I guess I need to start creating art again instead of just lurking. That MAY become possible now that I have a brief interlude of no school. It also will become more possible when I purchase and build my new computer in the next few days. For a while I was stoked on a nForce 750 sli, nvidia gtx280, q6600 intel quad system; but my friend is trying to talk me into the Phenom AMD/Radeon ATI family. I'm going to get a 24" Samsung HD monitor, so I WILL be doing art again. I've been looking into software like Vue as well, I want to expand my horizons and get into the third-dimension. My roommate is going to be taking a Maya class so I'll learn some shit there. So I'm gonna brag quite a bit in this post; but you might learn something so pay attention. Science, rock music & beer is the theme as usual.

I spent the summer learning how to use 0.8 meter telescope in an observatory near Ellensburg, WA for a class. My schoolwork consisted sleeping in to noon or 1'o'clock, then drinking beer all day, getting a suntan, grilling steak & ribs... And then staying up all night taking pictures of variable stars while listening to music and browsing dA. I got to spend two weekends this summer doing this... it was awesome. I even got to drive a university suburban offroad... not crazy offroading, but it was fun roaring up the hill with that powerful engine.

I've had the chance on and off to work on our school's new 16" telescope, I was working on doing the polar alignment about two weeks ago... then final projects came up and I musta pulled 4 all nighters in the last week and a half. It fuckin sucked, but I finished everything tonight so I finally get to post a journal. I learned a lot about quantum computers and calibrating standard stars for absolute photometry; but NO WAY do I want to have a week like that for a while.

I met an astronaut. His name was Dr. Love! He earned a Masters and PhD of astronomy and also aeronautics at my school, UW. The man was a genius, smarter than hell. He spent 10 years in the astronaut corp before flying to the international space station in February 2008. He was part of the team designing the moon return mission too. All the undergrads asked him questions; most of the discussion was about how he became an astronaut after being an astronomer (not a common ordeal), or about what his experience was like in space. (Your body has to get used to a lot of things.) Apparently all the fluids in your body rise without gravity so your first night in space is spent using the restroom a dozen times. Haha.

As if meeting an astronaut was not cool enough, I also was able to see our university's quantum entangled ion pair. This forms the basis for a quantum computer, which is a device that uses a property of nature called "superposition" of quantum states to run algorithms on a probabilistic logic gate. This means processes can be run in parallel, search algorithms can run faser. Rather than having information held by a classical "bit;" information is contained as a probability of up or down inside an imaginary space called the Bloch sphere, which is referred to as a "qubit." The experimental set up for the pair involves shinning a blue-shift laser and a red-shift laser an electro-magnetically trapped-ion. This slows the ion or set of ions enough that their motional energy becomes controllable. After that you can use an emitted photon to set the entanglement. You have two remote objects that are part of the same system. It doesn't allow faster than light communication however as after making a measurement the probabilities collapse into values.

Okay, if you didn't follow that don't worry, I still don't totally understand it. That's enough NERD content for a while... The only last thing I have to mention is that Cern's LHC turns on during my birthday. Which brings me to my birthday... my 21st birthday! Firstly, next weekend is Seattle's music festival, Bumbershoot. I get to spend the entire weekend ragingly drunk, where I get to see Fall of Troy & Beck on Saturday, Stone Temple Pilots on Sunday, and Offspring, Bedouin Soundclash and Xavier Rudd on Monday. It's going to be fucking dope! I left my job a few weeks ago due to how busy I knew I would be... and damn, it's the first time I get to go to Bumbershoot for more than an hour because it's the first time in the last 3 years I'm not working every day of the festival. Hell yeah!

So... I turn 21 on the third of September. That means I'm going out on the town on September 2nd after midnight. I have to go a night early, because the day after I turn 21 I have to be at the airport at 5 in the morning. Why? I'M GOING TO FUCKING MCDONALD OBSERVATORY! It's a huge, multi-telescope observatory stationed near Fort Davis, Texas. I spend a week there observing pulsating cataclysmic white dwarfs. It's gonna be awesome! Then we drive to Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico; which is right next to White Sands! While there I get to do instrumentation of a high-speed camera. I am SO STOKED. So I'm going to be pretty drunk still when I go to the airport to get there, and I have a layover in Phoenix. Haha... It's going to be a fun September. It's almost NCAA football season! And NFL is already kickin' off! WOOHOO!

So that's it, I'm going to buy a nice camera this week so I can take cool pictures of my journeys.