Frothing problems
Dear reader(s) :-)
Well, the blog is called science and COFFEE for a reason :-) I like coffee!
I had recently a problem that drove me crazy for a while until I was given the simplest solution ever! So simple and so obvious that if you already know it you go "REALLY???"!!
I'll put some information in German also, so people searching in german can find it also. Actually the idea here is to registered the solution and make it available to as much people as possible, because I couldn't find this solution anywhere!!!
So! I had a small AEG/Electrolux Cremapresso EA 250. Which was having hiccups. Like in the morning it would not turn on (nicht einschalten). You needed to unplug it for 15-20 minutes and try again ... this is a known problem, according to the AEG/Electrolux technical assistance. I shipped it back to them for repair and got it replaced by a Cremapresso EA 260.
The new machine worked perfectly until a couple of weeks ago, when the milk frothing pipe (milk frothing stick, milk frothing tube, milchschäumer ...) stopped frothing! Loud, very loud vibration noise, but not froth!!
Cleaned to the bone, no effect. Tried to "fine tune" the position of the tube, and nothing would do. Testing the machine, everything was fine. Coffee was coming, hot water for tea also, the milk was getting heated while the frothing would fail, so nothing wrong with the machine itself, just no froth.
Called the local technical assistance (Trepesch in Nürnberg) and their technician called me back. Heard my problem and gave me the neatest solution. The frothing tube, has a small hole (which I have never EVER noticed before, see picture below) and it was probably blocked. Got home, found the hole, unblocked it and ... voila!! Froth was back to my milk!!!!
The coffee machine is not out of this world, but does the job and was a gift, so GREAT! :-)
I hope this helps someone else!!
Labels: AEG, Coffee, Cremapresso EA 250, Cremapresso EA 260, Electrolux, Frothing problems
Talk in Vienna - Part 2
Unfortunately I could not comment on the visit to Vienna on a daily basis ... too tired at the end of the day to do anything!
The visit was great! On sunday Miguel picked me up and we walked around the town and then to his nice place. I was very happy, first that he's got this long term position, second that he's settling down good there in Vienna.
Monday was "hi folks, this is Cris" time. Met Paul, amazingly nice guy, it will be a pleasure to do this collaboration with him. Lunch with Bodo's group and talk in the afternoon.
Talk was good, I guess people liked it, there were some questions, nice ones good feedback. After the talk we already sat and started with wavelets. The whole theory on the topic, the math, the digital filtering and so on. Overflow of information to Paul, Miguel and Steffi and a nice review for me (man! it has been a while I haven't seen this topic). At the end, my goal was that they get the idea on what are and how wavelets work. Then we left for the post-talk dinner. Nice Wiener Schnitzel in a typical restaurant. Bad news was rainy evening. Hmmm ... walk in the city center got canceled.
Tuesday started soon, another talk at 9:30 (and rain). Now the idea was archive usage, I ended up doing what ESO should have done and advertised some of the new features, which were totally unknown to people. Also a proto talk on databases in astronomy. This is something I would like to pursue. People using databases puts some overhead in the start (there's a process and language learning), but it pays off in time when your work gets easier and more organized. Several questions and some feedback that showed me both topics were worthwhile.
After the morning talk me al Paul discussed our future observations, more on observational strategy, so that we maximize results on studying diffuse light. After lunch we started again the wavelets massacre. Now the code usage and data analysis. That was quite long, tiresome (for them) but I hope it was worth. They are good and understood the thing. It's basically "model-detect-reconstruct-assemble".
At night a nice dinner at Bodo's and chatting about the last 3 years :-) Afterwards I was too tired and it was already too late (and the weather was still to bad) for a night walk in the city ... next time.
Wednesday was quite a short day. It started with some early tourism (woke up at 6:30 so I would have time for it) and then a final discussion with Paul and with Steffi about her thesis. Too bad we didn't have more time to discuss it, but she's a bright young girl (and I'm the old guy saying this) and knows pretty well what to do, for the moment. Lunch brought some ideas. Let's see how it goes.
In summary. A nice and inspiring week.
Labels: OV_WAV, traveling
Talk in Vienna
It's been a while that I don't do science on a daily basis ... life goes on, but some science is been made :-)
A collaboration paper came around, another one is submitted, assisting Stefi (Bodo Ziegler's student in Vienna), just not much on my beloved compact groups from my side.
A post-doc from Bodo (Paul Eigenthaler) got interested in our wavelet method (OV_WAV) and would like to use it on fossil groups. Nice follow up! We (mostly him) wrote some proposals, let's hope we get data. He's moving to Chile at the end of the month so Bodo invited me for a talk/collaboration meeting in Vienna.
