I Survived Puerto Rico And All I Got Was This Mildly Successful Blog

... and a bunch of other stuff too, but we'll get to that. Readers who only signed on because of the recent rut of graphics posts are going to be disappointed, because there won't be any of those for a while. This week, instead of making it rain planets, my goals are simple and few :

• Take the dog for a walk (check)
• Drink lots of tea (check)
• Eat cake (check)
• Get fish and chips from a chip shop (pending)
• Go to the pub (pending, it's only Tuesday for heaven's sake)

If the banner change and the above list didn't give it away, I'm now safely back in the exotic city of Cardiff, a.k.a. the place where they film Doctor Who. That means I'm no longer sweating profusely the whole time, can ride a bus instead of having to drive like a total loser, and can generally experience all the other delights Wales has to offer.

YES. Just YES.

...We Interrupt This Blog To Bring You A Review Of Condor Airlines...

My cunning plan to save money by choosing budget airlines Condor went without a hitch. Apart from the total of 20 hours of travelling involved, but that wasn't their fault. That was because of the Atlantic Ocean being quite large (continental drift has a lot to answer for). But for about the same price as a return ticket with most other airlines, I was able to haul both myself and all my accumulated belongings (about 80kg of stuff) back to Europe with minimum effort, and in a premium economy seat, no less.

No, you don't get to ride a condor. Anyway this is clearly an eagle.

I have to give Condor very favourable reviews. Expecting nothing but misery and sorrow from a budget airline, I was pleasantly surprised. My 4 large suitcases were checked in without incident. They didn't even weigh them very carefully, fortunately - because one of them was a couple of kilos overweight. The staff were every bit as polite and efficient as on any other airline, except that I was paying half the typical price for the privilege.

I was extremely lucky to have an empty seat next to me (in a row of two) so I had as much legroom and any reasonable human being could expect. Not that it did me any good at all, because I just can't sleep on planes, but at least I was not sleeping in relative comfort.

The flight came with an evening meal, which was excellent (compared to other airline food, with metal cutlery (!) and a very large piece of cheesecake) and breakfast, which was truly awful (cold flavourless meat and cheese with some kind of disgusting bread substitute that I strongly suspect was regurgitated by a chicken). Tea, coffee, and alcoholic beverages were provided liberally (unfortunately anything more than a single glass of wine on a plane gives me a splitting headache).

All in all, regardless of other reviews, I would deem them excellent. The one thing lacking was a personalised in-flight entertainment system. This has always seemed like the least important aspect of a flight to me. I'm perfectly capable of amusing myself for 9 hours (if only by bringing along my own entertainment system, to whit, a tablet) but I sure as hell can't create my own legroom. The marginal extra cost for premium economy ($200) on a 9 hour flight was absolutely worth the extra space. I'd definitely consider using them again.

... and now back to our feature presentation

Total exhaustion notwithstanding, there are were a few things that struck me very quickly on my repatriation. One was that the cars in Britain and Puerto Rico are now about equal in size. Every other trip I've been pointlessly aware that British cars are noticeably smaller than their American counterparts. No longer, though I can't really tell if it's because British cars have got larger (hardly likely since the roads are still the same width) or the American ones have got smaller (much more likely since they're more economical).

Another thing that I was instantly impressed by was the fact that everyone spoke English, but sleep exhaustion makes me very impressed by everything.

Other expected bonus discoveries include the fact that evaporative cooling works here, so I'm not drenching myself in sweat in a completely pointless attempt to stay cool. Not that you even really sweat much at 20C. Then there's the fact that at night it's so damn quiet. There are no crickets chirping. There are no dogs barking (well, OK, not many). There are no roosters. But most of all there are no coquis. God how I hate those stupid little frogs.

The coqui is a 2cm long whistling frog whose call sounds like, "ko-KWEE ! ko-KWEE !". And they are LOUD. Easily as loud as a person. Basically, they're a bunch of slimy bastards. A hundred in the distance are fine. One just outside a house is very nearly as bad as the equally ubiquitous roosters.

Now, I'm not saying Puerto Rico is a bad place to live, but if I was one of the original Taino settlers, I'd have been the first to say, "C'mon guys, this is getting silly." What I'm saying is it's a bad place to live if you're me. And I am me. Although really I should qualify this even further, because presumably if I lived in a multi-storey apartment in San Juan the roosters and coquis would be no more of a problem than if I lived in central London. So what I'm really saying is even simpler : call me crazy, but I don't want to live in the jungle.

