Alexander (Alex) Smirnov

Climbing in the Gunks

2008-07-24 17:31:10

Saturday was my first attempt at climbing in the Gunks. Risi has been climbing there a lot in the past two-three years and I guess only his impending departure finally convinced me to join him and Maria. Since I last climbed at Carderock, Maryland almost a year ago I made no grandiose plans. My goal was pretty much to climb a few easy routes and get used to the exposure the Gunks are famous for. That and to grab a 5-star difficulty geocache "Vertical Limit" (bragging rights) located on the GT ledge in one of the climbing routes. The weather was incredibly hot and humid and its effects were exacerbated by the mere three hours of sleep I got the night before. In the end I only climbed the two-pitch Easy Keyhole (5.2) which was more of a warm-up that I bargained for, than failed to get past the first few steps on Laurel (5.7) and concluded the day with the first pitch of Arrow (5.6). Not much but I had enough because of the heat. I also failed to locate the cache on the GT ledge which was very disappointing. On the way back to the parking lot we picked up two other caches by the trail and ended the day with swimming (wading?) in the Coxing Kill and dinner/beer at the Gilded Otter in New Paltz. All in all - a good day.

Kitten Photography

2008-07-21 07:18:08

Quite unexpectedly, a new photogallery was added today. Also quite unexpectedly, the subject is a three to four week old kitten found on Stony Brook University Campus few days ago. Here is a quick look at the litte fella (unsure of sex as of yet)

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A few more pictures can be found in my portfolio (photo gallery). Harris and Lisa adopted it and it seems to be doing just fine.

Google Earth Coverage of Slovakia

2008-07-12 17:27:16

Slovakia (entire country) is finally covered in Google Earth with median resolution of 2.5m. Still not the best Google can do but a vast improvement from the previous status.

Cape Cod

2008-07-11 02:42:57

Few weeks ago we visited Andi's fam vacationing on Cape Cod. We had a great time and besides swimming and relaxing also managed to bike the Cape Cod Rail Trail (CCRT). We started in South Dennis and biked all the way to the end in Wellfleet and then back. With a few detours for geocaching we logged 46 miles. The kml file for Google Earth is here. Here is the map:

View Larger Map

Rest in Peace George Carlin

2008-07-10 05:20:06

Well ... I know it is late and everyone knows by now. But still due to a variety of issues I finally got around to honoring my favorite comedian - George Carlin who died on June 22, 2008. Here is one of my favorite bits from his 1999 HBO show "You Are All Diseased"

Finally

2008-06-18 17:33:10

My abiotic nitrogen reduction paper has finally been published in Geochemical Transactions (direct link to pdf). GT is an open access journal which means the paper can be downloaded by anyone anywhere for free.

Bicycling season

2008-06-11 01:03:12

The vacation in Slovakia renewed my interest in biking. I borrowed my father's mountain bike and had a lot of fun riding around my hometown (Trip 1, Trip 2, Trip 3, for example). Upon my arrival on Long Island we have therefore decided to invest. Andi got a Diamondback hybrid bike and I got myself a Trek mountain bike. Hybrid (trekking) bike is definitely a better option for riding on paved Long Island roads but after several test rides I decided I felt too uncomfortable (!) riding a hybrid.

Last weekend we took the bikes out for a spin around Stony Brook (GPS track). Decent ride. No major problems. I am I am beginning to like this whole GPS tracking thingy.

Home, sweet home

2008-05-24 09:51:28

I have been spending the past three weeks in Slovakia. Strangely, now that my time here is coming to an end it doesn't even seem like that long a vacation. I have been so busy that I barely noticed how it all flew by - geocaching, hiking, traveling, mountainbiking, photography, visiting with friends and family and so on. Good times. The pics will be posted on picasa as soon as I get to them. I will be back in NY on the 27th.

AbSciCon 2008

2008-04-16 02:04:09

I am attending the 5th Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 08) this week near San Jose, CA. My talk is scheduled for Thursday in a session titled "The Evolution of the Biogeochemical Cycling of Phosphorus and other Bioessential Elements: Sources of Bioessential Elements".

