And now for some dream completely different

Once in a while I have a completely whacked-out dream – some absolutely crazy, semi-logical chain of facts and facets. I can’t guarantee that they’re better than hallucinations from taking drugs (haven’t tried), but I’ve been told so by people who smoke weed, anyway. I had another dream like that quite recently and wanted to amuse my readers with the scenario:

The blue-gray shine of morning’s first light illuminates a cemetary. Actual stone crypts are set in regular rows. Black coffins stand on each crypt, surrounded by flowers. Between the graves, people stand in a crowd. They are all white, wearing white suits and dresses. A queue is visible, forming in front of a coffin in the middle of the cemetary. This one is white, and on top of it is a model of the White House. The people approach it with folded papers in their hands, which they drop into a slit in the roof of the model White House. We move away a little bit further, and an enclosure becomes visible: The cemetary is only a fenced-in part of a larger graveyard, set apart by a tight wall of black metal spears, tips gold-rimmed. Outside the fence, more people are approaching. These people are all black, wearing black suits over white shirts or black dresses and hats. Some of them carry black coffins in teams on their shoulders. It is obvious that they are heading for the only gate in the fence, which is locked shut. As they continue to approach, a tune fades in from the background: Harsh, distorted cellos, starting out slowly, but accelerating. The sawing, straining chords of “Hall under Mountain King” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw0TikGmVz4) rip across the scene. As the speed rises, the black people start walking faster. And faster. As the cellos break into the full riff, they start to run, to charge. The people who reach the fence first can only push against it and rattle. But the groups approaching with coffins do no hit the fence. Instead, they launch their cargo over the top of the fence. Black coffins crash to the ground inside the enclosure and break open. Every single one of them contains a model of the White House – painted black.

And here I woke up. Most of the symbolism is very obvious – but it should be emphasized that this was a dream, not a deliberate statement. So nobody has a readon to be offended, okay?

Three Monkeys – Oscilloscope Style

With the start of my graduate studies, the common oscilloscope has suddenly become an everyday tool for me in a version that it has never been before. The novelty of this rather complex device has allowed me extraordinary opportunities to “turn myself into a monkey”, as we in Germany are wont to say.

Monkey One: See no signal

Two days ago, I was trying to adjust a back-reflection mirror. I.e., at the end of five meter beampath, with a fibre, two lens systems and any number of polarizers and mirrors in between, a perpendicular mirror should reflect the laser beam all the way, precisely. We had a photodiode set up that would detect this happening, and normally it’s simple. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t see a signal. I checked again that the laser was being reflected back properly (done by holding an IR card near the incoming beam to see if a reflection showed up sideways – ideally it should be right on the incoming beam). I even went so far as to check at the photodiode itself – the beam is weak there, and I had to turn of all the lights in our lab and the neighbors’, until I could with a lot of effort see a slight pinprick right on the diode. What was wrong? The oscilloscope has two channels, and I had the wrong one switched on.

Monkey Two: Hear no signal

Yesterday, photodiode again, but a different one, much easier. I could easily see the beam going into the diode. But nothing’s happening; flatline. The epic reason: I had the GND button toggled. This connects the signal to ground and is normally used to find the green line again if you’ve turned so many wheels you can’t see it anymore. Somehow, I must have touched it on putting in the cable.

Monkey Three: Speak no signal, either

Similar situation: Get a beam to hit a photodiode (this is a recurring theme in our work, yes). The beam was definitely going in there, and the channel was not grounded. If I turned the diode (very rough method), I could sometimes see a little flicker like it was about to hit the diode, but I could never get a decent hit resulting in a high, steady signal. Hmmm. There’s a button beside GND, called DC/AC (not the band). If you put it to AC, it’s optimized for watching fast-changing signals. Suddenly putting a steady signal into an AC channel results in a short increase which drops back to zero as the signal stops changing. Guess what happened? Yes, I was in AC mode. The strong, constant signal from the photodiode had been there the entire time. Arghlll.

All of these things have something in common: It’s difficult to see. You must know to check for the problem – and now I do. I remain with the old adage “it’s only dumb the second time”.

Sleeping well

Another update from the realm of work-life balance: Things have improved greatly. The key, interestingly enough, seems to be getting up early. Those who know me will need a few moments to cease laughing, but it’s what I’ve actually been doing. Well, okay, I’ve been getting up at 7:30 – which by my standards is so close to yesterday it’s amazing I wake up at all.

