Your speed is 10km/h

I'm tired out today, probably because I had stomach pains yesterday and the day before. As soon as anything is wrong with my stomach I get very quickly depressed, so don't read this if you want cheering up.

For some reason or other my legs have stopped working properly. I have the feeling that I've run a marathon, or cycled lots, but I've done sod all. This morning I had trouble walking up a flight of stairs, and I needed a break after 10 steps. On the way to the shop I was clocked by the "check your speed" device at 10km/h. Even if you can't do metric, this is slow. It's not just that there is no strength in my legs, there is also no coordination. Every five steps or so one foot jumps out at an odd angle, and I have to stop, check where I wanted to go to, and start off again.

After lunch I went home for an afternoon nap, which helped a bit, but not too much. On the way home for the second time I was overtaken by five people, none of whom looked particularly to be in a rush.

The highlight of the day was being almost knocked off my bicycle by some blind bitch. Honestly it was, I got to swear and point and look indignated, and it was the only thing I've done properly all day long. I'm pissed off, so I'll force myself to eat something, then try to go to sleep.

Wise words

I didn't mean for this to turn into a two-days-late world-cup blog, but I must quote from my good self, one post down:

It seems that they [England] have finally got the hang of nutritional advice

Balls and hats

I bought an all-rubber cricket ball over the internet yesterday, which hopefully will look a bit like the one in the picture. This is called thinking ahead. Of course football is all the rage at the moment, but it only takes one defeat and it's all over. England are preparing for their match against Ecuador, and it seems that they have finally got the hang of nutritional advice, too, a full week after I sort of did. It's rather hot in Germany, and here are the wise words of Sven-Goran Eriksson:

'Maybe the conditions will suit Ecuador better, but there are things we can do too, things we are already doing, in fact. Drinking enough fluid is the most important, not just a couple of hours before the game but starting a couple of days before the game. Eating the right meals is important, too, but not as important as drinking.'

If they had any sense, and if FIFA rules allowed it, they would also be wearing a hat. I guess that for the centre-backs it could be a bit of a hindrance, but David Beckham would definitely be better off swinging in his crosses with a straw hat on. I bought a very nice wide-brimmed Stetson sun hat from "Hut Broemmer", and can confirm that it is a most useful device.

So the hatless English will probably wilt in the heat, and lose to those damned sun-burnt Ecuadorians who are used to those tropical temperatures of, how hot does it get in Quito again? Oh 19.4 +- 0.6 degrees.

Publication

I am in the process of writing a paper about what I did for my PhD thesis. I have been rather slow in writing until now, but this week I actually wrote some stuff. To be honest I had written sod all between the start of March and now, but the gap is quite useful.

Firstly I have forgotten what I wrote in the thesis, so now I can go back and check if it made sense or not. Most of the time (but not always) it does. Secondly the rest of the group (unless they are reading this blog) will be so surprised that I finally got round to writing something that they will hopefully put their names immediately to whatever I might happen to write.

A Time-honoured Tradition

Today, children, we will learn about nutrition. Now we all know that a healthy diet is important, and that drinking too much and eating fast food is bad for you, but sometimes the consequences are not immediately clear. Say, for example that you drink beer all afternoon, and fill up on a Kebab and chips. The chances are that you will survive this piece of foolishness, your liver will sort out the booze and you'll burn off the fat soon enough, and continue your life apparently none-the-worse.

Of course after a while you might lose the odd organ (I am missing the gall-bladder), but then it is hard to know exactly what caused this. Was it the wine and beer, or the fish and chips, or the turkey twizzlers, or too many hamburgers? Maybe something worse would have happened if you'd been eating salad the whole time.

Well this weekend I did some experiments on nutrition and sport. On Friday I went cycling with beer and kebab and chips lingering in my stomach from the night before. Until 20 miles I was feeling fine. I then got a cramp in one leg. After 30 miles I ate a salad (things were that bad!). After 40 miles I was suffering badly from the heat, and couldn't think quite straight. After 50 miles I was home and kaputt. Some guiding voice inside my head told me to eat lots of Spaghetti Bolognese, after which I fell asleep.

The next day I cycled 80 miles, despite the legs being a bit tired from the day before, and I felt a damn sight better. I then ate more Spagetti Bolognese, and cycled another 50-odd miles on Sunday.