No update

2008-03-28 20:05:57

Although much has happened since the last update I have not had the time to update this site, even the fairly relevant portions of it. Hopefully soon.

Something to look forward to

2008-01-29 08:23:45

It looks like the upcoming months will bring some interesting movies into the theaters. Not that it matters since none of them will almost certainly be shown anywhere on Long Island. With that kind of audience they have no chance of competing with all those "delicacies" served straight from ... well you know where.

Steep. A film about extreme skiers, I highly recommend investing bandwidth into the highest High Def trailer your computer can handle
Persepolis. Very interestingly looking animated feature.
4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days. Looks like an intense drama from the last days of communist Romania.
King Corn. Corn is everywhere. Literally. No joke.
What would Jesus buy?. A movie by Morgan Spurlock. I think this movie may turn out to be pretty bad but I will give it a try.
Taxi to the dark side. Intense documentary about an Afghani cab driver who got arrested at a Bagram US airbase and was later tortured and killed. This movie is guaranteed to excite intense emotions.

Last moments ...

2008-01-28 18:33:54

I am trying to tie up as many lose ends at work as possible before leaving DC. I spend most of the time running the microprobe on quite a variety of samples. The most exciting result thus far is the discovery of grumiplucite - a mercury-bismuth sulfosalt (HgBi2S4) in a sample from Rudnany, Slovakia. It is only the second find of this mineral in the world - besides its type locality in the Levigliani Mine in Tuscany (Italy).

Updates

2008-01-14 01:08:35

I have recently broke through the 400-found-geocaches milestone so I finally decided to update my geocaching page. The 400th cache was the Earthcache in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I have originally planned to do more geocaching while in MA but I injured my knees in a sledding accident. Few days later I met up with Francis in Maryland and did a bit of a sweep through several parks between Baltimore and Washington, DC, picking up 16 caches. The weather was awesome as was the Ethiopian food afterwards.

I am also slowly wrapping up my work at CIW since as of February 4th I will take up a postdoctoral position at Stony Brook University in New York.

Remember That Night ...

2007-12-28 08:10:27

... is the title of David Gilmour's latest DVD, released in October 2007. To review, I only have one word to say: Awesome. Here is an example.

Photo Gallery Update

2007-12-25 06:41:05

Finally posted the pictures from the Trip to Slovakia to Picasa and a few of them made it into my portfolio. . Photos from Niagara Falls are next.

V

2007-12-16 20:37:38

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose. So let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
V for Vendetta.

But ... these go to eleven!

2007-12-07 23:45:19

Few weeks ago, I gave the This is Spinal Tap movie another chance. I tried to watch this "mockumentary" once before but could hardly understand the language - which as it turned out was a major problem. This time it was much better and I enjoyed the movie very much. Here are two - possibly most famous - moments.

Busy week before Thanksgiving

2007-11-17 02:31:44

I have been trying to get as much work done as possible before I leave for Thanksgiving. I try not to think about the days past when complained about not doing enough analytical work. Now I am flooded with samples ranging from realgar to zircon and from terrestrial to extraterrestrial (Mars). No complaints from me, other than I would like to be at home on Friday night and not in the basement in the microprobe lab. Not only has Francis has bailed on me, I am cold, hungry and correspondingly cranky.

Despite the busy schedule, I managed to see several good movies, namely Michael Moore's Sicko, HBO-produced My Flesh and Blood and PBS-produced Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial. I immensely enjoyed it because last year - I think - I attended a public lecture at SBU on the same topic given by several protagonists portrayed in the movie (Eric Rothschild, Ken Miller and others). I also finally got my hands on another movie about the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution controversy - Flock of Dodos, however it was a disappointment. It pales in comparison with the above-mentioned PBS documentary, although arguably they are both focusing on different aspects of the controversy.

Two Songs ...

2007-11-02 20:13:57

... that never made it from The Wall (movie) to The Wall (CD). Both songs eventually turned up: When the Tigers Broke Free on the compilation album Echoes (2001) and What Shall We Do Now on a live recording titled Is There Anybody Out There? (2000). I don't know why. Do you?

