesis crap. Finally.

Blenders

Liz and I got Sean a blender so that he could finally enjoy the wonders of tropical foo-foo drinks. Who needs to be manly and drink whiskey when you can have a mai-tai or pina colada while watching a sunset?

Planetary Nebulae

So, I have to give Rrrobbearto some credit. His planetary nebulae are cool. Maybe not the most important things in the universe, but they make really neat pictures. I went to the "Hubble Heritage" website and grabbed a bunch of their pics. Since I almost failed his final exam, I'll leave a description to the experts on other webpages and just say that these are dying stars.

Published Finally

Finally finished everything. The polarization calibration paper will be published in PASP and all the editing is done. Good feeling. The next one's due Friday.

Kaena

Liz and I went all the way to the northwest corner of the island, Kaena point. I hadn't been up there in a year. It's always interesting contrasting the total ghetto with some of the most scenic places. I'm sure it's not like driving through Africa or New Orleans, but I'm always struck by the contrast. Here's a nice beach shot.

Cassie n Jeebus-Beams

Went to the north shore to twirl fire for the first time in a long time. No kerosene, windy, n cold, but good fun huddling around the "candle". This group of 14 year olds showed up with a pile of pallets and within 5 minutes there were cops. That was fun. Here's Cassie and some Jeebus-beams from Sunset Beach.

Chondrites

Saturday, Nick and I went in to do some Scanning-Electron-Microscope work with a new type of meteorite. They're leftovers from an impact between two moon-mars-ish sized things in the proto-planetary disk 4.5Gyr ago..... Here's some "maps" we made in two different elements - each brings out a different type of grain.

Bacteria

So, not only is the Ala Wai full of battery acid from Manoa, it has flesh-eating bacteria that killed a guy. Damn.

Lead Poisoning

So I learned today that the most polluted stream in the entire USA, at least until 10ish years ago, is the lovely Manoa Stream that flows through campus. I've said before that there's a distinct lack of care for the environment here. I didn't know it was this bad. So there's this lovely habit people have here of just dumping their cars, and particularly dead car batteries into streams, ditches, and back-roads. Instead of taking them to a junk-yard or disposing of them, they just leave them somewhere. Manoa Streams lead levels were insane. I was told that the levels are down to about half what they were, but this is still very high considering where we came from (worst in the country).

Also - somebody just got flesh-eating bacteria from falling into the Ala-Wai canal a few days ago. The sewage pipes are broken, there's shit in the water (really), and car battery fluids from up here..... sounds like a good time.

New Timelapse Up

Way more timelapse than anyone has time to look at is now up on my website......