Thanksgiving

Until recently I was convinced that the stereotype of British rainy days was over-exaggerated. Oh how this last month has proven me wrong. I try to strategically time my bike rides to and from work, but every few days I mess up get drenched. Thankfully the rain held off on Thanksgiving, and more importantly during the Rhodes/Marshall football game.

Several months ago I ambitiously decided to organize a Thanksgiving dinner for the American Rhodes Scholars. After being chided as a jingoist, the event grew to include all interested Rhodes Scholars, which at the end of the day was very nearly 100 people. I wasn't foolish enough to take this on alone, so I roped Sarah Miller into doing all the hard work. After a fair bit of stress and a full day in the kitchen, we managed to prepare a pretty darn good meal with all of the real 'murican favorites - rolls, cornbread, green salad, mac 'n cheese, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potato and marshmallow casserole, quiche (for the vegetarians), stuffing, cranberry sauce, and of course turkey (9 turkey breasts and 3 whole turkeys). As always, the football game was good fun (and the Rhodies won).

Chalkboard

Somehow grungy algebra is more tolerable on a chalkboard.

Lake District

I went walking in the Lake District (Northwest England) last weekend with the Oxford University Walking Club. We climbed a couple of little hills called Scafell and Old Man Coniston. Only when I got home and checked wikipedia did I realize that they're basically the tallest hills in all of England.

The weather on Saturday was gorgeous, but Sunday was a little more characteristically English. In the future I think I may have to be a little more serious about taking the advice to put on full waterproof gear.

Housewarming BBQ

I've been pretty delinquent about posting updates. Here are some photos from the housewarming BBQ Clara and I threw back when Oxford was still sunny.

The door to the rooftop patio

Deals!!!

Over the last week or so I've scored a few awesome deals. My new place is next door to the grocery store, so I can poke my head in at the end of the day and buy the spoiling food for dirt cheap. Usually it just means a loaf of bread for 10 or 15 pence, but one night I hit the jackpot.

80 pence for all of this

Though I've snagged some impressive deals in my time, nothing comes close to the most recent addition to my room. The other day Clara shot me an email ordering me to check out her department's dumpster. I reluctantly investigated, expecting to find a pile of rocks or a toilet brush. Instead I was met by this beauty:

She had to spend a few days in a garage at Rhodes House then in the hallway of a friend's place before I finally managed to get her down the Cowley Road. A surprising number of people stopped to stare as three of my friends and I passed by with her on our shoulders. The three of us from nerd schools (MIT and Caltech) didn't see what was so special about the sight, but apparently Oxonians aren't used to resourcefulness.

Around Oxford

Last weekend was "Open Doors Oxford." Most colleges and historic buildings are open to the public. I was excited that All Souls College was open, so I took a little tour of the grounds. I've become conditioned to Oxford's beauty so I actually found the college to be anticlimactic.

The Natural History Museum's hands-on insect exhibit proved more exciting.

Yes, I realize spiders are arachnids.

Just in case the tarantula doesn't make you jealous, my banana pancakes should do the trick.

Internet!

After nearly a month without it, I finally have internet in my apartment. Goodbye productivity.

Romania and Switzerland

My vacation was quite nice (photos here), but I returned to an apartment that still lacks internet. I blame Clara. Even now that I've taken charge of the problem it's still taking a remarkably long time to sort out. Without internet at home I've been slow updating this blog, instead using the time to read a few non-technical leisure books. It had been quite some time since I'd sat down with anything that wasn't math or science.

Romania was quite interesting and beautiful. I was particularly intrigued to see the bizarre mixture of classical beauty, modern developments, and derelict neighborhoods. Many Bucharest buildings once had grand facades, on par with anything you would have found in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. Today most of those facades are dilapidated. Some of the buildings have been fixed up, and there is ongoing work to improve other sections of the city. Unfortunately there is still a long way to go. Stray dogs roam city streets, and there are stretches of road lined with run-down communist block apartment buildings. My friend from Caltech, Alex, lives near the (in)famous People's Palace. Her parents are artists, and have been beautifully renovating their home. Let's hope some more people follow their lead.