So right now I have a new-found respect for my digestive system. It's quite amazing to think that a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese can propel you to the top of a big hill. It looks so static and splodgy (well mine did), and I can't imagine how anyone would ever think of getting huge amounts of energy out of it. It's an impressive feat, and I should imagine that the amazement is even greater on the side of the plate of Spaghetti Bolognese. One minute it's sitting there minding it's own business, the next it's being used as fuel by some idiot with a bicycle.

And before I forget, greetings to the two idiots with bicycles from Berlin who put me up to these trips. And thanks to "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" for the picture.

England 2 - Trinidad and Tobago 0

I'm a bit late on this one, but what the heck. I had a ticket (thanks Fabian again) for England against the "Soca Warriers" from Trinidad and Tobago. I could give you a match report, but there is no way that it would be as good as this one.

I can confirm that whilst some of the english fans were recounting the events of the second world war, and discussing the politics of Northern Ireland, the fans from the Caribbean really were singing

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London bridge is falling down. BREK it down! BREK it - down!

So England progress without playing particularly well, and the brave soca warriers from little old Trini... [NOTE FROM EDITOR: Rest of post removed for being too damned patronising. The days of your British Empire are over Mr. Endofphil]

Deutschland 1 Polska 0

Germany beat Poland with an injury-time winner this evening. Almost the whole flat here and the flat below turned up in Berto's pub afterwards to celebrate/commiserate. In total we comprised five poles and three germans, plus the odd englishman.

Germany deservedly won the football match, but the Poles remain undefeated when it comes to drinking Vodka. They also won the best chant competition (in my eyes) for "We're going to steal your cars". The Germans seem to be rather chuffed at beating Poland for some reason. This whole business is probably quite important in terms of new europe, and the increasing importance of Germany's neighbours to the east, but I'm drunk and I'm going to go to sleep, so I'll leave that as a point for you to ponder over.

WM

You may well have noticed that a certain football tournament is underway. Due to a combination of this and the erlangen beer festival I have been rather slow in updating this blog. Since the last update I went for a bicycle ride, drank lots of beer and watched lots of football, so everything is alright.

Even the usually xenophobic drunken English fans have turned into weltbuergerlicher drunken English fans. I quote from that bastion of reasonable thought and openness, the british tabloid: "The Sun".

Basking — like England — in the middle of a heatwave, Germany is heaven for footie followers now.

Huddersfield fan Paul Braithwaite, 39, who is sharing a VW camper van with two mates, said: “Everyone is drinking loads but behaving. The Germans have been laid back and the policing is low-profile. Right now, there is no better place on Earth.”

Is it worth the aggravation?

Yesterday I went for a round-table discussion with a leading consulting firm. I swear that I didn't just lift the following exchange from a Dilbert cartoon.

Boss: The job's not easy, and has long hours. For the first two years, you don't see much of your friends or family, which can be painful.

Potential Applicant: And after two years it gets better?

Boss: Oh yes. You still work the same hours, but you've forgotten what your friends and family looked like.

Shortly (well about an hour) after this I walked out, explaining that I had an urgent appointment in a beer garden.

Forchheim

125 km and 1.5 litres of beer was the sum of yesterday's cycling and beer-drinking efforts. The trip took me to Bamberg, where I saw off Henning, who is cycling to Hamburg after several days of careful preparation.

On the way to Bamberg I passed through Forchheim, and more importantly through the small village of Hausen. The residents of Hausen, apparently, believe that Pontius Pilate was born there, either in house number 48 or 73. I suppose that you can forgive them a few lost details in the 2000 years which have passed. Before the fact can become universally acknowledged, though, the Forchheimers will have to fight it out with the Fortingallers, who are equally convinced that Pontius Pilate was scottish.

Forchheim is otherwise of note for holding off the might of the swedish army during the 30-years war, during which they earned themselves the nickname "the wall shitters", a name best left unexplained. They achieved their military success despite having possibly the least imposing coat-of-arms ever, with not just one but two rather bored-looking trout.

Bergkirchweih

The Erlangen beer festival has come to town. I can't take my beer, and need a day off after each visit. It's not as though I get roaring drunk, I just feel hung over the next day, and need an early night with a cup of cocoa.

Anyway, "beer leads to hangover shock" is probably not worth writing about. The beer festival here attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world (the good thing about being hung over is that you can make up random facts without feeling guilty about it), and this year it brought Wouter and Uli, who may or may not be reading this. In a supreme example of inhospitality I invited them for a curry at my place. The trouble was that they only got to eat the curry after bringing the missing ingredients, chopping everything up and (this is the good bit) unblocking our bathroom sink.