Travels with Charley

2007-11-01 05:01:35

I have been a fan of John Steinbeck for a long time and so it is hardly surprising that I enjoyed his Travels with Charlie (1962). Although I expected this book to be more of a travelogue I was not disappointed with frequent philosophical interludes. The book is based on the trip which Steinbeck undertook around the country - from Long Island to Maine and Washington, California, Louisiana back to New York. His two companions Rocinante - modified camper truck, named after Don Quixote's trusty horse and Charlie - "French Gentleman Poodle" who is able to communicate with Steinbeck by saying "Fft". Although the main reason of this trip was to discover America and Americans, halfway through the book Steinbeck contends that it is an unachievable goal due to America's unique diversity, history, geography and ever-evolving population:

"Am I learning anything? If I am, I don't know what it is. So far I can go back with a bag full of conclusions, a cluster of answers to riddles? I doubt it, but maybe. When I go to Europe, when I am asked what America is like, what will I say? I don't know.

Some of the most fascinating passages of the book are towards the end when Steinbeck experiences rampant racism in the South. Since I did not grow up in the US and thus am largely unfamiliar with the Human Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties his descriptions are fascinating (and sometimes incomprehensible) to me. The book is filled with interesting observations, such as this one on Sinclair Lewis and what followed after the publication of his book "Main Street (Steinbeck passed through Lewis' hometown)":

"The only good writer is a dead writer. Then he couldn't surprise anyone any more, couldn't hurt anyone any more. And the last time I saw him he seemed shriveled even more. He said, "I am cold. I seem to be always cold. I am going to Italy." And he did, and he died there, and I don't know whether or not it's true but I've heard he died alone. And now he is good for the town. Brings in some tourists. He's a good writer now."

Interesting is Steinbeck's take of urban sprawl and demographic evolution of the country:

"The big towns are getting bigger and the villages smaller. The hamlet store, whether grocery, general, hardware, clothing, cannot compete with the supermarket and the chain organization. Our treasured and nostalgic picture of the village general store, the cracker-barrel store where an informed yeomanry gather to express opinions and formulate the national character, is very rapidly disappearing. People who once held family fortresses against wind and weather, against scourges of frost and drought and insect enemies, now cluster against the busy breast of the big town. The new American finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die. ... This is not offered in criticism but only as observation. And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside. This prophecy is underwritten by the tendency of the rich to do this already. Where the rich lead, the poor will follow, or try to."

Naturally, it goes without saying that taking a roadtrip such this one has been on my to-do list for a while now - in the US and preferably on few other continents as well.

One of my three wishes

2007-10-22 06:38:10

I would like to know what mental condition causes people to:

a) dress their pets in Halloween costumes
b) photograph them
c) enter the pictures into an online contest.

Even though I find no excuse for this sort of behavior, such contests do in fact exist (and are even advertised on TV) as can be seen here and here. I am not sure what has more adverse effect on me - the contest itself, or the remarkably clever play on words which is ... Howl-o-Ween. Isn't it bad enough there are websites like Cute Overload?

Sunday, Lazy Sunday

2007-10-14 23:09:39

After working for most of Saturday I took it easy on Sunday. Woke up around noon, went to the coffee shop for a cup of java and several chapters of Steinbeck. Then I hit the Library to read through the latest issue of Popular Photography and Imaging. I photocopied a few pages of tips and tricks on photographing colorful Fall landscapes and split.

In these perilous times ....

2007-10-13 21:22:10

Temperatures in DC dropped suddenly (well, it is still 60F/15C outside), the skies are clear and blue and the leaves start to reluctantly turn into various shades of red and yellow. Perhaps the Fall is finally upon us. While I am looking forward to clear days, which are especially kind to photography, I am constantly reminded that it won't be that easy. Halloween is upon us as well. Ceaselessly fascinated I watch people shop for costumes, Halloween swag and discuss party ideas while the battle for the most idiotically decorated storefront on Connecticut Avenue is slowly heating up. Can't wait to see who will be the winner this year.