Alex's Home

After a day and a half in Bucharest, we went to the town of Sinaia to the Royal Castle called Peleş. Peleş was gorgeous and is arguably the prettiest castle I've ever seen.

Peleş (the ş makes an "sh" sound)

That night I caught a ride with Dan, one of Alex's friends (and a current Caltech grad student), to the town of Sibiu in the heart of Transylvania. Romania notoriously has difficulties developing their roads, so I was surprised and impressed when we hit stretches of modern highway lined with the occasional glowing gas station. It was virtually indistinguishable from roads through the middle of Missouri. Other roads matched the reputation a little better, especially the ones with horse-drawn wooden carriages (complete with wooden spokeless wheels). I did some sightseeing in Sibiu then train hopped to the town of Braşov. Not far from Braşov is a town called Bran, which boasts an old castle on a mountain. This castle was commandeered by Hollywood, making it "Dracula's Castle" despite virtually no link to the historical dracula (Vlad Ţepeş). While nowhere near as impressive as Peleş, I felt compelled to pay the castle a visit.

After a little more Romanian sightseeing I caught a flight to Geneva, where I rendezvoused with an Oxford friend, Jessica, and her undergrad friend, Doug. Doug's now a physics grad student working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. My couple of days in Switzerland were great fun, but quite a bit pricier than my Eastern European adventure. Doug hooked us up with a tour of the accelerator, an outing to Gruyère, and a hike in the Jura Mountains.

A chamois in the Juras

I'm back, briefly

After dropping off the face of the internet for a month, I decided to finally update things. My parents, grandparents and I went on a great Mediterranean vacation a few weeks ago. I decided to cram one more little vacation in this summer since I still want to see a few more things in Europe. I head to Romania tomorrow, followed by two days in Geneva (to see the LHC!). Additionally, I just moved into a new place in Oxford that I'm sharing with three buddies. It's pretty nice, though the moving process is always a bit of a hassle. I spent the morning on the phone with utilities, praising the great 0845 and 0870 phone numbers. These prefixes are about as costly as a 900 number, but not quite as exhilarating (so I'm told).

The New Place

Stow-in-the-Wold

Last Saturday I rode my bike to Stow-in-the-Wold. I wound through a series of villages on my way there. Most of these villages were quiet and beautiful, but Eynsham was a little more lively. I actually had to take a detour because the roads were being used for a local "shirt race," which was basically part pub crawl, part parade, part soap box derby, and part costume party. I had my point and shoot with me so I shot a few photos of the ridiculousness before turning around and finding a new path.


The rest of the scenery was a little more stereotypically British.

White Horse Photo

You can just barely make out part of the white horse at the top of the photo.

White Horse

I was thinking about camping out Friday night for Saturday Wimbledon tickets, but the forecast was rain Friday night and all day Saturday. I should know better than to change my plans for forecasts. Saturday turned out to be sunny and gorgeous. All was not lost because I got to take a nice little bike ride. Clara and I rode to the White Horse Hill about 22 miles away from Oxford. It has a doozie of a climb at the end of the route.



The hill is very chalky, so long ago people would dig ditches and make chalk pictures. The National Trust now keeps some of these preserved. The Uffington White Horse is one of the largest, but there are many of these hill figures across the English Countryside. Clara (the geologist) tried to tell me something about the hills, but I just heard "blah blah blah strike and dip blah blah blah." Some people need to learn how to not talk about technical stuff when others clearly aren't following and aren't interested. [edit: (sarcasm)]

Pembrokeshire

I've failed to update for a while, so to appease the family I'll link to lots of photos this time. Over the weekend I went with some friends to the Pembrokeshire Coast in Wales. My walking trip to Wales made me think pretty highly of the region. After this trip I think it's fair to say I'm officially in love with Wales. We stayed at a youth hostel right on the coast in a little town called Broad Haven, giving us great access to the beach and the coastal walking path. I even took a dip in the ocean and didn't get hypothermia. More photos of the adventures are available here .