One might therefore infer that I'm somewhat ecstatic about being back. This is not quite the case, mostly because of the travel exhaustion and five hours of jet lag. It's also somewhat hard for me to currently accept that I don't have to go back. It's a nice thought (not that there aren't things I'll miss), but I don't really quite believe it. But I'll leave that to another post.

The Return of Ramesses

Last year I borrowed a hapless kitten for two weeks with dubious name of Ramesses. Not surprisingly, Ramesses the Kitten was quite unable to live up to the standards of his more famous Pharonic namesake, Ramesses the Great. He fathered less (i.e. none) children, built less monuments (again none, though he did poop a lot), couldn't even understand the basics of riding a chariot and had about as much aptitude for commanding armies as I do for for playing Set (also none).

However, he was found to be far superior to Egypt's greatest ruler in many ways, not least of which is that as a trained astronomy cat he would naturally attack the wi-fi router with the rampant aggression that surely Ramesses I would have reserved for his Hittite foes, presumably because he hates all sources of RFI.

This year, Ramesses is on a mission of self-education. Being considerably older and wiser*, he has broadened his interests to include photonics (in this particular and unique instance among cats, laser pointers), robotics...

* Wiser meaning, "fatter" in this case.

Alarmingly, technology has advanced to the point where we can use
robotic cockroaches to entertain cats.

...and nuclear fusion.

Pet Smart presents : the home tokamak for cats !

He is, admittedly, somewhat more tolerant of the wi-fi router antennae. Perhaps, like the rest of us, he is simply willing to accept the sacrifice of a small part of the scientifically valuable EM spectrum in exchange by the massive convenience benefits bestowed by modern technology.

As befits such a prodigious polymath, Ramesses is clearly interested in everything and consequently his eyes are almost always as big as saucers. This makes him look continuously baffled.

He holds this expression more or less permanently. This means I
have absolutely no idea if he's bored, hungry, annoyed, perplexed,
tired, inquisitive, quite content, plotting to overthrow the Nigerian
government or just needs to pee.

He also reacts in the presence of anything : small pieces of dust, a light breeze, the continued existence of the floor, etc., with a sensitivity level that would make any gravitational wave detector vomit with sheer envy. I gave him the nickname of Ramecaesium.

All this cuteness comes at a price. And that price is that he's a bloody *!"£#?!$ awful nuisance. If he was a colony, he'd be the least likely ever to vote for independence. If I even go to the bathroom it's an instant and continuous series of miaows. At 4 in the morning he starts clawing at the door to the spare room to be let out, which basically sounds like a series of very loud thuds*. Then I spend the rest of the morning in a completely pointless effort to get back to sleep. That means I have no energy left in the evening to keep him entertained, which results in him biting me.

* If I leave him loose about the house he'll jump on me, which is even worse; if I shut my bedroom door then that seems to work but then I get no air conditioning.

Last year when he left I felt really quite lost. This time, after a month without anything approaching real sleep*, not so much.

* OK, a week of this was more because of the Single Dish Summer School for which there were at least some compensating factors. It's probably worth an entire post if I ever get around to it.

I love cats. Just not that cat. If I wanted a hyperactive animal who follows me around like a puppy and won't leave me alone the whole time, I'd have got a baby elephant. Or a puppy.

Minicebo !

One month ago I described my efforts to model the Arecibo Observatory. While I'd really like to use the electronic model for a whole bunch of different things - not least of which is to make an FPS level - the primary motivation of getting it laser etched in glass is now complete.

This crystal is about half the size of my gigantic Virgo Cluster glass brick, measuring 9x9x4.5cm and weighing in at about 0.8kg. That means it's roughly a 1:3000 scale model of its big brother and has a mass 1.5 million times less. The collecting area of minicebo is about 10 million times smaller than Arecibo. I'd guess that if we made an actual radio telescope this small, it would be the world's smallest filled-aperture radio telescope, instead of the largest.

Here's one we made earlier !

The etching company did a really great job of converting my untidy mesh into a sensible point-cloud that preserved all the important details.

This cube doesn't have its own light stand (yet), in these shots I'm just using the one I bought for the Virgo Cluster. Fortunately, 9cm light stands are really common and available from just $5.