GL Movie Night - Evil (Sweden, 2003)

2007-10-11 05:57:41

The movie shown was a 2003 piece called Evil (Ondskan) directed by Mikael Hafstrom and is based on an autobiographical book of the same title written by Jan Guillou. Ondskan takes place in Sweden of 1950-ties and revolves around Erik Ponti, who lives with his mom and his sadistic father. Perhaps not surprisingly Erik himself is quite violent and is eventually expelled from school. He transfers to a private boarding school (Stjarnsberg) where violence is quite common. Erik undergoes a period of personal growth while he stays away from fighting while still maintaining his dignity. The plot eventually culminates after his friend Pierre gets beaten up and leaves the school. Erik kicks a few asses after he accepts violence as necessary evil (e.g., pacifism is not always an answer). After graduation he returns home and it is implied that he gave his father what he had coming to him in a long time (again, violence is justified by years of abuse). In the very last scene, he promises his mom it is the last time. Another story, (in my mind) secondary, but nicely complementing and blending in with the main plot, is his love affair with a waitress at the school.

Ondskan was also nominated for an Oscar in the foreign movie category but ... who cares about Oscars anyway. I enjoyed this movie immensely and I am already looking for other movies directed by Hafstrom. Especially "Kopps" looks delectable and it sure would be a change from Ondskan. But that is another story.

Photographs from the movie.

National Mall in DC at Night

2007-10-09 06:54:48

In an effort to occupy my mind (and perhaps help with my insomnia) I started to overhaul the photo gallery. The first addition is from my latest photo trip to the National Mall in Washington, DC - at night.

High Hopes?

2007-09-12 00:47:17

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our troughts strayed constandly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begin

Along the long road and on down the causeway
Do they still meet there by the cut

There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The night of wonder

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

At a higher altitude with flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world
Eneumbered forever by desire and ambition
Theres a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road weve been so many time

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever

This just about summarizes my current mood

2007-08-31 23:39:52

Off to Germany

2007-08-15 05:52:43

I am off to Germany on Friday for the Goldschmidt 2007 Conference. After the conference I am going to visit my brother and undertake a few day trip to the Bavarian Alps. By the time I get I back I expect to have all the pictures from my trip to Slovakia and Niagara Falls posted. I have decided to switch my photoalbum from the current system to Google Picasa. More details will follow.

Canon Test Pictures (Washington National ZOO)

2007-05-26 03:12:25

Click on the thumbnail to open the photo in a new window. Must have javascript enabled in your browser.

asmirnov.net

2007-05-25 23:07:39

While renewing a bunch of domains for my friend Peter I decided to purchase a domain name asmirnov.net for myself. Both asmirnov.org and asmirnov.net are pointing to the same (this) website. Ideally, I would like to own all three - .org, .net and .com but someone already snatched asmirnov.com. Well, two out of three ain't bad. For now.

And the winner is ... Canon!

2007-05-25 01:57:38

After months of deliberation, I finally made the decision to upgrade my photographic equipment from my old, compact and reasonably trusty 4.0MP Olympus Camedia C-4000z to a 10.1MP Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I made the decision to upgrade long time ago but I was going through an inner struggle between this Canon and a Nikon D80. In the end I decided that the 200 dollar difference between the two cameras was big enough to abandon my original plan to buy the D80. Instead, I put the money towards the lens - the Canon EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS USM zoom lens, to be exact. My equipment bag will be complete once I acquire a Canon EF 70-300mm, F/4-5.6 IS USM telephoto lens. When will that be? Soon I hope. Although probably not before my trip to Slovakia this summer.

Photo credit: Risi.

New Laptop and Goldschmidt 2007

2007-04-26 18:02:27

My Dell Inspiron laptop is having issues with the soundcard again. I called Dell technical support to resolve the issue and it seems like they finally got fed up with exchanging my motherboard (this would be the 6th time in 2 years) and decided to give me a brand new laptop instead. They promised it would be a newer model with similar or better specs. Although I would prefer Windows XP I will have to "settle" for the newest eyecandy from Microsoft. Time will tell

On an unrelated note, I submitted an abstract for the Goldschmidt Conference in Cologne, Germany in August of this year. After the conference I will be flying to Munich to visit my brother for a few days before I fly back to the US.