Lazy Weekend

In order to finally kill the rumor that I'm just lounging around in England, I planned a busy weekend. Saturday and Sunday in Oxford were gorgeous - sunny and ~70 degrees (in American units), so I soaked up about 14 hours of sun thanks to a picnic, punting, tennis, and an ultimate (frisbee) tournament.

Punting is a silly tradition wherein people pile in long flat boats as one poor guy has to propel the boat in the most inefficient possible manner. It's usually fun because people have pretty poor control over their boats ("punts"), leading to amusing situations. Unfortunately I was so good at guiding our punt that my friends just got bored.



After a disappointing second place finish in the spring league, the ChUniv ultimate team showed up to the "Cuppers" tournament ready for redemption. The tourney was on small pitches with just 5 on a side, or, in the case of ChUniv, 4 on a side until the others finally showed up. It was an exhausting day of 7 games. We were just too knackered by the semifinals to keep up with the slightly more organized, uniformed, practiced teams. At least I connected on my first successful hammer to the end zone.

Our Motley Crew

Wake up, frosh!

It's ditch day! Well it's not ditch day for me, but it is for the folks at Tech. If you want to share in the fun, you can try to crack this puzzle, which is part of my friend Matt Grau's stack.

Obtain the 8 digit decimal number from the following:

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000010010010010010010010010010101010000
000001001101101101001101101101001010100000
000010011011010010001001000000010100000000
000100010000000000010000000000100000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000001010101101000000000000000
000000000000000110001000010000000000000000
000000000000000000010000100000000000000000
000000000000000000100000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000010101011101000000000000000000000
000000001100010000010000000000000000000000
000000001000100000100000000000000000000000
000000000001000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000101001011101000000000000000000000000000
011000110000010000000000000000000000000000
110000000000100000000000000000000000000001
100000000001000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000101
010111101000000000000000000000000000010000
100000010000000000000000000000000000100001
000000100000000000000000000000000000000010
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000010100101110101
101000000000000000000000011000010000001000
010000000000000000000000000000000000010000
100000000000000000000000000000000000100000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000010100101101011101000
000000000000000000001100010000010000010000
000000000000000000011000000000100000100000
000000000000000000000000000001000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000001010010110010111101011101000000000
011111100001000001100000010000010000000000
011010000000000000000000100000100000000000
100000000000000000000001000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000001010111100
101100101110010111010110010000000100000011
000011000001100000100001100000001000000010
000000000001000001000011000000010000000100
000000000010000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000

Ditch Day Photos

Rectory Farms

On Saturday Melis and I rode our bikes to Rectory Farms, a self-pick farm about 5 miles outside of Oxford. Asparagus and strawberries were in season. The rest is better told with pictures.

Before

After

The Good Stuff

I also played tennis on grass for the first time. It was quite the experience.

Another Sunny Day

This is the second amazing sunny day in a row, and they both fell on the weekend! I'm going outside to enjoy it. Will post more later.

Walking in Wales

I'm a little slow posting about my weekend in Wales. It was a great trip! If only the "Walking Club" had a slightly more masculine name (like "Hiking Club" perhaps) I may have joined sooner. We headed out in a minibus (read 15-passenger van) on Friday evening, stopped off at a pub for dinner, then arrive at our hut that night. The English walking tradition mixes and matches components of camping, backpacking, and hiking. Instead of actually camping, people stay in these nice little cabins, complete with sleeping pads, showers, kitchens, and even electricity. They're quite cheap (£5-7/night/person), and I wouldn't be surprised if it costs that much to find a place to legally camp. On Saturday we drove to a mountain called Cadair Idris, which we summited right as it got windy and rainy. It was actually quite nice since I enjoy the wind at the top. Most of the others in the group took along huge day packs with first aid kits, emergency shelters, rope, etc. This all seemed a little excessive to me, so I took my camera instead. I think it was a good choice.

Cadair Idris

The trip was particularly notable because it was the first time I'd hung out with as an American in a group of primarily Brits. It was an experience I thought I'd have more of, and was quite fun, especially since I could easily divert any America-ribbing by bringing up the Welsh. I was incredibly ignorant of the English-Welsh relations - so ignorant that I thought Wales and England were nearly the same. I mean I knew that they were different, but didn't completely realize that the Welsh have a language that looks like this and is still taught in their schools.