I may make this a regular deal. In our flat we have quite a few things to fix, so if you are feeling hungry and have some kind of plumbing/floor laying/painting qualifications just send me a comment, and I will see what can be done.

Stern-Gerlach results

The first results for the Stern-Gerlach experiment are in. Our data production has been rushed through, and the results have been analysed. The data transmission from the experimental area to the main site (my office) was found to be rather slow. The exact rate was 0.144 MB per minute, but could be doubled if I didn't stop for a coffee on the way over with my floppy disk.

Anyway, here are the results: The black points show the profile of an atomic beam as the detector is slowly moved across the beam. I pushed the detector by hand, so you can't really compare the positions of the maxima for the four measurements. The width of the beam is a couple of millimetres. When the inhomogeneous magnetic field is turned on by passing a current through the electromagnet the beam is split into two. You would expect that the two beams have the same intensity, but one is always larger than the other: maybe something is cutting the beam off for positions in the left of the plot. The next step will be to reattach a motor which moves the detector automatically, and to check the alignment of all the components.

Virtual vacuum leaks

I have a really good quote about vacuum leaks, and thought that I had blown the chance to use it, already having fixed one leak. Today I tried to restart the Stern-Gerlach experiment, and found that it had a huge leak in it. There was a very good reason for this: I had attached a light to the vacuum system to check whether it was aligned properly. This light was built in to what looks like a leak-tight metal plate, but which actually has a huge hole in it.

The picture below shows what happened: the air which was pumped out by the pump was continuously replaced by the air coming in through the leak. Now the funny thing is that the leak could only be heard by listening to the bellows, which I drew as being the zig-zaggy thing. At this point you could hear a hissing sound. This hissing sound couldn't be heard at the point where the air came in, only when it passed through the bellows.



After a couple of hours, and after installing a spare bellows which made exactly the same noise, I worked out what was wrong, and removed the piece with the hole in. For a while I was annoyed, but then I realised that I may have created a new musical instrument: the leakophone. Presumably by varying the tension in the bellows you could create a whole range of hissing sounds with various tones. Add a couple more bellows and you could play a lovely tune. Before I forget, that quote, stolen from R.K. Fitch who claims that it was a student's answer to an exam question.

The essential components of a high vacuum system are a rotary pump, a diffusion pump, and a leak

Black Humour

I read in the newspaper today the tragic death of Do Van Ky, a would-be Vietnamese immigrant to Britain, and I burst out laughing. You may find this heartless, for the story is a very sad example of what happens to many people who leave a life of poverty in their own country to seek a better life in the west. After somehow making his way from Vietnam to Europe, he entered England via Dover, hidden in the back of a lorry together with several others. Once in England, the immigrants tried to leave the lorry whilst it was still in motion, but Do Van Ky slipped and was crushed under the rear wheels of the lorry.

What could be funny about this? The unfortunate driver of the lorry was Stan Bowden, who couldn't be blamed for what happened. He summed up the event thus:

"A man made all that effort to struggle halfway across the world for a better life, he tried so hard, he must have been desperate. The first time he hit British soil, some bastard ran him over. That bastard just happened to be me."

This made me laugh. I don't know if you are supposed to laugh at such things, but it is probably better to laugh at these things than to ignore them, which is what I usually do.

An honest day's work

For the first time in god knows how long I actually worked properly today. I took the Stern-Gerlach experiment apart and stuck it back together again with a new vacuum chamber, which has been built by the workshop. Vacuum systems are a bit like a child's building set. Each component has a kind of connection at the end, which (hopefully) fits the connections of other components. This is commonly called a "flange". This means that once you get enough pieces you can build and rebuild your system in any way you want.

With a bit of luck it will work soon. The down-side of this is that I sacrificed the afternoon coffee and cake break.

Sacrificial offerings

No, no, no, despite the title of the post I'm not writing about Hermes. I am back in Erlangen, and back on track with my mission statement: today I cycled to Bamberg and drank a shandy. Bamberg is about 40 km from Erlangen, but I took the scenic route, stopping for lunch in the small franconian village of Teuchatz. Gasthof Neuner (that's the name of the pub in Teuchatz) is good for three reasons; it has cheap beer, a very limited menu (a choice of one of three lumps of meat, each served with salad and dumpling), and is on top of a hill. This means that you get 5 extra minutes to digest your dumpling before you have to go up the next hill.

