Fortran is fun, whoever said forgetting what you did last week indicates it was a good one was wrong, and Chile has some exotic creatures. These are the highlights of my sixth week...
First of all, my Fortran program has reached Beta phase. It is menu driven, whoa fancy! It has sparked a new project for my advisor and I. More details on that when they form. I completed a macro in SuperMongo to superimpose slits onto a fits image, actually, that part kind of collapsed and I haven't figured out that one yet... I can't make a good grayscale image of the fits file. Any suggestions... ? But I can create the desired picture with GIMP. Woo hoo! The macro still works to make the correct slit width and Position Angle though, so kudos to me! Although, I had a cosine and sine switched for a while and it made interesting slits. We are going to begin writing the paper for SA2-237 next week.
I realized that the 'great' time I forgot about two weekends ago was really just a big waste of time on my part. I spent the better part of Saturday - some weeks ago - trying to configure my FVWM set up so I can have a pretty work environment. Well it wasn't a big waste of time, I accomplished what I wanted but it was not very scientific...
I've been exploring the city of La Serena for a while now. The flowers on the Recinto and around the town are spectacular. And the animals that I have seen are some that I have never come across in my life. I was about 5 meters from a flock of quail this weekend. It was cool. It must be strange to have this thing sticking on the end of your head. So I tried it, but I couldn't find anything springy to use as the stem... I think a plain sock with a rolled up one inside of it just doesn't do justice to the quail. Hmmm... Doug Funny uses a belt, but I found this next to impossible and painful during sudden motions.
There are also these birds that come out at night. They squeal and I managed to sneak up close enough to observe them in more detail. Which was quite a feat. They stand in fours or fives and move in a pattern similar to military maneuvers I have seen on TV. Two will stay back and one leads the others and the advance, then one of the two that stay back will turn around while the other one moves toward the group, then the last one back will also move with the group. And they do this until they get scared off. It's interesting. They stand on their feet with their chest protruding and their tail feathers are sharply pointed toward the ground. They have grey feathers on the back side and white on their bellies... I'll try to sketch one and put it here for anyone who cares to see more.
I have also seen what looks like a Red Fox around the Recinto. It usually comes out at night, like 3 AM or later and it is always between me and my way home so I always scare it off. There is a strange creature that I captured in my room. It looks like a cross between a scorpion, ant, and spider. So far it appears to suck the juices from other insects I have fed it. It is very intimidating. Perhaps a picture will come for that too... time to break out the sketch book.
Wait a minute, more highlights have come to mind...
Monday we went to visit Gemini South! It is located on an adjacent mountain to Cerro Tololo. Cerro Pachon is the name. It is higher and we had to fill out this form that said our brains could rupture and we can't hold them responsible for it. There was some stuff about aliens but I forget what it said.
This week we heard from Jim DeBuizer about all the great things MID IR has to offer the astronomical community. This lasted for two days. But it was very informative and colorful. Saturday we had movie night at Don and Stephanie's. We watched a short called the Bile of Vile - not for those with weak stomachs - and and the highest grossing Hong Kong flick ever... Storm Riders. Two excellent movies, as opposed to Red Planet, which we viewed at the local theatre on Friday. Don't see it. Although the Nematodes are cool, the concepts in the movie lack scientific reality and interest.