I always thought of the English as being more different from the Scottish and the Northern Irish, but my hiking buddies were quick to inform me that the Welsh are a bunch of sheep-shaggers. As best I can tell the general view is that Arkansas:USA as Wales:Britain, with all due respect to all insulted parties. More photos are available in my picasa album below.

Wales

In other news, this afternoon was the finals of the College ultimate frisbee tournament. I've been playing on the Christ Church and Univ joint team (ChUniv) since last term. We've been doing remarkably well thanks to a couple of great handlers, but we couldn't hold on today. It turns out that some of the teams actually practice, which should definitely be illegal. I'll have to start getting in better shape for our chance at revenge. There's a day long tournament in a few weeks. Expect to hear a victory story soon.

Energy Frontier Research Centers

The DOE announced that money is starting to flow towards some of the major solar energy challenges. Specifically, 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers are being created at universities, national labs, and a few other nonprofit and for-profit R&D labs. A very significant amount of the money seems to be directed at developing a better understanding of materials science problems - nanostructured materials, novel compositions, catalyst design, etc. I was pleased to see several centers highlighting attempts to incorporate major theory efforts to simulate and rationally design materials. Synopses of the center goals are available here.

On this side of the pond I've put off explicitly thinking about solar stuff in order to focus in on more fundamental physics. I'm convinced it's a necessary investment. David Logan has been teaching me to think in terms of diagrams and Green's functions, and I'm starting some simulation work with Mark Wilson to better understand nanostructured crystal formation.

I'm off to Wales for the weekend to do some walking in the Cambrian Mountains. I'll post a photo or two upon my return.

The Street Where I Live

I'd heard that my beautiful little Magpie Lane once had a slightly less pleasant name (and reputation). A friend just directed me to the wikipedia page that elaborates on the history. Warning: medieval names were fairly blunt and in this case vulgar.

Pole-vaulting

I've known some people who seem to think that pole-vaulting is an impressive skill. They've tried to convince me that it's actually difficult. Today I uncovered the truth about their "sport." It's easy.

Clara claims to be an expert pole-vaulter, so I let her accompany me as a witness of my awesomeness. She tells me that I'm a natural. I think the photos make that obvious.



Naturally the photo prompts a few questions.

1) Todd, why are your legs so beautiful?

I use copious amounts of sunscreen on my legs. Skin cancer is no laughing matter.

2) Todd, how are you so good?

Like most things in life, my success is a direct result of the fact that my momma read lots of books to me when I was a kid.

3) Wow, are you really clearing 13 feet?

Yes.

After I showed them how it's done, Clara and Andrew "Stobo" Sniderman attempted to match my feat.

One of these people is an "expert" and the other was vaulting for his/her first time. Which is which? I bet you can't even tell, which just shows how easy it is.

Sheeps

Awww

Bill and Tom

As I walked to my office today a couple of kids on bikes yelled out "Hey Todd." I looked up to see two of my math students from the park. They didn't stick around long enough for another lesson, but I'm sure we'll have another chance.

Feelin' old

I went to a birthday party today for my friend Sarah. I spent a few hours helping to make homemade linguine and tortellini for the party. Naturally it was a big hit, and like usual a large chuck of the credit goes to Jason.

In addition to the celebration of Sarah's birth, I got to celebrate the birth of Adam Thomas Gingrich, making me Uncle Todd. I ate an extra hunk of cake for Adam. Congrats, Mark and Kari (as if you have time to read lame blogs).

Mmm linguine

Spring

We've had some beautiful weather the last few days, which makes me thankful for my semi-private garden at Rhodes House. It's pretty awesome.

Judy Knudson

Judy Knudson, my piano teacher from back in the day, came to Oxford over the weekend. I'll be lazy and steal her work. She wrote about the visit in her blog.

Easter

I went to the Trout for Easter lunch. The nearby playground was too tempting to pass up. That's me in the orange. Check out that good form.