Next step: Don’t dawdle. Quick breakfast, shave and go. Do NOT turn on the computer, under no circumstances at all. This has me at work at about 8:30, way before everyone else. I can switch on the lab and perform some experiments of my own. Since I don’t run full measurements alone, I normally only have some more simple element characterization to do, or some behaviour to check. When other people start arriving, I either piggyback on their plan (if it sounds interesting) or go to my desk to perform calculations and read.

By the time lunch rolls by, I’m actually hungry and I have accomplished something. In the late afternoon (17-18 o’clock) I’m actually finished with a decent workday behind me and can go home. The main realization behind this is that there are two things that have been tiring me:

1. working late in the evening (not the same thing as working long hours)
2. sleeping too little

The last one was simply because I went to bed too late and had pretty long breakfasts (including some reading and music). After a week without either, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. I think that for the forseeable future, I should be able to do everything that needs doing – although “needs doing” is very often my own decision.

On another note, my two official hobbies, choir and french, are both proceeding well. The choir may actually get Elias into decent shape before christmas, and while my french is even rustier than I thought, I’m slowly thawing it out again. The key seems to be some discipline in formulation: Stick to grammar I actually know instead of shooting for loftier phrasings. That’s what I normally like to do, but if it leads to four errors per sentence, it ruins the appearance.

Hello burnout

After pulling a twelve-hour workday on monday and feeling really beatup until late yesterday evening, I’ve decided that keeping my working hours lower cannot be a sin. I entered university working way too little and not even going to most lectures. This worked the first semester, but resulted in sharply declining grades and even two failed exams in the second and third semester; after that, I started kicking my own butt a little bit more and fortunately pulling up quite a bit. My diploma was the high point of my academic career with perfect grades. So, the lesson from my first five years was

I am lazy and when I work longer for some reason, it’s good.

In fact, working less with the excuse that it’s more efficient was one of the things that got me into the initial problems, so I mistrusted skipping something because it seemed less helpful. Sometimes I did it anyway, but I’d normally feel guilty in some way.

Now, however, I’ve started my thesis, and despite getting paid 20 hours a week, I work 40-50. I try to be at work 8 hours a day, and unless I have some important appointment, I work longer whenever it seems useful. This is normally the case when an experiment is starting to work late and I want to be there to see the entire process. For the time being, I’m learning the most from watching other people operate the lab. A situation like that is what led to the twelve hour monday. I’m feeling a lot better now, but yesterday was not a very good day – I felt worn out, twitchy and a little depressed the entire time.

I think what I have to learn now is that there is a limit to how much I can work and keep feeling well – this limit may be lower than some of my colleagues’. But frankly, my colleagues are all leaving a long time before I get my thesis, and at the moment, I’m learning a lot more from them then they are from me. So, nobody else is affected if I work a little bit less (say, 8 hours a day, not counting lunch). The only thing I should really care about is that I learn enough to pull off a good thesis when the time comes. I’m pretty certain that whatever position I take afterwards will be less work than being a grad student. So, for the moment, I should try to get a healthier and more efficient perspective on how much time I spend at work.

Heavy metal at the end of summer

My brother and I went to a festival on saturday: The Summers End [sic]  at Andernach! I originally saw the poster advertising it at the Rheinkultur festival a couple of weeks ago, and research showed that it was a small festival on some field outside a village.

Hoooowever, and this is big, there were several of the major names of the german gothic metal scene there: Subway to Sally, Letzte Instanz, die apokalyptischen Reiter. A quite amazing line-up actually, not to mention a good supporting casts with old friends like Van Canto, the 100%-guaranteed bravest band in the history of metal. Also, the only a capella band in the history of metal.

The drive was a little bit longer than we’d expected, but weather was excellent, the sun beating down and a light breeze cooling all the black-clads. We missed Van Canto (longer drive, remember?), but the first band we saw turned out to be the surprise of the evening: The previously-unknown Coppelius, styled after Hoffmann’s The Sandman (meaning 18th century garb, white make-up and a rather florid style of speech) presented themselves with Cellos, Oboes and interesting song-writing. A pleasant surprise, and I took a CD home with me.

The rest of the festival varied between excellent and okay: Saltatio Mortis and die apokalyptischen Reiter were not as appealing as Coppelius had been, but Letzte Instanz and particularly Subway to Sally showed their full abilities – these two bands are not my longtime favorites for nothing.

I think Andernach will be seeing me again next year – the field-and-forest atmosphere is kinda nice, and the bands were a really good deal for the low price.