I was particularly impressed that so many of the fine details were preserved from my original mesh. Even the individual girders on the platform are visible when you look closely.

Eventually, once things settle down (probably not any time before moving back to Europe), I'll make two versions. One will be a higher-polycount version with more modelled details, textures and lighting effects. One thing I'd like to do is show what the radio sky looks like above the telescope (like NRAO did for Green Bank). And possibly play with Blender's fluid simulator to recreate the end scene of Goldenye...

NO ! Not that bit !

The second will be a low-poly version which looks nice in realtime. That will be for some sort of interactive model. Maybe you'll just be able to look at the dish in 3D. Maybe it will involve an actual game. I suspect there are many uses I haven't thought of yet.

At some point down the line there will be bulk orders of these. Whether we can find some way to sell them to the public has yet to be determined. Anyone interested ? How much would you expect to pay ?

A Voyage To Snake Island And The Forest Of Unpleasant Pain

Firstly, whatever anyone else tells you, no matter how appealing the prospect of saving $100 on the plane tickets might be, do not, I repeat, do not, under any circumstances,

DO NOT TAKE THE FERRY TO CULEBRA.

There are two ways to get to Culebra ("Snake Island" in Spanish, which probably lacks a certain tourist appeal), a tiny island about 10 miles across just 17 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico proper. One is to catch a tiny, 10-seater plane which is adorable, takes about twenty minutes and is a lot of fun. The other is to catch a ferry. That's at least as much fun as being eaten by a snake.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SNAKE ISLAND.
Enjoy your stay.

The first rule of getting to Snake Island is : do not take the ferry. Seriously, don't.
The second rule of getting to Snake Island is : FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T TAKE THE FERRY.
The third rule of getting to Snake Island is : WTF ? Weren't you listening ?!? I SAID DON'T TAKE THE GODDAMNED FERRY !

The ferry mistake (I wouldn't deign to call it an option) involves waiting in line for around 8 hours, starting from 2am. This means actually getting to the island (the ferry takes 1.5 hours) takes longer than a transatlantic trip. The first half of this gruelling task consists of waiting in line to buy the tickets. The line is very long and is entirely outside, and of course there's nothing open at 2am (there aren't even vending machines). Theoretically, you may be able to get on a 4am ferry this way. But would you want to ? When you get there you'll be exhausted and nothing will be open, so don't do that.

If you have a large group, don't think you can get away with having one person take one for the team and wait in line all night. That's not how it doesn't work. How it doesn't work is that everyone in your group has to wait, otherwise you might not all get on (I'm saying "doesn't work" because this is not a system, this is not even organised chaos, this is just chaos).

The second half of the experience happens when you've bought the tickets. This part is inside, technically. The building is well-ventilated, but open to the air and so doesn't have air conditioning. There are vending machines and a small shop that opens at some ungodly hour, but there aren't anywhere near enough seats. For reasons best known to themselves, the staff insist on grouping everyone in tight, claustrophobic lines about 3 hours before the ferry is due to depart. This does absolutely nothing except annoy people.

In short, getting the ferry to Culebra is not so much a public service as a cruel psychological experiment studying the combined effects of massive sleep deprivation and overcrowding.

Once you get to Culebra though, it's quite nice.

You have to go through hell to get to paradise. This might have some profound meaning,
but another, better option is to just take the freakin' plane.

Last time we went we got trapped by a hurricane so were the only people mad enough to stay. This meant we had Flameno Beach all to ourselves. All four of us. On one of the world's best beaches. This time we went during the peak of peak season during a four-day weekend so it was slightly busier, but still frankly deserted by the standards of most British beaches during summer.

Even better than Swansea.

Flamenco Beach is popular not only because it looks quite pretty, but also because the soft fluffy sand isn't too hot to walk on yet the crystal-clear water is so warm that, if somehow stranded in it, you'd probably die of starvation before dying of exposure. It's just lovely. And also it has those bizarre tanks, left over from the times when the place was used as a military testing ground. While bombing the heck out of a tropical paradise might not be the greatest example of military stratagems, I have to admit that the end result - 30 years later - is really quite nice.

