IO Modifications to Program and Sonic Youth

So if I haven't mentioned this before, I spend all of my workday writing one program. It simulates observations taken from the south pole given a specific set of parameters. I spent almost an entire week modifying it so that it would take these parameters from a text file created by the user. This way it doesn't need to recompile if the parameters were to be changed. Normally something like that doesn't take long, but my adviser wanted a lot of other changes that altered the structure of the code. Long story short... I made a lot of modifications.

In other news, I saw a band called Girl in a Coma play Friday and Sonic Youth with The Entrance Band on Saturday. After the show Friday we wanted to see a movie but couldn't agree on what to watch so we went to the lake shore at like 11pm then came back and partied with the 1st floor people. Saturday night was entirely dominated by the Sonic Youth show (though we did sneak into some construction site next to the dorm).

First Weekend and Stuff

My research adviser has been out sick since last Thursday so I've been receiving orders through email. I have a ton of questions that he needs to be here for so I'm just going to stay confused until he shows up.

Last Friday a girl in my dorm almost got raped. Some crazy guy walked inside off of the street and tried to rape her. Luckily she got away and found people, he got arrested. What kills me is she was staying awake waiting for me and the people I was with to come back and give her birthday doughnuts.

I went to see this play called Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was like 30 completely unrelated skits in no particular order, you just called out numbers and they perform the skit associated with the number. It wasn't really a play, but it was awesome.

Saturday I went with people to see Paul Van Dyke and Benny Benassi. We got there to find out it was sold out. Fail.

What Office?

So since I don't work in a lab, I don't really have a set place to work. I was never given an office because they ran out of keys to the astronomy building so I just float around campus with my laptop, programming in strange places. I'll spend an hour or two outside, an hour by the coffee shop, late nights in my dorm, I actually like this better than having an office.

I spent all of yesterday trying to get cernlib to run on my computer. I literally spent a whole day trying to get it running, then I found this wonderful thing called Fink, which did it for me in less than 30 seconds.

Finding places to eat on campus is nearly impossible unless you want to spend $10 on a bagel and some coffee. One of the girls in my dorm found this place a few blocks down 57th st. which supposedly has fantastic food so we're getting a group of people and heading down there for lunch.

The REU students are going to go bowling or something tonight, I'll take pictures of it with my iphone since it will be my only chance to document it.

The Initial 2 Days

Getting here was a nightmare. There were problems with my flight, luggage, finding a place to put my luggage until I could check in, forgetting stuff-- a lot went wrong. A lot went right too, I have no roommate and every other person does.

All of the physics REU students live on the same floor so there's a sense of community building. We're talking about getting groceries and cooking for each other on different nights of the week. The meal plan here is ridiculously expensive.

As far as what to do around here goes, I have no idea yet. I've found an open mic for every night of the week here and I brought my guitar and drumsticks. I'm still getting settled so I haven't really gone out.

I will post pictures eventually and keep everyone updated. Hopefully I won't lose interest in this blog because I need to keep track of what I do for this final paper/presentation.

Pictures will be posted once I get someone to mail me my camera I forgot.

First Things First...

I'm Tony Allen, I go to North Carolina State University and study physics, and this blog is about what happens in my REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) at the University of Chicago. Normally I do research at NCSU and do research with John Blondin but I'm in Chicago for the summer.

I'm here for astrophysics and I am working with Don York and Rick Kessler on computationally intensive project.

I will be working with software called SNANA and simulating type Ia supernova observations. Don York wants to put an array of telescopes at the south pole to constantly look for supernovae in the sky (which is dark for large amounts of time down there). My job initially is to write software that will simulate this array of telescopes and see if it will be worth spending the large amount of money on them.

Supernovae happen about once per century in our galaxy, multiply that by the number of galaxies in the universe and that's how often supernovae occur. We only catch an absurdly small number of these supernovae due to stuff (atmosphere, cosmic dust, etc...) being in the way.

I will go into more details about this project as I learn more about what I'm doing, currently I'm reading papers and trying to familiarize myself with the project.