Why people shouldn't mess with me

Today was a beautiful day in Oxford, so I laid out in University Parks to read. Not long after I'd started, five teenage kids sat on a bench near me. Shortly thereafter I started noticing a bunch of pebbles landing around me. I ignored the kids for a while, assuming they'd get bored soon enough. After all, they had pretty pathetic aim. Eventually they did get bored, but just bored enough to up the stakes. They started creeping closer, wondering how close they could get before I'd finally notice them. Eventually when the most obnoxious of the little runts got a few feet away from me I informed him that I wasn't an idiot and would appreciate it if he and his little wanker friends would kindly leave me along. Naturally they then started playing the "what are you talking about I don't know anything about pebbles" card. After a little more verbal pestering they finally ran along.

About five minutes later they returned with friends. I'd already learned they were only 15 and they weren't hostile, so I was more annoyed than intimidated. From my original encounter it was clear that they were bored and just wanting someone to pester and talk to for entertainment, so I developed a good plan. As they approached I told them I'd talk only if they could solve a maths problem I gave them. I wrote down an infinite geometric series and asked them to find the sum

They were fairly bright and one of them quickly told me it was one. The others argued with him saying it wasn't really one, it was naught point nine repeating. I then proceeded to demonstrate the equivalence of the two. By this point in time the most obnoxious of the group had grown bored. He seemed a little obsessed with his recently discovered genitalia, so he preferred drawing pictures all over my paper while I regaled the others in some more maths. Several of them were vaguely familiar with the notion of differentiation, so we talked about basic calculus, the exponential function, the concept of Taylor series, etc. It worked out quite nicely since the interested guys kept the others in check. Eventually the group ran along, but I convinced three of them to stick around long enough to see the derivation for what is perhaps the most beautiful formula of elementary mathematics.

Back in Oxford

I've finally returned to Oxford. Thanks to everyone who made my American tour so much fun, especially all of the folks who hosted me for one or more nights. And now for the abbreviated recap.

The Hertz Symposium was incredible. The conference brought together a lot of really bright folks doing incredible work in all of the physical science (condensed matter, atomic physics, quantum computing, theoretical chemistry, biochemistry, organic and inorganic chem, systems biology, mathematical biology, etc.). It was great to see such a broad range of topics all presented at a high level. Bill Gates spoke the first night about his foundation and its work. He was very impressive. Gates is extremely well-read (he visited every poster presentation where he asked pertinent questions) and thoughtful. For example, when discussing malaria eradication, Gates discussed how it is important to model the effects of proposed plans to ensure that knockout punch can be delivered before a superbug could evolve. Other speakers included Jay Keasling and Xiaowei Zhuang talking respectively about engineering yeast to synthesize anti-malarial drugs and super-resolution optical imaging.

After the conference I hung out in the South Bay area with Anthony Chong, went to the touristy sites in the city with Sarah Stokes and her friend, hung out with Ryan and Kayte, then checked out Lawrence Berkeley Lab with Jordan Katz. It was great fun hopping from friend to friend. I tried to move on to the next before wearing out my welcome. Hopefully I was successful in that regard.

From SF I flew to St. Louis and met up with Gina Gage, who is now in architecture school at Wash U. My mom and sister joined me in St. Louis to go to the City Museum, a museum which is hardly a museum. It's really an abandoned warehouse turned into a giant fun house.

After a brief stopover in Columbia the family drove up to Iowa to visit Mark and Kari. What Iowa lacks in beauty it made up for in food. We ate at a restaurant called the Machine Shed, which was supposed to serve as a tribute to farmers. My all you can eat catfish dinner came out with two whole catfish. After struggling to put those away they came out and offered me more. Family time was rounded out with a visit to my momma's famous hometown then finally a few days at home.

Gifts for my soon-to-be nephew

The final leg of my journey was at Caltech. It's remarkable just how fun the place can be when there's no homework. In addition to meeting up with far too many friends to count, I got to partake in the prefrosh weekend activities - capture the flag, ruddock's hot tub, deconstruction, open mic night, etc etc etc.

Deconstruction - yes, I know this is horrible.

More photos are up on facebook.