We Will Miss You, TiVo

I got the "Green Screen of Death" on our TiVo on Saturday. After about 30 minutes, it would restart itself and then go back to the green screen telling me my TiVo has "encountered a serious error" and it "attempting to fix the problem". This went on for a few hours, so I decided to put the TiVo out of its misery. We've been having playback problems (video stutters, pixelation, and even failure to play recordings) for a few weeks now, so I'm not surprised this happened. I shipped the box back today, and we'll get a new dual tuner TiVo in a week or two. The exchange is technically an upgrade, so I have to pay them $150, but the lifetime subscription service will transfer over for free.

Harpers Ferry

Today I took a drive out to Harpers Ferry. It's had an interesting history, especially during and immediately after the Civil War. It's also interesting that one of the major factors why Harpers Ferry has all this history is due to its geological and geographical setting. The reason why John Brown attempted his revolution here is because it was a US armory, but the armory was there solely because of geography (it was at a natural transportation hub and it was defensible). It was hotly contested during the Civil War because it was necessary for supply lines for both Union and Confederate armies (river access and a gap through the Blue Ridge). And everything else seems to follow from there.

My friend Will is a professional historian of Science, and he's always talking about 20th century science in terms of institutions and collaborative groups rather than isolated case studies (if I understand him correctly). In that vein, I'm always more interested in the history of a place in terms of environment rather than people and events, since I tend to think that geology and geography strongly influence said people and events.

Anyway, after Harpers Ferry, I took a short detour up to nearby Sharpsburg, where the Antietam Civil War battlefield is located. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, and part of the reason why the Confederates lost is because Harpers Ferry existed so close nearby. General Robert E. Lee needed to secure his supply lines and keep the Union garrison there from attacking his rear, so he had to send off a large part of his army to take the town. While I was at Antietam, I kept wondering to myself "just why was the battle so bloody?" Part of it is due to relative inexperience (it was early on in the conflict) and poor planning (the Union army really should have just routed the Confederates), but there are several geographical reasons as well. From what I could tell, the Confederates either had high ground or sunken depressions to give them light protection, but no trenches or real fortifications. Hence they had the tactical advantage to hold their positions but no real protection from bullets and cannon fire. That's a surefire recipe for heavy casualties.

FIBbed

I'm spending most of my week trying to make a FIB sample to take with me to the synchrotron next week. The FIB is in a class 100 clean room, so I have to wear one of those bunny suits all day. Unfortunately, we lost the first two tries, so I'm working on a third section. I have one last session scheduled for Friday, so hopefully the third time's a charm.

The FIB works by sputtering away the sample with an ion beam. I can tell the FIB to dig out trenches around an area of interest to create a 1 micron thick flat section. But then comes the hard part! I have to take this tungsten needle and gently touch it to the top of the section (much harder than it sounds), make a platinum weld between the needle and section, cut out the bottom of the section, detaching it from the rest of the sample, and then bring the released section over to a TEM grid, weld it into place there with Pt, and then cut the needle free. After all that nerve-wracking manipulation, it's trivial to mill the section down to ~100 nm, where it becomes transparent to electrons.

The first sample we lost trying to touch it with the needle (not my fault, I wasn't operating the FIB then). It wasn't aligned properly, and it ended up prying the FIB section free, whereupon it flies off into the ether of the instrument, never to be seen again. The second time we picked up the section and brought it over to the TEM grid, but it charged up during the second Pt welding and flew off.

Most Disappointing Albums of 2007

In no particular order:

Chris Cornell - Carry On
Air - Pocket Symphony
Brandi Carlile - The Story
Aqueduct - Or Give Me Death
Idlewild - Make Another World
Rilo Kiley - Under the Blacklight

Top 7 Albums of 2007

1. Sarah Blasko - What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have












2. Alaska in Winter - Dance Party in the Balkans












3. White Stripes - Icky Thump












4. Barcelona - Absolutes














5. Daft Punk - Alive 2007













6. Once - Original Sountrack













7. Idlewild - Scottish Fiction: Best of Idlewild 1997-2007
also check out the download-only b-side disk

Hypocrite

Even though I hate the Apple microcosm, I had to give in and purchase songs on iTunes. I like a relatively obscure Japanese rock band called Eastern Youth. Unfortunately, their US label hasn't released their last two albums on CD, and the only digital versions are on iTunes. Rather than paying $40 for each import CD, it's easier to buy the songs on iTunes and convert to mp3. So I am officially a hypocrite on that count.

Bad Science Day

After a fairly good week in Houston for LPSC, I've been having really shitty science luck this week. While I was away, my colleague prepared a sample for me to microtome. It took him a full day to do his part, and it only took me ten minutes to ruin the sample. And I didn't just ruin the sample, I burned it to a crisp! You see, I was supposed to microtome the sample in epoxy, but I put it in sulfur instead. No worries, though, because sulfur can be sublimated away. So I cranked up the hot plate and waited for the sulfur to melt and disappear. However, I did not realize that at high enough temperatures (but below the sulfur boiling point), liquid sulfur goes through an extremely exothermic reshuffling of atom positions. When this happened to me, the sulfur quickly turned from yellow to red, and then spontaneously combusted! Then I was left with an ugly black mess, with a tiny sample hidden somewhere in the middle (pristine of course because the sample is made of materials with very high melting temperatures). So then the rest of my Monday was spent frantically trying to prepare another sample. My colleague and I managed to get a sample, and I embedded it in epoxy like I was supposed to the first time.

Then yesterday my job was to create microtome sections--about fifty 100nm sections, which will cut about halfway through the sample. That took a looooong time! But once I was done, I looked at the sample in the microscope and discovered that it was still uncut! Turns out I had wasted my time sectioning a gas bubble just above the real sample! I was pissed and it was late in the day, but I had to get this done, so I kept microtoming. Finally I got to the real sample. I cut a few 200 nm sections just as a reference point and went to look at the sample again to confirm I had really reached it. This ended up screwing me up, because once I put the sample back in the microtome, it wouldn't cut right and the sections came out crappy. So I looked again at the sample, and lo and behold, it was gone! I had wasted almost the entire day just for three measly sections that were a bit too thick.

Luckily, I found out today that one of those sections was just thin enough for TEM. And it had the interesting material we were looking for. So I guess there is a silver lining, but it's probably the worst possible silver lining.