Our second adventure on Snake Island involved hiring a couple of kayaks and hunting for sea turtles. We didn't find any, but that was OK because the snorkelling was still up to nature documentary standards. At this point the Forest of Unpleasant Pain makes an appearance (to cut a short story even shorter, Sondy stood on something and went, "ow").

We took the kayaks to the ferry dock and I sat on the unpleasantly rocky (if you don't have footwear; note to self, always bring flip-flops) coast, guarding the boats from chupacabras (who knows, maybe they enjoy kayaking),  while everyone else investigated town. It was happy hour. I had no shoes, no shirt and no money, so people brought the drinks to me instead. Must be doing something right.

Finally we rowed around the corner to drop the kayaks at a dock near the airport. Except we didn't hear our rental company trying to attract our attention, so we pretty much chose a random plausible-looking docking point and went ashore there. This turned out to be the back of someone's house. One of the kayaks had taken on a lot of water, so we drained it and Sondy attempted to explain to the luckless lady of residence that we just wanted to take them through to the road and that she'd never see us again once we were on our way.

I don't speak Spanish, so I can't vouch for the translation. However, given that the woman's facial expression said something like, "You seem a harmless enough bunch of gibbering idiots", I'm not sure it was entirely successful.

We parked (?) the kayaks in front of Culebra's ecological school and drained the remaining water. Having no phones, minimal clothing and no real amount of currency, we were pretty ill-equipped to deal with any incoming apocalypses, unless they involved kayaking around a small lake and a spot of snorkelling. We got very confused looks from a lot of passers-by driving golf carts, which was curiously satisfying. It's pretty difficult to out-weird a Puerto Rican driver, but on this occasion we succeeded : "Washing your horse in the middle of the street ? Fine, don't mind me, I'm just parking my kayak."

Having learned the lessons of the outward voyage, we took the plane back. We turned up at the airport at around 10am, gave the nice lady at the desk $50, didn't present any form of ID (well  I didn't anyway), and were back on the mainland by 11:20. Keep your bloated Airbus A380's. Tiny 10-seater aircraft are wonderful.

Back on the mainland, a large friendly dog came and supposedly checked our luggage. I'm not at all convinced of the effectiveness of this procedure, as the mental processes of this particular dog probably went something like this :

"I'm at an airport ! Best thing ever !"
"Hey, look, people ! Best thing ever !"
"Wow, an aeroplane ! Best thing ever !"
"Yay, a shoe ! Best thing ever !"

And so on. That about sums up what's probably my last Puerto Rican adventure... leaving aside some crazy scheme to discover the secret of Monkey Island. The hitherto pointless monkey counter on the side of the blog may get an update, as there apparently really is a small island full of monkeys not so very far away. The downside is that the secret of monkey island is that the monkeys all have herpes, and the words, "what could POSSIBLY go wrong" do tend to somewhat leap to mind.

ESCAPE !

Or Why I'm Taking a 75% Pay Cut For Science

You'll note the banner change today as I officially accepted a job offer from the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Physicists of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences somehow lacks a certain punch, so long-term I'll probably go with Physicists Formerly of the Caribbean. I may or may not keep the Arecibo background, I haven't decided yet.

For those reading this years after the event, here's the temporary banner.

I've been determined to leave Arecibo for some time, having applied for jobs for around the last nine months (it's just a coincidence, I swear !) and received about a dozen rejection letters (which is actually doing pretty well). For the non-scientist readers, a normal academic career path consists of two or three postdoctoral appointments (usually in different institutes) followed eventually by a permanent position - usually lecturing, sometimes pure research.

This expectation that as a postdoc you're supposed to drop everything and start a series of new lives across the world is one of the best, most awful and bizarrely pointless aspects of the typical astronomy career path. All of my family and 90% of my friends (99% of the really important ones) are back in Europe, so why the hell would I want to live over here ? That would make no sense. The situation is made even worse for me because I don't like (read : detest) driving, and since there's no public transport (?!?! seriously, WTF, Puerto Rico !) the sense of isolation can be crushing. I mean, come on, I don't even like the climate.

So new horizons beckoned, and while I applied for a few jobs in the States, Europe was the goal. Being offered a job gave an instant and unbelievable sense of euphoria. This was rapidly tempered by the salary, which is above average in the Czech Republic but not enough to make any meaningful savings that I could use elsewhere (it's lower than what I was earning as a PhD student in the UK). I spent several days thinking very carefully and unusually seriously about whether this was a good idea.

