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.