It's been a while from my last science travelling, so it'll be fun. Also great to see old friends (Bodo, Miguel Verdugo, Steffi) and meet new people (like Paul). Also a great chance to walk around Vienna and take some nice pictures :-)
In addition to talk about compact groups, intragroup light and dynamical evolution, the idea is to teach Paul, Stefi and eventually Miguel, how to use the OV_WAV. Is a nice piece of code, but it's not the easiest thing to use and requires A LOT of human interaction. The results are TOTALLY worth.
I'll probably also talk about some tutorial on using ESO's archive, not any official thing, just my take and tips as advanced and long time user, on using the new features they have. Tell people that using databases is cool and good. My office mate, some months ago came with a comment that is killer on the topic "if I knew databases when I was doing my PhD, everything would have been easier and faster. And some of the math and theory on the wavelets method. It's not a must know, but it helps if you know what's being done.
I'll try to keep posting during the week.
Labels: OV_WAV, traveling
ADASS 2011 - the other days
So, as expected, a daily post about ADASS would end up being too much. The daily program was too long and then comes the social part of it ;-)
After the tutorials there was the opening reception in the Observatory, in the beautiful Cassini Room. I really have to go there again with a real camera hehehehe
Summarizing what I found interesting in the talks.
There was a lot about GPU processing. GPUs are able to do floating point operations with much better than CPUs, and they have lots of processors inside, so with parallelization one can really improve processing (on what can be distributed). BTW, don't ask the GPU to write a text, it's not able to ;-)
Nice processing example using GPU would be the GPU version of the FATBOY (University of Florida) pipeline.
Another point was Cloud computation. For several cases it is good and applicable. Instead of buying high power machinery, use Amazon, for example. Might be faster (since you don't have to draw specs, approve budget, collect invoices, buy the H/W, install all the S/W and fine tune it ...
VO world goes on, despite ESO going from active to passive member of IVOA. Lot's of interesting things going on. At ESO we need to find a way to extend VIRGO's life ... let's see what can be done.
Lot's of smaller communications on on-going projects. This would have been the perfect place to present the OV_WAV. Well, it's not all lost, we still can finish the paper and present it there!
Synergy between different areas was a lesson to take home. Eric Feigelson told us how he made statistical analysis of quasars using the statistical methods developed for survival rate analysis in biomedicine.
Sometimes all it takes is mention the problem to someone.
Some years ago I wanted to do automated search of compact groups in SDSS. The idea of calculating distances from each galaxy to all the other ~140 million galaxies in the catalogue was out of the question. There had to be a better way (I know there are several, I just needed to know which). There was. I mentioned the idea to my office mate at ESO, Joerg Dietrich, and he mentioned KD-Trees and that he was building a library on that a while ago. We just had to include spherical coordinates in it and voila, there it was, the solution.
I was not aware of binary or any other kind of tree, but mentioning got me the solution. The project didn't go forward for other reasons, but we had the tool.
That's why coffee is so important hehehehehe The solution might sit in the same office as you ... you just need to find it out!
Labels: ADASS, OV_WAV
ADASS 2011 day one
Not sure I'll keep with the daily update, but today I can hehehehe
Short day, just a tutorial. Either GPU processing or R (statistical language) or walking around Paris in a dull weather windy day.
I tried to play with R last year ... could not find my way around it and quit with a "I have to read more about it ...". 1.5 year later I haven't read about it, for one reason or another, so I decided to give it another try.
Tutorial with Eric Feigelson. He's been doing astrostatistics since ever and used survival rate statistics to quasar analysis in the 80's. I like that "synergy" thing. Get a technique widely used in one place and find out it solves your problems in another area ...
Tutorial was good. I might be able to find my way around it now, so it was worth to break the ice :-)
Labels: ADASS, statistics
ADASS 2011
After two years I'm back to a conference. Since the IAU GA in 2009 in Rio I haven't been to a conference ... kind of bad, but, part of life.
I'm in Paris for
ADASS (Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems).
I'm pretty new to the topic, so it will be fun and surprising :-) Let's see. A lot on GPU processing, I'm curious about it and tomorrow a tutorial on R (statistical language).
Labels: ADASS
Paper and refereeing
So! Some science (quite ok for someone that does not have time for science lately :-) )
Refereeing a paper. I must say the authors made it easy, since the paper was good.
Paper accepted (astro-ph/1109.3967), in a nice collaboration.
Not bad :-)
Labels: papers, refereeing