A short while after lunch I passed a sign pointing to the "Jungfernhoehle", which translates as the "virgins' cave". Of course I cycled straight past it, suspecting that seeing the cave would involve a long walk, that the cave would be very much like any other, and that the virgins had probably taken the afternoon off.

In all these points I was probably right, but the cave has a most peculiar history. According to a local legend three virgins were beheaded in front of the cave and each October would go for a headless moonlit ride. Then in 1951 some members of the Engert family, living in nearby Tiefenellern, decided to dig out the cave in a search for treasure. They were eventually stopped by some local amateur geologists, and the digging, which had found only bits of bone, stone and pottery, was turned over to some proper archaeologists. After quite a bit of digging, they had quite a lot of bones, including 40 skulls of young girls each with a hole in the side. They also had an extra large cooking pot. Putting two and two together, the experts declared the cave to be a site of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism, dating back 4000-5000 years. The cross below (borrowed from wikipedia) is a memorial to the victims.



Is it a coincidence that the story of the beheaded virgins rose around a cave where ritual sacrifices took place? Many people, including Victor Harth (see link below) thinks that it isn't, and that the legends were passed down through the generations for several millennia.

Links:
Victor Harth describes the story, in german.

Two geologists from Erlangen mention the story in their article about something else. Also in german.

A Time article from 1953, which you have to pay for. I did pay for it, so if you really want to read it just [DELETED BY ENDOFPHIL LEGAL TEAM].

Hardon production in deep-inelastic scattering

This is not quite what Hermes is supposed to do! If you can't spot the mistake try clicking on Mr Ben Goldacre's website. I just made up the title of this post, but it seems that there are a lot of genuine high-energy physicists who have made this typo. The next ten years of particle physics suddenly looks much more exciting!

Suddenly appearing objects

I have very good eyesight, but sometimes I just don't see stuff. After three days in Hamburg I discovered that they had built a new police station right at the entrance to DESY. I managed to pass this building several times without noticing it at all, and was surprised to say the least when I got off the bus this afternoon right next to a police station.

I also spend three evenings in the control room of hermes and never noticed the bottle of champagne which has a label declaring that in should be opened "for the first recoil proton". The new detector at hermes is called a recoil detector, as it detects things which are going forwards, but not as much forwards as other stuff which is going forwards. This means that anybody who happens to be going forwards at a good rate themselves would conclude that the stuff detected by the new detector is actually going backwards.

So if the new detector ever detects one of these "recoil protons" it is time to open the bottle of champagne. At the moment the recoil detector is in lots of small parts, and the experts are welding and hammering it back into shape. To be honest, I think that buying champagne and labelling it "for the first recoil proton" is a rather safe investment.

Hamburg

I went for a nostalgic bicycle ride around Hamburg today. I went to the english bookshop on Stresemannstrasse 169. I didn't buy any books, but I bought a packet of teabags, a tin of drinking chocolate (Hi Juliane!), some malt vinegar and two packets of biscuits. The malt vinegar is the last missing ingredient for a fish and chips, which I will try when I am in Erlangen again. I got my hair cut at the old barbers, drank a coffee in Ottensen, and bought a set of ping-pong balls.

I used to have a life here in Hamburg with lots of nice things. Somehow I let the bad stuff take over and I gave it all up.

Key Access

I am back in the east hall of the Hera ring, looking after the Hermes experiment. Things have changed since I was here in November. The polarised target, which was my special bit of apparatus, was removed and replaced by a new detector.

The most obvious things here are the gaps. The new detector has gone into the place of the old polarised target, but it isn't as big. There are now places you can walk where you used to have to climb or crawl. There are gaps in the array of electronics, too, whole racks are missing. The odd thing is that nobody pushed the remaining things together, they just left the holes as they were, as a kind of reminder of what used to be.

One thing that hasn't changed is the chance for a key access. The experiment and accelerator are enclosed behind concrete blocks, and you can't get into the experiment when the accelerator is running because of the high radiation levels. If there is a short break then it is possible to go inside and try to mend the odd broken cable. To do this you have to talk to some guy in the accelerator control room, and say who you are. The sound system is really bad, though, so the guy just makes his best guess as to what you might be called. Of course you can help by giving some context: "Nass wie feucht" or "Vogel wie Tweet Tweet" [1]. Then you are allowed to take a key, and pass through the gate. Today we went in and reattached one cable, and swapped two others round.

[1] I have a collaborator whose name translates as "Wet", and one whose name translates as "Bird". For such circumstances it is easy to pass on the correct name.