Trying Something New: Weekly Update #1

It is clear that with advent of data, my time for writing has been reduced to next to nothing.  Most of my creative energies are going into my work, which is fantastic, yet it makes for some boring blogging.  Even worse, I haven't cooked anything particularly interesting in a while, the recipe I posted last time being the only exception.  So, in order to bring some balance to my work driven life and to perhaps inspire me to cook something bloggable again, I am attempting to post an update once a week, hopefully with a little bit of physics, a recipe and maybe something about life here.      

This week I have to have a draft of an internal paper on the first phase of my analysis done by Tuesday evening (Ack!) .  It is the first jump through a series of hoops I have to make it through between now and the conference in July iin which I am hoping to show my results (or have my results shown...which is another quirk of HEP).  The collaboration has to approve the public presentation of any plots, and its a multi stage process to get a community of 3,000 people to agree to do so.  The current strategy, which no one likes or completely understands, involves first writing an internal paper about the analysis which triggers the relevant physics group leaders to assign three to four analysis reviewers to it.  The reviewers give suggestions, over see the analysis and when they are reasonably happy the result is first sent to the physics group for approval and only then is it presented to the collaboration for approval.  Somewhere along the way a paper which is suitable for public consumption is produced.  This process doesn't sound too bad the way I've described it, but it seems to be infinitely more complicated in practice.  My fellow Berkeley grad student Seth has a blog post about one of his experiences with the approval procedure up at USLHC blogs.  It's aptly titled, "Collaborating isn't always easy".

In order to get the draft together I have a lot of work to do in the next 24 hrs, yet I find myself in front of my computer, writing in order to clear my head.  I just got back from CERN, having taken the second to last bus, which left CERN at 11:30, home.  I spent the half an hour long ride toute seule, listening to the Dixie Chicks, watching stop after stop go by empty.  It was rather depressing, yet calming at the same time.  Sometimes I find that all I need to release the stress of working hard and being far away from home is the crooning of Natalie and the rest of the girls from Texas.

I was going to continue this post with a brief description of my weekend (recipe included!) mostly in pictures but my internet connection is very poor so I'll have to finish it tomorrow at CERN.  I leave you with a picture of some of the prettier acquisitions from the Saturday market.  I have no idea what I'll make with the gorgeous beans, hopefully they come with some inspiration.