Update to the Geocaching Section

2007-03-15 06:06:39

As the number of geocaches I found slowly creeps towards 100 I decided to experiment a little with google maps. As a result, i overhauled the geocaching section of my website. I like this new functionality much more since now I (or you) can zoom in to see detailed environment of the hide. Kudos go to GPS visualizer website for the code.

Arizona Pictures Online

2007-02-08 04:32:15

So it finally happened, you can now view the photos from the Arizona Trip. Several hundred pics are posted so make sure you have plenty of time and a cup of tea at hand.

Ethiopian Cooking

2007-01-31 04:42:37

After recently eating for the second time in the Dukem Ethiopian restaurant in Baltimore I decided to give Ethiopian vegan cooking a shot. When I was passing through Silver Spring, MD approximately a year ago, I remember stopping by an Ethiopian grocery store. I did not remember the exact location, though I recalled it was close to the Greyhound station. After a brief Google Maps search I found the address and went to search for the grocery store after work. Although it was already dark I managed to find the store in an instant. It was not stocked too well but I did get some spices (berbere, mitmita, shiro) as well as Ethiopian flat bread (injera). A 5lb package of injera was 6 dollars and to me it is not worth the trouble to make it from scratch. I wanted to cook the same night but after reviewing some of the recipes I realized more elaborate preparations were necessary - such as the preparation of Niter Kebbeh. So I ate two pieces of injera and that was my Ethiopian experience for the night. To be continued.

Directions to Oso Draw and other things

2007-01-27 04:25:54

I have more than enough work these days to spend any significant amount of time on updating this website. I do; however, spend about an hour today either preparing the photos for posting or writing the travelogue. I did update the "Personal" section with a page containing directions to a petrified wood collecting area in Oso Draw, AZ. Maps, GPS data and images are included. More to follow, hopefully after this coming weeknd.

Arizona

2007-01-17 21:32:26

Spent fantastic 6 days in Northeastern Arizona, visiting a multitude of national monuments and parks and taking over 1GB of photos. The route traveled: Phoenix � Prescott � Tuzigoot NM � Montezuma Castle NM � Sedona � Flagstaff � Sunset Crater NM � Wupatki NM � Flagstaff � Williams � Grand Canyon NP � Tuba City � Monument Valley NM � Kayenta � Navajo NM � Rough Rock � Chinle � Canyon de Chelly NM � Holbrook � Petrified Forrest NP � Show Low � Globe � San Carlos � Besh-Ba-Gowah � Superior � Phoenix. I hope to post the pictures this week, followed by travelogues in both English (on these pages) and in Slovak on my slovak blog.

Back on Long Island

2006-12-18 20:17:58

Came back to Stony Brook last Friday and will be spending a week doing experiments in the lab before leaving for Massachusetts on Saturday. Spent the weekend geocaching and on Sunday attended the departmental holiday party.

The new GPS is in!

2006-12-03 06:27:22

So the GPS finally arrived (Garmin eTrex legend Cx) few hours after I came back from the geocaching trip. It took me several hours to manually transfer the waypoints from the old unit to the new one, especially the ones I collected while in Slovakia. The Garmin software that came with the unit is decent, though not as good as I anticipated. Downloading and uploading data (waypoints, routes, maps) is very easy though. I am tempted to go caching tomorrow again though I got plenty of other work to do, especially cleaning, grocery shopping and cooking. My futon is going to arrive tomorrow as well. Damn!

Geocaching Saturday

2006-12-03 01:13:59

My new GPS unit has not come in yet, even though it was shipped on Monday from a town not 15 miles from my house. I am not sure what Amazon is doing with my order. I woke up late today but still managed to get down to the National Mall Area and find a few geocaches. Well ... 13 to be exact. Granted, virtual caches are not as much fun as traditional caches - but it is fun nonetheless. The area in front of the White House was crowded with families with screaming children taking pictures with either the tree of the White House. I wrote down answers to cache questions and got the hell out of there before losing my mind. Well, at least the weather was really nice today. Geocaching took me to the WWII Memorial, MLK Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Albert Einstein Memorial, Freedom Plaza.