Quite quickly, though, I realised that it was a damned good idea. I'm not fussed on fine dining or flashy cars (obviously) or palatial houses (though I'd like one with a bath next time, if it's not too much trouble). Really, when you get right down to it, I just want to be able to take my dog for walks. And that doesn't cost a damn thing.

Everybody say "d'aaaawwwwww".

Still, while I don't think I should buy a boat, I am very conscious of the need for financial security. Which makes Prague a risk, but a calculated risk. Not taking any risks at all is for losers. Taking wild, crazy risks ("let's jam the fork in the toaster to see what happens !") is fine if your ambition is to win the Darwin Award.

The risk of Prague is that I won't earn any useful money for the next two years. But the savings I have from Arecibo are such that there would have to be a really spectacular disaster before that became a problem, and the chances of that happening are acceptably low (things might be different if I had zero financial redundancy). In contrast, it's almost a certainty that Prague will be a better place to live, both from a personal and career point of view. So, it's a small risk of utter ruin (no more than normal, really) for a really good shot at living somewhere more awesome. Carpe diem, indeed.

I believe the phrase you're looking for is, "good grief".

Visiting home three of four times a year should be no problem as it's a $300 return flight direct to Cardiff which takes 4 hours. Compare getting home from here, where the total journey time is around 18 hours (more like 24 now there are no direct flights), costs > $1200 and involves getting over significant jet lag -  it really can't be done more than twice a year. That's not enough. I'd have to be some kind of freakin' monster to want to shun my family and friends for the sake of earning money.

The tremendous commitment required to go between Puerto Rico and the UK means I've only had one visitor in the entire two and half years I've been here. Many of my friends can't drive, thus ruling them out entirely. Yes, in principle I could drive them around the island. Realistically, San Juan airport is so far away (and I find the process of driving so intensely stressful) that it might as well be on the Moon, so that doesn't work. In contrast, driving in Prague is unnecessary because of the public transport network. So Europe is by far the best option for beating isolation.

Driving on the Moon is a lot better than driving to the Moon.

Career plans also played no small role in the decision. If the goal is to move to somewhere in Europe permanently, then actually being in Europe is an infinitely better way to make other European collaborations which may eventually lead to jobs. Staying here would mean I would become part of the woodwork - great for keeping the telescope going, but not for doing actual research. And that might be fine (given the... umm.... healthy salary this place pays) if I wanted to stay in Puerto Rico forever, but I don't.

Then, just to make absolutely sure I was subject to the maximum possible emotional g-forces, another institution (which pays far more competitively) that I didn't think I had much of a shot at decided they wanted to interview me. I took the (perhaps crazy) step of declining the interview. Prague required a decision on a much shorter timescale than the interview process, and declining a firm offer for the chance of a better one would be a really bat-shit crazy* risk (especially as I don't have much experience in the most important technical skill required for the other job). Accepting Prague and then accepting the other would be grossly unprofessional and unethical.

* Technical term.

This kind of balance is what got the world in the state it's in today, so no thanks.

Anyway, the AICAS is a research institute, not an observatory - it's within Prague itself and I can generate RFI to my heart's content (i.e. I can have wi-fi and a mobile phone again ! and I can call it a mobile rather than a cellphone ! yay !). It also has a much larger research group (Arecibo has all of 3 massively overworked staff astronomers). Not to mention that living in a city - particularly one as outstandingly beautiful as Prague - is unimaginably appealing after living in the middle of the jungle for two years (most of the buildings in Arecibo's pathetic town center are full of trees*).

*DISCLAIMER: there are some really very nice places indeed in Puerto Rico. Arecibo is not one of them.

The institute also owns an observatory in the nearby countryside, thus getting
the best of both worlds.

So Prague ticks nearly all the boxes. I can go home more often, have visitors, live in a city, never drive anywhere, do exactly the research I want to do (this is pretty uncommon for postdocs, so this is really a major perk) and form more European collaborations. I just won't be earning any (more) more money for the next couple of years. Unlike gap year students, I already have financial backup in case of emergencies. All in all, pretty sweet. Maybe I can finally get off the emotional roller-coaster and on with more important things, like selling my much-hated car. Or possibly burning it.

It would absolutely be worth every penny I paid for it. Tempting.