Letter to a Christian Nation and other Writings

2006-11-29 08:58:30

I did some book shopping recently and acquired the following: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva, Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky, Whispering in the Giant's Ear by William Powers and The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. I already managed to read through the Letter to a Christian Nation and it was a fascinating read indeed. A tiny book packed with razor sharp observations about Christianity and religion in general. I am now reading Harris' second book, The End of Faith and it is a much more difficult read. In fact, I have to read some paragraphs two or three times to make sure I understand the arguments. I am some 50 pages into it and I am curious to see how I am going to like it.

Still alive

2006-11-22 07:24:50

It has been solid 8 months since I last updated this blog. Lot of changes happened in my life, some more pleasant that others. The bottom line is, I live in Washington DC now where I started working as a postdoctoral fellow. I am trying to catch up with writing papers from my PhD research so I am not doing any actual research yet. And quite frankly, I am not yet sure which research direction should I take at this point.

In October I visited Slovakia to get my new J-1 visa and finally rested a bit after 2.5 years of work. I spent a lot of time with my family, did some geocaching, hiking and took a lot of pictures. I have already started posting some of them online but I still need to add some sort of labels so the visitors know where the picture was taken. And it will be useful for me as well - some time down the line. I have also posted some updates in my 'personal' section, namely a page on geocaching and some books that I recommend.

Finally some sleep ...

2006-03-11 17:07:21

The past ten days were crazy. On Thursday I started working on a proposal for the NASA postdoctoral scholarship which was due on Monday. Now I just hope that the recommendation letters and the transcripts will get to TN on time. On monday I started working on my talk for Carnegie which I sort of finished on Tuesday night, practised it once and then worked on it more while on the train to Washington DC. By Wednesday night I had it all polished and practised (the talk was supposed to be about 45-50 minutes). On Thursday - the interview, nice dinner in a Thai restaurant and then the train ride back to NY on Friday. Got in around 7, dinner, two gin and tonics and then I crashed - in my bed finally and slept non-stop for 12 hours.

Del.icio.us

2006-02-21 08:41:39

Read what I read and what I recommend. That is if you care. Just visit http://del.icio.us/asmirnov or add this link to your RSS reader. Again - if you care. Most of the articles will be in English, though some will be in Slovak or Czech as well.

I have some spare time now so I will update some older stuff throughout the website.

Quick update

2006-02-07 09:13:54

It seems like things finally took turn for the better. First and foremost, I got invited for a Postdoc interview and while this hardly means anything, it makes me feel a bit better because it is about as far as I was able to get with my job hunt.

Another piece of good news is that my abstract that I submitted for the AbSciCon 2006 in Washington, D.C. was selected for an oral presentation in the session 'Elements of Life'. It does appear to be a great opportunity to finish years of graduate research with a talk at an Astrobiology conference.

The paper submitted to Astrobiology in December is in review and we should get the verdict pretty soon. Another paper, intended for publication in EPSL already finished and is being currently reviewed by my co-authors. The dominant paper of my thesis is currently in the works and is progressing nicely. I will hopfelly be able to finish it by the end of this week.

Microsoft Windows on my laptop finally crapped its pants and so I spent last Saturday reformatting the drive and installing every single piece of software all over again. Fortunately my drive is partitioned so there was no loss of data involved.

My beer drinking days are over - at least for now. I have decided to switch to wine so as I write this at 3 AM in the morning I am sipping some fine South Australian Shiraz. Mmmmm.

Quick update

2005-12-14 09:23:02

Life has been pretty hectic these past few weeks. Most importantly, the paper I was intensively working on got submitted into Astrobiology. After this deed was done, i started working on another on - formation of metallic Ni during dissolution of olivine. I expect to finish the first draft before Christmas. Besides the paper i have been busy searching for and applying to a variety of postdoctoral fellowships across the world. Given my previous track record I keep my hopes pretty low - but I am hopefull nonetheless.

In the meantime, Codeweavers rolled out Crossover Office 5.0.1 beta for testing purposes. Given my workload these days I don't think I will have enough time to test it.

And it is freakin' 3:30 AM again! Need to go to sleep. Now.

Several Updates

2005-11-29 19:16:42

The most recent (and good) news is that my brother got himself a job at Audi's R&D department. Congratulations and goog luck!

Posted several updates in the "Research" section, notably a spreadsheet converting 2theta to d and vice versa. Another update is an EndNote style for publishing papers in Astrobiology (the journal). It is built from "Instructions for authors" for this journal.

I am in the last stages of writing/reviewing the paper about ammonium sequestration in the Hadean ocean - which is going to be submitted to Astrobiology - hopefully before the end of this week. I am hoping for a speedy submittal and review process.

Today I posted a complete review (in Slovak) of SuSE Linux 10.0 on my slovak blog site.

Geochemical Transactions

2005-11-13 10:05:17

Geochemical Transactions is the first geochemistry open access journal in the world. This is of course a fantastic piece of news, especially for me - both geochemist and an open source (and open access) enthusiast. The journal will be published by Biomed Central and all articles will be avilable free of charge. The deal is even sweeter as the open access is retroactive and thus extends to all articles ever published by Geochemical Transactions. Biomed already hosts over 140 open access journals. I strongly identify with BioMed's philosophy that open (e.g., free) and instant access to peer-reviewed publications is essential for further advancement of science.

Gas Solubility Calculator and Thermodata

2005-11-12 06:17:48

Needed to calculate a few equilibrium concetrations of dissolved gases and went completely overboard. Created an Open Office spreadsheet in the research section (linkylink) for any future use.

Added thermodynamic data for Awaruite and Tetrataenite (logKs of dissolution reactions for GWB) in the research section

Last Week Wrap-Up

2005-11-08 04:19:52

Though I worked almost constantly it seemed like I was only mildly productive. Finally got the GC to work properly and I am finally able to analyze for hydrogen in my N-reduction experiments. Today I calibrated the damn thing with R^2 values over 0.99. This is one of the last major obstacles on the way to the paper.

In one of the last hydrothermal experiments of this project I managed to (unintentionally) synthesize some strawberry-red phase. The particles refused to settle on their own from which I deduce they are pretty small - perhaps approaching nano scales. I think it is hematite though at this point it is nothing but a SWAG "Scientific Wild-Assed Guess". With Marc's help I plan to separate it out and shine some X-Rays on it this week. It would be very interesting if it turned out to be a nano-phase

I attempted to start an experiment last week to determine hydrogen concentrations during Fe alteration but I fialed - TWICE - even though I assembled those stupid-a** reaction vessels at least 100 times over the past several months. Perhaps I am (finally) losing my mind.

Saturday - BBQ at Marc's, excellent as usual. Sunday - dinner in an Afghani Restaurant (excellent) with Andy and his father followed by a movie Good Luck and Good Night (excellent as well).

Crossover Office 5.0 Final

2005-10-25 21:22:44

After much testing, Codeweavers released their Crossover Office today with (at this) point crucial support of Microsoft Office 2003. Out of my 4 advocated applications only EndNote 9.0 passed with flying colors - and it is not yet even officially supported by Codeweavers. I have awarded EN9.0 a gold medal and will adjust the rating as soon as I test its "Cite as you write" capabilities with MS Office 2000. This is of course exciting news for those scientists that consider EN9.0 a crucial piece of software blocking them from transitioning from Windows to Linux.

Quick update

2005-10-23 03:12:55

I just tested Crossover Office 5.0 Beta4, hopefully the last before the prerelease version. Due to time constraints I only tested EndNote 8.0 and EndNote 9.0, as expected with different results. While EN9.0 passed with flying colors, EN8.0 crashed and burned.

On October 14 bunch of us went to see Noam Chomsky who was giving a talk on campus. The talk itself was on Biolinguistics so most of it was way over my head. I found the discussion to be much more interesting, probably because most questions were about politics. I managed briefly meet with Prof. Chomsky and ask him to sign one of his books I have in my library:
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Last week we also had two movie nights - it is hard to say which one left us more angrier: This Divided State or Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room. I highly recommend both of them.

Crossover Office 5.0 (Beta 2) tested

2005-10-09 02:33:10

It didn't take much time for the folks over at Codeweavers to release the Beta 2 version of their Crossover Office. This release contained significant bugfixes though none of them affected my advocated programs. They added EndNote 9.0 to the list of program for which one can submit test reports. Speaking of EndNote 9.0 - it performed really well and except for few minor bugs (annoyances) runs really well. I presume it will get officially supported in the 5.0 or 5.1 COO releases. But then again I might be wrong.

OpenSuSE 10.0 and Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 released

2005-10-07 20:01:28

OpenSuSE - the free version of Novell's SuSE Linux distro was released this week. I am not too crazy to update right away so I think I will wait for the paid version so I don't have to bother with updating all the proprietary stuff. Yes I know ... I am lazy.

For some time now I have been testing Firefox 1.5, currently released in Beta 2 version. It's got a plenty of new features including automatic update and yada yada yada. So far I have not noticed any major problems with it, certainly appears to be stable than 1.0.7 which kept crashing on my Windows XP machine like there was no tomorrow. Most of my themes and extensions are not yet compatible with this release but I expect that to be fixed fairly soon. The final release of FF 1.5 is planned for later this year.

A bunch of things

2005-10-04 04:44:47

I finally got around to test the Beta 1 release of Crossove Office 5.0. There has not been much improvement for my advocated programs but then again they are not priority for Codeweavers (this is not a complaint ;-). The biggest improvement was in handling EndNote 8.0 which installed successfully and even ran up until I tried to open/create a database. Then EN suddenly exits. I replicated this error several times. The Geochemist's Workbench and Crystallographica Search & Match behave the same way they did in the Alpha1 release. I also tried to install EndNote 9.0 for which we now have a site license - to my surprise it worked perfectly. I applied to be the advocate for EN 9.0 since there are none for 9.0 but plenty for 8.0. I am waiting for an approval from Codeweavers.
I feel rather recuperated after this weekend. First there was a Chilli Cook-off in the department - fairly well attended. It ended rather early so we took all the remaining beer and wine to the roof of the department and continued drinking there. Good times. Then there was an attempted tailgate party before the football game but it wasn't very good - mostly because the game itself was attended by perhaps 4 people. The fake cheering and incompetent commentator. There the decision was made to go to the beach, have barbecue, campfire and drink some more beer.
So we drove down to Smithpoint beach on the south shore. We planned to drive east on the beach and then camp out for the night. But this Long Island and that means that no fun is allowed - everything is prohibited including staying on the beach past 10 pm or camping or having a fire. And most people around here suck too. So we drove to the north shore where one of us lives and therefore has access to the "private" beach. Even there - no dogs (we had one), no open fire, no camping, no staying past 10 pm. We decided to ignore these rules (and risk encounter with the police) and had fun for the rest of the night. The next day in the morning we packed up and left. The summer is over.

Crossover Office 5.0 (Beta 1) is out ...

2005-09-27 20:20:32

... as of yesterday, huge number of bugfixes - hopefully including those for EndNote. I hope to test before the end of this week.

If anything can go wrong -- it will

2005-09-21 23:53:28

So sayeth Murphy in his first law. Moreover, Murphy's constant states that "Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value". Both are true - unfortunately. Few weeks after my leaking titanium reactors departed for Erie, PA - the autosampler on our Ion Chromatograph decided to go as well. I am left completely hanging with respect to all analytical and experimental work. In accordance with Murphy's constant it was the most expensive part that broke down - the sensor system determining whether the vial is in the "sample" or the "rinse" mode. This naturally renders the entire system unusable. We tried to revive it with the help of Dionex tech support but to no avail. It has to be serviced - either on site or shipped to California. In any event there will a considerable cost associated and I dare not to venture even a wild guess. Cost aside, this will most likely result in a setback with respect to time. I don't think there is anyone to blame for this, we have been using reliably for years and years and especially over the past few months the usage was unusually heavy. Between me and a colleague the machine ran virtually non-stop for weeks at a time.

The New Beginning

2005-08-30 05:15:20

My good friend Thailon finally talked me into doing an upgrade of my website. Since I am completely lost with respect to programming of any sort he volunteered his precious free time to help me out with design and pretty much everything else - but the content.

Most of the website is still in the state of disarray, with no formatting abd so on. I will try to fix that as soon as possible though I really have not much free time on my hands.